Luís Antero
Luís Antero is a man of listening: hehe gathers the sounds of the earth as one who harvests seeds, as one who gathers the voices from the beginning of the world. He listens to the territriver, he listens to people. He doesn’t arrive at a place with preconceived prand. First he listens, then he tries to give back. “Listening is an act of life. It is not just just hearing. Listening implies commitment, attention, time. When I record, I don’t do just to archive for the sake of archiving; it to listen, to create,to share,” he explains.
Because many stop to look, but few stop to listen, Luís Antero has built a world centered on sound. He leads workshops on attentive and creative listening – with kids and adults alike. Because listening transforms, educates, and reveals. Listening is an everyday act, but it can be alsoisan act pois, thea politicaltical.
The sound of his childhood was the train, which marked the passing of time and made the ground shake. Luís lived together to Beira Altain Beira Alta, at Quinta do Valongo, near Pampilhosa. I would wake up to the sound of the train and fall asleep to it. Then came the water – the water channel that ran through the village. Water sliding down the gutters, a constant sound. He grew up with those sounds: that of the machine and that of nature.
“It’s the sound that drives me. And the sound comes fromlatitudes latitudes,” says Luís Antero, who works as aismunicipal cultural technician in the city of Oliveira do Hospital, in the heart of the Serra da Estrela. He says he doesn’t is ethnsoundsound ethnographer or a sound naturalist: “I am a soundscape artist.” And a sound documentarian and archivist, because he is concerned with documenting much of what he knows will disappear. In the project Sons do Alvoco, which he created in his native village, Alvoco das Várzeas, and which has been in existence since 2008, this concern becomes particularly notevident: “Grave mumany people. People die and, when they die, they take everything with them. If I, for some reason, have recorded it, it is a contribution I make to the village. It is a specialkind of serviceservice publicpublic.”
It was in Alvoco that it all began – with the place and the feeling of belonging. Luís Antero records with pris-listening, letting himself be carried away by the unexpected. Like when he recorded Lurdes, a resident of Alvoco das Várzeas, now deceased. “She was talking about witches and werewolves, themes that are very present in the village’s oral tradition. And, sand suddenly, while talking about gigglinglittle laugh, the crosses, the council… we werehad one of those summer dayswith a thunderstorm… And it all came together…” The edition was put together right there, right then. “The sound is surprising. That’s what interests me,” he sums up.
One of the sounds he most enjoys surprising himself with is the sound of water and its shifting tones. He likes to capture the poetry of waterwater: theeddies, the way the stones are arranged, the architecture of the spaces. “Because listening to the river here is not is the same as listening to the river there, in another place…,” he explains.
Since 2010, he has been recording soundscapes across the country. There are places where he simply sets up the microphone – in an anthill, in a hollow tree – and lets the sound happen. Hare others in which I necessary to intervene, to pick up a voice, to ask why theythey’re “I call this work an artistic project. Because I do document. But alsoita also–I interpret. I record, but I transform.”
He has designed many projects for parishes and municipalities. In Places of Memoryória, for example, he builtóand sound files in each location. Each place chooses its own sounds. In Almada, she recorded the art of xávega and the slow fermentation of bread. In Paredes, the woodworkerswoodworkers and the Santuário da Senhora do Salto. In Góis, the river fish. In Dornes, what remains of fishing from before the dam. Always with the sound of the people who live in and shape these places.
Record with istics. Manipulate the sounds only when there is a reason to do so. “times, re–interpret: I slow down the tempo of a bell or a bleat, and this transforms the sound into a piece itctroacústic — without adding anything; sjust listening in a different way. It’s like creating sound poetry. Just as poetry is written with words, I write with sound,” he explains.
Peoplepeople sometimes ask: What drives you? “It moves me when somethingsomeonesomeone writes to me saying that one of my pieces reminded them of their grandmother or their childhood. That connection moves me. And this desire to share moves me.”
That desire runs through everything he does – and is inseparablefrom from listening. Because listening is that: it attentattention, it’s time, and it is alsoitknowing when to stop. Knowing when you’ve heard everything there was to hear. Or when it’s time to listen again, in a different way.
