Perhaps it will be given. Thursday 8 December, Devendra Banhartindie songwriter emblematic of this millennium, will make the first sideshow of the very interesting Music Wins festival, at the C Art Media Complex. The next day, Argentina plays the Netherlands.
“I’ve never been interested in sports –he tells Clarin-; my adolescence was playing with dolls, wearing my mother’s dress and playing music. But I think so If there is a chance to see an Argentina match in Argentina, then I really care. It has to be a good experience, a moment of epiphany that makes you part of the tribe, of the same club, only it’s a country.”
It’s true: attending an Argentina World Cup match in Buenos Aires is an experience out of the ordinary.
“As a child I moved to Venezuela”
For Devendra Banhart, his whole life is a conglomeration of unusual experiences. Beyond an atypical musical career, which began with a very small and independent label and which has already taken him to Argentina five times (he has an account that he has with absolute clarity), the wheel of destiny has moved him from one place to another. ‘almost from the cradle.
He was born in Texas, but at the age of two his parents, devotees of Prem Rawat, the Child Guru, moved to Caracas.. “I think my first language was a bit of English, but I was so young when I moved to Venezuela that I didn’t know that another language could exist. That feeling of “I forgot what the adults meant” stuck with me. And it’s amazing how malleable a small person’s mind is: it only took me two seconds to understand Spanish.”
And add. “I wish that chip was invented so that they install it and you can understand any language in two seconds. I want to know Sanskrit, Tibetan, Japanese; knowing languages helped me: it saved my life.”
He doesn’t lie: one day he was in Morocco and he met a soldier who pointed a machine gun at him: “It was a time when everyone hated George Bush, and I was in a medina in Marrakesh and I met that soldier. And I talked to him in his own language and I asked him to put down the machine gun. Luckily he did, otherwise we wouldn’t be talking.”
“We share our love for Argentina”
The two shows that Devendra will do this Thursday 8 and Saturday 10, day of the festival at Club Ciudad, find him with a different rhythm because he has just finished recording his new album to be released in 2023, but he is not yet ready to present it so will give a concert retracing his already twenty-year career.
“This new album was produced by Cate Le Bon and it will take a while to come out, so in Buenos Aires we will only do two new songs. In reality, what we will play will be a manifestation of the affection that exists between us, because we have been playing together for almost twenty years”.
However, there are three members of the group who have never been to Argentina: “They are like crazy people who read all the books about where to go, where to eat, and that inspiration is very precious. We will play songs from all the albums, but as foreigners we will share our love for Argentina, in the end it comes to this: sharing”.
And immediately pulls out his knowledge of Argentine rock: “There is always more to explore, from tango to Almendra, Spinetta, Pescado Rabioso, Artaud. There are a lot of new bands that I want to explore, especially at festivals, and since we play in one, it’s an opportunity to discover this music. In this group they are all collectors and they want to see bands that we don’t know”.
“In my house everything was ambient music”
One of the terms Banhart uses to define his latest collaborative album with Noah Georgeson, shelterreleased in 2021, draw attention to the old: new era. It’s an exquisite record of ambient music, somewhat reminiscent of those records that ushered in the genre like Airport music by Brian Eno.
Does this remind you of Brian Eno? It’s the best insult he’s ever gotten and look, I’ve gotten a lot! While he and Harold Budd are influential in our music, it’s a record we made in a pandemic with Noah, remotely.”
“Our idea -he says- was different: we wanted to go to all the places where the ecology is threatened; we wanted to go to the Arctic where the ice is melting, because when it melts it makes noise and we wanted to record it. We also wanted to go to Amazonia and record the sound of felling trees. Our intention was to record the sound of the aural manifestations of ecological destruction and draw beauty from them.”
The plan was interrupted by the pandemic and they found themselves listening to ambient music to have peace in that intense moment. And they changed the concept towards the new age. “It reminded us of our moms taking us to health food stores when we were kids where they listened to new age records on the Windham Hill label, with those pianos filled with reverb. In Caracas, it was all ambient music inside the house, and going out for streets was all merengue and salsa. I grew up in this duality”.
The Festival
The The Music Wins festival will take place on Saturday 10 December at Club Ciudadwhich has been able to be an appointment for unforgettable concerts (Festival BUE, presentation of Natural strength by Gustavo Cerati), and besides Devendra Banhart, complete the grid Lucy Dacus (pay attention to this name), Metronomy, The Magnetic Fields, Chet Faker, !!! (chk chk chk), My invincible friend from Mendoza and many more.
Away from the ambiance, Devendra Banhart’s presentation promises a more festive atmosphere. Especially if Argentina goes to the next round in the World Cup.
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Source: Clarin
