Rosalia Soria Luz is a musician and composer of electro-acoustic music, who left her native Mexico to study in the UK. She grew up hearing popular music of her father’s band playing a kind of cumbia (a style involving trombone, tuba, trumpet and drums known as banda or duranguense), and aged 13 joined the band as a bass player. In the UK she immersed herself in electroacoustical music at the universities of Huddersfield and Manchester, where she won her PhD, and where she developed a completely new aesthetic identity. But she still draws on her love of acoustic instruments and traditional popular music from Mexico. 

Belonging to Manchester by listening and adapting

Surrounded by the comminuty of composers in South Manchester, Rosalia has developed a new aesthetic for her creative work. 

“Because I studied in Manchester, all my music, electroacoustic now, is greatly influenced by the aesthetics of Manchester, from people coming to study at the NOVARS Research Center. I was doing nothing else but composing for three years, electroacoustic music, and that was my first experience ever composing electroacoustic. So I got all the influence from my classmates, and lots of them, some are from Chorlton or Manchester or around. And one goes to concerts and talks to them, and then they, they give influences into to how one composes, just by listening to them and how they talk, or how they shape their ideas. And when one gets their own style, or I got my own style, just based on all those influences from my classmates, and all those concerts. So I think, right now professionally, I'm really connected to Manchester." 

Carrying Mexcio in acoustic sounds

At the same time, Rosalia has not relinquished her roots and background, which are part of her music.

"In my aesthetics, I feel like I belong to Manchester in that sense that I absorbed the aesthetics from people coming here. But in Mexico I studied traditional music in the conservatory. I think I’ve got aesthetics from Mexico as well because here, people are not so used to using acoustic instruments in electroacoustic music, or at least not in the way I use it. So normally I record an instrument, and I try to put it as it is, because I really enjoy the timbre of the instruments as they are, without any contemporary techniques or so but just normal timbres. And I try combining that we learn other sounds, or objects or so. I think this is my style from Mexico, how I record these instruments, using acoustic instruments in that way… here, usually they would take an instrument and apply lots of effects or stuff with a computer to make it some entirely different, or making unrecognizable words, I really like to present the instruments as they are in my music in a very traditional way, and this comes from my influences from Mexico.

Before coming to the UK, I completed a bachelor’s degree in Electronics Engineering and a master’s in science in Electrical Engineering. When I first started my PhD in Manchester, the idea was to combine a bit from my engineering background with my musical background. I started using “state-space models” as part of my research and composition process. These are mathematical models very common in Control Engineering and can represent physical systems from the real world. My approach was to use these models in real-time to shape, transform or create sound. Thanks to this approach my music has a very specific identity given by the behaviors of these equations and how I use them to modify sound parameters. They have become a permanent instrument in my artistic practice..” 

Changing perspective, with distance 

As Rosalia has changed environment it has given her a shifted perspective on Mexico, as well as a fresh creative approach in which the voices of Mexican people find a placed in the electro-acoustic aesthetics of Manchester, and that way to draw attention to multiple personal experiences of racism. 

"After I came to Manchester and I did my PhD, at some point I didn't know if I could continue in Manchester or not, so I went to Mexico, after living in Manchester for three years. I realised that people in Mexico were behaving in quite a racist manner towards me, because I'm not white. I [had] thought it was worse than in England, where I was being treated with respect [just] because I was in the university and I'm a researcher, and I've got a doctorate, and everyone was very respectful and nice. And I went back to my country, and I couldn't believe that people treat me worse there. How could this be? I was extremely offended. 

And at that point, I saw like a call for proposals from the government to propose like, some project involving music. So I decided to propose a portfolio of electroacoustic music, to raise awareness about racism in Mexico… the racism that is amongst Mexicans – how between Mexicans we don't like each other when we have darker skin. In that proposal, I said I was going to write electroacoustic music, but ask people their opinion, because I didn't want to put my own opinion, because it would be like, very subjective or, I don't know. So I went and started interviewing people, “do you think we have this kind of racism in Mexico? And what's your experience? Would you like to share an experience?” So that opened a new kind of way of thinking for myself and musically, also, how to include those voices and those opinions and those experiences from people that have been targeted in that sense, being discriminated because of their darker skin? How can I include that in a musical piece that still sounds musical, but in a way gives voice to, to those concerns that I have, how can this be that I'm treating worse, treated worse in my country than abroad and, and I realized that this is like a standard reality, and we don't realize that in Mexico. And my point is just trying to create a bit of, raise awareness about it, but in a musical way. 

So because electroacoustic already… because of the language … some people don't even consider that music… I wanted to put a bit of melody, or a bit of a rhythm, but still without losing my compositional identity. I have three pieces that have interviews included, but I like Nuestras Voces a lot, I would like to share a fragment of that [here], because people are very honest sharing their experiences" [refer to audio above]. 

Solidarity in anti-racism

Rosalia’s composition came to generate a sense of solidarity among participants. This then triggered a current of denial as the result was increasingly made available. 

"And I think they realized that what they thought is only happening to them, lots of people were coming up with the same problem, so in a way they feel identified and felt like together, like sharing that experience with each other, and that made me really happy, like they didn’t feel it was only them suffering- there were lots of us are going through the same. And then they started sharing the music, and some other people started being really angry at me and also sending me … saying that I was fabricating of course. So it has been also quite bitter [laughs] in a way, but also really, really rewarding. 

Mostly in Mexico, people that were white and heard all this, they say that there is no such racism, and if some people are being discriminated against is because they deserve that. And who am I to put those things in there? How is it that the government is funding such kind of thing? And I was saying, “well, the government pays me, because my music kind of portrays the identity of the country and our identity right now is that we are discriminating each other for years” [laughs]. But they will say, “Ah, you are crazy, and you should study more” and that the music is horrible – “it’s not even music”. And yeah, whereas other people started hugging me, because they felt like suddenly someone, gave them, gave them a voice, or kind of talked about something they have been struggling with. So it's been really strong in both ways, like good experiences, and also really horrible attacks. In Manchester the response was also strong." 

Presenting in Manchester

In Manchester, the reaction was mainly surprise and dismay about Mexican society.

" I presented it in a concert at the University of Manchester and also in Staffordshire. I put subtitles … and they were extremely shocked. They wouldn't even imagine that this happens in Mexico, because one usually discriminates against people of other countries, or …. I don't know … but not [against] our own, as we do in Mexico. And then in the concert here in Manchester, for instance, everyone started sharing their own experiences of racism that they have witnessed, or experienced themselves after the concert just because of it. 'Oh, yeah, this was really touching really strong, really, really powerful".