Los Nocheros

Los Nocheros stand as Argentina's foremost contemporary folk quartet. Across an extensive career they have issued over 25 albums that have moved more than three million units while collecting numerous Gardel and Latin Grammy Awards. By restoring zamba and chacarera to mainstream favor they demonstrated that longstanding regional styles could function as current popular music, and their international travels have drawn more than 30 million concertgoers.

Formed in the northern province of Salta, the founding lineup set out to introduce the music of their homeland to listeners nationwide. Mario Teruel, Rubén Ehizaguirre, Kike Teruel, and Quique Aguilera cut two early cassettes that circulated only at local performances; these recordings drew notice for the richness, intricacy, and force of the vocal harmonies as well as the poetic quality of the texts. After Aguilera departed, Jorge Rojas joined as singer and songwriter in 1993 and contributed several of the group’s most enduring successes. The following year the quartet made its major-label entrance with the EMI release Con el Alma, an album that created a decisive turning point both for the foursome and for Argentine music at large. Their appearance at the 1994 Festival Folklórico de Cosquín earned the “Consecracion” prize for best new artist. As the album’s reach extended beyond the northwest to the rest of the country, the musicians began an unbroken pattern of nationwide touring that has since taken them to every Argentine province each year.

The 1997 albums Tiempo del Amor and Ven por Mí registered strongly on both radio and sales charts, even reaching Spain, and brought the band its first Gardel Award for Best Folklore Group. Signos, issued in 1998, carried their popularity throughout Latin America and encouraged a younger cohort of artists to explore and extend folk traditions, reinforcing the idea that traditional music in Argentina remains a living popular form. In 1999 they received the Best Album of the Year Gardel for Nocheros; the accompanying tour continued well into 2000 and reached Mexico, coinciding with their first Latin Grammy nomination. Another milestone arrived with 2004’s Noche Amiga Mía, which incorporated rhythms from across Latin America and earned a Latin Grammy nomination in 2005. Shortly afterward Rojas announced his departure for a solo career. Mario Teruel recruited his son Álvaro Teruel to assume the vacated role, and this revised lineup promptly won a Gardel Award for Best Group Folklore Album with the live recording En Vivo en el Teatro Colon.

The new configuration’s first studio album, Gen, appeared in 2007 and was followed months later by Los 2200 Noches. La Fiesta, captured during joint performances with Chaqueño Palavecino and Soledad Pastorutti, was issued as a combined audio and video package. The band then returned to the studio for the 2010 release La Otra Luna. In 2011 they issued the live set Carnaval with Los Tekis, one of their most widely enjoyed later recordings. Clásicos: El Pecado Original, a 2012 collection of ten longstanding folk standards, brought a third Latin Grammy nomination. Zafiro followed in 2013 and launched one of their most extensive and successful tours. Trio, released in 2014, returned to more celebratory material; the cover photograph, however, shows the members looking solemn—an effect attributable to the unexplained absence of Kike Teruel. Three decades of activity were marked in 2016 by Nocheros 30 Años, an anthology of lesser-known songs whose distinctive sound, as Mario Teruel observed, is recognizable “in the first chord.”