“Un transhumante”, by Federico Randazzo Abad, meticulously follows the life and work of the musician, with testimonies and in situ records. A film to get to know better, or discover, one of the greats of folklore.
What is a transhumant? for gift Atahualpa Yupanquiis the one who, with his desire to walk and learn, leaves behind his house and the smoke from the stoves of his village. He has no deadline to return, but he also has no forgetfulness. This is what we hear him say, in the documentary Federico Randazzo Abad “Atahualpa Yupanqui, a transhumant”. And this is how the memory-lovers evoke it in this film, first with their formative journeys, from years traveling through what Ricardo Rojas called the three mysteries of our land: the pampas, the jungle and the mountains. And then, with his informative trips.
He is not going to dazzle and learn from France, but to dazzle and teach Europeans, he says Sergio Pujol, which also explains how the artist knew how to combine and enhance the various musics of the interior, maintaining its essence while, with his own stamp, applying to the guitar what he learned as a child on the violin.
Randazzo takes us to Cerro Colorado, opens the suitcases of clippings, postcards and love letters, the files of handwritten notes, the old records of topics and interviews, discovers the first recording of the “Indian Trail”1936, his love life before and after Nenettethe teachings of musicologists such as Isabel Aretz and Bence Szabolscito whom he humbly listened, and follows the investigations of Schubert Flores about the social commitments of Yupanqui, his brief time in the Communist Party, from which he separated on bad terms (“First of all, Argentine, I followed my flag”he said in the “Coplas of the persecuted payador”) and his problems with Peronism, under which he was banned, imprisoned and tortured.
“I think, then I exile”it was said, paraphrasing Descartesand took refuge in Cerro Colorado. your son Robert It evokes those years, when getting to the house under construction was little less than an adventure. Later would come the trips through Europe, America, Japan and the Arab world, world fame, the triumphant returns to Argentina, the cutting responses to any suspicious person who objected to his life in Paris.
Jacquelinehis last assistant and wife, shows us the simple Parisian home at the foot of Rue du Moulin de la Vierge. The camera shows from afar the burial of the ashes on his beloved Cerro. Happily, the film ends just as the artist ended his recitals, that is, it shows him making that compilation of couplets that did not accept an encore but left the heart clean and satisfied. Very good idea, in line with the rest, which has no unevenness or waste.
There is more, like the bonus of the herb that sponsored the first record, the fragment of a copy of “Zafra” in colors that had not been seen for years, the explanation to the French audience of a “chanson du charretier” which is none other than “The axles of my cart”a Japanese musician singing “The muleteer” on the street, and more, pure memory for some, happy discovery for many.
“Atahualpa Yupanqui, a nomadic person” (Argentina, 2024); Dir.: Federico Randazzo Abad. Documentary.
Source: Ambito
