Chacho Echenique
Chacho Echenique from the Duo Salteño was born on July 21, 1939 in Salta. He was not only a famous singer, poet and composer, but also a professional football player in his youth. At the age of 22, the club Atlético Lanús of Buenos Aires hired him, and later he played in Tucumán.
From 1967, he devoted himself mainly to music. He founded the Salteño Duo with Patricio Jiménez under the musical direction of the extraordinary pianist and composer Gustavo “Cuchi” Leguizamon. They developed a completely new way of singing a duet for the time: two voices in counterpoint instead of the traditional thirds and sixths. Chacho Echenique sings the melody with his countertenor, Patricio Jiménez with his baritone the second voice. And they are accompanied by the guitar.
In 1969 they won the Revelation Award at the Cosquín Folklore Festival and became famous immediately. From the 70s, the Salteño Duo performed throughout Argentina and unveiled this new type of Salta Song beyond the country’s borders. They won numerous prizes, including the Earth Prize for Cultural Development, which UNESCO awarded them in 1990.
In 1992 Chacho and Patricio took different paths. So in December 1993 I could only interview Chacho Echenique. After a 13-year hiatus, in 2005 the Salteño Duo returned to the stage with great success. Unfortunately, Patricio Jimenez died of a stroke in November 2009. Therefore, he could no longer personally receive the award of the Porteña Legislature as Personalities of Culture, which was awarded to the Salta Duo shortly before.
Chacho Echenique told me in our conversation how much the landscape of Salta and the Andes inspires him for his songs. He spoke of his collaboration with the wonderful poet Manuel Castilla. From the dreams of the people of Salta and its surroundings. And how important it is to resist so as not to lose their cultural identity. Listen for yourselves to everything that this great singer-songwriter Chacho Echenique told me in December 1993.
“All this I will transmit through the wind. And all the message left by people who still live like this, dreaming of founding their new villages, which belong to them, which instead of having been the little villages they had, instead of having taken wings they cut them off again. But I believe that they are forms of resistance that still remain in Latin America.As long as there are these resistances we will have a cultural identification.”
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WIKIPEDIA
The group was founded in 1967 by Chacho Echenique and Patricio Jiménez under the musical direction of Gustavo “Cuchi” Leguizamón, adopting a very new formation for the time: two voices in counterpoint and two guitars initially. Then they incorporated an accompanying guitarist. Echenique is the first voice of the Duo to register a countertenor tone, Jiménez’s vocal register is baritone.
Two years later they were revelation of the Cosquín Festival, gaining the recognition of the public, hence the popularity obtained in the country during the 1960s and 1970s. It is at this time when the duo begins to be part of the New Songbook Movement without formally adhering to the commitment signed by artists such as Armando Tejada Gómez, Mercedes Sosa, Oscar Matus, performing bold songs with strong social commitment. The harmony based on the counterpoint of the two voices, each of them performed with a different melody, means that when listening to them together there are dissonances that give it a unique sonority: in two voices they synthesize a chord and seem many voices.
Among the best known songs performed by the duo are: La pomeña, Elogio del viento, Zamba del Laurel, La Arenosa, Doña Ubenza, Zamba del silbador, Ronda para Teresa, Madurando Sueños, Zamba de Juan Panadero.
In 1990 the group was recognized by UNESCO with the Land Prize for Cultural Development, being named “Honorary Partners” by the aforementioned entity.
The group split into 1992, to return in 2005, when the duo returned strongly with a series of concerts in various cities of Argentina and the It is that the Duo had been silenced in the media, but not in the people who were transmitting by word of mouth, from parents to children this almost ritual act of summoning others to listen to the “DUO” that remains as well as cult music.
On November 20, 2009, the Salteño Duo was recognized by the Buenos Aires Legislature as Outstanding Personalities of Culture. However, Jiménez could not attend the event, because he was already in serious health; suffered two strokes, died on November 22, 2009, Music Day, “in his hometown.
VIDEO: Teatro Comedia de Córdoba- December 3, 2005
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