Nightclubs: The Music of Sound

Noise imitation is an art generously described as culturally insignificant, and its practitioners are historically tenants of the ghetto reserved for Swiss bell-ringing acts and families who come onstage to play Jealousy on paper-covered combs. But Lucho Navarro, a Chilean who gave up aspirations for the quiet life of an electrical engineer to devote himself to noisemaking, is such a master of the art that his wordless vocabulary has become a hilarious Esperanto; by imitating the sound of nearly everything, Navarro reminds his listeners that the world is indeed full of sound and fury. Coming from him, it's all very funny too.

At Manhattan's Village Gate cabaret, Navarro announces (in Spanish and infant English) that the great liner is setting sail from New York—"ba-hoooooo." Then Spain and 10,000 oles as the matador enters the corrida. A veronica ("shwuss") and the bull flies past ("bohr-uhm, bohr-uhm"). Another 10,000 oles. With only a word here and there, Navarro moves on to England for the Queen's birthday and produces an affair of state: troops marching, planes swooping close by them (the sound of both at once), rifle fire, drums, bagpipes, bugles, hoofbeats, helicopters.

In between times, Navarro turns dials on imaginary television sets (gunfire everywhere), short-wave sets (static and screams), moves in on an auto race at Indianapolis (skid, crash, silence—then the thin crackle of flame).

Navarro insists that a microphone only amplifies his sounds, but he is clearly a masterful student of public-address systems: his whispered "God Save the Queen" becomes the chant of thousands when breathed into the mike. "I make the big sounds down below the chest, the little ones up by the lips," he explains.

"The bowling ball—buhh-whoooooooo-crusssssshhh—is hardest for me. An easy sound is the race car—rrruuuuummmmm." " Navarro, 29, abandoned his studies six years ago to try his luck as a performer.

In a year he was performing at a theater called the Bim-Bam-Bum in Santiago, Chile. Performances followed throughout South America until his success brought him to New York last fall. He now has offers of nightclub contracts in Chicago and California and is developing a whole new bouquet of New York sounds.

""I am gifted with very acute hearing," he says intensely. "Other people go out on the street to look. I look but do not see. But my ears—they are like radar—clickita-cli-click.""