Jose Vincent AsuarAn engineer who also had a great passion for music, he dedicated a large part of his life to the development and research of electronic music. In the 1960s, he collaborated with the Faculty of Arts at the University of Chile and was one of the founders of the Sound Engineering career. Likewise, he is recognized as the father of electroacoustic music in much of Latin America.
In 2010, during the Ai maako electronic music festival, held in Chile, the attendees were surprised by the presence of José Vicente Asuar, who had decided to move away from the world of electronic music in 1989. Despite this, his legacy is still present. today thanks to the work of the José Vicente Asuar Archive, which has dedicated itself to restoring, cataloging and digitizing a large part of his work.
Francisco Miranda, in charge of the Archive, highlights the vision that Asuar had when creating the necessary equipment to synthesize sound, as well as the timelessness of his compositions. In addition, his youngest son Claudio Asuar remembers his father’s passion for music, who used to lock himself in his studio on weekends to experiment with sounds.
José Vicente Asuar did his thesis on the electronic generation of sound in 1958, including a composition called “Variaciones Espectrales”. This research would be the cornerstone for the development of electroacoustic music in Chile. Subsequently, Asuar traveled abroad to build and develop music studios at universities in Germany and Venezuela.
In 1969, he was invited by the dean of the Faculty of Arts at the University of Chile, Elisa Gayán, to promote a career in Sound Technology, currently known as Sound Engineering. Thanks to this initiative, Asuar was able to apply his knowledge and further develop electronic music in Chile.
Listen to the U de Chile podcast: The father of electroacoustic music in Chile
