- Quetango Quartet, Presentation House Theatre, Sunday, June 30 at 8 p.m. Tickets $20/$18 as part of the TD Vancouver International Jazz Festival. For more information visit coastaljazz.ca.
THE jarring notes of the cello rise like the onset of paranoia. Cymbals clash and the sound sharpens like shards of a broken melody.
The guitar enters the fray, dissolving into the melody and sweetening the song like sugar in your coffee.
The track holds a mercurial balance between cello and guitar until the disagreements are forgotten and the tango takes flight.
"Oxydo" is one of the most intriguing tracks from Postango, the newest album from Quebec tango quartet Quetango.
In his first English-language interview, double bassist Frederic Vermette discusses the formation of the unique group.
"When I entered college we were obligated to play double bass," he explains of his days at Laval University.
The obligation turned into a joy, and before long Vermette crossed paths with Daniel Finzi, an Argentinean musician who had come to Quebec to study with a cello teacher.
Vermette eventually recruited childhood friend and guitarist Jonathan Hains as well as his cousin, percussionist Simon Boudreault.
"Daniel at first wanted to do a more traditional kind of tango, but since me and Jonathan had a lot of different influences, and we compose a lot also, it kind of gets into the music of the band," he says. "We all have a different approach."
Vermette serves as the band's circulatory system, pumping out deep rhythms by sawing the plastic strings with a bow, plucking them with his fingers, and sometimes adding percussion by knocking on the wooden frame.
Formed in 2002, the band has rarely left Quebec, straying below the border only to play for a crowd of tango fans at a festival in Buenos Aires, Argentina.
"When we play tango in our town . . . or in the province of Quebec sometimes people would say that the music we're doing is not tango, but when we went there, (Buenos Aires), people were saying that we were doing tango," he says.
Quetango does not feature a bandoneon, a wind instrument that bears a passing similarity to an accordion and is often seen as integral to tango.
"At first, since we do not have this instrument, some festivals or venues think we are not doing tango," Vermette says. "The vision of the tango is more traditional. People have a conception of tango that is more in stereotypes. More like tango is love, passion, and we see that in movies. But tango at first is a music that is not always about love. It's the music of the street."
In his book, Slavery and beyond: the African impact on Latin America and the Caribbean, editor Darien J. Davis traces the first stirrings of tango to a 1455 decree from Pope Nicolas V that gave Portugal licence to enslave any Africans who resisted Christianity.
Approximately 400 years later, the promise of newly freed lands made Argentina the destination for a wave of approximately six million immigrants.
Many Portuguese, Spanish and Italian travellers ended up on the outskirts of society, dancing in the bars and brothels of Buenos Aires, according to author Susan August Brown.
It was in those dance halls that African rhythms met a fast-paced waltz known as milonga music, giving birth to the tango.
The sons of slumming oligarchs may have made the dance smoother and safer while transmuting the music to high society, according to Brown.
The word tango may stem from the African word 'tambo,' meaning "drums" and "noisy gatherings," according to research included in Rise and Fall of the Cosmic Race: The Cult of Mestizaje in Latin America by Marilyn Grace Miller.
In the early 1800s, as much as one-quarter of the population of Buenos Aires consisted of Africans.
During special events such as the festival of Saint Balthasar, both slaves and free Africans danced to drums and marimbas in rituals known as candombes.
Many Argentineans gathered to watch the ceremonies, including dictator Juan Manuel De Rosas, whose spectatorship granted the ceremonies an acceptance across cultures and races.
Within those ceremonies, Miller argues, were the seeds of the tango.
The music continues, Vermette says, noting that many Buenos Aires tango groups share a similar bent toward exploration with Quetango.
"My songs are more of an almost rock-driven or progressive rock. It's also blended with every other influence like jazz, classical music," he says, discussing his apprecation for bands like Gentle Giant and King Crimson.
Hains, described by Vermette as a jazz aficionado, tends to lean toward improvisation.
"Jonathan is the more cerebral guy with a lot of harmonic ideas," he says.
Finzi has also composed for Quebec orchestras, according to Vermette.
"We still see (Daniel) as the bandleader. It's more democratic now. Everybody says what he thinks," he says. "Since everybody's an expert on their instrument we change things on our own."
Quetango exists because the members of the quartet can each find enough work as professional musicians, both teaching and playing, to keep the group together.
When it comes to their live show, Vermette promises an unorthodox tango.
"It's not traditional tango. Sometimes it's almost rock music, sometimes it's more a jazzy feel. There's a lot of different textures, a lot of different sounds. I think energy is a good word to describe a Quetango live show."
