Semaine du Neuf | When the collective becomes an entity

“Nada nos quita lo bailado” is already by its title a pretty direct message that whatever the differences, whatever the oppositions, we’ll keep moving and we’ll keep dancing – together. It is a popular reference for that which can’t be taken from us – our memory, our history, our experiences.

I suppose that’s exactly what Ana Maria Romano wanted to bring to this form of composition, a collective one, where every musician, with their own individual baggage and story, is part of the process and the product as a whole – the collective becomes an entity. As a listener, I could feel the interconnectedness and the horizontal process of this piece becoming what I was experiencing in Sala at that moment.

I am always specially interested in hybrid formats and constellations of differences and contrasts – although with an apparent separation both sonically speaking and on stage, between acoustic instruments and the electroacoustic apparatus, Ana Maria Romano, Lori Freedman, Daniel Áñez, Noam Bierstone and Pablo Jiménez’s No Hay Banda made us feel like there was one for the night. As much relevant as is it is now in such a complete distorted world we’re living in, we could hear the speakers shouting “No borders! No nation! Stop the Deportation!” and a Free Palestine, echoing through the room: field-recordings made by Romano at the International Women’s day march that happened the last 8th of march in downtown Montréal. Once more insisting in the intersection of our motives and existences. Known by her strong policies on gender activism and intersectional feminism, Romano treated the collaborative creative subject the same way – non-hierarchically, permeable, listening, sharing, playing and doing together.

The piece itself evoked sometimes feelings of tension, sometimes strange stillness or ambiguous contemplation. Sometimes too, an electronic trance. A well sustained place for improvisation and collaboration – certainly leaving the room very inspired, thank you!