2024-08-25 03:01:00
“Here I am, tuning the guitar.” This is what he is doing Juan “Tata” Cedron, at the time of being interfered with by Page/12, on a Tuesday afternoon. “And yes, I spend the whole day with the viola in my hand, and singing things… my wife goes upstairs, and my daughter too,” the musician bursts out laughing. It is not hard to believe him, of course. Let him laugh, because he is an absolutely likeable, charming, charismatic. And he can play at any time and in any place, because in fact that is what he has been doing since he was a child.
“When I was a kid, I was about 13 or 14 years old, I worked in a ceramics factory, and I remember that the boss, a chemist, always told me ‘Come here, I’m going to send you to Colón, you!’ “I spent the day singing!” he laughs again. “And how things must be, that now I have a very rata, very lunfarda song, Julian Centeya, which speaks precisely of that: “I’m so busy / from morning to night / all day long” hums the “Tata”, perched on “The Maleva Muse”, piece of Centeya and Litto Fog, which populates his current repertoire.
The dialogue takes place in the days leading up to the double function that Cedrón will offer at the Catalinas South Theater from La Boca (Benito Perez Galdos 93). The first, whose 250 tickets are already sold out, will be this Sunday, August 25 at 19.30. And the second, still with seats available, next Sunday, September 1st, at the same time and in the same place. Like others to come (Friday, September 6 at the Roma Theatre from Avellaneda de Sarmiento 109; and Sunday 15th in To Trilce, Maza 177), the double function in the xeneize region not only has the purpose of celebrating their 85 years of life – he was born in Saavedra, on June 28, 1939 – but also the six decades who has been playing the guitar, composing and singing, if we take 1964 as the year zero, when he founded the Trio – later Quartet – Cedrón, together with the violinist Miguel Praino, and the bandoneon player Cesar Stroscio, musicians who produced the debut album, under the name of Dawn.
Given its profuse aesthetic content, the anniversary size could not bear any other title than the one finally chosen: Creole Songs. “It’s a name that I also used Nelly Omar, because she, like me, wanted to say that she didn’t just sing tangos, but also milongas and styles. Well, I do more or less the same. Although it is true that I can play my songs as square tangos, I generally decide to play them half arpeggiated, what do I know, and in addition to tangos I do milongas, I do some huella, and everything is seasoned with a sauce cedroniana”, says “Tata”.
Let’s get down to business with the repertoire, then. In addition to “La Musa Maleva” centeyeana above, what the singer, composer and guitarist plans to do with guitarist Daniel Frascoli It is a handful of songs that go straight to the heart of the suburbs, of the moving borders between deep countryside and city, or of distant ports. “La viajera perdida”, for example, a gem from the implacable tandem formed by Héctor Pedro Blomberg and “Negro” Enrique Maciel, back in the twenties of the last century, which Ignacio Corsini used to perform first, and then Edmundo Rivero. Of course, when naming her, “Tata” does not miss the opportunity to sing her: “Your white handkerchief gives me its perfume / your name, Maria, gives me its song / Your eyes reflect the light of another sky / I carry you in the boat of my heart.”
Also included in the guitarist’s plans are gems such as “Little black head” –music by Agustín Bardi, lyrics by Atilio Supparo-; a beautiful poem that Homero Manzi wrote in 1940, and Cedrón dressed with music several years later (“Palabras sin importante”), and the emblematic “Monte Criollo”, also by Manzi, but with music by Francisco Pracánico, which had been released in the eponymous film, in May 1935. “With this theme I make a whole mess, because they are very strange verses “the ones Homer composed there. I tend to fantasize a lot and, well, in this case I made up a speech to explain how they made that tango with Pracánico, whom Tuñón mentions in ‘Los Ladrones’.”
-Thieves who hear a tango by Pracánico… that surname!
-Tremendous, yes. There is such a big network, and since I lived through all that, I have the gift of digging so that things come out. In fact, I usually ask people, do you know who Pracánico is? And nobody knows. Man, He made “Corrientes and Esmeralda”, with Celedonio Flores! He also did “Si salva el pibe”, also with Celedonio, and several songs that Gardel recorded. What happens is that He was a Peronist and after ’55 he didn’t play anymore. He was 60, early 50s, and he disappeared, the guy.
Another part of the concert at Catalinas, whose opening will be given by the singer Juliet Laso and the guitarist Leandro Angeli, will be given by the execution of new topics, that Cedrón composed together with a poet, puppeteer and actor from San Martín de Los Andes, called Rafael Urretabizkaya. Among them, a little waltz called “La pizarra del títere” (The Puppet’s Chalkboard). “It’s a good thing that Julieta starts the recital. It turns out that the girl called me to say hello on my birthday, then she told me that she was a fan of mine, and that she wanted to play the same night,” says the musician, who is also focused on recording a new album, with guitarist Alejo de los Reyes, based on the work of the Uruguayan poet Osiris Rodriguez Castillos.
At one point in the conversation –because Tata goes back and forth, he is elliptical- he takes up again his impressions of “La musa maleva” by Centeya. He wants to sing it all. It comes to him. And he sings it. He completes the phrase he had started minutes before. “Since I’m stuck in the kitchen I sing in the morning / She gives me the wine with which I get carried away / With her I invent real whims / And what do I care if in life / The guy next door comes and steals your dream / The guy across the street comes and leaves you a liar / And the one who one day made you believe you owned the world / Suddenly she runs away.”
“Centeya was a poet with a lot of grit,” he recalls, after the performance on the fly. “I met him back in ’68. We went to the Bar Ramos on Corrientes Street. He also stopped at a bar called La Diagonal, and he would say, instead of ‘I’ll see you tomorrow at Ramos’, ‘I’ll give you an appointment at Ramos’, he would say. (laughs). The truth is that it is very nice to rescue Centeya’s songs, because I saw him, I knew him, and I sing him… this is the generational transfer Right? Because, yes, it’s good that there are new things, but it’s also good to recover one’s own language, the one from always, from your parents, from what was sung, from the musicians and poets that you admired.
-At 85 years old, and 60 years of music, you must have something to say, evoke and sing…
-But of course… let’s say for example that I started singing and playing in a very particular year like ’64, surrounded by people from the theater like Tito Cossa, Lizarraga or Mauricio Kartun; actors like Alcón and Alterio… I lived with them, practically. Also with Piglia, with Briante, with Gelman, with Paco Urondo, with David Viñas, with Cristina Banegas, who must think like me, because I met her in ’62, and we lived in that context. Then the musicians, right? I am very melodicbecause among other things I still have the melody that I’ve always had, since I listened to the radio as a kid, in a time that was great. You listened to, I don’t know, La Tropilla de Huachi Pampa, Los Hermanos Ábalos, Los Chalchaleros, Eduardo Falú, in folklore; in tango you had Di Sarli, Fresedo, Pugliese, D’Arienzo, Troilo, Gardel-Razzano, Magaldi, Corsini, we absorbed all that in the forties, live or on the radio, in the case of those who were no longer there. Later, in the sixties, Di Tella came along and those things, which everyone talks about and what do I know, but the truth is that there were four in Di Tella. There was Minujín, who would grab a balloon of paint and throw it at a mattress, and things like that, but at that same time, on the other hand, there were Piazzolla, Di Sarli, Rovira, Ramón Ayala… it must be said.
– Why does it have to be said? Hasn’t it been said?
-So I have to say it again, in any case, because we come from those people, and all of that flourishes in the songs that we are making with Frascoli. In fact, at the Catalinas concerts in La Boca Kartun is coming to tell some things about those moments, While I make songs, in a kind of pay between musical pieces and texts.
-You are also going to play at Hasta Trilce and here comes a sad case, the unexpected death of Tomás Bradley, owner of the place and director of the orchestra La Lija.
-Tomás, yes… what happened to that boy was terrible, we all feel so much pain. He was an extraordinary guy from every point of view. Ideologically good, and profound. Also in literature, in music, in composition, in the things he wrote for that group he put together, and which was a strange thing, because it was not like Quilapayún, and those groups. Rather there was a very nice mix in that group, Latin American but also very CreoleTomás was a countryman, half gaucho, an extraordinary guy, much loved.
-60 years is not a short time in terms of physical fitness, Tata. How is your voice and your energy?
-My voice is doing very well, and I want to sing. I only have a little problem with my hand, because I had an operation that didn’t go very well, and it itches a little at night, but I have no problems playing. I’m fine. And my voice, well, very well, too, as I said, because I studied it and worked on it a lot. I never say this, but I’m well trained with breathing and voice placement. Besides, I nuance a lot, but not in an affected way… I don’t always sing the same, Let’s say. I don’t shout so much, I try to tone things down, to speak more things to the soul, to the ear, to the skin… in short, I feel looseand I’m singing well. Watch out, It’s not bragging but experience. I take this opportunity to say this because I think that young people need to hear this and speed up the experience a little.
-But is it just a question of experience? Doesn’t your desire, your always high spirits, or your spirit have an influence on how you reach 85 years of age?
-Didn’t I say I spend all day singing? (laughs) I’m also really looking forward to it, of course. I’m very happy, and I’ve actually worked hard this year.
-It is no small thing in this context of the country, especially in terms of music, national and popular culture, which is what you were talking about a few words ago.
-It’s precisely in these moments that you have to be in the best spirit, to come together, so that we can be together. As Kartun said in a report during a moment similar to this, In culture we must come together, To save all the memories we have. As if there were a war, to take care of the family, take care of the cousins, take care of the kids, take care of the chickens. Take care of ourselves and be together, precisely so as not to enter into this madness.