Venue: Križanke, Ljubljana
Concert date: 06/26/2010
Attendance: 0
On the night of the Mexico vs. Argentina round-of-16 match, Ljubljana’s Križanke promised a show with just as much South American temperament: after three years, Gotan Project were back in Slovenia on a promo tour for their new record, Tango 3.0. We got to hear almost every song from the new album, and we also took a trip back to the previous two, La revancha del tango (2001) and Lunatico (2006).
No big surprises here. Their driving force is still tango, globalized and woven together with hard-hitting electronic rhythms, and now the Mississippi blues tradition has crept in as well. You can pick up a bit of that bourbon haze typical of those parts of the United States (in the song Panamericana, named after the highway that runs the entire western length of North and South America, tying the two halves together). So the band plays a kind of connecting role between north and south, young and old, traditional and modern. That’s reflected in the crowd too: couples with kids, students, and also those listeners whose first serious brush with tango was a plain old audio cassette of Maria de Buenos Aire (tango operetta), recorded back then by the legendary Astor Piazzolla. You could even say we Slovenes have an especially strong bond with Argentina and tango, considering how many of our countrymen live there, having emigrated after the end of World War II and brought the traditions of their new homeland back to Slovenia with them. You could go even further and look for common ground between the bandoneon and our own accordion, which is unfairly saddled with an overly hokey, countryside twang despite its huge musical potential.
Music is living energy, always pushing toward evolution, and Gotan Project aren’t waiting around to be run over by time. They make good use of technology’s progress, which allows for surprising sound manipulations (one of the most striking is definitely their trademark, slightly choppy trumpet loop). In the song La Gloria, for example, they cleverly worked in Victor Hugo Morales’ famous “Gooooooooooooool!”, in perfect harmony with what was happening in the sports world. Their music is full of erotic charge, it pulls us onto the dance floor, and on the wings of the violin and trumpet it carries us across the ocean to Buenos Aires. Their lyrics woo and beckon and put women on a pedestal, even though we all know we’ll only be queens for one night (la reina de la noche).
They also dressed up their set with visual projections, packed with red, of course, the color of passion and desire. You can easily identify with the yearning women with angel wings, waiting for a promise to be fulfilled. It’s not unusual either for a woman to occasionally have a deer’s head instead of a human one (though the symbolism of that is lost on me), and at times two rappers join the performers on screen (Mi confesión) to explain that true satisfaction lies in tango, with love whispering in its ear.
A professionally played show (we got two encores) that could have been even better, and gone on a little longer, if someone had thought to whisper to the band mid-set that the Argentines had once again, with a little help from above, beaten the Mexicans 3-1.
Photos: Mia Milharyčič
Setlist
1. Cuesta abajo 2. Época 3. Diván 4. Tango square 5. Rayuela 6. Una música brutal 7. Tu misterio 8. De hombre a hombre 9. Toda mi vida 10. Mi confesión 11. La Gloria 12. Diferente 13. La música de siempre 14. El mensajero 15. Panamericana — TrÃptico — Panamericana (finale) ENCORE: 16. Mil milliones / Queremoz paz 17. Desilusión 18. Peligro 19. Santa MarÃa (del Buen Ayre) ENCORE 2: 20. Inmigrante
Photo gallery
