Daniel Melingo is one of the most interesting musicians of the international music scene. Argentino with a past characterized by many heterogeneous projects (active in the independent theater in Buenos Aires during the military dictatorship, guitarist in the band Los Twist and saxophonist with the Los Abuelos de la Nada) and collaborations with big names in Latin music – such as Milton Nascimento – for some years he has dedicated himself to a personal version of the tango, which is affected to the same extent of his background and the research that has taken on the traditional repertoires. The result is a new tango, an approach in which we perceive very offhand and, at the same time, a great mastery in shaping the grammar of this traditional genre originating in the Rio de la Plata, between Argentina and Uruguay. The album produced in recent years have been characterized by ambivalence and this represent a new and plausible stage of the tango, which are discernible in the traditional elements of a melancholy and irreverent poetic and, at the same time, the elasticity of the structure of popular songs, open also to “authored” interventions as those of Melingo. In the wake of this trial, the Argentine multi-instrumentalist has so far produced several albums (Santa Milonga, 2004, Maltido Tango, 2008, Corazon & Hueso, 2011), the last of which, “Linyera,” released this year, is having a great international success, so as to have permanently placed at the top of the World Music Charts Europe. News of this eclectic musician are not many (his own records are hard to find – the latest is produced by World Circuit Records – and his website is out of date). You can find in journals and in some particularly attentive radio broadcasts. As we are reminded Valerio Corzani in his review for the RSI Rete Due, the tango of Melingo “is not an Orthodox tango. Quite the contrary. Also from the point of view of rhythm goes fishing in that stylistic feature, but at the same time expands and sinks also in Argentine folk of different cutting and different structure. It has been made ​​known, however, in the past, in the eighties, for having combined the tradition of Argentine tango with the universe of the slums. But then it turned into a sort of crooner, a voice memo with the sandpaper, which has developed an increasingly eclectic musical vision, more and more personal”.

Autore: Daniele Cestellini

Daniele Cestellini ha scritto 752 articoli.

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