Interview with Léonor Harispe of the band Cuarteto Tafi on the occasion of the release of their 4th album Amanecer

The Argentine music group Cuarteto Tafi releases on March 19 its fourth album entitled Amanecer. The opportunity for us to meet the singer Leonor and retrace their history. It is all in sensitivity that the interpreter has indulged. We invite you to travel, the time of the interview, in Argentina between traditional music and modernity.

Just Focus. Hello! To begin, can you introduce yourself and your Cuarteto Tafi group?

Leonor. I am Leonor Harispe, I am the singer and the author of the texts of the group. Author, composer, performer. I am of Argentine origin. I am the daughter of political exiles from the last Argentine dictatorship. So I am bi-cultural, Franco-Argentinian since I grew up the first years of my life in Buenos Aires and I arrived in France twenty-five years ago now, to study and find my way. I found my job which is music. About ten years ago with the guitarist of the band, Matthieu, we were students in a university city in Toulouse. He played the accordion and I sang on the balcony. We both got our bearings, we became very good friends and we went on a trip to Argentina, so to my home. And when we came back from our trip, we thought we had to take a serious look at Argentine music. I meet Ludo who is the bouzoukist of the group, I meet Fred who is the percussionist and the Cuarteto Tafi born like that, around a trip to the foot of the mountains in the northwest of Argentina. This place is the cradle of folk music. The four of us gathered around this style, to first pay tribute to this music and then with time leave a little bit the shackles of traditional music and find our own style. Our own desire to make music and do something that resembled all four of us.

Just Focus. You are of Argentine origin, which is not the case with the other three musicians. So it was the love for this music that led you to this style?

Leonor. Here! It's a story of love and friendship, love at first sight between the three boys, for this style of music. And friendship also because we have become over time strong friends, see more, since the bouzoukiste is my companion. So it's almost become a family story, this band.

Just Focus. Can you tell us what Cuarteto Tafi means?

Leonor. So cuarteto, it's quartet, we are four. And Tafí is the name of a very small village that is located in the north of Argentina at more than 3000 meters above sea level. In the heights, in the middle of the mist and the mountains. It is in this village that many folk music of Argentina is born. The four of us went to this small village and fell a little in love with this place, which is a little mystical, a little magical. And when we came back from a trip we thought, we're going to be called Cuarteto Tafi.

Just Focus. It's really symbolic!

Leonor. Yes! It's a tribute, it's symbolic. It reflects the origins of the band actually.

Just Focus. Did growing up in Argentina help you to work on this style and maybe accompany the other musicians in the band?

Leonor. So, yes! Music has always been a part of my life. My mother, my parents, were and still are politically involved and had invested a lot in the militant life of Argentina and music has always been part of our lives. My mother used to sing, at the end of meetings, a tango or a samba or a chacarera which are the styles of there. And so I have always been rocked by the classics of Argentine music. When we created the band, for me it was obvious to look into this style and start singing things that I had finally heard throughout my childhood. We had to transmit all this to my companions, to the three musicians and it became, yes, like a transmission. And then we did it anyway in our own way because we never did traditional, we readapted all that. Because that's what we want to defend today, is that our style, certainly, has a touch that is Argentine and in fact, since I am the singer. But our style has become more like world music, with a fusion of instruments, sounds, with my Argentine voice.

Just Focus. Can you tell us about your song El Canto del Sur which is one of the tracks on your album Amanecer? Explain to us what it represents and especially the message you wanted to convey?

Leonor. El Canto del Sur, so the song of the south, is a piece that I wrote and that we composed following the social movements that took place in Chile in 2019/2020 because of an increase in the price of public services. There have been massive movements, demonstrations all over Chile. It was very moving to see small towns and villages taking to the streets and demonstrating for days and days. We, in France, we had this outside look, we saw these long demonstrations that were really endless. Two months later, there were women's demonstrations in Mexico, Ecuador, Bolivia, Honduras, Argentina, Catalonia, Lebanon, Iraq, there were all over the world. It has become like a kind of denunciation of inequalities that has become global and it has even happened in France with the movement of yellow vests. So the four of us said that we artists shouldn't miss it. We had to put ourselves at the heart of these movements, by writing a song that talks about them. The fact that Latin America and the whole world are coming out of the house to go to the streets and to demand things. Concretely, the piece I wrote is about every part of my female body that represents a landscape, a part of Latin America. It became an organic piece, with the final bouquet that is the women's movement in Argentina, who managed to legalize abortion. The song of the south ends with this latest approval of the law for abortion. It is a beautiful gift that the world sends back to us with the release of this piece.

Just Focus. Again, it is a tribute to your roots and especially a committed piece that ultimately concerns the whole world?

Leonor. Commitment is an integral part of our artistic purpose. Poetry too! We are not a militant group but a committed group, who love, who are sensitive to the movement. But we are also sensitive to poetry, beauty, sound and musical encounters. And finally the commitment is also in the fact that the album we are releasing is the result of a lot of collaboration with a lot of French artists. El Canto Del Sur was composed with Deep Kelins who did all the programming, the beat. So yes, a human and friendly commitment too.

Just Focus. Can you present us this album that comes out today?

Leonor. Amanecer, it's the dawn, it's the dawn. There is an extremely individual tendency in the sense that it is this warmth, it is this feeling of happiness that one feels when the sun rises. The rays of sunshine that touch our face early in the morning and are extremely pleasant. So this very naive side that runs through this album. And then also a message of hope, buds of hope. Each piece is a bud of hope to tell oneself that the night will soon disappear and that the sun will rise. Because times have been very hard and still are, but there are still things, buds of hope, rays of sunshine in the world that appear. Each piece is a collaborative piece, but they are also committed pieces, full of poetry, that speak and pay tribute to women. And then of course, there are pieces that refer to my childhood and its memories. Always with a lot of hope, warmth and commitment.

Just Focus.You told us about the artists who accompanied you on this album, can you introduce them to us?

Leonor. There is Leïla Martial who is a great singer and musician of Toulouse origin who has just acquired the double victory of jazz in Paris. She put her voice on the first track of the album. Leïla is an incredible and overwhelming artist with her creativity, inventiveness and humility. This person marked us musically and humanly. We asked her, almost the day before the recording, if she would put her voice on the track, she accepted and it was one of the highlights of the recording. Then this album is also characterized by a touch of modernity, because there is a lot of beat and programming. There is Ghislain Rivera who is also a great musician, who proposed a lot of colors and programming on the tracks of the album. And there is Deep Kelins on El Canto Del Sur. At the level of instrumental musicians, there are Serge Lopez and Jean-Luc Amestoy. Serge on guitar and Jean-Luc on accordion who we invited on the song Somos la riviera, which talks about friendship and meeting. And finally Matthieu Saglio on the cello, a full, complete, beautiful, humble artist too.

Just Focus. You told me that you didn't just make traditional music and you can see that in the musicians who accompanied you. What are the influences of the band?

Leonor. Let's say that our music has become a bit of world music. There is no longer that legacy of traditional music that the Cuarteto had. For our influences, there is a Greek Bouzouki and an Oud so there are Mediterranean influences, with the heat of the south. There is Afro-Latin percussion with a percussionist who has been immersed in salsa and who has this love for pulse. The guitarist also plays the oud and gives a more flamenco, more jazz touch to our music. And then all these new modern approaches to beat and me with my voice as a woman of Argentine origin that brings all the Latin American side. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rHud-nmx_PA&ab_channel=CuartetoTafi

Just Focus. How have you adapted to the Covid crisis? You're releasing an album, you've done live streamed concerts. Are you going to develop this way of doing concerts?

Leonor. So during the lockdown we had a bit of luck because we were preparing the album and during the deconfinement we were able to record it. During the lockdown we worked individually, so we missed the repets' a lot. Like everyone else, we have also missed human relationships a lot and what makes us suffer enormously is this lack of perspective and this lack of vision, to say that we are isolated in the middle of all this extremely fragile context. Culture is not at the centre of the discussions, on the contrary. It is not even last, it is absent. So it is very painful to see that there is no perspective in which culture could reintegrate into this society that we are reinventing. The live stream yes we do. We are very, very far from people but we do what we can. It's already great that festivals are adapting and they do what they can to maintain a link. But what is missing is the relationship with people. A concert is live music, it is a live show and in live there is human. So we're doing live streams, but I hope it's not going to be the cultural project of 2021 or 22. I hope it's just going to be a moment to pass.

Just Focus. It keeps the link, but it's true that a concert is the meeting between the public and the artists.

Leonor. That's it, it's sweating together, it's crying, getting moved, clapping… If only to have applause in live stream… There you go.

Just Focus. Leonor, thank you for this interview. Do you have a word for the end?

Leonor. Let readers not hesitate to follow us on the networks. The album is out today on all platforms. That they do not hesitate to like, to follow us, to tell us what they think of the album. And I hope we'll be back on stage very soon. Thanks to Leonor and her band Cuarteto Tafi for this beautiful interview! You can now find their album Amanecer on all platforms by clicking right here Instagram @cuartetotafi