When in 1906 Andrés Chazarreta played “La Zamba de Vargas” in public for the first time, in a small theater in the city of Santiago del Estero, the municipal authorities and the aristocratic class considered that the performance of native music “was a setback for culture,” Gabriel Maza tells us.
Chazarreta’s name is linked to an essential work to preserve the memory of a repertoire that was discriminated against when it began to take its first steps in the early 1900s.
Chazarreta began playing chacareras, zambas, vidalas and gators with his precarious knowledge of the guitar, acquired from his older brothers, who raised him from the age of four, when his mother died.
He traveled the country with his work as a school inspector and began to become familiar with the culture of each region and with those Creole rhythms that describe the landscape, customs, sorrows and joys of rural people.
On those trips, Chazarreta understood what his true vocation would be.
From there he began to collect works (many by unknown authors and others that arise from oral transmission, the vast majority anonymous) that he heard during his travels and that ended up changing his destiny.
Chazarreta began by transcribing these traditional pieces into a staff.
That simple act, revolutionary for the time, ensured the permanence of a music whose roots could have been buried in oblivion.
“Listening and feeling closely the songs of my people with which I became familiar, and imbibing all their motifs and wishing, on the other hand, that they would not be lost due to carelessness or indifference, I decided to begin my work in 1906, arranging “The Zamba de Vargas”, a piece that I had learned since my childhood by hearing my grandmother sing it every day and preserving the flavor of its wild motifs.
Although he always recognized that the “Zamba de Vargas” was not his, the fact that he had signed the score as his own brought him problems and adversaries.
The same thing happened with “La López Pereyra” in which he also admitted to being only a compiler.
But he was also an excellent composer and guitarist, violin, piano and mandolin player.
He created a Native Art group with 35 members, with a singer who would end up being the best voice of Argentine folklore: the now legendary Patrocinio Díaz.
They went on tour with resounding success throughout Northern Argentina and almost without intending to, they arrived in Buenos Aires.
His friend Ricardo Rojas, the Santiago writer of “El Santo de la Espada”, allows him to do two shows at the old Politeama Theater.
Buenos Aires hears provincial music for the first time. The success is total.
Although an incident mars the performance. A rude spectator shouts from the second row of the theater:
-“What a shame that those dirty boots set foot in a theater as prestigious as the Politeama!”
Chazarreta answers him from the stage:
-“Our boots are cleaner than your soul!”
The spectator, faced with the general rejection, exclaims:
-“I promise you that you will not act tomorrow.”
Let’s remember that they were going to do two functions.
And since the aggressors do not forgive the reaction of those attacked, the rude spectator achieves his goal.
But Andrés Chazarreta has already triumphed and like the greats he lived and wrote for his people.
From that town he took the inspiration and motives for his works; He gave him the mystique of his dances and songs, and from him he received permanent adhesion, which is only granted, once and for all, to the authentically consecrated.
That is why there was pain from crowds, crepes on ponchos and guitars at the time of his death shortly before midnight on April 24, 1960.
A month before, his wife had died and his total love for her meant that he could not overcome his pain.
He was almost 84 years old and had abandoned his artistic activity four years ago.
And a final aphorism for Andrés Chazarreta who managed to insert folk music in Buenos Aires, something that seemed unrealizable to many.
And the af. final insert on pages From l… for this circumstance:
“There are goals that seem unattainable. But there are men born to achieve them.”
Yeah. 38
Source: Ambito
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