Experimentation and Improvisation in Bogotá at the End of the Twentieth Century

This chapter explores how experimentation and improvisation became meaningful within the Colombian Western academic tradition. Acosta provides a musicological report of the evolution of experimental composition, interpretation, and improvisation in Bogotá toward the end of the twentieth century. The rise of atonality, electroacoustic and mixed music, indeterminacy, and other avant-garde movements from the late 1950s onward, are sketched as direct precedents for the rise of experimental improvisational practices since the 1980s. These tendencies grew into a rich field within Colombian music throughout the last decades of the century, with the appearance of improvisation/experimental music ensembles in which composers, performers, and improvisers found creative outlets. This process is traced, along with the significant proliferation of performance situations, as well as the reactions of artistic, educational, and governmental institutions to the developing field.