Sandra Luna Downloads

Outside Argentina, most people know tango through the dance or the music of a handful of orchestras. But tango canción is the true soul of Argentine tango - and it is through the songs that some of Buenos Aires' most daring artists are reinventing the genre. Raised in the stockyard and... Learn More »

Outside Argentina, most people know tango through the dance or the music of a handful of orchestras. But tango canción is the true soul of Argentine tango - and it is through the songs that some of Buenos Aires' most daring artists are reinventing the genre.

Raised in the stockyard and slaughterhouse district of Mataderos in Buenos Aires, SANDRA LUNA hails, like tango, from the margins. She brings a passionate, sometimes pained, voice to both classic and new tango songs. 'Tango encapsulates the whole of life,' she says. 'There are portraits of grandparents, parents, children, dogs, streets and the entire range of feelings, of missing, suffering and joy, everything that brings the senses to life.'

Some people discover tango while others are born into it. Sandra Luna has been singing since she was six and performed in the tango bar El Boliche de Rotundo at the age of 11. Shortly after, she was singing alongside local legend Héctor Varela and his orchestra at Mi Club. Born in 1966, well after the major tango booms of the 1920s and 1940s, Sandra was nonetheless nurtured in the tangopolis - the subculture of Buenos Aires tango. She moved among giants of tango canción, figures such as Edmundo Rivero, Roberto Goyeneche and Nelly Omar. She played with guitar virtuoso Roberto Grela and shared sets with Antonio Agri's orchestra Sexteto Mayor at Carlos Gardel's house in El Abasto. She sang on TV, 'where they christened me Luna' - as in the brilliant Buenos Aires moon shining 'across the way' in the early Borges poems written for a city which opened vulnerably out onto the vast pampas.

On her international début album Tango Varón, Sandra performs classics such as Homero Manzi and Anibal Troilo's Ché Bandoneón and the poignant, tremulous Lejana Tierra Mia, first recorded by Carlos Gardel, as well as post-1940s numbers by Astor Piazzolla and Atilio Stampone.
    
With Carritos Cartoneros, she brings the genre right up to date with a song about the impoverished cardboard gatherers who come out at dusk in Buenos Aires to claim its recyclable waste and earn a few pesos.

Like all serious contemporary tango artists, Sandra balances the weight of the tango past with the need to redefine and renovate. Paraphrasing tango lyricist Horacio Ferrer, she describes tango as 'cinders that burn again and again... tango is like life, and has to evolve. I think contemporary tango needs a sure voice, which sings out with strength while the pueblo cries.' Her vocal style melds the influence of great women tango singers like Mercedes Simone and Nelly Omar with non-tango influences including Edith Piaf and Ella Fitzgerald. The title track, Tango Varón, is Edgardo Acuña's story of the birth of a macho, streetwise music called tango - Sandra Luna's version dances with Acuña's words and makes the song hers, all woman.

The producer of Tango Varón, Serge Glanzberg has worked with Manu Dibango, Keith Richards and Ronnie Wood and the Clash's Mick Jones. He tuned in on the emerging dance scene with remixer Joey Negro, Stereo Mcs, Holgar Hiller and Renegade Soundwave, Coldcut, Dj Richie Rich and the Jungle Brothers and spacy poetess Anne Clark. When he was asked to produce Sandra Luna, he connected for the first time with his father's old love: tango. Norbert Glanzberg was a star pianist in the late 1940s, touring with Edith Piaf, Yves Montand and Charles Trenet - Glanzberg Sr played Buenos Aires in 1947. The Paris-BA connection is a century old, like the tango itself, and Glanzberg has found a mix that allows in the old romance but pushes Sandra's passion and drama, and the strident piano and guitar accompaniment, to the fore.

Chris Moss
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