“Canciones con Pimienta”. Hybrid Texts as Part of the Alexisfera

Abstract

The work of renowned researcher and a teacher Alexis Díaz-Pimienta is dedicated to popularising classical metres and poetry improvisation. He does this through online workshops at his Academia Oralitura and social media engagement. The décima, a ten-line stanza associated with Pimienta’s practice, has become the centre of the Alexisphere. This transoceanic artistic community includes both prestigious personalities and talented, unknown authors. In collaboration with some of these artists, Pimienta has developed a series of educational shows, consisting of a dialogue between his improvised verses dialogue and the pre-existing lyrics of the song played by the singer-songwriter on stage. The result is a hybrid textual form, compounded by the original written text and a brief improvised poem, the latter sometimes adding new meanings to the former. As an example of these, we will analyse “Más poeta serás tú” and “Si tú piensas en mí”, by Fran Fernández and Vicky Gastelo.