Babasónicos. From left to right: Adrián Dárgelos, Mariano Roger, Diego Rodriguez, Diego Castellano, and Diego Tuñon. Courtesy of Producciones Crack, Argentina.

 

Combine Sai Baba with the suffix “sonic” and what you get is Babasónicos: an enigmatic name for a Buenos Aires-based band that neither practices meditation nor follows any gurus. The band’s sound—a fortunate blend of psych, funk, and traditional Brit rock—isn’t intent on making the nationalist statements that characterized some of the bands epitomizing the Rock en español movement of the late ’80s and early ’90s. Babasónicos are tough on themselves and that’s palpable in the nine records they have released over almost two decades. Their lyrics have a complex simplicity and an everything-but-obvious relationship with the songs’ musical structures; even subtler is their way of conceptualizing and delivering each of their albums. Enter Adrián Dárgelos, the band’s front man and songwriter, whose onstage persona at times reminds me of Brian Eno at his most exaggerated with Roxy Music. As Dárgelos performs, his alter ego takes over—it sings triumphantly about his obscure fascination with women and dealings with the devil and reflects the audience’s worst fears and desires. Isn’t that what we expect from a cathartic performance? Babasónicos, unlike many of the Rock en español bands, grew from the bottom up and hence remained ahead of the curve. In this age of digital downloads, though any medium allowing them to reach their audience is good enough for them, the immediacy of the live show is their credo.

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Laureana Toledo When you started the band, the Rock en español movement in Latin America was at its peak—some Argentine bands like Soda Stereo, Charly García, and Ilya Kuryaki and the Valderramas were getting a lot of attention then, since they were supported by big record labels that were tapping into the Latin American market. What was the context in which you emerged like?

Adrián Dárgelos We formed the band at the end of ’91. There were some mainstream bands—the ones you mentioned, certainly—but we felt that no one was representing the generation that came after them. In the underground circuit a lot of bands sprang up in the early ’90s in response to this—we were one of them.

LT Some of the more mainstream bands sounded very Latin. Your sound was different, or at least the part of your output that was heard outside of Argentina.

AD We were already Latin, so we didn’t need to make ourselves sound Latin. We weren’t like other bands at the time that were incorporating folk music elements into their sound, like Café Tacuba in Mexio, for example. Ilya Kuryaki were projecting themselves onto the Latin American scene, while our music was a bit more hermetic. We were after a specific sound—our first albums were more experimental, since we also got to produce them.

LT How did you go from simply making music with your friends to making music your profession, your business?

AD We had a band in school and we played as a hobby, but when it came to becoming a part of the work force after graduation, we had no luck getting jobs. We had no option but to become musicians; we would have starved otherwise.

LT What would you have done had music not worked out?

AD Nothing! The system in Argentina marginalized us to the extent that we became musicians. Being a musician back then wasn’t a business at all; we were all déclassé. The market we know now didn’t exist 18 years ago.

LT Of course not. Argentina actually paved the road for bands from other Latin American countries, with its successful producers, business models, and bands.

AD Yes, it also exported a lot of its talent. Argentina is too small, so once people make it there, they often want to go elsewhere. A lot of the people from the ’80s scene emigrated to Mexico. This wasn’t the case for us; we evolved gradually till we became one of the biggest bands in Argentina. In ’95 we started touring in Latin America and part of the US, especially in Mexico, Chile, and Colombia. We toured after each album and kept growing slowly, without being aware of it. We didn’t depend on publicity; it was the other way around, our success depended on how our work evolved and on the audiences’ response to our live shows. Our music was never played on the radio either—it was actually banned from the radio.

LT So you didn’t have to worry about making songs that would make it to the top of the charts.

AD No, although I would have loved our music to be played on the radio actually. Reality was harsh then.

LT I hear that you’re making music to be downloaded from cellphones.

AD CD sales are falling so much we thought that the only way to still have access to our audience is through this type of medium.

LT Does it worry you that the quality of the work you produce for months in the studio could be lost in a digital format?

AD Our younger listeners grew up listening to music downloads, so they can’t tell that their quality is lacking. Music is exciting to people or it isn’t, that’s the only criterion that matters now.

LT Fans of your music will only know what it really sounds like in a live performance.

AD Babasónicos never stopped playing live. We try to make it attractive for people to see us live.

LT Talk about your alternate persona. It’s as if you were an actor who is in character as soon as he gets on the stage.

AD I arrived at that character through songwriting. Around 2002-03 the character started coming out automatically as soon as I set foot on the stage. The songs themselves prompted the character to become bolder, more insouciant. But it happened ipso facto, there was no previous construction.

LT Unlike Bowie saying, Now I’ll be Ziggy Stardust.

AD I never had that self-reflection, I was just going with the flow, doing things I was embarrassed by. That’s what I do: I expose myself to embarrassment. I come out on the stage and catch people’s attention by making a complete fool of myself.

LT Your gestures and costumes are completely exaggerated, yes. You’re nothing like that in real life.

AD I wouldn’t be so sure. (laughter) This character comes out of my imagination. I’m a medium more than a composer, because I know that as soon as I’m done with a project, I’ll need to go out and search again for material for a new one. My thing is not to materialize my plans, but to always remain searching. To realize a plan would amount to speculating on what the end of my search would be.

LT That’s sweet.

AD I do what others don’t want to do: meet frustration head on. I spend seven or eight hours a day sitting down waiting for an idea to pop up in my head, but I don’t despair because I know that something always lies ahead.

LT Often it’s not perseverance but—

AD It’s to know that you won’t be harassed by frustration. You have to go to the cave every night to see if the dragon comes out—if you happened not to be there when it came out, someone else will tell you about it. This process gives me the confidence to stand there on the stage in the role of that character who is a hero, in the mythical sense, for he cannot be judged by the same standards as other mortals. People don’t see his fissures; they accept him, though he’s shameless. No one sees the strings dangling from his mask.

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Babasónicos. Courtesy of Producciones Crack, Argentina.