2 for dat Tango: Federico Aubele and the Gotan Project at Schema : more than ethnic

2 for dat Tango: Federico Aubele and the Gotan Project

Gotan%20Project.jpg

Lets break down Spanish and Latin music down for a sec: Flamenco comes from Spain, Mariachi music is Mexican, the Mambo and Rumba are Cuban, Merengue is Dominican, Samba and Bossa Nova are Brazilian, and Salsa came from from the Cuban and Puerto Rican descendants in the NYC. Tango, however, is distinctly Argentinian and instantly recognizable from the sound of the bandoneon and in Astor Piazzolla, its most famous exponent from the latter half of the 20th century.

Where much of today's groove oriented music stems from funk, jazz, soul, reggae & dub and predominantly salsa of the latin genres (as well as Afrobeat and the beat of the Indian tabla and vibe of the sitar), FEDERICO AUBELE and the GOTAN PROJECT are 2 artists bringing the Tango back into the beats of today.

Aubele is a native of Buenos Aires and is on Thievery Corporation's Eighteenth Street Lounge (ESL) label. Aubele, while being a huge influenced soul of Piazzolla is a guitar player first and foremost that got into DJing later on. His sound is unique for combining the deep booming bass of soundsystem style dub with his latin guitar and tango foundation.

The Gotan Project are a trio of Parisian based producers who have roots in Argentina, France and Switzerland. Much like the more recent direction of organic "electronica," the Gotan Project sought to use real musicians and compose real music instead of cutting and pasting samples of their influences. It probably still throws some people off to read the word "electronica" used to describe much of today's "downtempo" or "chllout" music but as you know if you've heard lots of this stuff, the music has little to do with the spacy, techy sounds of trance and more do with root music like jazz and the tango.

Where perhaps in the late 90s, this kind of music was more sample and cut/paste based, many of those DJ oriented acts starting picking up instruments and calling on live musicians to get in studio and play the actual sounds live which can also be reflected in more and more "live shows" bringing back live instruments to the forefront where turntables and vinyl seemed to exclusively rule the stage for a while. Like many of those acts, like Thievery themselves, the Gotan Project's live sound only seemed to improve with their third and most recent disc, Lunatico (which is the disc that gave me some fresh injection of modern beat influenced tango after playing my Aubele, Gran Hotel Buenos Aires disc to death).

Aubele is supposed to be working on his follow up disc currently.

Fede Aubele myspace page

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