Since 1987, the city of Ferrara, Italy has hosted the week long International Festival of Street Musicians - better known as the Buskers Festival. The Festival is the largest buskers festival in the world, drawing an estimated 800,000 people this year. There are Invited Buskers, Accredited Buskers and, I suspect, Buskers that just show up. This is the second year that the Argentine group Violentango has made the trip to Ferrara to appear as Invited Buskers - a tribute to the excitement these street musicians generate. In today's video, Violentango performs their infectious version of Libertango.
Members of Violentango include Juan Manuel Lopez and Andrès Ortega - guitar, Adrián Ruggiero - bandoneon, Santiago Córdoba - percussion, and Ricardo Jusid, bass. They have a great jazz-tango sound which they apply not only to nuevo tango but also to traditional tango. While comfortable on the street, these are working musicians also comfortable in clubs, on theater stages and in recording studios - they have released three records (reportedly selling 17,000 copies of their recording Buenos Aires 3A.M. entirely on the street). They are also composers and arrangers - note they way they work in a dozen or so bars of Violentango at the end of Libertango. I don't know if this is a "trademark" move to salute their name or just something special for this performance but it works and it's clever.
You can listen to more of their music on their MySpace page and become a fan on their Facebook site.
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