Lunfardía, the most recent band led by Buenos Aires maestro Ariel Hernandez, straddles the urban preoccupations, formal angularity and defined rhythms of tango and the more relaxed shapes of Argentinian folk, writes Siobhán Long.
THE ANT AND DEC of South American music? I don't think so . . . Ariel Hernandez and Dermot Dunne made an unlikely alliance a few years ago with their spine-tingling debut, Pa'l Que Se Va. Dunne's surgically precise accordion found a suitably challenging, yet sympathetic collaborator in Hernandez's intricate guitar work, and the pair sought out furrows never before ploughed, at least not round these rhythmically docile parts of the northern hemisphere.
Never a man to let the grass grow under his feet, Ariel Hernandez has shifted his Argentinian tangos, chacareras and milongas into another space, where they can flex their considerable muscle even further. Lunfardía is his latest plaything. A quintet that marries violin, double bass and percussion with the already thriving guitar and accordion combination, Lunfardía is a deliciously volatile melding of disparate styles, most of which are south American, but with an occasional stray Romanian tune creeping in, just for the hell of it.
Hernandez named his band after a 19th-century dialect, Lunfardo, developed by what he calls the "lower classes" of Buenos Aires. A heady mix of African, European and native Argentinian languages, it was a patois inextricably bound up with the music of the time. Although not widely used today, Hernandez sees it as an apt reference point for the cross-fertilisation of musical forms that defines his latest project. Having cut his musical teeth at home in Buenos Aires with Grupo Huancara and Banda El Ombligo, and since his arrival in Dublin in 2004, with everyone from Havana Son to Caroline Moreau, Phil Ware and Ronan and Conor Guilfoyle, he's quietly left his own musical identity percolate to a point where he's hungry to showcase what's possible when five musicians of distinctly differing backgrounds lock themselves away together in a rehearsal room.
"I suppose it's the closest, it defines very well my background," Hernandez says, reflecting on the symbiosis of past and present that Lunfardía represents. "It's exactly what I grew up with in Buenos Aires: a mixture of everything: tango, Argentinian folk, and a lot of other South American styles too. It's a cosmopolitan place, and that's why I know the folk music from Bolivia, Venezuela and Peru. You get that human exchange quite easily in Buenos Aires."
ARIEL IS QUICK to point out that the argot of Lunfardo is most closely associated with tango, which itself was deeply influenced by Argentinian folk music. Few musicians back home in Argentina play both tango and folk music these days. The two have been sundered by years of evolution, yet Hernandez is particularly comfortable playing and composing music that finds its point of intersection in both styles: straddling the urban preoccupations, formal angularity and defined rhythms of tango and the more languid, relaxed shapes of Argentinian folk.
It might be tempting to suggest that Lunfardía is a product of our increasingly multicultural society, but Hernandez highlights the fact that three of the five band members are Irish (although both parents of Cork-born violinist, Ioana Petcu-Colan are Romanian, and her cultural influence criss-crosses with her South American compañeros seamlessly on Peasant Dance). Peruvian percussionist Frank Vidal partners Hernandez, alongside Dubliners Dermot Dunne and Malachy Robinson on high-arching accordion and disciplined double bass. For Hernandez, it was the lure of the company of great musicians that gave birth to Lunfardía. His work with Dermot Dunne still excites him, but multiple musical identities are what drive many musicians, including Hernandez.
"The communication between a duo is a lot easier, because it's only two people talking, and it's a lot easier to sort out things," Hernandez suggests. "You can do whatever you want with the tempo because there are only two people to think about. As soon as a third musician joins in, you already have to decide on the tempo, and you have to follow it. Still though, with Lunfardía, I like to leave gaps for those moments to happen, as we do in Cartas De Amor, when we have a long moment of a duo with Dermot and Ioana on accordion and violin. There are other duo moments in the CD too, but the best thing about the five of us playing together is the power, the dynamics that it can rise to. It's multiplied by the amount of musicians. I'm much more free as well, because having a bass means that I can go to solos and improvise more easily. Sometimes the accordion on its own as an accompanying instrument isn't enough for the Argentinian folk rhythms."
Cartas De Amoris a particularly cinematic snapshot of the band. It somehow summons, at least to this writer's ears, the mood of Hector Babenco's Kiss of the Spider Woman, in all its crimson-lipsticked matinee idol romance. Hernandez is surprised by this comparison, but not by mentioning the tune as a standout.
"That tune was composed by Cuchi Leguizamón," he explains, "who was one of the best Argentinian folk composers, but I wrote a lot of jazzy couplings, and there are lots of dynamics in that tune. It's a really complicated style of Argentinian samba, if you're not used to it, because it's so slow. There's so much space in it. Frank was telling me that he panics with that rhythm because although it's so slow, it's so precise. It's as if you're zooming in on a painting to see just how good the painter is."
HERNANDEZ COMPOSED TWO of the tunes on Lunfardía's debut, Picada Pa'Cinco, (meaning picadas, or Argentinean tapas, for $5), both of which happen to be chacareras, folk dances from northwest Argentina. His presence infiltrates every other track on the CD, however, as he arranged all 14 tunes, from Astor Piazzola's renowned Libertangoto a sublime interpretation of Nada, a traditional tango that's unquestionably contemporary in mood, yet faithful to its origins. This is no folk music by numbers: it's a densely layered coalition of polyrhythms and sublime melodies that pushes the players to the outer limits of their comfort zones - and sometimes beyond.
Hernandez and co recently finished a highly successful debut tour, a highlight of which was their heart-stopping performance in the Sugar Club. Watching Hernandez swap between his Spanish guitar, his charango (a tiny 10-string guitar, the oldest in Latin America) and his quatro (another small, four-stringed guitar), his jazz background was clear, and yet there was no doubting his passion for the folk music that fuels much of Lunfardía's repertoire. Irish audiences might be more familiar with the music of Astor Piazzola than any other Argentinian composer, and Hernandez makes no secret of his admiration for the man whose music is synonymous with tango, though perhaps largely in quarters outside of Argentina.
"For me, he was a fantastic composer of beautiful music," Hernandez says, expressing little desire to engage in a long-running debate about whether Piazzola's music conformed to the rules of tango or not. "He definitely used a lot of tango elements, but he didn't care about whether his music was classified as tango or not. He was authentic about what he did, and had a very good background as a tango and as a milongas player, and that's the key to his success. His music is beautiful and extremely well orchestrated, and I guess that's why almost all classical musicians play his music."
