2023-07-06 11:21:00
The composer and musician Max Masri, traveled a long way to become one of the most outstanding innovators of tango. A regular habitué of electronic parties, Morocco and Club 69, he carries in his blood the gene that distances him from the conventional. He began playing the guitar in a punk group and studied composition with Virgilio Expósito, a true legend of our city rhythm.
In 2003, two decades ago, he founded Tanghetto, a band with which he toured Europe more than thirty times, taking his innovative art through countries as far away as Germany, England and Italy. He was nominated four times for a Grammy, the highest award given by the industry, and won the Gardel twice.
This year, the group launched “Argentinxs”his tenth album, with a selection of luxury guests including Amelita Baltar, Adriana Varela, Lidia Borda, Fito Páez, Leo García, Pedro Aznar, León Gieco, Abel Pintos, Lito Vitale and Peteco Carabajal.
Scorpio, affable and warm, 1.94 meters tall, he moves like a giant, dodging speakers, instruments and keyboards in his Recoleta apartment, where he receives NEWS.
News: Has music been present in your life since you were a child?
Max Masri: Always. Tango came to me from my old man and from my grandmother, although I didn’t like it for something in particular. The fact that it was family music made everything easier, even though no one in my family had anything to do with the world of music. I studied systems and then economics, but I thought: if I had to live this whole life…
News: And did the classes with instruments appear?
Masri: Yes, I started playing the bass and I had a small keyboard with a sequencer where I composed some things. I studied a bit of classical guitar, rock guitar, bass, but the part about the machines was the one that interested me the most.
News: He was a guitarist in the punk band Innocents.
Masri: That’s how it is. I liked that style because it was extremely rebellious for my adolescent vision. We were playing at a place called Cátulo Castillo, in Palermo and I started to get a little disappointed because I saw that there was a whole industry around rock that was far from that rebellion. Little by little I was getting closer to less common things at that time, like tango. I was lucky that a friend of my family had an acquaintance who worked at SADAIC, where she wanted to go to learn composition.
News: Did you study there with the great composer Virgilio Expósito?
Masri: He was already a very old man and the incredible thing was that he liked the composition that I brought him. It’s a song called “El arte de amar”, which I included on a Tanghetto album. He clarified to me that he took more advanced students but that he saw potential at 19 years of age. I was totally unaware because I didn’t know who Virgilio was and he told me about him. The tango “Naranjo en flor”, the bolero “Vete de mí”, to show me that I could compose anything because I was an asshole full of prejudices. He was extremely open and from the start he showed me that a traditional composer could do other things. In all the classes he sang a song before starting with his voice like that (it imitates an almost dysphonic tone).
News: Did tango evolve with groups like yours?
Masri: Tango is strange because we did something different and when our first album came out it also drew attention outside the world of tango. But it can be seen that there is a resistance from some people who appropriated that rhythm and lectured on what is and what is not tango.
News: Is there some kind of canon that they can’t deviate from?
Masri: Sure, but with Tanghetto I never had the intention that the world of tango embrace us, but that’s how it happened. They began to invite us to the Tango World Cup, to the Tango Festival. There I saw that people danced to our music. We started traveling the world, going through all the festivals. There was like a mismatch because we lived with the most traditional of tango. My attitude was, I do what I want. I’m influenced by electronic music and I’m going to follow that. I’m not going to be doing the acting of the tanguero.
News: ¿Tanghetto surge and 2003?
Masri: There we materialized the idea of fusing tango with electronics that came from a long time ago. In ’97 or ’98 I heard a remix of a Madonna song that had a bit of a Piazzolla song. That gave me the idea of mixing something of tango with rock, although it didn’t close me off completely. In another process of work in the studio, I began to devise the themes that gradually led to Tanghetto. An “open source” group, in which there are permanent members, but not all the members always play live. It can be a quartet, a sextet, an octet, which is very different from the vision of rock where they are always the same. There are people who have been here for six years, others 18. We are adapting for tours.
News: What happened when they were nominated for the first Grammy?
Masri: It was a flash. It was 2004 and it was very expensive to travel to the United States. We arrived, they invited us to a friend’s house that was very far from the place of the event. They call us from the organization to ask us where they are going to park the limousine (laughs). We didn’t know how to act like stars because we didn’t have anything to do it with. We went independently, without any label behind it. We decided to go by bus, it took us a long time, we arrived late and it was complicated because they wouldn’t let us in once the ceremony had started. A person waited for us, we were able to enter and it was incredible, although we did not win the prize.
News: Despite everything, did you sell many records from that first release?
Masri: More than a hundred thousand albums, which is unusual for an independent group. We had a lot of sales because in general the record stores played our music. It was not that we sounded on the radio as a hit of the moment. The first note they made to us was in the Buenos Aires Herald newspaper. Later the interviews began as a phenomenon of electronic tango together with other groups.
News: Did you feel that tango deserved a deconstruction? What had to adapt the rhythm to the new times?
Masri: Totally. It costs me all that thing that is associated with the old, appropriated by older gentlemen. I have a bit of rebellion with that (laughs). Most people associate tango with the melancholic, but when they hear what we do, they feel that it is different, but they like it.
News: Shortly after starting they jumped to appear in public?
Masri: In 2005, less than a year and a half after training, we did a performance at the ND theatre, a consecrated space. That time we covered Depeche Mode’s “Enjoy the Silence”, people raved about it and we decided to put it on a remix album. That was danced in milongas and even Pamela Anderson danced that version on the Ellen DeGeneres show on American TV. Building on that success, we made New Order Blue Monday, which helped us get to England. The English are difficult, but they respected our version. We went that way, doing that kind of covers but later on we went back to our roots and incorporated “Cita”, by Piazzolla and “Bahía Blanca”, by Carlos Di Sarli.
News: Do you celebrate 20 years of existence with “Argentinxs”?
Masri: Yes, with the inclusive X for the ten albums, the twenty years of the group, everything, the inclusion and the fact that everyone can mention it however they want. The X has no gender. It’s the first time we’ve released a complete album with sung lyrics.
News: Do you identify with the LGTBIQ+ collective?
Masri: It’s my turn, for me it’s something that everyone should do. It is not a matter of being on one side or the other. It is a matter of collective conscience, I think.
News: It has notable guests. How did you convince Amelita Baltar and Adriana Varela?
Masri: They were different moments (laughs). With Amelita, we knew each other, but we did not have a formal relationship. We talked about it, she had lyrics and I tried to put music to it. She is very demanding and we invited her to a show where we did three songs. It was a nice experience. With Varela, it was different, we connected through a mutual friend.
News: Is it true that you share a passion for astrology?
Masri: Yes (laughs). She told me that an astrologer who told her: You have to sing changed her life. She worked as an otolaryngologist and she had a big change after that. In my case, I studied for a couple of years at the 11th House, the astrology school, but I had to leave because of the tours. I, as a good Scorpio, have my mysterious things and I didn’t tell them anything about my life, nor that I traveled through music.
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