Into the Mystic: The World Accordion to Chango Spasiuk

For a guy who comes off as not verbally oriented, Chango Spasiuk sure got chatty last week toward the end of a show at the Getty Center's Harold M. Williams Auditorium, high on a hill overlooking Los Angeles' West Side. The Argentine accordionist had gone through nearly 90 minutes leading his three-man band with nary a word, save for a few thank yous in a tentative, if heartfelt, English to the appreciative crowd.

The monkish quietness, enhanced by the blissful-mystic countenance on his hair-draped and bearded face (itself accented by the red cloth draping his lap and legs as he sat and played), seemed to say that this is music to be experienced with the heart, not the head. Even the parts sung by young classical guitarist Sebastian Villalba (sometimes in duet with his brother, guitarist-percussionist Marcos) were often wordless.

It's fitting, given that in the liner notes of his new album 'Pyandí' (the word in his native Guarani language for "barefoot"), he quotes philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein's stern 'Tractatus' edict, "On that which cannot be spoken, we must be silent." More often this is translated as "Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent," but the point is clear. Spasiuk fears too many words will rob music of its mystery, of its power.

And on this day, much of that mystery comes in a sense of geographical dislocation. At times the sonic pictures seemed to float between the northeast Argentine village in which he was raised and the Ukraine where his family came from a couple of generations ago -- and all points in between. With violinist Victor Renaudeau completing the ensemble, frequently setting the tone via lines marked alternately by playful rawness and virtuosic grace, breezy Gypsy passages evoked a café on the Left Bank, lively/sad rancheras a Mexican street party, and skippy polkas a Scandinavian solstice. And yes, a familiar Argentina was there too -- but in the chamber-music approach associated with Buenos Aires salons and concert halls thanks to composer Astor Piazzolla. And yet nothing ever seemed distant from Spasiuk's own humble roots.

But as he and his compatriots sat back down for the encore segment, basking after an enthusiastic standing ovation from the crowd, Spasiuk seemed to feel a need to explain himself a little. With his manager Katarina Paulakis standing in the audience to translate -- no more than half the audience understood his Spanish -- he waxed philosophical:

"I feel a little like the big Argentine poet Atahualpa Yupanqui, " says Spasiuk. "Many years ago, he did a tour of the United States. He was asked, 'How did it go?' He said, 'It went really well, but my hands are really hurting from speaking English.'

"When I was 9 or 10, just starting to play the accordion, the world was very different than it is today. Today, when we hear music, I can see all the iPods and with 300 songs, 400 songs, 1,000 songs -- and it's still not enough to be happy. But when I started playing the accordion and I learned how to play just one tune, I could already be hired to play at a wedding. And that's not a metaphorical thing. It actually happened. When I was a boy working as a carpenter with my father, I would play accordion and people from the farms would come and say, 'Oh, you play? My daughter is getting married.'

"I'm saying all this because on the surface of this it could be an opportunity to say this is my music or your music. But we shouldn't forget that music it a chance to connect with something which deepens the connection to something that is true. And it's about getting closer to something in us that is not Argentine or American. But something that is of no nationality. As Atahualpa Yupanqui said, 'Music is like a torch that people use to see beauty on their path.' And for this we are happy and grateful to have the opportunity to at least try to get closer to this idea."

Of course, he could have explained how his music developed, how even before his grandparents arrived from Ukraine, a lot of European sounds had mixed with the local chamamé dance rhythms -- a hoppy, happy 6/8 that was infused into much of the day's selections. He could have explained that what might sound Mexican or Norwegian or Parisian to untrained ears is simply a matter of him interpreting sounds of his youth while reaching out beyond borders. But he's not really interested in being a teacher, at least not in the conventional sense.

After the show he elaborated further, again with Paulakis translating:

"The point is to try to remove anything that is between music and people," he says. "So everybody sits in their seat from their own culture, age, social status. I really prefer to play that speak. But sometimes the speaking deconstructs the culture we all have. What is important is I know my music and what it is about, and the more I do the more I can explain.

"Music is like the taste of something," he continues. "People cam describe a taste, but when it's in your mouth it's different than what they said. But in one way it doesn't matter."

And he adds that it's not just here in Los Angeles that some people might not recognize the origins of the music, since it's been so highly personalized through his own sensibilities: "Where I come from, people often don't understand what it's all about. The whole context is very complex."

Even the joy he clearly takes in playing, and the joy experienced by the audience this day, is not so simple.

"It would be great if people understand that behind this joy is melancholy, where it came from," he says. "Sometimes a well-written program can help with that. But it would take to long to completely understand. "

It would also help, he said, if audiences could "see how some of this music would be danced to in the village. I am not a musician who plays dances. But some of the tradition is continuing."

Here he notes the Wittgenstein quote and brings the discussion to a close.

"If I spent all my time talking about what should be and could be, I would lose my ability to do this."

Turning back to the mystic, he concludes simply: "There is what there is in every moment."