(PRWEB) October 10, 2003
LOS ANGELES— The Paris-based Gotan Project brings its soulful and fiery fusion of classic tango melodies, dub and electronica to UCLA’s Royce Hall at
8 p.m., Saturday, Oct. 18, 2003. Presented by UCLA Live, The Gotan Project will be joined by Los Angeles’ 50-plus member daKAH Hip-Hop Symphonic Orchestra. This performance is approximately three hours with an intermission. For tickets call 310-825-2101 or visit http://www.UCLAlive.org.
In addition to Gotan’s principal members, including DJ/producer Philippe Cohen Solal, DJ Christophe Mueller on computers, and tango guitarist Eduardo Makaroff, the lineup features Cristina Vilallonga, vocals; Serge Amico, bandonéon; Arnaldo Zanelli, piano; and Line Kruse, violin.
With sales currently in excess of 600,000 copies worldwide, Gotan Project’s acclaimed “La Revancha Del Tango” was released domestically on Beggars XL in April 2003, featuring their jazz-house hit “Triptico.” Their remix of Sarah Vaughn’s classic, “Whatever Lola Wants” on the “Verve Remixed 2” compilation, featuring today’s greatest DJs remixing the legends of jazz, has enjoyed much airplay on alternative music programs. In addition, their music will be featured in the first episode of “CSI Miami” on CBS this fall.
These French dance producers turned world music crusaders are well on their way to invading the record boxes of DJs around the world. Left-looking spinners including Gilles Peterson, Thievery Corporation, Peter Kruder, UFO, Jazzanova, Rainer Trüby, Herbert and Mr. Scruff have all been championing Gotan’s continent-crossing fusion of tango, dub and beats since their debut single “El Capitalismo Foraneo” was released in January, 2000.
A Los Angeles phenomenon, daKAH is the world’s largest hip-hop orchestra featuring 58 musicians and almost every instrument imaginable. Led by Maestro Double G, daKAH has featured many of hip-hop’s greatest musicians including Macy Gray, Nikka Costa and members of the Breakestra and Black Eyed Peas.
Like a strange, mongrel beast, dance club music will feed off anything: salsa, Brazilian samba, Afrobeat, and now tango. In its native Argentina, the tango is the music of revolution, both sexual and political. It is Argentina’s pop, jazz and its folk music all rolled into one. It’s music that came from the barrios and swept the high societies of Europe in the early 20th century. The second tango invasion came much later: in the late 1970s, when the country’s right wing military junta forced many left wing musicians to flee and find refuge in more liberal cities like Paris.
“There has always been a big tango scene in Paris,” says Gotan founder Philippe Cohen Solal. Indeed the word Gotan itself is just “tango” said in Buenos Aires’ Verlan slang—the Argentinean underworld’s equivalent of old fashioned London argot like backslang. “In Verlan they use the word Gotan to mean tango,” explains Cohen Solal, “there was a tango club in Paris called Gotan in the 60’s.”
Employing some of the finest tango musicians in Europe, Cohen Solal and fellow Gotan projectors Mueller and Makaroff allowed them to freestyle around a theme—then returned to the studio to edit the jams into a seductive tango dub.
“We are not scared of treating or filtering the musicians,” they say. “We’re ‘using’ electronic tricks to make the tango more accessible and that’s why it works. We don’t want to do deep house, with long solos on top of that—it’s really boring. The improvisation has to come back to real melodies and bring melodies back into dance music. We love dub, we love soundtrack music, and we wanted to discover something surprising that nobody would expect.”
With cover versions of the theme from “Last Tango In Paris,” and a dubbed-out take on Frank Zappa’s “Chunga’s Revenge,” this is willfully weird but strangely compelling music that ignores both geographical and musical borders.
Cohen Solal has spent the last 10 years working as a musical supervisor, collaborating with film directors such as Lars Von Trier (on “Europa”), Jean-Baptiste Mondino and Nikita Yolande Zauberman (“Clubbed to Death”), before hooking up with mutual Mueller and veteran Argentinean émigré and musician Makaroff.
A veteran guitarist and singer who has already recorded 12 albums, Makaroff has written and played on film soundtracks and presented TV shows in his native Buenos Aries. He came to Paris in 1990, where he’s fronted the tango group Tango Mano and conducted the orchestra for the Paris tango club Dancing de la Coupole.
“We wanted to work together for a long time,” explains Cohen Solal, “and then Eduardo made me discover the really percussive, groovy side of Argentinean music. We wanted to do something we really loved, with no compromise or thinking about selling to others.”
Drawing upon influences from jazz, funk, European classical, hip-hop, rock and Latin music, daKAH Hip-Hop Orchestra has won critical raves and a loyal following for their recordings and live performances since its inception in 1999. Musically speaking, the sound is like a spice rack, featuring several flavors, aromas, herbs, seasonings, and applications. Orchestral instruments swing on dance rhythms to create the genre-defining sound of symphonic hip-hop. Individuals bring their unique talent to the center stage, while Maestro Double G directs the traffic. Most importantly, they have demonstrated a previously uncharted potential for both the hip-hop house party and the symphony orchestra.
This event is supported by the Henry Mancini Tribute Fund at UCLA.
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