Monday, September 27, 2010

The Villa - Peter Muller

The Villa by HaroldandtheGauchos


This song I did while studying abroad in Buenos Aires, Argentina last year. The keyboard part is played my friend Fabian Ayala, a 15 year old music student who performs with Gustavo Gauzman, a band that focuses on Cumbia, dance music which originated in Columbia, and Chamamé, an Argentine folk music popular in the band's home province of Chaco on the Paraguayn border.

Here is a clip of Gustavo and Fabi playing a chamamé in Fabi's rooom.







In Argentina low-income housing areas are dubbed "Villas Miserias," and typically are made of makeshift housing built with cheap materials such as cinderblocks and tin. This record was made in "Villa Carraza," just south of the city of Buenos Aires. The lyrics to song come from a conversation I had with another member of Gustavo Guzman who migrated from Chaco to Buenos Aires to find work in the 1970's. We spoke for an hour or as he compared life during and after the military dictatorship that ruled over Argentina from 1976 until 1983. It was interesting to hear his perspective on the difference between then and now in an impoverished part of the city.

Check out the television in the background of the video- The house had few amenities, and a dire need for water pipe improvement, but a television was considered key by the family.

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