Meet with Eduardo Makaroff, on the initiative of the Mañana label whose two titles (Melingo and Gerardo di Giusto) are already marketed

Eduardo Makaroff: It is with Gerard Lo Monaco, French born in Argentina, my associate, a large artistic director in the graphics which I created the label.
The day when I had the idea, I E called it and he immediately said me that he was the man for my project. It is him which found the name of the label. The offices of Mañana are right beside his. The contact with Naive was also made by its intermediary, the concept how to make function a label and especially all the visual part comes from him. It is for that that one gives such an importance to the visual communication. It invented the new format of the square, unusual small pocket like created the completely innovative interior for a disc. It has a true professional glance of the world of the edition.


Musicargentina.com: How was born the idea from this Mañana label?

EM: Mañana was born in Paris because inter alia, Juan Carlos Caceres, other pals musicians and myself had dreamed to make a movement, to write a manifeste.Cela could have had to be called "Los muchachos of Paris" - title of a song which Juan Carlos Caceres wrote, in which it names all the musicians who play with him. I wrote myself a song which is called "El Camion", and one had imagined to make a truck with "filetes" (a typical work of painting in Buenos Aires with much of the reasons and lines fine)
The Truck would have made the turn of Paris with Murga of the style Trio Electrico Brazilian of Bahia which consists to assemble and make the Carnival on a truck. Maintaining it is very known, the bus has even an elevator and the Trio is aggrandi with six types with all possible amplification. Everyone dances around and behind the truck while following the repetitions and displacements. And Caetano Veloso says that that which does not follow at least three streets the Electrico Trio is not alive, it does not exist.

We had this is delirious who indicated a need, a need to link themselves, to gather for saying that there is something which occurs, again, that one wants to defend a certain way of making Argentinian music, of going ahead, to compose of new things because there are things to say. Caceres does not stop speaking and giving lessons of Argentinian history and tango to everyone. And it makes well because it knows itself there. It is an almost spiritual need for the Argentinian musicians installed in Paris.

As soon as there is creation, new compositions, one can leave in any direction. The tango is an enormous and unexploited matter. It is so incredible, incredible. It is for that that there is a future interesting for us all and for the music in general. The matter of the pop-rock'n'roll, the classical music or the jazz already was exploited enough. On the other hand the tango, that done a long time that it is not exploited and there are very many styles, instrumentations and rates/rhythms possible. Now there are a great movement around Murga, for example, heir to the African rates/rhythms, this recovery of the African rates/rhythms by Caceres is continued with a music of street, of Carnival well of district which currently occurs to Buenos Aires.

In addition, all the folk rates/rhythms are the base of the compositions of Gerardo Di Giusto. It is also the base of certain compositions of Gotan Project, one speaks about a widened tango, Argentinian music in general, that includes/understands also will chacarera it, the milonga will camp or for Gerardo el huyano, the zamba....

Mañana is a rather acoustic label of Argentinas musics but one remains open to all that can make it evolve/move.


Musicargentina: You leave under this Mañana label a discographic production devoted to the Argentinian music. Which are the criteria which guided your choices of production?

EM: The Mañana label is devoted to accomodate new creators, type-setters and interpreters who have new things to say with the language and the universe of the Argentinas musics, especially of the tango but not only. The tango is the music of Buenos Aires and of Rio of Plata which has a history and a depth, that which has the broadest universe, which made several times the turn of the world but one includes also the folk repertory of Argentina.

We do not produce all this we publish. For example, Melingo produced itself its album, as an artistic realizer (producer), it also has this concept but it is by the composition that our selection criteria pass. One is not closed a day to make recoveries but my thought since a good moment around the tango and the music which will become tango, goes in the following direction: in the tango one moment ago, a few decades ago when one stopped - except exception - making new compositions, of saying new things.

Piazzolla made the last great revolution. And after him, I believe that one is satisfied a little, in any case for much, to reinterpret Piazzolla or to reinterpret the standards of the tango: the ultima curda, Malena.... It is a pity. After Goyeneche or Rivero, it is hard to sing the ultima curda.
On the other hand, with this matter which, for the musicians of my generation was replaced by the Anglo-Saxon rates/rhythms, the Argentinian rock'n'roll... one was expressed with the influence of Beatles and all the movement rock'n'roll. Now there is an overproduction of this type of music and one can recover the tango to continue to create with this esthetics less exploited and not only by the Argentinian ones. You can plunge inside and you t'en never leave. These is a universe which never finishes.


Musicargentina: This famous infinite possibility as Leopoldo Maréchal wrote it. Thus the label which has just been born seems to have beautiful days in front of him, not?

EM: Apparently. After there are other considerations on the level of the impact of the public and considerations commercial. But concerning the artistic choice, it is before a whole choice of type-setters. But one is not fundamentalist.


Musicargentina: Why a musician becomes editor? how does that nourish you?

EM: I passed my life to be before any artist, type-setter, guitarist, singer and then producing of music in the audio-visual one. At a given time, one wanted the idea and to leave the discs of tango, therefore I put myself more deeply in the commercial part which have to see with the edition and the production and for me more shitting which is how to sell discs. Finally, it is a trade. If you sell wine, there is a specificity but you have a marketing to make, for the soap also and for the works of art also and unfortunately in this capitalist company it is like that. Thus I engaged of people who help me to learn the trade from tradesman.

In my family, I was not high in an environment of tradesman of the whole. Even being Jewish district of the Ounce in Buenos Aires (the equivalent of the Path in Paris). My mother ést chemist and my father engineer, me I was born in a rather intellectual environment. To become artist was a little against my parents who were scientists but something of normal that I can assume easily. On the other hand, the commercial activity is a little distant from my practices. But I am made help by specialists. The project is really collective.

For example Gustavo Beytelmann enormously helped me. I passed the hours and about the hours in round and we spoke much about this idea of launching a label. It said to me: "there are few people who can do that, then do it to you. You are the person... " And coming from him, it is somebody who knows himself there, it worked much in houses of discs in Argentina. It knows how Trova was born... It knew the owners of all the houses of discs over there, the large ones and the small labels. And one discussed much.

If one does something with a long-term idea, if good music is made, I believe that one will leave oneself there because the good music ends up being sold during 20, 30 years. You can go today to buy a disc of Glenn Miller as one buys the disc of Troilo. One needs only quality standards, it is for that that great attention is paid. It is not simply that and left a disc will be published because there is a new type-setter, not the type-setter must be very good and the recording and the production too!


Musicargentina.com: Was Mañana also done because you had vexations with labels?

EM: Too. At one moment given, before having enormous success with Gotan Project. I do not know if you know the disc "Argentinian in Paris"... Ca makes a long time that I made this personal disc with songs, in particular with the milonga of the courtesy which one had composed with el Pollo (Daniel Mactas) and some French songs, of the tangos, in any case, my way of seeing, of approaching me the culture tango, as with Mano has Mano or we compose our songs, as for a group of rock'n'roll. One does not conceive a group of rock'n'roll which does not interpret its own topics, that would make very odd. In Argentina, Fito Paez, Charly Garcia, each one made his compositions and me I wondered how to make to leave a personal disc...

But now I do not want to leave it, I must modify it a little but why not leave it in my own label even if I did not create it to leave my own productions.
For example, I is very glad to have produced the next album of Caceres (left in March 2005) and of being able to leave it on my Mañana label but I am also glad to accomodate Gerardo di Giusto which carried out itself its disc that one took at the end for the mixing or so happy to accomodate Melingo and his own production. And there one awaits a production of Mañana which is that of the bandoneonist Juan José Mosalini with the String quartet Benaïm which will interpret works that Gustavo Beytelmann is finishing composing for bandonion and cords. I already listened to the first compositions and it is superb! It very showed me. I am the editor of Beytelmann now (laughter). The quartet is established in Paris and Benaïm, the first violin, is of Israeli origin. It is a quartet of very high level of classical music which Mosalini and Beytelmann go coacher for the tango.

The other projects are on the way.

Before leaving the first disc on the market, stops it with ear functions already very well and I receive many proposals which come from Argentina and from here. For the moment, I listen to all. Ca creates a dynamics and that proves that there are many people who make things everywhere. I discovered many things.


Musicargentina.com: Which is your attitude of artist and editor in the current context of the musical edition?

EM: It is particularly odd because we leave a label at the time when the One of Release titrates: CD is deceased. One of fout because the intention is to do something which one likes to do. It is the continuation of my own career, my own artistico-productive life of Argentinian which likes much the Argentinian music.

We precisely think that, thanks to independence, one will be able to leave itself there nevertheless and, like one says in Argentina: Rio revuelto ganancia pescadore has (with surevol†ée river, profits of fisherman). Maintaining those which break the mouth, in fact the large companies lay off and which fight in the field of industry by on the artistic one but on the sale, marketing with any shit. I can ensure that there is an enormous percentage of sold shits in an artificial way with enormous investments marketing.

One signed with Naïve because it is an independent distributor. Even as its owner, Patrick Zelnick, is the spokesman of the independent labels. One is over the same wavelength and my interest is that the label can have a dynamics to be left there economically but especially our objective is not to earn money. Me I would be content if I recover the investment from here at ten years... The advantage of this it project is that one is there to be able to leave the good Argentinian music and especially to support creation and the new proposals.


Musicargentina.com: Could you have assembled Mañana before the boom of Gotan Project?

EM: I could not without the success of Gotan Project. In the top of the vagueness of the tango, Gotan Project opened the world to me, learned to me much from things. I know what occurs and which is environment tango in San Francisco, in Japan, in Warsaw... without speaking about all the remainder. I spent two years to make the turn of the world. And then like there were success, I gained a little money to be able to invest. If not I could not have done it.


Paris October 14, 2004