Gotan project

The Tango's Revenge

Paris 

06/02/2002 - 

The concept of 'tango fusion' up until now was limited to Grace Jones having injected a bit of Jamaican dub into Piazzolla's Libertango in the 80s. Now, more than two decades later, the world's leading DJs are putting tango back on their turntables thanks to Gotan Project's innovative mix. What do you get when you fuse the traditional Argentinean tango, milonga and chacarera with contemporary electro beats? Read on and find out:

The three turntable mixmasters in Gotan Project all have an impressive track record behind them. Philippe Cohen-Solal is renowned for his DJ-ing and innovative remixes, of course. But he has also acted as a music consultant in the film world, working with the likes of Bertrand Tavernier, Lars Von Trier and Mikhalkov since the early 90s when he launched a parallel career as an electronic music composer and producer. As for the group's second turntable maestro, Swiss mixmaster Christoph H. Mueller, he's been involved in the electro music world since the early 80s.

Mueller and Cohen-Solal joined forces in the 90s, setting up their record label Ya Basta in 1996. The label proved to be a successful launchpad for various electro projects including the Boyz from Brazil. Mueller and Cohen-Solal have always acknowledged a wide range of musical influences in their work, having been reared on an eclectic diet of pop, country, disco, new wave and world beats. But it took the arrival of Eduardo Makaroff, an Argentinean singer and guitarist - who has been living in Paris for over ten years now like Christoph - to inculcate the pair with a passion for gotan. (That's tango written backwards, for those of you who're not familiar with Argentinean slang!)

Tango - once described by leading tango composer Enrique Santos Discepolo as "a melancholy thought expressed through dance" - grew up barefoot in the backstreet brothels of the Buenos Aires suburbs in the late 19th century. The dance, which mixes African and Turkish roots and was originally exclusively performed by men, ended up spreading overseas to Paris. Then, after it had caught on in the dancehalls of the French capital, the tango returned triumphantly to Argentina in the 1940s.

The Paris-Buenos Aires connection appears to have survived down the ages and resurfaced in the collaboration of Mueller, Cohen-Solal and Makaroff. For once the three musical musketeers had met up in Paris, they went on to surround themselves with a host of leading Argentinean musicians - namely Nini Flores (bandoneon), Gustavo Beytelmann (piano), Line Kruse (violin) and Edi Tomassi (on percussion). Recruiting Spanish vocalist Cristina Vilallonga to sing the lyrics Makaroff had written, Gotan Project took their acoustic/electro mix into the studio. And a few EPs later the group's debut album, La Revancha del tango, was born.

The key to Gotan Project's success lies in the group's having unearthed unexpected links between apparently unrelated styles such as traditional Argentinean milonga and house music (c.f. the excellent Triptico). Mixing essentially acoustic samples with melodic compositions of their own, Gotan Project add a novel touch to proceedings by sampling extracts of speeches made by legendary Argentinean figures such as Eva Peron. Alas, these often draw an-all-too dramatic parallel with modern-day events at a time when Argentina is echoing to the sound of caserolazos (popular street demonstrations fuelled by the sound of banging saucepan lids).

Gotan Project's "electro-tango" is already well-known on the club scene, regularly spinning on the turntables of the world's leading DJs. But the group are now about to take their innovative sound to new ears as they embark upon an extensive international tour of their own. On 15 January Gotan Project kicked off their world tour at the "Tenax Club" in Florence, with a pre- and post-concert set mixed by the internationally famous DJ Gilles Peterson. The show proved an absolute hit with the audience who exuberantly danced the night away. "There were even signs of couples dancing the tango," Philippe Cohen-Solal says, with a smile.

Florence is just the first step in Gotan Project's international tour which, in the course of the next few months, will take them to Italy, Germany, Austria, Scandinavia, Spain, Portugal and Le Bataclan in Paris (8 February). RFI/Musique met up with Philippe Cohen-Sohal the day after the group's triumph at the "Tenax Club" and found out more about the Gotan concept:

RFI/Musique: A few months back you were quoted as saying that when Gotan Project took to the stage you wanted to come up with something really unusual, something no-one else had ever done before. Do you think you've managed to do that?
Philippe Cohen-Solal: What we've tried to do as far as our concerts are concerned is to create a real artistic performance. We try to put on a real 'show' when we play. Actually, we'd already played a few concerts with the musicians from the album. We appeared at the "Transmusicales" Festival in Rennes and did a few gigs in Lisbon and Turkey too. But Florence was the first time we'd taken our new formation out on stage. And it was a real challenge because with seven of us up on stage together it's not always easy to keep a balanced acoustic/electronic mix.
At the same time I think we're a group who use the stage as a springboard for musical experimentation. When we're up on stage there's a real exchange that goes on between Beytelmann on the piano and me on the turntables - there's something very spontaneous and direct going on, a sort of flirtation between techno and contemporary music. As far as our live shows are concerned I feel we've succeeded in shrouding ourselves in a certain air of mystery.

Gotan Project's on-stage experimentation seems to be as focused on the visual side of things as on the music. Is this something you feel has been influenced by your past work as a musical consultant in the film world?
Well, I think it's true to say our music has a strong cinematographic feel to it. That's something people have often remarked upon. As far as our visuals and our album cover are concerned what we were trying to do was come up with something quite modern and abstract, you know, to put a contemporary spin on tango by 'distorting' its traditional image in some way.
And that's something we try and carry across into our stage performances too, by projecting images onto the walls around us and making full use of multi-media. We take a lot of black-and-white shots of Argentina from old film archives, but we've also been out to Argentina to film our own images. We want the images we project at our performances to feel like the kind of video installation you see in modern art galleries like P.S.1. in New York. You know, the kind of gallery that works with real living avant-garde artists rather than the same old established names…

On La Revancha del tango you also take something of a political stand, mixing in the voices of legendary political figures such as Eva Peron - on El Capitalismo foraneo (Foreign capitalism) - and Che Guevara on Queremos paz (We want peace). What were you aiming at with this kind of 'political sampling'?
The political backdrop to the album is closely linked to Argentinean history, of course, but there are also a lot of references to what's going on in the world right now. Take El Capitalismo foraneo, for instance, it may have Eva Peron's voice on it, but the song is a direct reference to the forces of international capitalism we're living under today in 2002. And that's a topical issue everyone needs to think about. As for Queremos paz, well, unfortunately it would be difficult to come up with something more topical and contemporary right now!
Then there's Epocha, another track with a deliberate double meaning. The song functions on two distinct levels. On the one hand, it's a simple straightforward love song, but on the other it's the story of a country undergoing a seismic shift as it moves from one era to another. That's what Argentineans are living through right now with all the protests against economic dictatorship and the political leaders who've done the country so much harm.
The name of our record label, Ya Basta! (That's enough!) was inspired by Sub-commander Marcos's book. But don't get me wrong, the label's not intended to be a 'political music' label. I don't feel like I'm a 'political artist' or anything. All we're trying to do is give people pleasure through good dance music. And by that I mean what I say, decent 'dance' music, not pounding teenage club music!

How has Gotan Project's experimental fusion gone down worldwide? And what do people think about the group in Argentina, the home of tango?
The countries where we got a very positive reaction right away were Italy and Portugal. In fact, the album's doing so well in Italy right now that we may well end up with a gold disc soon!… Gotan also made a major impact in the U.K. too and at the end of last year a lot of people chose La Revancha del tango as their Album of the Year in the British press. When you know how ferocious British music critics can be you can't help but feel pleased at having gained recognition! Having said that however, things have moved a lot more slowly in the French media…
As for Argentina, our album's only available as an export over there at the moment. But we've had a lot of positive feedback from DJs and journalists who've said they really love the music. And that's great because the tango tradition obviously weighs a lot heavier in Argentina than it does in France. As far as I know, no-one has ever tried to experiment with any kind of tango fusion in Argentina before. And I don't think it's any coincidence that a lot of Argentinean musicians have ended up coming to France - they know they'll have a lot more freedom to experiment over here. Take Piazzolla, for instance, it wasn't until he came to Paris that his music really began to take off!
We'd obviously love to go over and play in Argentina, but given what's happening over there right now, it's impossible to fix any dates. No-one's programming anything right now… But we've got plenty to keep us busy while we waiting! It looks like we'll be on the road most of this year because our tour's suddenly taken on new dimensions. We really weren't expecting it to be so big. And the plan is to add new songs to the concerts as we go along. When we performed in concert in Florence we played La Cruz del Sur live for the first time - that's a new track that doesn't feature on the current album. Once we finish the tour we want to get back in the studio and get straight down to work on a new album.

Interview: Nathalie Bentolila
Translation: Julie Street