Ruidos y susurros de las vanguardias - Medialab Prado

music emitted on the radio reproduces the metaphor of the revolution dreamt by
the stridentists: The absolute wind blows against matter / cosmic; music / is the
propaganda that waves in the balconies, / and the landscape shows out / in the
weather cocks.
In this heroic period of Stridentism in Xalapa List Arzubide had his first contact
with the radio, a medium with which he would be familiar until he was appointed
vice-director of Radio Educación, a radio station conducted by Agustín Yañez.
When he recalled that scenario at an interview, List expressed very accurately the
role of the radio in a context of political agitation as well as its capacity to transform
the citizen's habitat:
The first time that I listened to the radio was in Xalapa, it was made with a
small stone, galena, and through the radio we were listening the arguments
of the Deputy Chamber during Obregonismo. Thee broke very easily and had
to be repaired. It was extraordinary; it seemed a miracle. At the hair dressers'
had one of those devices. (Bermejillo, 1995, 8-9).
4.- Stridentists without Stridentism. List Arzubide and the radio.
After the fall of General Jara and the subsequent dissolution of the stridentist
group, the history of the links between the movement and the radio had a
meaningful epilogue represented by Germán List Arzubide, who also counted
with the collaboration of Silvestre Revueltas in one of his episodes. The
relationship of List Arzubide with the radio is in fact a chapter in the history of the
stridentists after Stridentism. The year 1927, with the fall of Jara's government,
meant the end of Stridentism as an organized avant-garde group, since from that
moment, the writers and painters that had collaborated in the journal Horizonte
come back to Mexico and spread out some time later. In the capital they kept their
presence in the press and prolonged their activity with the establishment of the
group of artists ¡30-30!, born in 1928 as a result of the confrontation between the
young generation of artists and the authorities of the conservative Academia de
Bellas Artes. In those moments of professional and political crisis, the artists
associated with the group developed their work in the field of the pantomime
theatre: in 1932 List founded in Mexico, together with Germán and Lola Cueto, the
Teatro de Guiñol. In the case of List, it was the pantomime theatre that brought
him so close to the radio. But, at the same time as the vivid imagination of the
stridentists developed in the theater, List got involved in a mysterious episode
related to the radio.
It was the assault, with guns, to the studios of the radio station XEW La voz de
th
América Latina the 7 of November 1932, in which revolutionary and political
speeches were pronounced against Pascual Ortiz Rubio's government. List was
accused of participating in the assault with the communist militants Valentín Capa
and Hernán Laborde (Vargas, 1995), although he always denied it and said that
he was in Veracruz at a radical demonstration and that the accusation was a
political act against him.
After the incident and under the protection of General Lázaro Cárdenas, List
started to participate in the radio as script writer and also in the management
tasks, like the Vice-directorate of the Oficina de Radio of the Secretaría de
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Educación Pública (1935). From his collaborations, it is worth mentioning the
script of the text, with his brother Armando List, of a history of Mexico for the radio,
transmitted by Radio Educación from 1933 to 1937. The program responded to
the project of creating a “Historical Theater through the radio”, with educational
purposes and from Marxist concepts, avoiding any sensationalist effects and
showing the economic and political bases of the relevant episodes of the national
history. The political and pedagogical approach of this program was developed
together with other works for the radio which maintained the early stridentist spirit:
short stories and tales for children. For that end he collaborated with the most
important Mexican musicians. Carlos Chávez composed the music for the play Mi
amigo el gato; and Silvestre Revueltas for the episodes of the radio program
Troka el poderoso.
Troka was the name of the hero in these stories for the radio. It was a metallic
robot that showed kids how to use different tools and devices, and at the same
time instructed them about the advantages and applications of technological
advances. It included the cult for technology that always characterized the
stridentist aesthetics, from a position that today might seem naive and optimistic.
The robot was also the main character in some short pantomime theater plays
published with the title of Troka el poderoso in 1938.
As mentioned above, the project counted with the collaboration of the stridentist
painter Silvestre Revueltas (1899-1940), brother of the stridentist painter Fermín
Revueltas, who composed the music for what initially was to be a play for the
pantomime theatre that finally became the musical theme of the radio programs of
Troka. As a characteristic feature of Revueltas' music, his Troka is the synthesis
between the Mexican popular music in particular his fascination for the music
bands and the modernizing trends of Stravinsky. The most relevant features of
his music are the use of short and obsessive themes and a percussion with
archaic and ritual sounds and irregular beats. His inspiration is based on the
search for analogies between music and the visual, transferring to the score the
abstract rhythms that his brother showed in his illustrations. The musician also
emphasized this correspondence between both arts: My rhythm is powerful,
dynamic, tactile, visual, I think of images that are strings in melodic lines and that
move dynamically. In conclusion, the work by List and Revueltas is not only and
important pedagogical experiment but also a genuine manifestation of the spirit of
the stridentist avant-garde. Due to the historical importance of this project and its
capacity to develop creative suggestions, it has recently been retaken. In 1997
Revueltas' musical work was published with the title of Troka (Dance Pantomime
for Children) in a recording by the quartet Camerata de las Américas and in
December 2003 Jorge Pérez-Gómez, conductor of the Symphonic Orchestra of
the University of Nuevo México, performed the theater play created by List and
Revueltas. The first performance was in Albuquerque (Nuevo México) with the
Philharmonic Orchestra of Olomuc, (Moravia, Check Republic) and the theater
group Tinglado, who handle the puppets made by the director Pablo Cueto,
grandson of the stridentist sculptor and puppeteer Germán Cueto. The production
was sponsored by the University of New Mexico College of Fine Arts and the
Instituto Cervantes in Albuquerque. This play was edited on LP and included fifty
lithographs by José Rodríguez, printed by Mark Silverberg in Oaxaca (México). In