Estridentismo and Sonido Trece: The Avant-Garde in Post-Revolutionary Mexico

The aftermath of the Mexican Revolution (1910–1920) saw the discussion around the nation’s cultural identity return to the political sphere. In the midst of a revived artistic fever, directed at an institutional level by José Vasconcelos, estridentismo (Stridentism) – the literary and artistic avant-garde movement founded by the poet Manuel Maples Arce – and Sonido 13 – composer Julián Carrillo’s microtonal music theory – were not part of the official debate. This essay offers a reinterpretation of these artistic movements through a critical approach to the zeitgeist that dominated the avant-garde during the first three decades of the twentieth century. Thus, I relate the practices and theories of Carrillo and Maples Arce to international avant-garde figures and movements such as Filippo Tommaso Marinetti and Italian Futurism. Taking recourse to Luigi Russolo’s suono-rumori (sound-noises) and his avant-garde considerations on sounds in Nature, this essay sheds light on Stridentism’s and Sonido 13’s responses to the emergence of modern soundscapes. Thus, it re-evaluated the current critical and historical narratives by reintroducing these two often dismissed movements into the Mexican cultural panorama of the period.