On Music and Political Concerns: An Interview with Hilda Paredes

Abstract

In this interview, the Mexican composer Hilda Paredes talks about the political and ethical concerns which are involved in her music. She shares her thoughts about the relationship between her music and contemporary Mexican indigenous poetry, the connexion between gender issues and social justice, the burden of racism, the embodied experience of violence, the destruction of language, and the relationship her creative process has with environmental concerns. We discuss these issues in relation to several of her works, in particular Kamex ch’ab (2010), El Palacio imaginado (2003), La tierra de la miel (2013), Harriet (2018) and Rainy days (2019). The result is an exploration of how she tackles in each work these issues by constructing networks of events, places and people.

Keywords

• hilda paredes
• mexico
• music composition
• postcolonialism
• feminism