Any attempt to theorize about Latin American composition will necessarily involve a prejudgment of which composers to consider. In addition the context of a colonial system of cultural transmission should not be ignored. This context makes it important to evaluate a composer's significance in terms of his or her distinctiveness in the light of metropolitan composers and compositions. A number of characteristic trends can be seen in the works of composers who meet these criteria, including a distinctive sense of time; use of nondiscursive, reiterative processes; austerity; violence; the breach of technological and cultural boundaries; and an interest in cultural identity.

The author presents a general view of the development of electroacoustic music in Colombia from its beginnings up to the recent present. The article covers major protagonists and events that have contributed to the development of this new field of music. The author also focuses on several key works in the development of this media and their creators.

The Brazilian Group for Computer Music Research (NUCOM) has become renowned for its annual Brazilian Symposium on Computer Music. The author recounts the group's proto-history-the period of the 1970s and 1980s-with particular reference to the early works of Aluizio Arcela and Eduardo Miranda. The author continues his discussion to focus on NUCOM, which began to take shape in 1993 when Miranda and Geber Ramalho (one of Arcela's students) met in Paris and decided to launch a discussion list on the Web. The following year, Maurício Loureiro chaired the First Brazilian Symposium on Computer Music, affiliating NUCOM to the Brazilian Computer Society (SBC).