30 years after its box office success, Tango Feroz revives with a documentary and an album with versions of the legendary Tanguito

A couple of months ago, coinciding with the thirtieth anniversary of the film’s release Fierce tangoactress Cecilia Dopazo announced that she was getting ready a documentary of that huge box office success.

Now another aspect of the anniversary of the 1993 Argentine cinema boom has just appeared: an album with versions of Tanguito’s songsthat pioneer of Argentine rock who died tragically at the age of 26, whose story inspired the famous film by director Marcelo Piñeyro.

The interpreter of these themes is Fernando Barrientosprecisely the co-composer of the success Love is strongerand for the album he had the participation of people like Lula Bertoldi, Julieta Laso, Rubén Goldín, Florencia Ruiz AND Isabella di Sebastiano.

The result is called Homemade, Tanguito x Barrientoswhich covers the only official album by José Alberto “Tanguito” Iglesias, following the same order as the original and adding its own tribute called They closed their eyes to the sky.

The same manufacturer

Fernando Barrientos, who formed the duo thirty years ago Cain Cain with Dani Martin and enjoyed local and international success for two decades with the duo Orozco-Barrientosreturned to Tanguito’s universe when he received a call from producer Claudio Pustelnik, the same as Fierce tango.

“It all started,” says Barrientos, “with the request to do a version of the song Naturalin homage to the 50th anniversary of Tanguito’s death and the 30th anniversary of the film Fierce tango. “After reaching an agreement with the artistic producer Pelu Romero we decided to re-record the entire Tanguito album.”

-Was your point of reference the album released the year after his death, or the cassettes that only appeared in 2009?

-I went straight to the source, I sent myself the ’73 album, which I had listened to some time ago and which contains some wonderful songs. That’s where we immediately got to the heart of things.

-How did you organize the casting of the guests?

-It was a joy to have all the guys working. Except for my brother Flavio and Leandro Lacerna, with whom we worked together many times, all the others were all proposed by Pelu. It was a revelation to me how much they achieve by delving into each of the songs.

I didn’t know them and it was really a pleasure to have Lula Bertoldi, Lucy Patané, Florencia Ruiz, Isabel de Sebastián, Noelia Sinkunas, Rubén Goldín, Julieta Laso, Shaman Herrera, Alex Musatov, Christian Covre and Manuel Farizano. Nor did I personally know Isabel de Sebastian, terrible.

The importance of the Tanguito

-How would you explain to someone the importance of Tanguito?

-It was a unique flash that illuminated the foundations of Spanish rock. He was part of a generation that believed that freedom was possible, that love could change everything. More than 50 years after his death, Tanguito’s songs tell us that this imagery is still valid.

The original idea for this ’73 album was for the band to be Manal or Los Gatos, but Tanguito arrived two or three days late and there was only Javier Martínez in the studio, so they decided to do it with the peeled viola. an almost documentary album by a very free singer-songwriter, a boy with an incredible poetic level.

-Litto Nebbia’s famous humming also appears in Tanguito’s songs, so they both may have invented it.

-There is no way! The buzz of the quia could often replace a guitar solo or something. She did it that way and it was wonderful.

-How is your relationship with the music of “Tango Feroz”? It was a long time ago and then you went the other way.

-I have the best memories. I met so many incredible people, like Moris, Antonio Birabent and Ulises Butrón, who we played with a lot in that period. To make the documentary we entered that universe again and also recorded a version of it Love is stronger with Dani Martin, which we had never recorded because Ulysses sang it in the film.

-The album left you as a kind of island in the middle of your current career. Tell me what you are currently doing with Orozco-Barrientos.

-Starting in 2024 we plan to release a live album with two records that we made at CCK and Teatro Independencia in Mendoza. With that material we will try to compile 11-12 songs for a live album, which was an unfinished business we had with Tilin.

-Finally. How do you see the growth of the Mendoza rock scene, with a new generation emerging as strongly as you did when you started?

-It’s wonderful. Beyond a group like You Señálemelo where there is contact with Gaby, who is Tilín’s son, we began to notice that there were many groups and soloists in Mendoza who continue to thrive.

I look at them, I really embrace them and I congratulate them, because there is a continuity and a point of view linked in the rock of Mendoza, which fortunately with these new groups has acquired a meaning that until that moment was something totally new.