Folk musician Ra l Carnota passes away

Artist reneged on massification and stood out as a wide-ranging composer-performer

Raúl Carnota, a distinguished folk music author, singer and arranger and an iconic personality in Argentina’s arts world, died yesterday after battling a long illness, medical sources said. He was 66.

Carnota, a multifaceted musician who played bombo and was also a fine vocalist and guitarist, was born in the BA neighbourhood of Almagro on October 30, 1947. He was raised in the beach resort of Mar del Plata, later returning to BA to forge a music career.

Far from a massive, facile affair, folk music, for Carnota, was an original mode of artistic expression whose authenticity he helped cement, soon becoming a beacon for younger listeners and musicians. Indeed, Carnota leaves behind an output of 15 essential albums (which he started recording in 1982) in the Argentine folk music repertoire.

Carnota was hospitalizad for several months, returning home for a brief stay before he had to be taken back to the Sanatorio Güemes for treatment of throat polyps and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD, or EPOC in its Spanish-language acronym).

In April, 2012, recovering from vocal chords surgery, he said in an interview that, “I’m not very paranoid about anything and I’ve always have had faith in myself. This thing must have developed naturally in me, because I seem to be running against the odds right from the start.”

In a similar vein, he added that, “The day I go I will be remembered for all the things I did.” Among the many things he did, for example, was perform in Adolfo Ábalos group, making his professional début in 1972.

From those years, Carnota was very fond of his participation in the show El piano en sus tres dimensiones, headed by Ábalos, Horacio Salgán and “Mono” Villegas. Carnota was especially thankful to Villegas, a jazz musician, “because he gave me breathing space. I profited from his advise about the need for and importance of creative freedom.”

At the dawn of the 1980s, Carnota headed his own ensemble — a trio with percussionist Rodolfo Sánchez and pianist Eduardo Spinassi. The ensemble’s breakthrough came thanks to the inclusion of the songs Grito santiagueño and Salamanqueando pa’ mí in Mercedes Sosa’s album Como un pájaro libre (1983).

It was on the strength of those two hits that Carnota recorded three albums between 1983 and 1985: Suna Rocha-Raúl Carnota, Memoria adentro, and Esencia de pueblo.

In 1987 Carnota made an unusual electronic-folk fusion experiment with the album Entre la ciudad y el campo, after which came a prolonged hiatus until 1994 with the release of Contrafuego. Contrafuego was the début album of Carnota’s quartet with Sánchez on percussion, Lilián Saba on piano, and Marcelo Chiodi on wind instruments.

By that time Carnota had already started to distance himself from traditional folk music festivals and circuits, because, in his own words, “there’s no way you can develop your artistic skills there.”

“Folklore festivals are gauged by the rounds of applause, which forces you to perform very-well-known songs if you want to be back the next year,” he said.

In 1995 Carnota started to tour Europe, and in 1998 he recorded Reciclón with a new trio: Sánchez on percussion and Willy González on bass. Reciclón’s hit single La asimétrica is considered Carnota’s statement of principles, asserting that he was no good at explaining things and that he only knew how to perform. In 1999’s Fin de siglo, Carnota summoned two new sidekicks: Juancho Perone (percussion), and Juancho Farías Gómez (bass). “The idea of putting together guitar, percussion and bass is not original because it comes from the ‘power trio’. Our music, however, is very elaborate, because the bass does not go ‘pum pum,’ developing, instead, harmonies and rhythms and working on melodies,” Carnota said back then.

Enjoying his well-earned status as an independent musician, Carnota inaugurated the new century exploring his own repertoire in new versions, an experiment documented in his 2000 album Sólo los martes. He further developed the experimental phase with 2005’s Espejos, a two-disc set featuring the same songs in two versions: solo, and featuring prestigious guest musicians who helped him modify the rhythm and melody of each song. It was a daring feat, because a gato was rendered as a milongón, a chamamé as a son, and a vidala as a joropo.

Towards 2007, Carnota looked back with his album Retrospectiva, and looked ahead summoning percussionist Sánchez and harmonica player Franco Luciani to form the ensemble Proyecto SanLuCa. It was a unique group that released an eponymous album and went on a tour of Argentina.

SanLuCa, other than folk music, also featured tangos, and a striking fusion: Ña Polí o la pureza de la gente como usted (text by Teresa Parodi and music by Carnota), with a stunning introduction with samples from The Police’s Every Breath You Take. “The song has now become Ña Police, I hope Teresa doesn’t get mad at me,” Carnota quipped.

Herald with Télam