Hidalgo, Juan
Rrose Selavy
Juan Hidalgo (1927-2018) was born in Las Palmas, Canary Islands. He studied composition and piano in Spain and later in Paris and Geneva. He moved to Milano in 1956 where he has developed most of his musical career. He collaborated during his career with people like Marchetti, John Cage or Bruno Maderna. 'Rrose Selavy' is a unique queer-sound-art piece that claims for revision of the role of the gender in the society through the musical language. Juan Hidalgo played a leading role in definitively abandoning the traditional avant-garde musical research -the problem of music as sound- to devote himself to the musical fact as a search for a language that is creative and critical at the same time. Beyond the abstract notion that the language can be a source of indoctrination, words and language play an important role in the social construction of gender. The musical language also marks and generates a very particular type of social body and listening. Precisely, a change in the syntactic form of sounds would trigger a new listening and a new understanding of the world of sound that surrounds us. Silence and noise are not only two opposite poles within music, but also at a social level. One-time vinyl edition of 500 copies with the original inner notes by Daniel Charles and additional notes from Julio Prez and Eloy Palazn. Originally released on Cramps Records in 1977.