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."
Finally, the book reflects on the preservation of the poem, delving into the use of language "that makes a joke, mocks it, mocks the culture of noise." Fernández recalled that psychoanalyst Oscar Masotta, a pioneer in the introduction of psychoanalysis in Argentina, spoke of the "sheltering of lack." "Because in psychoanalysis, after lack comes anguish. And when we don't have the poem, when we don't have a poetic use of language, what we're left with, as I say in the book, is the falsetto and the bad taste of everyday life."
These three essays seek, in a way, to describe how Babasónicos makes people dance, think, and feel. "It's a bit like a book about the effects a work has on the body, not just mine, but the audience's. The book also attempts to record those conversations with friends about the impact of a work."
Connecting psychoanalysis with everyday life is no simple task, but it is necessary. It involves connecting its notions with what challenges us every day: what we like, what makes us feel good, and also what confronts us with our deepest emotions. “I had a column on a radio show called Rock Interprets Psychoanalysis, which at one point became Babasónicos Interprets Psychoanalysis. Not psychoanalysis interprets Babasónicos. That is, not that psychoanalysis is applied, but that a rock band, from a poetic, musical, and rock aesthetic, interprets certain concepts of psychoanalysis,” Fernández explained.
And he gave an example: “For example, the song Mareo constantly talks about what we in psychoanalysis call the lost object, what happens to us with that object that doesn't exist. You hear that song, like many others, and you're working with an analytic concept, without them necessarily having to know psychoanalysis. But there's a treatment where you don't need to know psychoanalysis, because psychoanalysis speaks to the human experience.”
"I believe that in the way Freud and Lacan propose three registers of human experience (the symbolic, the imaginary, and the real), there is a common way of dealing with the human adventure, both through psychoanalysis and Babasónicos," he added.
Although the book seeks to open new conversations, it is based on previous dialogues and exchanges that sparked ideas and interpretations. “I say it's more of a co-authored book because it's a highly conversational book. For example, there's a fragment about Babasónicos' relationship with existentialism and Sartre, which didn't even occur to me at first; a friend suggested it to me. Obviously, I later developed it, but the idea didn't come out of nowhere. I thought it was good to have a book that spoke about Babasónicos from that perspective, because otherwise, the erotic, aesthetic, and political dimensions are always crushed under the image of the rock star or the great rock band and the admiration we all have for them.”
Fernández also argues that we live in an era plagued by what he calls the politics of confusion, a phenomenon he began to observe within the field of psychoanalysis itself and which now extends to culture in general. He explains that this policy is based on conceptual disorganization, historical misinformation, and intellectual disorientation that generate a climate of permanent uncertainty. In this context, confusion operates as a tool of power: "If I have you confused, I weaken you," he asserts, alluding to a strategy that permeates both military history and contemporary politics.
In contrast to that logic, Fernández finds in Babasónicos a kind of aesthetic and symbolic compass to guide him amidst the noise and prejudices of today's culture. He believes the band proposes an "erotic political aesthetic" that invites us to listen differently, to pause and reflect in the face of a culture that promotes the constant and distracted reproduction of content. His book seeks precisely that: to listen to their albums again attentively, rediscover their meanings, and recognize in them a possible cartography for understanding the present. "Simply by listening attentively to a song, lingering on the negative, as Hegel said, understanding that each Babasónico song is like an interpellation, like a stumble, like a kind of objection to the banality in which we are permanently immersed. Then, when you pay attention, you win, because in reality the song is already like a kind of virus that makes you sick in a good way; you just have to let yourself be inoculated," he reflected.
“The culture of the unconscious goes against common sense and shatters the complex of prejudices we live with,” says the psychoanalyst, who defines Babasónicos as “the only Lacanian band in Latin America.” For Fernández, the group's work has an “awakening” effect: “It awakens your own body, it awakens your relationship with others. It's an awakening of the ear.”
In addition to going against the grain of common sense, a profoundly Lacanian characteristic, Fernández highlights in the band "a taste for music, for language, for dance, an eroticism," which shapes an experience "not only aesthetic-political, but also erotic-aesthetic-political." "There's a taste for the joke, for what fails, for the rest. There's a unique way of addressing issues that aren't usually considered central. This combination of going against the grain of common sense and a certain taste for the other side, for what's out of sight, makes it (I say joke) a Lacanian band, because the treatment of the themes is truly very close to psychoanalysis."
Finally, the author maintains that "music is a factor in politics" and that Babasónicos is a band that knows how to inhabit the culture of noise without submitting to it. "There was a psychoanalyst who said that, in the end, after so many twists and turns, every word is there either to lull or to awaken desire. Music is the same: I believe there are types of music that are invented or emerge to lull, and other types of music that are invented to awaken."
Journalist: Gonzalo J. García / Photography: Ramiro Ortega.