Jazzed-up folk from Argentina is real `guys' music

Julio Santillan traveled a long way to discover that there's no music like home music.

In 1998, guitarist and composer Santillan - who performs tonight with his group Los Changos at Ryles - left Tucuman, Argentina, to study jazz at Berklee College of Music.

"I will tell you something," he says. "When I was in Argentina, I didn't play any Argentinian music. Just barely. I knew these folkloric rhythms that I learned from my father. He's not a professional musician, but he was my first teacher. I studied classical music in the conservatory. Then I got into rock. And then when I heard jazz, I said, `Wow!' So I wanted to go to Berklee, which is a very famous place. If you are a musician in Argentina, you know about Berklee."

Santillan fit right in at his new school. Maybe too well.

"There are a thousand guitar players at Berklee," he says. "So I have my guitar and I'm trying to learn scales and to improvise. Just like everyone else. Suddenly I did a chacarera strum. It's an Argentinian rhythm and there's a special strum you do with it. Everyone was shocked. `Wow, man! That's amazing.'

SANTILLAN

"And to me this chacarera is the easiest thing in the world. But everyone is saying, `Do that again, man. It's amazing.' And I thought, `It's true. It really is amazing.' So I started working on that. I started to play this music I knew, because it was my music.

" Santillan teamed with the other Berklee student from Tucuman, drummer Franco Pinna, and founded Los Changos Trio, which also includes Argentinian and Berklee teacher Fernando Huergo on bass.

Los Changos, he explains, is slang in northern Argentina for "the guys." In 2001, the group released a CD, "Desde el Norte" (From the North), a striking combination of jazz sensibility applied to Argentinian folk rhythms.

The trio stays busy, performing as Los Changos and also as fast- rising Colombian singer Marta Gomez's band. Los Changos also frequently expands to a septet for live performances and on its new CD, "Anit Negra," featuring Gomez on vocals, Fernando Brandao on flute, Evan Harlan on accordion and Billy Novick on clarinet (replacing Carlitos Michelini, who played on the CD).

Santillan's originals on "Anit Negra" contrast brooding dissonance with the lilting loveliness of Gomez's voice, while maintaining their roots in Argentinian rhythm.

"When people in the United States think of Argentina," he says, "they think only of tango. But there are two main kinds of music there, tango and folkloric. I realized that the folkloric is unknown, like a blank page.

"There are many rhythms in this folkloric music. Some, like vidala and baguala, are related to the Native American people that live in the high plains. Other rhythms have Spanish influence. And there is a lot of African influence. The chacarera is a very black rhythm."

Los Changos employs these little-known rhythms along with jazz, a dash of pop and the classical formalism of some of Santillan's compositions for a sound that is accessible but challenging - and not quite like anything else being played in Argentina or the United States. With Berklee acting as a magnet for ambitious young musicians from around the world, a new kind of Latin music scene is growing in Boston.

"It's very true," says Santillan, 29. "What happens is that you come to Boston and find people from all over the world. So your music changes. Los Changos would be a very different project if I did it in Argentina. We do our thing with Argentinian rhythms, but we also deal with a lot of other influences. That makes something unique. It makes something that is happening here, not in any other part of the world."

Los Changos Septet plays tonight at 8:30 at Ryles, Inman Square, Cambridge. Call 617-876-9330. Also see Los Changos Trio at 12:30 on July 21 at South Station, free; with Marta Gomez on July 17 at Ryles; and at the Hatch Shell on July 27.

-LARRY KATZ

E-mail: lkatz@bostonherald.com - Boston Herald,  Jul 9, 2003.  pg. 053