Nilo Gallego

In the Serra da Estrela (Portugal) silence is sometimes broken by the calls (chamamentos) of shepherds to control their flocks of sheep. These sounds are the basis for the sound poet Américo Rodríguez's compositions.

Patricia Lamas, with her generosity and energy, invited us to improvise-play-share at the recently opened creation centre L'animal a la esquena (Celrá, Girona). From that meeting resulted, among others, these improvisations.

'Puerta Beta' was based on the site specific performance ‘Fuera de la fábrica Beta’, a collective creation directed by Nilo Gallego, in which the public, located inside an abandoned factory, a symbol of the industrial decline of the area, could observe the busy transport routes that connect the outside with the centre of the city of Bilbao, through a game between the everyday, chance and a series of interventions in which the residents of the Zorrozaurre neighbourhood participated.

Action/performance: Nilo Gallego Rodríguez and Felipe Quintana Pastrana, with a flock of 200 yearling sheep (6 zumbos (buzzers), 36 long bells, 36 short bells, 48 picks, 48 shears).

The autumn weather in a remote village of Caurel, in the mountains of Lugo, the slow time of the rain, the time to look for the fire...

On his return to his Galician homeland, the poet and storyteller Antón Avilés de Taramancos (1935-1992) sees the parallel stories of his life in Colombia and the history of the American continent intermingled. The uneasiness of a new world and the terror of colonisation and subsequent slavery give way to peace in the city where all the ingredients blend together (European, African, Amerindian) and, finally, integration in the ecstasy of dance. After his death, around a sidereal oak tree, the sounds of the two continents come together.

Villa 31. Buenos Aires is about life in its most physical sense, the life that, despite everything, beats unstoppably in every corner of the planet. It speaks of happiness, suffering, and the learning of both, and takes place, perhaps by chance, in one of the various shantytowns of Buenos Aires: Villa 31. The recording was made as part of Rodrigo García's stage project ‘Cruda, vuelta y vuelta, al punto, chamuscada’.