"5 questions for a Costa Rican musicologist, composer and writer" (original) (raw)

For Susan Campos, music is a discipline, but also a means of exploration, learning and education. Ever since she can remember, music has been her one true passion that has allowed her to travel the world. When she was 4 years old and living in Turrialba, east of San José, Campos knew very clearly that her only desire was to immerse herself in the world of music. “I can remember that when I was 4, I believe, that one of the first things that I told my parents when I began speaking was that I wanted a piano,” Campos, now a musicologist, composer and writer, told The Tico Times. This characteristic determination led her to taking piano lessons and then join the municipal band of Turrialba. At the age of 12, she met Costa Rican composer Marvin Camacho, who taught her both piano and composition. This led to her acceptance into the Etapa Básica (basic phase) music program at the University of Costa Rica, which she juggled while simultaneously taking the first years of high school. She left high school in order to focus on her music full time, although she eventually finished her studies through the public school system’s distance learning option, then studied conducting at UCR and obtained a master’s degree in Spanish and Latin American Philosophy from the Autonomous University of Madrid (UAM). As if that were not enough, she got her doctorate in musicology from the UAM as well. Five years ago, Campos returned to Costa Rica to rejoin the national music scene and has developed five albums of her own with New York record label Irreverence Grup Music. Her latest album, “A Woman of No Importance” (Cybernetics Oratorium), in collaboration with Elena Zúñiga, Gaby Arguedas and Tomás De Camino Beck, speaks about cyberfeminism, a branch of feminism focused on technology, the Internet and cyberspace. Campos’ career has taken her around the world and earned her various awards; her work has also been published in various magazines including the Oxford University Press. She currently works as the Director of UCR’s Inter-University Campus in Alajuela. On a warm afternoon under the candlelit ambiance at Apotecario restaurant in Barrio Escalante in eastern San José, The Tico Times sat down and spoke with Campos, 42, about her life and work. Excerpts follow.