The following is an interview between jazz journalist Morgan Enos and drummer Rodrigo Recabarren, pianist Yago Vazquez, and bassist Pablo Menares. Recabarren and Menares hail from Argentina, Vazquez from Spain. Their new album, Familia, was released 23 February via Greenleaf Music.
On a Zoom meeting with Rodrigo Recabarren, Pablo Menares, and Yago Vazquez, one doesn’t feel an ounce of remove or pretension. Rather, you feel as though you’ve crashed a family reunion of sorts, one that plays out unceasingly among a band of tight and longtime friends.
“We are excited to play with each other; there just happen to be microphones in the room,” pianist Vazquez tells LondonJazz. “That’s what the record is really like. We just get back together, and play the music, and that’s the record.” (His disclaimer, at the top of the interview: “I don’t know if you notice, but we are not extremely serious people.”)
This belies not only a depth of forethought, but a potent system of cultural strains: Familia represents a network of pan-Latin sounds.
“There are few things more important than identity,” Recabarren stated in the press release. “I moved to the states to learn about U.S. folklore, and in the process I found myself.”
“No matter where you go, you bring your roots with you,” Menares added. “There’s always rhythms like this within the background of your life.”
Read on for an interview with Recabarren, Menares, and Vazquez about their intercontinental nexus in the Big Apple, and how the fraternal Familia came to be.
UKJazz News: You all moved abroad to New York City around 2009. What was it like to transplant yourself in this new environment, and negotiate your heritages there?
Yago Vazquez: I was scared. I remember that, moving here from Galicia, Spain. Galicia is a small town, so moving here was scary, for sure. I knew one person here. Just a suitcase, no apartment.
Rodrigo Recabarren: I came here for school, as did Yago. I was living in Jersey at the beginning, with a friend of a friend of a friend who rented me a room. It was a bit overwhelming for me, at first. I was leaving my girlfriend back home, and it was my first time living anywhere else. It was scary, but also, it was very energetic. Very exciting, also, because of the music and musicians that I was able to see.
Pablo Menares: It was pure excitement moving to the city. Last night, a friend and I were talking about how from the first moment that you land in New York, it feels like home. It’s that kind of place, and it really felt like that to me. Taking my bass on the subway, I was like, Wow, I’m loving everything about it. Checking out shows, playing with people, connecting with people – everything about it was amazing.
UKJN: How did you come to constellate?
YV: We’ve been friends basically since they moved in 2009.
Two weeks ago, we were in Chile, playing the music on this record. And we played one gig with Camila Meza; she’s a vocalist and guitar player…
UKJN: Love her. I’ve seen mind-blowing performances on Instagram.
YV: She’s incredible. And we actually met through her! She had a gig in New York, and Pablo was the bass player. She asked me to play piano, and Rodrigo came to see the concert. We kept playing sessions with different people.
RR: How did we get here? I feel like it has to do with who we became, in the process of being here in the last 14 years.
Nostalgia has a lot to do with it, at least on my side. Coming to a different place, and learning to not only acknowledge or respect who you are, but to decipher who you are aesthetically, with the music that you grew up listening to.
UKJN: I admire that Familia flows naturally through your myriad influences. Nothing’s contrived.
PM: Yes, that’s the spirit of the band. For me, that gave us a way of composing the tunes. An inspiration to follow. We have a very free way of playing, so the composition doesn’t have to necessarily [adhere] to a specific rhythm. It’s just inspiration.
UKJN: Can you talk about the notion of family?
PM: When we asked what would be the title of the album, “Familia” came up.
It’s super natural to us. What we’re doing now [on Zoom] is what we do all the time. This feels like talking to my family on the phone; we’ve done this so many times.
And sometimes, we have to remind ourselves that we’re working. It’s a very joyful endeavour, this band and album and everything.
