“Hacia nuevos horizontes”

Abstract

Abstract This chapter explores a series of developments in Cuban electroacoustic music production beginning in 1979. The composition, presentation, and reception of electroacoustic music all reflected increasingly globalized networks. The effects of globalization and postmodernist theories emerging from Europe impacted how Cuban composers approached their craft, how audiences listened to classical music, and how composers engaged with audiences through their compositions. These developments in shifting aesthetic and worldviews took place when Cuba was undergoing drastic political, economic, and social changes, coinciding with the establishment of institutions and festivals that promoted new and electroacoustic music in national and international audiences through performances and recordings. This chapter examines the Festival de Música Electrónica Primavera en Varadero, the LPs of electroacoustic music by Cuban composers released by the EGREM, and the establishment of institutions designed to meet the needs of composers, researchers, and artists, such as the Asociación Hermanos Saíz and the Taller ICAP de Música Electroacústica (TIME). The composers and works represented in these spaces both reflected and enacted the economic, social, political, and aesthetic shifts that took place in Cuba during the last decade of its diplomatic and economic ties to the Soviet Union. The case studies explored in this final chapter show how one particular genre, electroacoustic music, facilitated compositional innovation and artistic networking for Cuban composers who increasingly viewed their work as both Cuban and global.