Biography
The Argentine-born composer Kerpel shares an unconventional stance toward his nation’s musical heritage that echoes the Nortec Collective’s approach to Mexican traditions or Tom Waits’s relationship to Americana. He approaches indigenous and vernacular forms with clear respect yet applies an irreverent hand that prevents mere preservation.
After studying composition in Buenos Aires, Kerpel wrote scores for the aerial performance and interactive theatre ensemble De La Guarda, an experience that released him from conventional expectations surrounding folk and pop structures. His 2003 debut album Carnabailito combined regional instruments including the Argentinian flute, the erhu, and the cavaquinho with melodic material drawn from northeastern Argentina. These acoustic sources were subsequently fed into digital processes that warped, fragmented, and reassembled them. Several pieces incorporated the texture of a stylus scraping across vinyl, not as displays of turntable skill but for the smeared, unsettling atmosphere such sounds produced. On “Sintenerte,” a child’s spoken narration created an unsettling, spectral mood instead of any quaint effect. Although the record’s lyrics generally convey desolation, its inventive reshaping of Argentine source material still yields pleasure. Kerpel’s method demonstrated how inherited traditions might be refreshed without being flattened into generic uniformity that erases their original distinctiveness.
After studying composition in Buenos Aires, Kerpel wrote scores for the aerial performance and interactive theatre ensemble De La Guarda, an experience that released him from conventional expectations surrounding folk and pop structures. His 2003 debut album Carnabailito combined regional instruments including the Argentinian flute, the erhu, and the cavaquinho with melodic material drawn from northeastern Argentina. These acoustic sources were subsequently fed into digital processes that warped, fragmented, and reassembled them. Several pieces incorporated the texture of a stylus scraping across vinyl, not as displays of turntable skill but for the smeared, unsettling atmosphere such sounds produced. On “Sintenerte,” a child’s spoken narration created an unsettling, spectral mood instead of any quaint effect. Although the record’s lyrics generally convey desolation, its inventive reshaping of Argentine source material still yields pleasure. Kerpel’s method demonstrated how inherited traditions might be refreshed without being flattened into generic uniformity that erases their original distinctiveness.
Albums
Singles
