The composer Gustavo Santaolalla, winner of two Oscars for ‘Brokeback Mountain’ and ‘Babel’ and author of the soundtrack of the video game ‘The Last of Us’, has participated in a workshop at the TAI University School of Arts, with which he promotes the ‘Musical Intelligence’ research and innovation project of the training centre.
The project consists of a collaborative sound base for non-profit purposes, with the purpose of recovering, conserving and giving a new life to lost or endangered instruments and sounds through technology and innovation, as explained by the school in a statement.
In the workshop, Santaolalla has analyzed original creations by the students, enriched with those sounds and instruments in danger of disappearing, which are given a new use thanks to experimentation and technology.
Thus, the use of pre-Hispanic, African and European instruments have imprinted their own style on the compositions, which oozes personality and roots, but also innovation and avant-garde, thanks to the use of technology, but guided by human creative thinking.
It is a creative style that Santaolalla defends with the plucking of his ronroco, an instrument of Bolivian origin that he has used in the composition of the soundtrack of the video game.
Among the instruments used in the workshop are the jaguar ocarina used by the Mayans; the water owl whistling vessel used by the Nazca, Vicus and Mochica cultures; the flute without pincullo holes, used by the Amazonian Indians; krin, used in Oceania and Africa; and others of European origin such as the rebec, the violin of the transhumant shepherds of Spain.
The composer has claimed to feel “identified with the project”. “I like to claim the use of different instruments and sounds to obtain a different, unconventional music. That is why I am interested in the recovery of lost sounds and instruments and the use of technology with a differentiating purpose, far from productions that sound like copies. This project is a tool at the service of creativity”, he expressed.
“We want to get those forgotten sounds out of the showcases and museums and make them available to everyone,” said the director of the Music Area of the TAI University School of Arts, Daniel Batán-. The ‘Musical Intelligence’ research project enables a a differentiating creation, which combines roots and innovation, and which contributes to a paradigm shift in current musical creation, and encourages creativity with a distinctive factor”.