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Gotan Project released three critically-acclaimed 10" singles on their own label ¡Ya Basta!, 'El
Capitalismo Foráneo', 'Santa María Del Buen Ayre', and 'Tríptico', which resulted in crowded
dancefloors and big labels waving with contracts. The long-awaited debut album 'La Revancha Del
Tango' was recently released on several labels. Apart from the Philippe Cohen Solal [a Frenchman],
Gotan Project consist of Swiss Christophe H. Müller [who was previously working with Philippe in the
Boyz From Brazil] and Argentinian Eduardo Makaroff, brother of Madrid-based and - both in Spain and
in South America - very popular Sergio Makaroff.
"Two years ago Christophe and I met Eduardo, who had been living in Paris for eleven years already,
and immediately we became friends," Philippe says. "I was a big fan of Astor Piazzolla, the man who
reinvented tango by adding elements of classic and pop music to it, and Eduardo let me listen to all
kinds of folk music from Argentina and other parts of South America. One of the records I heard was
this folkloric album with extremely percussive music from Argentina, and I simply fell in love with
it immediately. We decided to start making music together, without thinking of trends or commercial
success. Through Eduardo we met loads of other Argentinian musicians living in Paris, and we started
jamming. At first it didn't work out at all. After a couple of jams we recorded the Piazzolla track
'Vuelvo Al Sur', but somehow it didn't turn out the way we wanted it to. Something was missing, and
whatever we tried, we just couldn't seem to get a satisfying result. At one point we were about to
give up, when one day I was fiddling about in the studio, twisting some knobs and such. I started
dubbing some of the separate tracks, filtering them and manipulating the sounds, and all of a
sudden the song came to life. I had found the missing ingredient! Excited as we were, we started
playing around with it; we let the bandonion player improvise around certain pieces of music, for
example, instead of giving him finished pieces to play. We re-recorded the track and made another
one, 'El Capitalismo Foráneo'. But the same thing happened to that song; something was missing.
Until one day I was walking down the street, listening to it on my walkman, when I heard the street
noise coming through the music; a dog barking, a train passing... It sounded fantastic. So I
recorded those sounds and mixed them into the song, which gave it a kind of 3D feel."
And that's exactly the sound that Philippe loves, the filmic element. Not at all surprising when you
come to think of it; he's been busy with movie soundtracks for years.
"Indeed. I've worked as a musical supervisor and advisor with Lars von Trier ('Europa'), Nikita
Mikhalkov ('Urga'), Yolande Zauberman ('Clubbed To Death'), and Bertrand Tavernier ('L'Appat'), and
I've written music for Didier Le Pecheur ('Don't Let Me Die On A Sunday') and Christian Vincent
('Sauve-Moi'). In fact, I have two different jobs that come together artistically in Gotan Project.
I mean, I want to let that filmic element come through in Gotan's music."
Despite the fact that the group are based in Paris and will therefore be seen by many outsiders as
part of the so-called "French touch", the trio don't feel connected to colleagues like Daft Punk or
Étienne de Crécy.
"No, not at all. It's not that I don't like them or anything, and I know many of the 'French touch'
artists personally, but I feel we are not a part of that whole scene. We're just doing completely
different things. I think there's not really anything happening in house music, it's all been done
before, and better too. A lot of that French house stuff is just the recycling of old disco and
house tricks, there's not a lot of experimenting going on. And besides, the whole house scene has
fallen into that stardom thing they wanted to escape from in the first place. People had enough of
the big pop stars and guitar heroes in the 80s, and they made music that was anonymous, music that
was about the music and nothing else. And now? Now the guitar heroes have been replaced by DJs who
earn ridiculous fees and release weak versions of their own and other people's songs. Because of
this we said, 'Enough! We're creating a new label, and we'll release music that is not trendy but
experimental.' So we created ¡Ya Basta!." [Spanish for "enough already!"]
The fact that traditional music is being enriched with elements from other genres is not something
that is new to tango music, according to Philippe.
"The roots of tango lie, as is the case with many kinds of music, in Africa. The word 'tango' comes
from an African dialect, just like the word 'milonga' [the mother of tango. It's also used to
indicate the tango dancehall.]. At the end of the 19th century, European and African immigrants got
together in bars and brothels of Buenos Aires, and they started making music with the original
Argentinians. Tango emerged from that. So it actually already is a hybrid of different kinds of
music. In the beginning, tango was considered music for the ordinary folk, the Argentinian
aristocracy didn't want to know about it. It wasn't until tango became popular in Paris in the 20s
and 30s that the music could be heard in Argentinian high society. Because of the history of tango,
I can't understand why Astor Piazzolla received death threats from so-called 'tango purists' for
'soiling tango' with his classic and other influences. As far as I'm concerned, there's no such
thing as 'tango purism', simply because of the way the music developed. So I couldn't care less
about what people who consider themselves 'tango purists' think of our music. Purists are deadly for
any kind of music. [laughing] They're evil! Apart from that, the tangueros' reactions have been
great so far. Maybe it helps that there's a couple of well-respected tango musicians on the record,
such as Nini Flores on bandoneon and Gustavo Beytelsmann on piano. Which, by the way, is a great
honour for us, I mean, such great musicians, and they're playing with us, tango amateurs with a
totally different background than theirs, beautiful. I went to Argentina, did a few DJ gigs there,
and I was curious to find out what people thought of Gotan Project. So I was happily surprised when
I noticed that local DJs were playing our records, and that the crowd seemed to like them a lot."
The next step for the band is to play in Argentina. Most of the musicians on the record are also in
the live band.
"Yes, and that's great. Only Gustavo can't come with us, as he is playing with other groups. We
played live for the first time on November 30th, at the TransMusicales Festival in Rennes, France,
and it went great. Obviously, we were pretty nervous, but there were a lot of girls dancing in the
front, which created a really nice atmosphere. Peter Kruder once told us that girls love our music
and that they bring the boys to the dancefloor, and he turned out to be right! But we did notice
that we still have to grow as a live band. We hope to play a lot in the months to come, just so we
can get used to each other and we can start improvising on stage a bit more."
It's quite possible that 'Época' will be the next Gotan Project single, which is the most
politically outspoken track on the album. It's a tribute to the people who disappeared during the
fascist regime that reigned in Argentina during the 70s and 80s. Especially in the Netherlands,
where the wedding of the crown prince and the daughter of a former member of that regime is
imminent, it would be interesting to see what would happen to the song.
"I'd like to find out too. The Argentinian musicians who play with Gotan Project are mostly
refugees from the junta. Gustavo was even invited to play at the wedding, but he said he wouldn't
know what he'd do if he'd see Máxima's father. He's still very emotional about what happened in the
past, and I can't blame him really. He was chairman of the musician's union in Argentina, and the
military government didn't like him very much. One day he got a warning from someone on the inside
who said they were planning of getting rid of him, so he had to flee the country that same day.
That's how he ended up in Paris, leaving behind everything he had. But 'Época' [Spanish for 'era']
isn't only about the disappeared. It's also a song of hope for the future of Argentina."
Another tribute on 'La Revancha Del Tango' is 'Chunga's Revenge', a Frank Zappa song.
"We dedicate the record to several people, more or less divided in three groups. Willie Crook, the
man whose voice is featured on the track, names the musicians who collaborated on the album, then
the people who inspired us, and lastly our families and friends. The whole track is played live,
because we want to sample as little as possible. Not only because of the high costs of clearing
samples and such, but also because, as I said, we think there's been enough recycling going on.
[laughing] The recycling must stop!!"
http://www.kindamuzik.net/interview/gotan-project/gotan-project/875/
Meer Gotan Project op KindaMuzik: http://www.kindamuzik.net/artiest/gotan-project
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