‘canto oscuro’ by araukaaria

Araukaaria on stage. Photo by Kerttu Kruusla.

ONE THING that has always impressed me about resident Viljandi Argentine musician José Manuel Prieto Garay, better known as Pepi, is his sincerity. It can be disarming at first, it can even make you a little suspicious, put you on guard. For how could a modern person be so sincere? At what point does such sincerity become an act? But his façade of sincerity is so durable and resilient that no matter what you throw at it, it just won’t stick. There’s no winking at the camera here, no hidden double meanings, no metamodernism. Everything is what it is.

This is sort of how I approach the new song by his group Araukaaria, too. “Canto Oscuro” is disarmingly sincere. It has a cinematic quality to it — it would make a good backing track to a montage about a religious pilgrimage. Considering the story behind it — the loss of Pepi’s father, a trip to Palestine — that’s not far off the mark. Pepi recounts a roadtrip between Chile and Argentina before his father passed away years ago in telling the story. His father was very ill at that time, and could barely make the trip. This song, “Canto Oscuro” (Dark Chant) is kind of like the soundtrack to that trip composed after the fact. It passes along like a mountain road at night.

Shadowy, lofty, winding, introspective.

“I think it was clear from the beginning of the song that it was some kind of lament or requiem,” says Pepi of the song. “I wanted to visualise the journey I lived with the music and lyrics.”

Supposedly it takes about 16 hours to drive from Santiago to Buenos Aires. “Canto Oscuro” is only about six minutes long, but it feels like it could be 16 hours long. There’s enough packed in, a flute motif by Rauno Vaher at its opening, atmospheric guitar playing by Viljandi virtuoso Norbert de Varenne, backing vocals by his sister María Julia Prieto Garay and keyboardist Lisanna Kuningas, and solid contributions by Fedor Bezrukov on bass and Johannes Eriste on drums, the rhythm section of an earlier incarnation of Araukaaria. Araukaaria is one of those bands like Nine Inch Nails, that revolve around a principal songwriter and musician, but that have a revolving cast of characters, some of whom return after various scrapes and adventures (Rauno Vaher was the original drummer, and the last time I saw them, he was back on drums).

“I like to work with different people and in particular here in Estonia most of the musicians are involved in three or four projects which makes it hard to schedule and coordinate,” says Pepi. “As the project is quite a live band project, having different people always brings a new flavor.”

One of these players is Lee Taul, also of Don’t Chase the Lizard, Black Bread Gone Mad, and the Songs and Stories from Ruhnu Island project, who provides epic sweep with her violin. And another is — surprise, surprise — Tomás del Real, another Viljandi Latin American musician, this time from Chile, who helps out on something called the charango, a “small Andean stringed instrument of the lute family,” as Wikipedia informs me. He hadn’t played it in years, he says. But here it is, filling out “Canto Oscuro,” fusing Estonian and Latin elements.

“One day I was working on some other stuff and Pepi rang me up and asked, ‘Do you have time today to help me with something? I need you to record a charango in two hours,” recalls del Real. “I hadn’t played in a while but I went over there and we locked in the studio for a little bit and I made what I could,” he says. “I knew that the song was important to him and that Chile in a way plays a part, this connection between his life here and there, so I guess I was one of the pieces he needed for that track.”

As a person who also lives a life bridging continents, I know that sentiment well. At times, in the air between Europe and the Americas, I have often thought of myself as pulling thread with a needle, trying to sew two lives, one here, one there, together. It’s this sense of disorientation, of displacement that lurks in the obscured background of “Canto Oscuro.”

It is felt, even if not expressed.

“Pepi has an ability to put images in music that the listener can understand without even understanding the lyrics,” says Kuningas. “A lot of his lyrics are very visual, and he is able to put these pictures in your mind.”

Most of the song was recorded in one live take, though a few elements — the backing vocals, the charango, classical guitar — were added later. Martin Mänd of Kopi Luwak recorded “Canto Oscuro.” It was mixed and mastered by Mattias Pärt. Animation to accompany the video was created by Pepi’s sister Camila. Pepi decided to release it on February 12, his father’s birthday. “This song is connected directly to my life, my story,” he says. “It’s a snapshot of that period of my life and has helped me to heal and to let go of a very big emotional burden.”

alonette, lisanna, and tomás

Alonette, Lisanna, and Tomás, in that order.

I WAS HAPPY TO CATCH the most recent loft concert at Tomás del Real’s house in Viljandi this past Saturday. He calls these intimate musical events the Viljandi Home Sessions, or VHS. This one was VHS Volume 5. I have been to every single session. The last session, about two weeks before Christmas, featured Lonitseera band members Kaisa Kuslapuu and Kristin Kaha doing renditions of obscure Estonian holiday songs. That was undoubtedly the most unique and chaotic session, as there was a dog present and the electricity went out. In my opinion, they undersold themselves. Kaisa’s keyboard playing was fun and unorthodox, her singing is always great, and Kristin has some alarming and impossible notes stored away in her vault of a mouth. There were certainly a few “holy shit” moments. But, in true Estonian fashion, when I complimented them on their performance they sort of shrugged and said, “Eh, it was okay.”

This session had more of the cuddly folkie feel that Tomás was probably going for when he dreamed it up. No dogs or babies were present, and no electrical outages occurred. A fox did visit Tomás on the day of the session, maybe to provide him with some luck. A singer songwriter from Chile, Tomás has lived in Viljandi for some years now. He opened with some of his songs, including a new one, “Algún día,” which I felt innovated on the material he recorded for Principios de Declaración and Notas Rotas. I wouldn’t say it was better, but there were some changes and melodies in there that surprised me. Some new landscapes emerging from familiar terrain. Then came Lisanna Kuningas, who played three of her own songs on the guitar. Lisanna is also the keyboard player for Araukaaria, and did a wonderful session with the band’s singer and guitarist Pepi Prieto in November. These were really fun and enjoyable.

And then there was Anett Tamm, performing songs from her 2025 album Compass under her artist name Alonette. I personally found the melodies to be interesting. Every time I thought I knew where a song was going, she turned it around and went sailing off in another direction. I’m a taller, larger person, and when I am at these sessions, I like to lie in the floor in the back. It’s just more comfortable for me. There’s a nice strobe light employed, and so when I look at the ceiling back there, as the performers play, it’s almost as if I am staring up at the stars as they shoot over me. Because of this effect, while listening to Alonette, I had the sensation that I was drifting through space. Her songs have an amorphous quality to them, they expand and contract, and so I started to feel like I was watching the aurora borealis. At one point, I looked over at Tomás as if to say, “She is great, isn’t she?” Tomás just nodded as if to say, “I know.”

Thanks for the music and thanks for the photos Tomi Palsa.

‘custer’ by johnny cash

AMERICAN COUNTRY GENTLEMAN Johnny Cash was feeling particularly aggrieved in 1964 and wishing to highlight the struggles of indigenous peoples in the United States, so he recorded a whole album of songs called Bitter Tears: Ballads of the American Indian. The resulting record, released on October 1 of that year, less than a year after President Kennedy was killed in Dallas, and a month before Lyndon Johnson won a landslide victory against Barry Goldwater, is often a kind of side note. I don’t remember if it came up in Walk the Line. He didn’t mention it in A Complete Unknown either, even though it had just been recorded.

But it’s a beautiful collection, with spare, percussive musical accompaniment by the Tennessee Three, Cash’s backing band, which included Luther Perkins on guitar, Marshall Grant on bass, and WS Holland on drums. Session musicians Norman Blake, who is still alive (aged 87) and Bob Johnson helped out on guitar. The best parts of the songs are the lovely backing vocal contributions of The Carter Family. I had a hard time figuring out who was singing, but certainly Johnny’s future wife June Carter was in the lead, along with Maybelle, Helen, and Anita Carter. You can hear their sublime harmonies on “As Long As The Grass Shall Grow.”

“Custer” though might be my favorite on this record, if only for Johnny Cash’s dry and comic delivery. “Custer split his men / well, he won’t do that again.” We forget that for most of the time after George Armstrong Custer‘s defeat at the Battle of the Little Bighorn in 1876, he was considered to be an American military hero. But in the 1960s, the Lakota version of events started to win out (Custer’s widow Libbie, by the way, lived until 1933, which shows you how recent this history was.) Cash makes fine work of the legend here, though he didn’t write the song. Peter La Farge, a Greenwich Village folky regular, penned most of the songs on Bitter Tears. La Farge recorded several records of music with Native American and Western themes for Folkaways Records. La Farge died the year after Bitter Tears was released of an overdose.

Probably one of the most contentious aspects was Cash’s claim of Cherokee ancestry and accusations of being a Pretendian. On the cover of the album, his fist can be seen lifted in solidarity. Cash wears a headband, which makes him look just a little like Charlie Sheen’s character in Hot Shots. His claims of Cherokee identity were later debunked by Cash himself. He had no documented Cherokee ancestry. However, claims that he was purely of Scottish or British Isles descent are also false. A DNA test by his daughter revealed that she had African ancestry on both sides of her family, meaning that somewhere in Johnny’s “pure Scots” woodpile were some Africans. Note that this ancestry wasn’t documented either. And on Geni, at least some claim that Cash’s Hagler family from South Carolina might be linked to the Catawba Chief Hagler. So maybe Johnny was Catawba and not Cherokee. It’s certainly possible. This great record is the subject of a documentary and a tribute album too. “Custer” at two minutes and twenty-one seconds is not, maybe, the standout track, but it’s just perfect.

I remember that when Cash died in 2003, I said to a friend at that time, “But he was young, just 71 years old.” And the friend said, “But he had lived his life. He packed as much as he could into those 71 years.” I suppose after he lost June, just a few months prior, he had no reason to keep on living. But you are missed, Johnny Cash. We’re still listening to your music every single day.

‘robert f. kennedy’ by the ethiopians

I HAVE DECIDED to create a new series that I call New Track. I was going to call it New Track of the Week, but I am not sure if I will write about a new track every week. What if I want to write about one every two weeks? Or if I want to write about two new tracks in one week? New Track of the Week would be limiting. That’s why this series is just called New Track.

New Track features a new track. It’s a new song I have discovered that I would like to write about and share with the world. In this way, I can feature all kinds of music. In particular, I would like to write about local artists in Estonia who are connected to Viljandi in some way, but not exclusively. Rather, I’d just like to write about whatever I happen to be listening to. And today’s new (inaugural) track is ‘Robert F. Kennedy ‘ by a Jamaican outfit called The Ethiopians.

How did I discover this track? I was in a record store in Amsterdam and was looking at a Don Drummond record. Don Drummond was a Jamaican ska trombonist and integral member of the famous group The Skatalites. A lot of great Jamaican recordings from the 1960s were released as 45s, and so many are now available in various compilations. So, it was through exploring these compilations that I came upon this breezy recording, “Robert F. Kennedy.”

Learning about Jamaican groups can be complex. Often I try to find out who the bass player was on some sessions only to be led down the rabbit hole. This 2:04 song was recorded about a year after the assassination of Robert F. Kennedy (who would have been 100 years old on November 20, which also happens to be my birthday). The song is also credited to the Sir JJ All Stars. The Ethiopians were a popular vocal harmony group in Jamaica and in 1969 released an album called Reggae Power on the Sir JJ label run by producer Karl Johannes “J.J.” Johnson. “Robert F. Kennedy” is an instrumental track off that record.

But who was in the Sir JJ house band? It consisted of Bobby Aitken (guitar), Winston Richards (drums), Vincent White (bass), Alphonso Henry (alto sax), Val Bennett (tenor sax), Dave Parks (trombone), Mark Lewis (trumpet), Bobby Kalphat (keyboards), and someone called “Iron Sprat” (bongos). At least I think it did. Of the group, at least Vincent White is still around and playing. Here’s an interview with him recorded in July.