Ciro Perez
Today you will listen to the interview with the wonderful guitarist Ciro Pérez. Since I heard him play in the Compact “Tango mi refugio” with the bandoneonist Osvaldo Montez, I am a fan of this guitarist of the old great school of tango. Because Ciro has played many years with Roberto Grela, the most innovative tango guitarist, who was a shaper of the style.
Ciro Pérez was born on December 9, 1944 in the Uruguayan town of Canelones. When I visited him in December 1995 at his summer home near Montevideo, he told me about his encounters with the best tango and folklore musicians of his time: already in 1960, at age 16, Pérez met the then unknown but then legendary singer-songwriter Alfredo Zittarosa in a peña, the Latin American form of jam session. They played together for more than 10 years until Zittarosa had to emigrate due to the repression of the military junta.
In 1976 the legendary tango guitarist Roberto Grela called Ciro Perez and they began to play together. They recorded two albums as a duo: “De Gardel a Grela” and “Don Carlos de Buenos Aires”. And in 1978 they made an album with the singer and bandoneonist Rubén Juárez.
In the early 80s, Ciro Pérez emigrated to Paris, where he met Paraguayan guitarist Vidal Rojas, who had grown up in Paris. Pérez also played with other Argentine musicians who had emigrated to Paris, such as Juan José Mosalini, Gustavo Beytelmann and Roberto Lara.
His usual coffee was the “Trottoir de Buenos Aires”, at that time the meeting place of all the tango players who visited Paris or already lived in the City of Lights, such as Osvaldo Pugliese, Horacio Salgan and other famous tango musicians. For many years, Ciro Pérez has lived in Korsika.
Listen for yourselves to what this unique and beautiful tango guitarist told me in his beach cabin overlooking the Atlantic Ocean in the Uruguayan summer of 1995.
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Part of the interview
“He started playing at the Trottoir in Buenos Aires with Roberto Lara when the matter came up with the one I told you in ’85, that President Mitterrand came, that I was invited by President Sanguinetti; Uruguayan president who went to Paris in ’85, then, in his first government. I was invited by President Mitterrand, I received the invitation to a dinner that was in the Élisée for the arrival of President Sanguinetti.
I had met Mrs. de Mitterrand at the Pompidou centre on June 21, the day of music. I played with a trio called Rio de la Plata, so the lady really liked the trio; it was piano, double bass and guitar. There was Enrique Pascual on piano, there was Daniel Lagarde on double bass and I was on guitar.
And well, there were parades of important artists and we passed, we did tangos and she liked it a lot and well, she took me into account. And I was lucky enough to be invited by the arrival of the president of my country to the dinner of the Elysee Palace, so it was. And well, this matter of the quartet is… it is an idea that arose here in my hometown, native because one day they went to play in San Ramón, which is another … a city that is close to my village.
And since it rained and it was an outdoor festival, they couldn’t do it, so they stayed at the house of a friend of mine who is a dentist and well, a little rock was set up there; well, there was me, there were a few friends and well, I was playing a little guitar with them and the idea of… it occurred to me to tell them if they wanted to record an album to make a tribute to Roberto Grela with four Uruguayan guitars, because it had not been done.”
VIDEO
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