With El Valle de la Infancia (The Valley of Childhood) the Argentine bandoneonist Dino Saluzzi goes back to the music of his native north. He was born in Campo Santo in 1935. It is his first album with the "family band" since Juan Condori in 2006. Zamba, carnavalito and chacarera run through the programme, held between folk tradition and the open, improvised manner Saluzzi has developed over three decades on ECM.
Dino plays with his brother Félix "Cuchara" Saluzzi on tenor saxophone and clarinet. His son José María Saluzzi on classical and requinto guitars, his nephew Matías Saluzzi on electric and double bass. Two friends join the family. The seven-string guitarist Nicolás "Colacho" Brizuela is known for his long association with Mercedes Sosa, and a drummer and percussionist was brought in to widen the sense of freedom. The album was recorded between March and May 2013 at the Saluzzi Music Studio in Buenos Aires. Manfred Eicher produced it, with José María coordinating the sessions and Stefano Amerio mixing and mastering. Leopoldo Castilla wrote the liner notes.
Most of the music is Dino's, set out as single pieces alongside short suites. The three-part Pueblo opens with José María alone on guitar in his own Labrador. It moves through the wistful Salavina by Mario Arnedo Gallo and ends with La Tristecita by Ariel Ramírez, closed by a single bell. In Churqui Félix's tenor enters with a full, rounded tone over the warmth of high-plains music. La Fiesta Popular is a suite of five brief dances, and the closing Tiempos Primeros pairs La Arribeña by Atahualpa Yupanqui with Dino's La casa paterna.
"This work is alive with different genres," Castilla writes in the booklet, pointing to the dances of North Argentina. Chris Moss in Songlines found the record "more accessible and even more wondrous" than Juan Condori and called it sublime. Fernando Gonzalez, in The International Review of Music, heard "the work of a master in winter, still looking ahead as he glances back". Stephen Graham of Marlbank warned that the album takes a while to reveal itself, and then casts a spell that is hard to break.
This is the CD edition, ECM 2370, first released on 25 April 2014.
