Event Type
An inventive improvisation featuring Mixe trombonist Kunt Vargas with poets Christopher Rey Pérez and Andrés Paniagua, curated by diSONARE editors Diego Gerard Morrison & Lucia Hinojosa Gaxiola.
Taking Rey Pérez's poetic explorations as a starting point, the trio will delve into the concepts of fayucas and anábasis through vernacular rhythms related to street culture local to Mexico City and its peripheries, a metropolis forever teeming with text and language. Spoken word and music will weave together via the affect of the trombone and the humorist exploration of language, place and psycho-geographic maps of the poets.
Kunt Vargas is a musician, archaeologist and visual artist from the municipality of Santa Maria Tlahuitoltepec, Mixes. His native language is Ayuujk. He has been dedicated to music since childhood and has more than ten years of experience as a professional musician on the trombone. He has participated in various projects and musical styles, including important roles in Ensemble Kafka and Cinema Domingo Orchestra with Steven Brown, in the big band Jazz of Oaxaca and in improvisation sessions with Germán Bringas, Roberto Morales and Antonio Russek. He currently plays in the Kunt Vargas Trio, the funk-Balkan jazz band Los Pream, composed of musicians from Tlahuitoltepec. As a soloist, he plays experimental music, exploring the limits of the trombone, using techniques with materials such as "jicaras" (a cup formed from a gourd) and tubes. As an artist, he leads the project Sitio Arqueologico Kumantuk.
Christopher Rey Pérez is a poet from the Rio Grande Valley of Texas. His first book, gauguin’s notebook, received the 2015 Madeleine P. Plonsker Prize from Lake Forest College. He has edited Aliens Beyond Paradise/Alienígenas más allá del paraíso (Wendy’s Subway, ‘19) and is the author of several chapbooks, pamphlets, and artist books. The latest is Future Tourism (Sputnik & Fizzle, ‘24). With Gabriel Finotti, he publishes the multilingual and nomadic bookwork, Dolce Stil Criollo. He also forms part of Post-Novis, an alternative project of architectural education and practice.
Andrés Paniagua is a poet and translator from Mexico City. He is the author of Usted está aquí (2016), Sin nada detrás (2019), (Una banda de punk llamada) Rattus (2020, 2021), Querida Ele (2024), and co-author of Señales de ruta (2019). His work has been published in various magazines and websites such as Tierra Adentro, San Diego Poetry Annual, Oculta Lit, Dolce Stil Criollo, Vozed, Al-Araby, and Letras Libres. He has been a beneficiary of FONCA funding for young artists on two occasions. He is editor of Sindicato Sentimental.
