Considered one of the most important musicians of the contemporary folk scene in Argentina and Latin America, the multi-instrumentalist Carlos Aguirre returns to Chile, specifically to Temuco, to perform next Tuesday, June 25 at 7 p.m., in an intimate and free concert to be held in the Aula Magna of the Catholic University of Temuco (Manuel Montt #56).
Six years after his last visit to the capital of La Araucanía, Aguirre returns with a repertoire that he has called “Retrospectiva”, covering a large part of his discography that, with twenty productions that he has released since the beginning of the 1990s, 90’s, demonstrates his ability to reinvent himself and rediscover through the sounds that his country and territory hide.
The musician, who was born in 1961 in the city of Paraná, province of Entre Ríos, has developed a career that began at the age of 13 as part of groups, and that today allows him to travel the continent and the world. In fact, the tour that brings him to Temuco will also take him to visit some cities in Japan, Spain and the rest of Europe, so it is an opportunity to listen to a musician who is characterized by the depth and sensitivity of his compositions, as well as for the harmonic and melodic richness of its arrangements.
Aguirre is also known for bringing music into a philosophical practice, maintaining an unwavering commitment to musical authenticity and his desire to convey deep emotions through his music. Based on the visit that he will carry out in the coming weeks, Aguirre answers questions that allow us to better understand his way of seeing life and music.
-What is it like to revisit your discography thinking that a production speaks of a past life?
For me it is a super emotional experience, because I am meeting the people, my people who inhabited each of those repertoires. In addition to that, a lot of memories of many very dear people with whom we were building each of that music. In many cases I came with written arrangements for the rehearsals, but I was also very receptive to proposals of many kinds.
In the case of guitarists, many times I had certain ideas about how to finger or how to interpret the songs, and I even directly had proposals to change one chord for another. Not to mention the journey with the different people who were in charge of percussion, which is a place that interests me a lot and I enjoy it very much. With each one we went through a whole process of building a language in some way. Maybe it’s too ambitious to say that, but it’s like a way of approaching that music. It is a mix of rhythms that are traditional or approaches. Better said, of those traditional rhythms traditionally approached and other timbral ways that are not so frequent. All of this took us a long time. Behind each album there is a lot of process, a lot of friendship, a lot of energy put into each of these people for whom I am super grateful.
-You have had contact with Latin American music and specifically Chilean music thanks to your tours, as well as your connection with the song through your work as a production arranger. What memories do you have of those experiences?
Beautiful. Always beautiful. Links are always woven with music. It’s not that music is a loose entity that one can separate in one’s feelings or memories, it is always linked to a lot of people that I love very much, from whom I have learned a lot. There were all kinds of experiences, mutual participation, friends who participated in my albums. I was lucky enough to be invited and also participate in albums from different Chilean productions. In short, I feel a great affection for Chile. Besides, there were stages where I traveled many times and stayed there for long periods, I stayed two or three months each way.
-What do you remember about Temuco?
I was lucky to go with different projects. I’m telling you that I have traveled since the beginning of the 90’s.
-Three decades have allowed you to see the changes that have happened on both sides of the mountain range.
Yes, as little by little bridges are being built, in the sense that while this thing is happening in Chile, another thing is happening in Argentina, to the extent that there are sister searches, which I feel is like turning the screw on forms traditional, but in some way think about them today, let’s say, perhaps with other approaches, with other resources. I am referring to harmonies that come from other music, or textures that come from other music, other ways of accompanying. I feel that all of this is, in some way, woven together. It’s very nice to observe that. I feel that Latin America is a continent that is very awake, in effervescence all the time musically.
origins
-Why did you choose music as your life profession? How did this call come about?
My connection with music is at a very early age, since in my parents’ house they listened to a lot of music and, when I was born, my older brother was already playing the guitar. There was a vivid experience in the house. From there, when I was five or so, my parents asked me if I wanted to study music, because they saw my interest. And well, it seems that my response was positive and I expressed to them that the piano was suddenly the instrument that interested me in that first stage. That’s where I just started. At the age of five I went through different teachers, generally more linked to academic music, let’s say, but at the same time in parallel, I played initially with my brother, who mainly played Argentine popular music. And later, around the age of 13, I began to join different groups, always related to Latin American music.
Obviously, starting to play certain rhythms that are not so familiar to you from Latin America makes you curious to inquire about how it is played and well, I think that from the late 80’s onwards I started to travel. I was lucky to have doors that opened to start traveling through different Latin American countries.
I would tell you that in the mid-80’s, I went to a workshop that was held in Rio de Janeiro on popular music from Latin America. It was taught by teachers from different countries. I went as a student, logically. And there the desire was sown to want to know each place in more depth with each music. That happened little by little and it continues, it is something that is so vast that I would not be able to live long enough to learn it. But well, little by little I was able to get closer to those places.
-Faced with this exchange that was born in Brazil and that continued with the rest of the continent, why are human relationships so important when composing music?
What happens is that construction as a human being and as an artist is always a collective construction, in the sense that, regardless of whether one has stages like this where one saves oneself or dedicates oneself to composing in a purer state of the word, to go inside in some way, there has always been a before and after of each of those moments that has to do with relating to another person and learning from other people other ways of seeing the world, other ways of seeing certain themes through those that one wants to refer to in the lyrics, even in the songs and other logic, from the point of view of how they build the musical architecture.
Each musician has a different thought, and for me that greatly enriches the palette of resources with which one later moves. Then you see how he makes those tools that he learned thanks to another person his own. But it is always with the other, with otherness, with other people.
-Something that is also transferred in human relationships is affection. How does sensitivity impact when interpreting or creating a song?
You have to delve into that sensitive memory all the time, let’s say. In fact, there is a succession of memories that perhaps a smell or a melody triggers in us. All of that is stored in this sensitive bowl inside us.
But I also mention the collective again, in the sense that other people also taught us to read some events or even events of nature, such as sitting in front of a sunrise every day. There are people who, through reflection, open a sensitive field that you didn’t know you had, but that no one had put words to that. From something someone told you, you can treasure or save that information more clearly.
The sensible universe is something that is at stake all the time, even to me it seems very important. For a few years now, I have thought of the studio as something broader, which is not only about sitting at the piano, as in my case, or the guitar, but also about delving into other experiences such as contemplating a sunset or a sunrise. , read poetry, read things of interest to one. Well, people who in some way also built other logics.
Folklore stripped of limits
-Why was folklore the musical style that sheltered you and defined a good part of your career?
I feel that it has to do with how far I decided and how far I didn’t, because it sort of decided a little on its own, in the sense that it is the music that I frequented most in my childhood, listening not only to what was heard in my house but It was very open, but a palette of different genres.
In my town there were festivals, where local musicians played and many times the music heard there was folk music. Naturally I ended up deciding or I ended up embarking, I would say, in the closest music, the one that even paints these places. In principle because I feel represented in that landscape, what they are telling us in that music. And later what came was an intention to give my own opinion about that. I also wanted to add some words to that story, some words of my own making, how I see this landscape, how I see these realities. At one point I was already embarking on that. I didn’t even have to think about what genre I was going to express myself in.
Beyond that, I do tell you that as a musician I recognize myself as very curious and I like to investigate many musics that are not necessarily from the folklore of our countries, but also seeking to draw on other resources from them. Learn too, because in each music there have been different developments. It’s not that everything is in our folklore. If one thinks of music as a more global fact, there are different types of music that have developed aspects in different ways. It is good not to close ourselves off from learning about other music, also thinking that this could enrich our own music.
-Folklore is a way of expressing certain landscapes that exist throughout the world.
Completely. In each region, because even if one thinks about it, folklore is more stripped of a political boundary. Let’s look at the Andean corridor, for example, it has a lot of regions, from Patagonia to Venezuela. That same corridor changes color, it has a lot of other expressions as we travel that distance. This is also the case with different regions of each country, that thing of political borders is diluted a little and they become larger regions.
I don’t know, suddenly, I think about the region where I live, we call here the river area, the freshwater area. And in truth it is a region that musically also includes part of Uruguay, Paraguay and southern Brazil. From the point of view of music, there is very similar music that makes the river become more of a corridor, where one navigates all that information and the political division is lost. I like to think about artistic phenomena this way, and not just artistic ones but the entire cultural life of people. Political limits for me are sometimes very sad consequences, a ruthless way of seeing the world.
-Ruthless in the utilitarian sense?
That, as a capitalist specifically. It is an expression of capitalism in the sense that I plant my flag. And the problem is that many times when this happens, the places that have been your brothers since the beginning become a possible invader or whatever. Based on these logics of political divisions, these things also happen. Some think that such music is from such a place or such another, and in reality it is from a much vaster region, but that view that proposes this division ends up leading us to much narrower definitions.
-It’s as if we started fighting over who owns the tenth when it belongs to all of us.
Exact. It’s like something that even covers a lot of geographies, which is great. And the beautiful thing is that, in any case, each place takes on its own characteristics. But there is something, a bridge that la tenth builds, for example, that unites a lot of geographies.
The musician and the journey
-In that sense, why is it important for the musician to travel? How does it impact his training?
I think leaving the comfort zone is the key to growing humanly and artistically. I think it’s good to look at the mirror that immediately shows you all the things you need to learn.
One can see it in two ways, either as desperate for everything you need to learn, in the sense of something distressing, or also with the joy of knowing the diversity that inhabits this planet and all the things that can still make your life. somewhat richer, more colorful musical experience.
For me it is very important to find out all the time if there are things that are not so close or that are not part of the specific universe of the instrument you have chosen. For example, in my case, I take the piano as a platform, or the guitar in some cases, although I do not consider myself a guitarist, but I have composed many things for the guitar. And I like to get away from my primary instruments and get into percussion, studying percussion. Then I return to the piano and I am already standing from another place, because that experience with percussion made me see my instrument from another place and understand other things that, perhaps the specific bibliography of my instrument, that experience would not have allowed me.
-We could see the instruments as countries that open this experience of traveling in sound.
I love that analogy you made because I had never thought about it like that, but I love it because in each country or in each region you are going to visit new logics that are going to challenge you, and they are going to make you review the logics that are naturalized or normalized in the region where you live.
From each trip you come back and question even the logic of how you live in your own place and that there are other ways that can be improved that I discovered in that place, anyway. I don’t know. I love to think that we are citizens of the world, and that somehow, regardless of whether one has one’s beliefs, it is good for one to travel around the world to see other ways.
It is also a beautiful exercise for the ego, in the sense that you are going to meet a lot of people who do wonderful things, and that relativizes a lot of what you do yourself. But not so that one gives up or anything, but so that one simply knows that from what one does one can contribute a grain of sand, a minimal thing that is great that it exists, but it is great to know that we are part of a concert of all people who contribute their grain of sand, together they create a much more interesting landscape.
-I have seen that in some of your interviews you quote a lot from Atahualpa Yupanqui, who told us that “music is one of the things that can save the world, because a man who searches and finds and enjoys himself for hours and days and years and light years , through generations, with beauty, what else can you want than a better world? What makes that phrase resonate with you?
How gorgeous. I think it is a possible path. It is not the only one, but it is a possible path. Music, art is a possible way to rethink and cleanse yourself, above all to cleanse and heal yourself. When you look for beauty, when you look for something profound to say, it is inevitable that this also challenges your own person. Am I up to what I’m saying? Does what I say correspond to my daily life? This also implies work in our daily lives to get closer to that ideal that we express somewhere in art. It implies, yes or yes, a job or a job of the person as a being capable of being improved. What I would add to Atahualpa is the fact that it is not the only way to find oneself. I think there are a lot.
-Yesterday I was listening to Joe Vasconcelos, who said that even if it had to be with his hands, music will always find a way to express itself.
That’s the art too. It has happened to me that I get very emotional in front of a person, for example, an actor who does a monologue and has nothing but his body. He builds you an entire universe with nothing more than his body. And sometimes I have even seen dances without music playing, that is, there is music in the dance itself and there is no need for something to play. That is wonderful.
What I was trying to say before is that art should not be given exclusivity in the search for the person. Art is not the only possible way to search for yourself. Of course he is, but he’s not the only one (laughs).