Music - Buenos Aires - page 450

Blues & Jazz
The high degree of crossover between Buenos Aires' blues and rock scenes is illustrated by
the path of the late guitar wizard Pappo (1950-2005). An elder statesman, Pappo was in the
groundbreaking rock group Los Abuelos de la Nada and became involved with the seminal
blues-rock band Pappo's Blues, as well as Los Gatos and others. He played hard-driving,
full-tilt rockin' blues and was especially great when covering such American masters as
Howlin' Wolf, BB King and Muddy Waters.
Guitarist-singer Miguel 'Botafogo' Vilanova is an alumnus of Pappo's blues and an im-
posing figure in his own right. Also worth checking out is La Mississippi, a seven-member
group that has been performing rock-blues since the late 1980s. Memphis La Blusera was
around BA's blues scene for a long time until it broke up in 2008; it once worked with
North American legend Taj Mahal.
Lalo Schifrin is an Argentine pianist, composer and conductor with a jazz background;
he's most famous for writing the Mission: Impossible theme. He's also won four Grammy
awards and has been nominated for six Oscars. In the late 1950s, Schifrin performed with
Gato Barbieri, another notable composer and jazz saxophonist. Carlos Alberto Franzetti is a
big-band composer who wrote The Mambo Kings (1992) and won a Latin Grammy in 2001
for his Tango Fatal album.
Guitarist Luis Salinas is known for his mellow and melodic tunes that run along George
Benson lines but are a bit less poppy; be sure to check out his jazz takes on such traditional
Argentine forms as the chacarera, chamamé and tango. Dino Saluzzi, a bandoneón player
originally from Salta who began recording in the '70s, was one of the first Argentine musi-
cians to mix folklore, tango and jazz. Dino's son José is a renowned guitarist in his own
right.
Another musician and son of an Argentine jazz legend is Javier Malosetti, son of pianist
Walter Malosetti. Javier's group Electrohope blends jazz, blues, rock and swing with Latin
rhythms and funk. Meanwhile, jazz guitarist Tomás Becú's debut album, Bushwick (2007),
is stellar. For wildly experimental jazz check out the Gordöloco Trío, which fuses ambient,
funk and jazz in its 20-minute-long songs.
Drummer Sebastián Peyceré, who favors a funk-tinged fusion, has played with the likes
of Paquito D'Rivera, BB King and Stanley Jordan. Finally, BA's own version of the Sultans
of Swing is the Caoba Jazz Band, who for years has been playing 1920s and '30s New Or-
leans-style jazz for the love of it.