Celeste Carballo and her history with tango: first she took Peter Gabriel to the milonga, now she will sing a piece by Piazzolla

Even if many don’t know it, the music of Astor Piazzolla and Argentine rock have always been close. And not only for the influence on the beginnings of rock of the songs he composed with Horacio Ferrer, but also for the very explicit unions in which the maestro shared parties with Luis Alberto Spinettaas well as praising 70s rock for having the courage to invent something new.

Piazzolla also praised him several times Charlie Garciawhich at the time of The Bird Making Machine included nods to his music, in addition to the instrumental theme Bicycleby Serú Giran.

Over the course of many decades of history, several figures of Argentine rock have sung their songs, for example Fabiana Cantilo with Ballad for a madman and in the 2018 Piazzolla Experience with Hilda Lizarazu, Julia Zenko, Ligia Piro and Julieta Venegas, as well as Celeste Carballo in 2008 on his live album Jealousywhere it ended up Prelude to the year 3001.

And it is precisely Celeste who this Friday will join the most representative quintet of the Piazzolla sound: the Revolutionary quintet, which is the official set of the Astor Piazzolla Foundation. There will be two shows (at 8pm and 10.45pm). Club Bebopwhere Celeste will be the voice of the immortal Astor’s compositions.

Devoto’s girlfriend

In the midst of the Good Friday celebration, Celeste Carballo came to the capital and went to a bar in the middle Villa Devoto, the neighborhood of his childhood. He enthusiastically recounted that the day before he had had a first meeting and rehearsal with the Revolutionary Quintet in his home in Moreno. And that everything had gone perfectly.

“They came to my studio,” he said, “mid-morning, with the sun shining. I set it up like a rehearsal room with speakers, microphones and everything sounded perfect. And I’d been studying for about a month, because they’re also there. two new songs for me, they had given me the opportunity to choose the repertoire and choose two songs, they were amazed Oblivionin a European version that is not the one sung here, and Libertango in the Grace Jones version in English, which is very beautiful and I brought it out on the guitar. “We’re already talking about recording them, because the rehearsals went so well.”

-Did you have any other shows or projects planned for this period?

-NO. Last year I had some pretty major surgery, an ovarian cyst the size of a grapefruit. That half stopped me and I put “stop”. But I started getting calls from many artists, like Juanse to sing in Obras and then in Cosquín Rock, and Los Caballeros de la Quema in Gran Rex. I learned a lot of repertoire that I didn’t know. It’s good. I like.

-This invitation came the same way.

-Yes. A month ago I received an invitation via WhatsApp from the Astor Piazzolla Foundation and obviously I said yes. I think it was because of what I did in 2008 on the album Jealousy as a tribute to tango, where I recorded Prelude to the year 3001. And two years ago an electronic musician called KoolTURE asked me to do a remix and I suggested that song to him. It exploded, people loved it and it started circulating.

After all, this music is not at all foreign to me. I grew up singing tangos! When I was eight years old I sang in the countryside because my older brother listened to tango and sang very well, even though he wasn’t a professional singer.

-How many years older?

-About 20 years older. Tangero King. And my sister Dora had the voice of an Argentine singer, as they said before. When we were at my brother’s country house, there was a lot of singing and it was a constant learning process. It was also heard a lot on the radio. I sang Julio Sosa’s songs when I lived in the countryside, when I was 6-7 years old. She was riding like a madwoman, singing loudly on horseback.

Tango and Peter Gabriel

-At what age did you go to the countryside?

-I was born three blocks from here, in the heart of Villa Devoto, but people have that sold-out fantasy of the country girl. The story is that I was four years old when my father retired and went to say goodbye to his brother, who had lived in Coronel Pringles all his life. And there was just a little farm for sale and we went there in the late ’50s, early ’60s.

Then every summer we came here, to my sisters’ house, to New York and Cuenca. We came back in ’67 and lived in an apartment between Havana and Gutenberg, right across the street from the train station.

-So you were here at the time of Piazzolla’s “Balada para un loco”.

-When it exploded Ballad for a madman I was 12 and we had just gotten back. I heard the song on the radio and the next day I went to a record store on the corner of Lope de Vega and Pedro Varela. As was the B side Chiquilín de Bachínwhich has become my workhorse on all birthdays and Sundays at my brother Eduardo’s country house.

Then I discovered that Piazzolla was like a Hendrix of tango, who played the bandoneon standing up and wore colorful t-shirts. I gave recitals at the Teatro San Martín, where my sister Violeta always took me. The culture of the 70s for me was super musical, not just on a national rock level. So it’s strange that now at 67 years old he has to explain why he sings tangos.

– It happened just now.

-Yes. Now the times are given. Have you seen that music is the art of combining times? Well, even combining dates. And now is the time. We got closer to the Revolutionary Quintet, and even more so after the rehearsals, because we discovered that many of us had played with the same people, like the pianist Franco Poli, who played with Rubén Juárez when he invited me to sing at the Tango Festival . I will never forget it, because it was very exciting to hear that particular and big voice next to you and with the bandoneon played by him.

I also remembered when Peter Gabriel came, when we finished the three concerts, that it was a party, we were happy, and he said “Now he said that Celeste will take us for a walk. Where are we going?” And I told them to go and listen to the tango and we went to Rubén Juárez’s house.

-Did you take Peter Gabriel to a tango shop?

-Yes. Furthermore, I asked him if he knew Piazzolla’s music, and since he said no, I asked the bus driver to stop in Corrientes at a record shop and I bought him three records.

vintage recordings

In recent months, Celeste Carballo’s official YouTube account has started to fill up with new material, from songs to unreleased videos from the time he made VHS clips. Additionally, he has uploaded a live recording from 1982 called Celeste at Jazz&Pop ’82.

Celeste explains the reason for so much archiving activity: “I asked the people at the distributor what was happening with YouTube, that we couldn’t monetize it, and they told me that I’m missing hours of viewing. So I put together a team with a friend who it handles all formats, I took the entire video library I had at home and we started watching the material and uploading it.

And he adds: “People think that my job is just to be on stage and sing, but I also have the record company and I do these things.”

-You also uploaded the show from the famous Jazz&Pop pub to the platforms.

-Yes. The amazing thing is that it’s a very raw recording, because it’s not even from a console. It came out of a little tape recorder that someone put on the counter and recorded the recital. It was 40 years ago, he sent it to me digitally and I thought it was amazing. I have spawned a new marketing category in music, which is “documentary sound” or “documentary audio”. It’s something historical, because if you listen to it with headphones, even the cars passing through Chacabuco Street are there.

-Is that show from the time of your performance at the Pan Caliente festival?

-Yes. That’s when things started to go well here. He also played a lot in La Plata, because he had a coach from La Plata, Pinguino. I played a lot with Los Redonditos de Ricota; I was going to rehearse at Indio Solari’s house, and Negra Poli and Skay came to my Department of Defense and Chile to drink mate or coffee in the evening.

-What was that period like before your first album?

-I come from psychology studies and work in an office; I had another head. But everything started to take shape and I started playing live more. I went to play at Pan Caliente and there were people from a place in Belgrano called Entreacto, who offered me to play every Friday of the year.

An audience was created there and then they came looking for me to play in a very small venue in Palermo. One day the owner of Jazz & Pop invited me to play in that famous club, where Chick Corea used to hang out after a great show. For this reason it seemed interesting to me to edit that material, where there is an unreleased song that is Steel soulwhich didn’t make it into my first album and a lot of fans asked me about it at the time.

-Did you meet musicians like Charly, Spinetta and David in that period?

-Yes. I had already crossed them. Don’t forget that before an artist records his first album and gets his first gold record, he’s probably played for five or six or seven years in a lot of places. But journalists always cut the apple at the weakest point and believe that it all started with the first album.

-Would you like to make a biopic or an autobiography?

-I have been writing in a notebook for many years. When I am very inspired I write anecdotes from childhood, from the farm, in the countryside, with my parents, with friends, with my brothers, with my nephews. For me that is the fertile ground for everything else. This is the character. Then it grows; It is a becoming. In addition, the girl read the entire school library, played chess, made puppets and put together short plays. All the famous life is not now.

I’ve never played at being a rock star, because I’ve always really been one. It’s not a game and it’s not easy. Things are done because you want to enjoy them. The moment you breathe is your life. The present breathes and you don’t have to be Buddhist or anything.