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Guillermo González was locked up by the pandemic like everyone else, but in that confinement he created a musical product that he had been looking for for a long time. The walls of the recording studio that he has in his home were a refuge in which he was kept safe from COVID-19 and, at the same time, that “cave” was the place from which he could break all the barriers so that his music transcend borders thanks to technology and new digital platforms.
In a nice chat with diarioepoca.com Guille commented that he started with music at the age of four. His parents took him to Jardilandia, a program on LT6 Radio Goya that aired on weekends. “They dressed me as a gaucho and I went to sing some chamamés in a kind of contest. People who worked there saw me, for example, Carlos Gómez Muñoz and his wife Marilén, who were in charge of the program and told my parents to follow me. wearing every weekend because they liked how he sang, “recalled the artist.
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Where does this love for music come from, no one knows, because “in my family no one even rings the bell,” he said with a laugh, but he added that his father “loves music but just listens, my mother does too, but not a performing musician or singer. there is in the family. ” So, when he still couldn’t read, his dad started taking him to festivals in the area.
“I went to the Watermelon Festival in the Corner, to the Fiesta del Surubí obviously, and even in Buenos Aires, in the city of Children, City Bell, when I was seven years old. There was also a kind of contest and I won a trophy, I went out first. All things for children but that was marking the way for me a bit, “said Guille.
“At the beginning it was always folklore and chamamé, because my parents love that genre and they made me sing that. I didn’t know how to read or write and I learned things by heart. My old woman made me rehearse and memorize the lyrics, the recitation, and even the presentation on stage, what was he going to say “, recalls the Goyano musician.
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When he reached adolescence, he formed his own group: Canto Joven. “We started making progressive folk music, like the band I’m playing with now, which is Amboé. At that time it was fashionable and we played their covers. There I started to be interested in other things, Latin music, rock, blues, jazz and I was lucky enough to have time to study while I was finishing high school and starting my law degree, which I obviously didn’t finish, “he said.
This is how he began to study alone everything that had to do with music: harmony, improvisation. “We already had internet so I downloaded books, read and with the magic of YouTube and technology I began to investigate everything. Here (in Goya) there is no training place for that type of music, African American music, let’s say, so I studied alone “revealed the young artist. As he deepened his knowledge, he had the opportunity to begin to play bass with that other type of music that he loved so much.
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“With cheekiness I started to play jazz, blues and funk that I love and I met a friend from Curuzú, Carlitos Florentín, with whom we went a couple of times to play Curuzú, Resistencia, Corrientes, with a jazz trio, and I was lucky enough to participate in the Jazz Festival held there at the Vera theater. First we went with Carlitos alone, we played a duet, piano and bass; and then we went to accompany Ricardo Lew, a guitarist who was Luis Miguel’s arranger, a very well-known jazz musician… that experience was like my received from the genre because playing with a guy like that who was in the United States, who participated in great jazz orchestras there, and well-known of the genre, was the most “.
While he continued to gain experience with different artistic exponents, the pandemic arrived and the confinement gave him the necessary courage to do what he really had in mind a long time ago, but he could not find the right time to do it. In solitude and facing this uncertain scenario in which the coronavirus put all of humanity, he was encouraged to record an album.
“One day I said ‘we are in a pandemic, I have nothing to do at home, I have my recording studio, my home studio, so I’m going to put together my album.’ to compose my songs and in turn to revert songs by (Luis Alberto) Spinetta, of whom I am a ‘recontramil’ fan. And that was the idea, in principle, to start a solo career, and I am doing it little by little “, he summarized in dialogue with time.
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Thus, Presagios was born, the “experimental but concrete” music album, as he defines his product. “It was the only good thing I could get out of the pandemic,” said Guille from his native Goya.
How do you make a solo album?
Today we need virtual instruments, which are the ones I used to put together everything that is the basis of music: drums and keyboards.
And I was putting together all the songs with that. Except for bass, guitar, pianos and the voice, that is real, then everything else is instruments that I play with a synthesizer, with a keyboard, but they are reproduced as drums, violins, strings … they are instruments played by me with the synthesizer but that when they are recorded the sound is changed.
How did you learn to make music with that?
(Laughter) I don’t know … I learned … At the age of ten I started playing the keyboard, after a bit of drums, I obviously studied a bit of guitar. I play all the instruments but I specialized in bass, which is what I like the most, but I was lucky enough to have time and study, to know the rest of the instruments. Thanks to that I was able to put together a kind of band by myself, a virtual band that sounds real, with the technology that exists today it sounds hyperreal. What is real are the bass, the viola because there are emulators of those instruments but they don’t sound very real.
How would you define your music?
I define it as the music that I always played. I always had it in my head but I could not capture it or it did not come out, I did not know the way well but it is like a music I would say quite experimental … experimental but concrete let’s say … that is what it always cost me when I wanted to do this type of music.
At the time when I wanted to do it, it was very volatile, it was not concrete, it was not round … it was too flowy, it did not get to summarize everything in a song and that is why I think it is experimental, but at the same time it is concrete.
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Do you make the lyrics and music of your songs?
In the album there are six songs that are mine, there are a couple that are by Spinetta, there is one that is by David Lebon, and there is a chamamé named Gere Gere who is by “Yayo” Cáceres, the Curuzucuateño musician who lives in Europe .
That song was a flash to do because I like it since I was 14-15 years old, when we played with “Canto Joven”, from then on I always liked that song, it drove me crazy.
With my friend “Mate” Acosta, who is the singer from Amboé, we have a band here at Goya that we usually go out to play. With him it occurred to me to make a symphonic version of the song and I invited him to sing it as a duet and that experiment came out. I started to realize after hearing that I don’t know if it’s cute or ugly, if it’s good or not, but what I realized is that I like it… what I tell you is recontra egocentric, but no It has to do with the ego … I say ‘the hell I could round off what I wanted so much at some point’. I was able to solve it in a song, and it sounds like an armed and finished song … that’s the beauty that I rescue.
Do you live from music?
Yes, I am a teacher. I make a living from music, I teach in a primary and a secondary school. In elementary school it is a flash and there is my childhood or playing part with music and that is good to have. Playing with music … that part I can exploit with the boys.
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How do you go about playing this laboratory music live?
Everything can be done live. There are songs that require a certain amount of people and musicians that it is very difficult to put together for a personal project, they have to have time, the musicians have to take over with you, and I am leaving that process for a little later.
For now my idea is to spread it digitally, to be heard on Spotify, on YouTube. I realized that digital is now full and it is time to take advantage of that. Put together a song and upload it.
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Omens is available on YouTube and Spotify. Maybe “Guille” is right: he cannot be qualified. It is not possible to say if it is good music, if it is beautiful or ugly. What you can’t do is stop listening. There is something mesmerizing about it that makes you listen to each song and look forward to the next one.
According to the dictionary, among many other meanings, an omen is a phenomenon that serves to divine the future and that often refers to the advent of a change. It is also called an omen. This new way of producing music is just that: an omen. This is the future and it has already begun. It can be heard and felt, like musical notes.
