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WOODSTOCK — Pan-American games at the Joyous Lake Saturday night featured a trio of musicians currently indigenous to Woodstock. Whatever the legend, when players like Canada born Garth Hudson of The Band and Winston Grennan, godfather of Jamaica’s rock-steady reggae beat join Argentine Tangoman Jorge Heilpern for a Saturday night pickup party, Woodstock is still a happening place. Put these men in tour, playing their Latin-flavored, New World music, and they’d rival the super Etoile band backing Sengalese singer Youssu N’Dour with their superstar status and genuine, fulminating flamboyance. The phenomenon of Tangoman is a legend in the making. Formerly an economist, Heilpern fled his country, after witnessing the “disappearance” of top men in his department. He commenced a second career as a musician, writing pop and commercial material, and singing his own songs, working intimate cabaret forums in Europe and on the American East Coast. The intensely focused emotion of his style has drawn comparisons to Belafonte; its sensual intimacy, to Charles Aznouvar. In front of the Latin band he’s put together over a few years, including keys player Paul Duffy, Paul Branin on lead guitar and sax and Steve Rust, bass, Tangoman’s persona has evolved from Mr. Cool, in backwards baseball cap and mirrored aviator shades — to Jewish-Argentianian bushman equivalent to Charro. |
In wire-rimmed, coke-bottle glasses and a shining dome wreathed by salt-and-pepper sweat-locks, Heilpern rides the rhythm he drives with guitar and song, a permanent revolutionary, inciting riot and transformation through dance. The all-action committee of band member backs his cause to the max. Drummer for Jimmy Cliff in the hit, “Harder They Come,” Grennan’s beat has shaped the bands behind Jamaica’s top reggae stars. Ultimately this veteran has tapped into a power that transcends his skins. Subliminal to the ariel licks of guitars and keys, he’s a locomotive force, sun-radiant when he brightens any Latin-ska-reggae beat with splashes from overhead cymbals.
“Who’s that?” you wonder, catching the geezer on stage who looks like Rip Van Winkle in a gaucho hat, passed out over his accordian like a drunk in some south-of-the-border cantina. Shave him or leave him alone — he’s still Garth Hudson, blessed out in his embrace with the organ of breath. Upright at keyboards for a lifetime, he’s now found the ultimate intimate outlet for his sweetest musical thoughts. In comparative moments of quiet, they bloom out through the band blast in fantastic and beautiful filigree on his instrument. |