Baguala de la Siesta

Ex-pat Argentinians in Paris are legion and involved in all kinds of musical projects, from Gotan Project’s Eduardo Makaroff to Gustavo Beytelmann’s cerebral piano playing. The Caronni twins, from Rosario, have been in the French capital since the late 90s, honing a folk-inflected jazz (or is it a jazz-inflected folk?) that, while nourished by tango, has more in common with Camille than with anything from their mother country. The expatriate milieu can make musicians commercially minded and prone to nostalgic overkill, but the two sisters seem to have benefitted from the freedoms of being far away from the rather conservative and cliche-bound ‘tangopolises’ of Argentina.

Laura’s cello and Gianna’s clarinet harmonise gorgeously with their rich, quietly commanding voices and the songs, while evoking the Seine, the cabaret and even the 1920s Paris tango scene, are far more than buskable turns for Paris’ passers-by. Performing Atahualpa Yupanqui’s ‘Los Ejes de Mi Carreta’ (The Axles of my Wagon) – which they describe astutely in the liner notes as ‘Yupanqui meets Bach’ – they capture the ennui of South American plains life. Impossible to pigeonhole, if this is the soundtrack to a siesta, it’s a thrilling, emotionally complex, deeply thoughtful one.