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In his book  Praise to the Earth (2019), Byung-Chul Han includes « There once was a garden » by Georges Moustaki. The poem is key in the argument of the Korean philosopher, who shares his experience of growing a winter garden, and turns this action into “sonic agency”. This is the term used by Brandon La Belle, but I could also say that it is in fact « quantum listening » (quoting Pauline Oliveros) of the resilience of plants under the snow, and the dedication of a human being to the task of caring for them, loving them and learning from them, with humility, but also with philosophical self sacrifice.

I know that we live in times when people only look at “black mirrors”, blocking all their senses from the cosmos that their body inhabits, and that is why the task of growing a garden, undertaken by Byung-Chul Han, deeply moves me. I identify with him and with Moustaki, but in my case, I live in the tropical rainforest that is being looted by ambition and human extractivism. It is in this context that I composed “Quebrada amarilla” for voice, quijongo and field recording.

The work includes two fragments of  Moustaki’s poem[1], the first: “This […] a song for children who are born and live between steel and asphalt […] and who might never [know] that the earth was once a garden”; embodied in the voice of the Costa Rican vocalist, composer and multimedia artist (resident in New York), Isabel Crespo Pardo. And second: “Where is that house with all the open doors that I'm still looking for and that I can't find anymore?”, in the voice of my mother, Celina; to whom the work is dedicated.

The field recording was made in Quebrada amarilla (Jacó, Costa Rica), a territory full of contrasts, especially between the biological and geological ecosystems that survive, and human looting.

This work is part of “Extended Quijongo Project”, and as with the quijongo[2], as a resonant bow, is the result of the symbiosis between plants and industrial wastelands . This videoclip was made and directed by Julián de la Chica (Irreverence Group Music, New York), in collaboration with Rafael Chinchilla (Central Cine, Costa Rica). 

My intention is for it to be a song of resistance against members of my own species (humans), who try to force us to be born and live between steel and asphalt, while the interests of transnational emporiums destroy the Earth.

Susan Campos - Fonseca, composer.

Credits

Produced by Irreverence Group Music
Music by Susan Campos - Fonseca
Isabel Crespo Pardo, voice
Quijongo and field recording
by Susan Campos - Fonseca
Special feat. Célina Fonseca Quirós

Recorded by Rafael Chinchilla at
Central Cine (Costa Rica) & Julián De La Chica
at IGMusic LAB, Brooklyn, NY
Mixed & Sound design by  Julián De La Chica
at IGMusic LAB, Brooklyn, NY 
Video by Julián De La Chica

[1] Georges Moustaki’s fragments of the original poem: “C’est une chanson pour les enfants / Qui naissent et qui vivent entre l’acier et le bitume […]/ Et qui ne sauront peut-être jamais / Que la terre était un jardín. […]  Oú est cette maison toutes portes ouvertes / Que je cherche encore et que je ne trouve plus? “. En: Loa a la Tierra (Herder, 2019), p. 94-95.

[2] The quijongo is a tradicional and unique musical instrument of Guanacaste, Costa Rica.