In A propósito de Babasónicos, UNR professor Ángel Fernández offers a tour of the band's work from an aesthetic, political, and poetic perspective. A book that invites us to listen again in order to think, feel, and awaken in the midst of the culture of noise.
Music is often much more than a simple accompaniment or a resource to silence: it can also be a bridge to reflection and redefinition. This is precisely the starting point of the psychoanalyst, writer, psychologist, and professor at the Faculty of Psychology of the University of Barcelona. Universidad Nacional de Rosario, Ángel Fernández, in his tour of the work of the legendary rock band Babasónicos.
His book, A propósito de Babasónicos, seeks to open a conversation about the impact of these musicians and their songs on popular culture. “I think that within the Argentine cultural landscape, the musical and poetic work that Babasónicos produces is absolutely unique. The book, in reality, is the result of trips to Buenos Aires to do control analyses with Germán García, where I listened to their entire albums. I was able to listen to the discography from cover to cover, and that suggested three ideas that the book addresses,” the author explained.
The first of these ideas is that Babasónicos "is a band that has duende," alluding to an expression used by García Lorca. "To express what has black sounds," says Lorca. "But it has to do with connecting with the earth, with the blood, with reality, as we analysts say. When rock had become something very descriptive, whether of reality itself or of fantasies, Babasónicos uses language that connects with reality."
The second essay, titled "Three Aesthetic and Political Manifestos," proposes recognizing the narrative arc of Babasónicos' work. "It's a kind of grand narrative that, through song, lays out a proposal for the listener, which has to do with using aesthetics as a political weapon. There's a book by Silvia Schwarzböck that argues that politics is not only in the hands of philosophy, but also of aesthetics, and it seems to me that there is a political sensibility with an aesthetic treatment in Babasónicos."
Por último, el libro reflexiona sobre el resguardo del poema, profundizando en el uso de la lengua “que le hace un chiste, le hace una burla, le toma el pelo a la cultura del ruido”. Fernández recordó que el psicoanalista Oscar Masotta, pionero en la introducción del psicoanálisis en Argentina, hablaba del “resguardo de la falta”. “Porque en el psicoanálisis, luego de la falta, viene la angustia. Y cuando no tenemos el poema, cuando no tenemos un uso poético de la lengua, lo que nos queda es, como lo digo