By Guillermo Cides
You’re young, and you don’t care. But as you get older, you start to summarize your own story. To understand it, to consider it. And, like young people, to not care.
In my case, which, let’s agree, doesn’t matter too much, I had to experience unthinkable things in this crazy life that is music. Basically, I could say that I was in all those places, at those parties, with those people, in those stages, in those situations. But the most relevant thing—I insist, if there is anything relevant—is that I never tried to be there.
Living then in the south of the world, far from technology and the latest news, without money, and with the simple curiosity of a young Argentine who wants to say something but doesn’t know how, I discovered my voice on the Stick, an instrument of which little or nothing was known. I learned without teachers, guides, albums, or references. I gave the first solo concert ever in Argentina, possibly one of the few in the world at the time. But for me, the world was too big. I recorded my first album without knowing how a Stick should sound like, discovering fire alone. I sent a cassette (!) to Stick inventor Emmett Chapman when I found out there was a Stick inventor. When the album came out, Chapman included my record on every Stick sold at the time as a way of showing what the Stick could play. However, that album had been recorded without knowing what music could be played with the Stick.
An Argentine promoter believed in me—Aquiles Sojo—and began placing me as an opening act for big bands—E. L. & Palmer, Rick Wakeman, Jethro Tull, etc. There I was, standing alone with my instrument in front of thousands of people, offering a concert concept that even I didn’t know was possible while in England, the Classic Rock Society magazine reviewed my first work, “The Inner World of the Planets,” with a summary that still perplexes me today due to its unexpectedness: “Cides puts the latest works of Tony Levin and Trey Gunn to shame”, the article said. Beyond the fact that the comparison was horrible and that was not what I was looking for, I also did not understand well why a British journalist would pay attention to a hidden and unpretentious musician from the south of the world.
From those days to today, he has had me experience surreal things. You name them: 10-concert tour with Roger Hodgson? I was there. Know many of the heroes of Argentine national rock? There too. Interviews and appearances in national newspapers and television? All of them. Until the day a group of kids rang the doorbell at my house to verify that it was true that the “Stick man” lived there. I was then afraid of losing my privacy. Maybe that’s why I started looking for new places—to be anonymous, like in the beginning. Spain, Colombia, Holland, and other countries saw this man who escaped from his fortune pass by with his Stick as a spear. I started playing with foreign artists who called me for tours. They were great moments. But others are incomprehensible to me. Even a self-conscious drummer literally told me, “I deserve more money than you. I am better than you. I have a higher level. [sic]”. I always found it curious that someone who had played with Peter Gabriel and who had called me to play felt “musically threatened” by an Argentinian who only played the Stick the best way he knew how. I was afraid of the world again. I responded literally: “It’s true. I’m still learning” and I left again. I still have his emails with a late and poorly made apology.
From a distance, I think that perhaps that “lonely Don Quixote musician” was what the British journalist saw in his review that day. Don’t know. And like the quixote from La Mancha, there is a world of mills that I do not understand, full of “high levels” and “the best and worst ones”. A world of egos and successes that is not part of my culture. Maybe that’s why Latin music has that strength and honesty: because we don’t care and we never will. And when music is made out of necessity, honest music is born. And the rest are windmills.
Today, after finishing the 40 concerts of my Silent Tour and being stuck in the recording studio where I spend my hours recording records that will be possible anonymous -or listening to Bill Evans-, I cannot accept invitations from musicians who has not had children. Because I no longer believe in leaders who have not had children, children are the ones who teach you and no one else. I just believe in work and in the absurd and wonderful attempt to leave for posterity things that do not die with time, and some way of playing or composing. Some melody that can survive even after me and my name, traveling eternally in an endless universe of silent stars.
That and nothing more, is the music.
The history, if it is worthy of standing on its own, is like water: it cannot be hidden and I, like each of you, could write a book, and we would surely share chapters in common. But we won’t, for one simple reason: because it doesn’t matter anymore.
And because we are not better than anyone.
G.C.