When Vitillo Abalos was given the Gardel award in 2017, he said, moved and smiling, “I waited 95 years to receive this award.” Well, one of those who was there, celebrating, was Juan Gigena Abalos, his great nephew. They had built a strong bond, especially during the last years of the life of the old drummer from the Abalos Brothers, when together they forged a film and an album for posterity: Abalos, a story of 5 brothers, the documentary, and Golden record, 1940s folklore, the recording work that Gardel deserved, in the category “best male folklore artist album.” “I shared the last years of his life with Vitillo, with great intensity,” recalls Gigena Abalos, who is actually the direct grandson of Machingo, the eldest of the leading brothers of Argentine folk music.
But the thing begins with Vitillo not only because of the above, but also because the guitarist of Cyrus and the Persians to name his band: Gauchos of the Pampa. “We found it funny when Vitillo told us that that was what they called the group once they traveled to England.” This is one of the reasons for the group’s bilingual name. The other is linked to what they understand as folklore, something that goes beyond the mere fact of playing songs from the palo. “Folklore for us has to do with a deeper culture,” says Gigena Abalos. “Many times you take a charango or a quena, and it is said that what you play with them is folklore, but it is not… There has to be a lot more for it to really be folklore. Therefore, what we do is play folk repertoire, plus some of our songs that have airs.”
All this to enter through the right door into the world of Gauchos of The Pampa, which will precisely turn into music what its leader says, on Saturday, June 8 at 8:30 p.m., at La Trastienda (Balcarce 460), under an eventual name, which is that of its main song: “La chacarera did not die.” “She did not die because the folkloric feeling is summarized in the farm,” says Machingo’s grandson. “When we opened for the Rolling Stones with Ciro and the Persians, I brought folklore records for each one, and I stayed talking especially with Charlie Watts. I told him what the chacarera was, and when the guy grabbed the record and read the word, it caught his attention, because it is something very much ours, something that represents us, but that did not go out into the world like it did with tango. That’s why we have to keep telling it.”
Well, that’s what the band born in 2018, with one foot placed on the Abalos heritage and the other on rock, as summarized in “Chacarera del Sufrido”, a recently released version recorded with Emiliano Brancciari, from No Te Va Gustar. “What we do has to do with playing folklore in a very own way, because playing it as it is is more of the same and it’s boring. It is always present in us to find a particular sound. I think it is a way to bet and sustain this genre for the next generations. We tried to communicate the story of the Abalos not only through music but also through a lot of values that they had. This means treating them with seriousness, respect and affection,” says Juan Gigena, whom Vitillo warmly called “the little guy who is in rock.”
By the way, one of the most unforgettable days of his life was when he had to entertain the members of Guns N’ Roses and Kiss with his grandparents’ zambas, gators and chacareras in a private meeting. “I wouldn’t have thought about it even in my dreams,” the violero gets emotional, taking his memory back to that night of September 29, 2022. “I started playing the guitar because of guys like Slash, and if at 14 years old they told me that a day I was going to be playing my grandfather’s legendary music for him, I couldn’t have believed it. “It was a dream night.”
Gigena Abalos lived with her grandfather Machingo until she was 8 years old. “My bond with him was intense and deep,” she emphasizes, directing her memory further back in time. “Actually, mine was the same as all of his brothers: they were all very grand. Very fun, affectionate and particular. They tapped their feet, they went on tour, they brought you gifts from everywhere… I grew up thinking that that was normal, but over time I realized that it wasn’t like that,” she says. In strictly musical terms, beyond the late experience with Vitillo, the musician evokes the creative, compositional encounters between his grandfather and Adolfo, the Brothers’ pianist. “I remember listening to them playing the piano, passing songs to each other, because they were the ones who composed the most in the band, the ones who most carried the baton of the musical role and the arrangements. I could see that and I clearly remember it.”
-And the rest?
-Machaco has given me guitar lessons, I even have a cassette in which he played me the various rhythms, and Roberto saw him less, but we have shared things, too. I have many anecdotes, but I remember a very special one that happened before my graduate trip, in which my grandfather Machaco took me to the train station that went to Sierra de la Ventana and, in the meantime, taught everyone to tap dance. the course (laughter). It’s something that my friends remind me to this day: he was a very characterful person. They were all very characters.
