Juan Cedron

Today you will listen to an interview with the emblematic poet, composer, singer and guitarist Juan “Tata” Cedrón, who in his songs fights for freedom and social justice against fascism and any kind of oppression.

Juan Cedron, born in 1939, formed in 1964 a trio with César Stroscio (bandoneon) and Miguel Praino (viola) until – with the addition of the double bass player Jorge Sarraute – they played as a quartet. The Cedron Quartet arrived in 1971 at the invitation of Paco Ibáñez and Paco Reves, the manager of Antonio Gades and Paco de Lucía in Torremolinos, Spain, to play at a New Year’s Eve party for many drunken German tourists, as Juan Cedron told me in his Paris apartment in November 1998.

After a tour of Spain, they recorded an album with Paco Ibáñez in 1972, which was released in France. From then on, the Cedron Quartet toured Europe every year until Cedron settled with his family in Paris in 1974, when it became too dangerous to stay in his native Argentina because of the military dictatorship. Here the Cedron Quartet performed with great success at the Theatre de la Ville, the Olympia, the Bobino and other great halls throughout Europe.

Cedron didn’t just sing his own songs at his concerts. He also set to music poems by important poets such as Juan Gelman, Julio Cortazar, Dylan Thomas and Bertolt Brecht. He also added to his performances the most important tango classics of the golden age. Among Cedron’s best known songs are “Canción de Juancito Caminador”, “Balada del hombre que se calló la boca” and “La cantata del gallo cantor”, in which Cedron recounts the Treleu Massacre of August 22, 1972, in which sixteen political prisoners were murdered.

In our long interview, Tata Cedron talked to me about so many interesting topics that I want to share this talk with you in 2 editions of our podcast series. What he and his companions were fighting for and against. How he advocated a revival of traditional tango, which had become infamous among his generation.

He analyzed how in his youth rock and pop music were displacing tango with the help of television and international record companies. It featured the work of the extraordinary bandoneon player and composer Domingo Federico and the significant poets Juan Gelman, Roberto Arlt and others …..

Listen to what this great poet, composer, singer and guitarist Juan Cedron told me!

Part of the interview

We came to France in the year 71, the end of 71 of this century. And we came invited by Paco Ibañez who is a Spanish singer who was heard in Argentina and another one, a Catalan, Paco Revés who was the representative of Antonio Gades, of Paco de Lucía, who is a very good friend and in Argentina they invited me to come here. And I made my debut in a colmao in Torremolinos on December 31st with many drunk Germans, tourists, in the middle of their hair, as Serrat says. It was strong, but good. And then we started touring Spain, Paco Ibáñez invited us to France, we recorded in Spain and the album came out here in France.

And well, from then on, we started making round trips in ’72, ’73, ’74. We made two, three trips per year. So, the first year they paid my ticket, I got the money back for the ticket, went back and stayed for another ticket. And so we started to come.

Musically, what was happening was that, let’s say, I’m talking about ’70, meaning it was very close to ’68. Here there had been an important movement which was May 68, there was a whole expectation in the youth with respect to culture, with a culture without blocking, without binding, without direction, without stopping one – let’s say, framed in the traditional canons. A kind of… what was called the revolution of ’68 here, right? which, in a way, cultural was. It was a very important cultural thing in this sense.

Then, the public that came to see the quartet was the public of ’68, the public of Paco Ibañez, the public of… against the military, against Franco, against everything that is façism, everything that is imposition, everything that is a right-wing policy. And cultural too, because we were militants in Argentina of… as citizens, as musicians, we participated in every act that was for Vietnam, for Cuba, in the slums, when there was a massacre in Israel…

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WIKIPEDIA

uan Carlos Cedrón was born in the city of Buenos Aires in 1939. He received the nickname “El Tata” from his grandfather when he was very young due to his tendency to constantly use “té” when he was learning to speak.1

In 1964 he formed the Cuarteto Cedrón -which would remain active from then on- and the café concert Gotán, which became one of the main tango strongholds of the 1960s. In 1974, due to death threats received by the parapolice group Triple A, he had to go into exile and settled in France, where he had an outstanding career. Among his works are the musicalizations of literary works by writers such as Raúl Gonzalez Tuñón(Los ladrones, Eche veinte centavos en la ranura), Julio Cortázar, Roberto Arlt, Juan Gelman, César Vallejo, Acho Manzi, Dylan Thomas, Bertolt Brecht, Federico García Lorca, as well as anonymous Mayan writings and unpublished poems by Homero Manzi.

In 2004, after 30 years of living in Paris, where he had arrived exiled from the last dictatorship, Tata Cedrón decided to return to Buenos Aires.

In 2012 he participated in Encuentro en el Estudio, an Argentine television program hosted by Lalo Mir and broadcasted by CanalEncuentro at ION Studios.

VIDEO

juan tata cedrón, emblem of the, miguel de cervantes virtual library, juan cedron trio gotan, todo menos la canció, notes by Juan Cedrón, from Cuarteto Cedrón

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