Global Courant
Hugo Fattoruso welcomes us in one of the dressing rooms of the Teatro Solís after the sound check of the second concert to celebrate his eighty years. Smiling, affable, close like his music, he manages to quickly reach the audience. His gaze maintains a glow of friendly youthful mischief.
Hugo Fattoruso, who turns 80 on June 29, embodies the name of dreamer like few others. Time did not break this artist who has a career almost as long as the years of his life. He started at 13 years old. And there, in the beginning, we can find Los Shakers, that Uruguayan group that was much more than a recreation of The Beatles.
“Music is very generous, music is gigantic, music accepts us all,” says the artist during the interview with Clarín, as an explanation of his extensive career.
played with everyone
Hugo Fattoruso, at the Teatro Solís in Montevideo, where he celebrated his 80th birthday.
Fattoruso played with everyone, he recorded more than a hundred albums if we add his collaborations and he hasn’t lost any of that creative flame that arose in his adolescence and that he has kept burning by giving heat to that incorruptible inspiration.
Composer, keyboardist, accordionist and singer, “El Hugo” is one of the Montevidean celebrities and his music sowed a modern look from the very roots of candombe that he imposed through his different projects, such as Opa (now converted into Barrio Opa), the Fattoruso Trio, Rey Tambor, Dos Orientales (with Tomohiro Yahiro), Barrio Sur, HA (in a duo with percussionist Albana Barrocas) and the Oriental Trio (with Daniel Maza on bass).
Fattoruso has managed to ensure that candombe, with its evocative quality, always finds space in his music, like a guest who does not need to ask permission to participate.
-How are you living your eighty years?
-I do not realize that I am turning 80, because I am active. I am like a cyclist in the peloton who lowers his head and pushes forward. And I keep studying and planning. I have projects; now with Albana we have a tour through several cities in Argentina that begins on July 9, in Bolívar and ends on the 23rd, in La Plata; On the 21st, we will be at Café Berlín, in the capital.
family celebration. At the Solís Theater, Hugo Fattoruso played with his children and his grandchildren.
And he adds almost as an apology: “Sometimes I’m tired, for example, after the first night at the Solís I fell as if I had been hit on the head with a blown iron, but I’ve been playing since one in the afternoon and the concert ended at 11 p.m.; today (second day of celebration in the theater) I suppose the same thing will happen to me”.
The tour of twelve cities in July, called the Anniversary Tour, begins on the 9th, in Bolívar, continues in Carhué (10), General Pico (11), Santa Rosa (12), Pigüé (13), Rauch (14), Azul ( 15), Bahía Blanca (16), Tres Arroyos (18), Mar del Plata (19), CABA (21) and La Plata (23) and in 2024, a tour of Japan awaits him with his project Dos Orientales.
Fattoruso has been with the MMG (Montevideo Music Group) record label for fifteen years, from which he feels, perhaps for the first time, real support.
“Since I was fifteen I haven’t celebrated my birthday, but this year, with a round number like 80, the label told me let’s celebrate. I explained to them that I wasn’t going to celebrate by playing alone, so we decided to develop all my projects on stage. It is very emotional to play with so many friends, even Ringo Thielmann, Opa’s original bassist and a great companion, came up…”.
“And, on top of that, I played with my family, my four children and three grandchildren and although the only professional is Francisco, they are all close to music,” adds this artist who has recorded seven albums that will be released little by little through the label.
The man without method
-So many years writing music, did you develop any method or process to compose?
-I don’t have a method, it’s a natural flow and I feel that it maintains the same strength. They ask me how I feel with my eighty years, the truth is I’m distracted, doing things, I don’t think about it, I keep doing everything I have to do.
“I want to be as uncomplicated as possible and the songs don’t sound the same,” adds the artist. There are people who make music too complicated, but deep down you play what comes from your heart. You can’t escape that. I have no formulas, I follow a passion that does not go extinct.
Hugo Fattoruso, with his scores. He says that he wishes he had studied more.
-At your eighty, what balance would you make?
-I shouldn’t have smoked cigarettes and I should have been more studious. The truth is that he should have studied more.
-But you always played.
-Yes, I never stopped playing, but one thing happens… the music is very generous, the music is gigantic, you realize that it is infinite when you set foot in the music. Music accepts us all, those who study and those who don’t need to study; those who can read music and those who can’t read music. Music is great and accepts us. So each one decides, I would have studied more.
-How did you manage to make the touch of candombe always flow in your music?
-That’s true, I also feel that this touch is always present, but it’s natural. I could say that it is like an impulse, that it is born from what I do and I think that it is fundamentally because I was born in this environment and having been able to absorb that tradition.
“I would tell you that with Opa it all started. We just started to propose something with Opa, because the Shakers were copies, but with Opa we played fusion music from the River Plate”, she recalls.
His way as a musician
Fattoruso says that he brings melody to candombe. Photo Laura Tenenbaum
Hugo Fattoruso is a melodist with a penetrating imagination, which is balanced by a solid rhythmic walk.
“Candombe is rhythm and dance, it was born in the street with the drums; when you take it on stage you play it with combos, with bass, drums, keyboard, now when I play with Barrio Sur or Rey Tambor everything remains in the hands of the drum string, my place is to support with the melody”, says this musician who, without a doubt, he revitalized candombe from his explorations.
But he insists: “Percussion is 50 percent in music, but with the Barrio Sur or Rey Tambor quintet it becomes 90 percent. The fabric is in the drums, the flavor, the race and the African pulse is there. I can play other things, piano pieces, I can compose simple things, a ranchera, a bolero, a little waltz, but when those drums sound you have to know where you are”.
His next tour in Argentina will be with Barrocas, with whom he has developed a percussion and keyboard ensemble of extravagant audacity at times. They move in different contexts with a superhuman intuition.
“What happens is that Albana is always attentive and is a tireless worker. She studies hard and knows how to listen. And that is central for us to feel so comfortable. She is always attentive. She is excellent, ”Fattoruso points out categorically.
A little history
Hugo Fattoruso, in his natural habitat, the piano. Photo: Fede Kaplun
Hugo Fattoruso was born on June 29, 1943 in the La Comercial neighborhood, in Montevideo, the son of Josefina and Antonio, who were a strong support for both Hugo and Osvaldo (1948-2012), his brother, a wonderful drummer. While Josefina was fascinated by opera and classical music, Antonio was fascinated by jazz. A home where there was music all the time.
Hugo started with the accordion, continued with the piano and also with the guitar. At the age of four he had his accordion and a teacher, Polola. Around the corner from his house lived a musician named Juan Tormenta, who played the accordion. One day playing in the street with a hoop, Hugo went to the window of Tormenta’s house, where he was rehearsing, and heard the accordion.
“I was mesmerized. His sound fascinated me. I think he made Brazilian music. I went to my house and asked my dad for an accordion ”, recalls Fattoruso, who was already playing something on the family piano together with his father.
From that moment on, fascinated by the accordion at the age of four, he did not stop playing music.
Hugo and the piano, a repeated scene. Photo: Fattoruso Archive
Los Shakers (a group for whom Luis Alberto Spinetta felt special admiration), Opa, Grupo de Cuareim, Los Pusilánimes, La Escuelita, Trío Fattoruso, Rey Tambor, Dos Orientales, HA Dúo, Barrio Sur, Trío Oriental and Cuarteto Montevideo passed by.
In addition to countless collaborations with musicians such as Chico Buarque, Milton Nascimento, Eduardo Mateo, Joao Bosco, Hermeto Pascoal, Djavan, Ruben Rada, Jaime Roos, Leo Masliah, Flora Purim, Jorge Drexler, Fernando Cabrera, Beto Satragni, Pedro Aznar, Fito Paez , Luis Salinas and Leon Gieco, among others.
With 67 years of experience, Fattoruso is an artist of eloquent creativity who managed to create a universe in which candombe opened up to other genres based on his innovative proposals.
WD
