Cerronato Interview: SXSW 2010

When native Austin quartet Cerronato isn't jamming to an urban version of the Colombian vallenato, its band members dabble in genres as varied as country and alt rock. (Singer and percussionist Gustavo Manzur just finished touring with Morrissey). Spinner recently spoke with founder and lead accordion player Mike Maddux about Cerronato's love for syncopated Latin beats, the meaning behind their moniker and making it on the SXSW roster nine years after the band's formation.

Describe your sound in your own words.

Well, a good way to describe the sound is to discuss the instruments -- we have a lead accordion, electric bass and two people that play percussion along with vocals. We are a quartet and the style of the music is from Colombia; t's called vallenato. It's a very syncopated kind of Latin music, and really very different. It's sung in Spanish and it's very dynamic, exciting music. People imagine that we play flutes and wear sombreros, but really it's dance music. Cerronato plays sort of like the city version of vallenato; we have an electric bass, we play with mics, we play kind of loud. There are a lot of newer versions of vallenato that aren't very exciting; they sound more like pop music. That's not what we are trying to do. But we do make it our own.

What drew you to this style in particular?

I am a piano player from a long time ago, about 20 years ago, but when I took interest in the accordion, someone gave me a vallenato record and I just thought it was the greatest way to use this instrument. When I first heard it, I knew that I wanted to do it.

How did your band form?

The band formed in 2001, so we've been together for nine years. Once I realized the kind of music that I wanted to play, then it was a matter of finding people to do it with me. Mostly it was through asking people. There were some people I already knew, having lived in Austin for a long time. The first two people I hired were two old friends, and then we started asking friends if they knew someone that knew how to play the instruments we were looking for, and it went from there.

What/who are your musical influences?

In terms of American music, probably my oldest influences are jazz musicians. Jazz piano players like Thelonius Monk or Bud Powell, a beatbox piano player from the '40s. Flaco Jimenez is the reason I picked up the accordion. He's a Texan of Mexican heritage who plays conjunto music. His band plays a lot of waltzes and polkas. Vallenato-wise, I'm a fan of the composers. There's a very famous one named Rafael Escalona who is a friend of Gabriel Garcia Marquez. The lyrics of vallenato share some of the strange magical quality that Marquez's writing has. In fact, in the first chapter of '100 Years of Solitude,' he talks about a guy who plays accordion.

How did you come up with your band name?

Valle means valley, nato is sort of like native, so vallenato means native to the valley. Since Austin is in Texas Hill Country, we wanted to incorporate that in our name, so we combined "cerro" which is the word for hill and "nato" to make up one word: Cerronato.

Is this your first SXSW or have you played before?

When I first got to Austin in the late '80s, SXSW was just starting and it wasn't as huge. At that time it was mostly local acts. I played then four or five times, but ever since I started Cerronato the festival has gotten much bigger. So I've been trying for nine years and we finally were able to get there!

What is in your festival survival kit?

We like to have at least one water bottle of tequila on hand.

What's your musical guilty pleasure?

The song 'I Kissed a Girl.'

Beatles or Stones?

Oh wow, if I had to choose, I'd say Stones, because they are bluesier.

What's the craziest thing you've seen or experienced while on tour?

I'd say the wackiest thing we've done: We got invited to play at a Viking Festival, which was really a celebration of Scandinavian food and music. Accordions are very big in Scandinavian music. Before we played, I bought everybody in the band plastic Viking helmets, which we wore while we played music from Colombia.

Who would you be most excited to cross paths with at SXSW?

Carlos Vives. Or Colacho Mendoza, one of the most famous vallenato accordion players.

Many of the band members have other gigs on top of Cerronato. Are the musical styles all similar, or is someone in a completely different genre -- say a punk/heavy metal band?

I play in a jazz group, a country western group and a group that plays the music of Astor Piazzolla. Our bass player plays in several jazz groups and a blues band. One of our singers, Clemencia Zapata, had her own Salsa band, and currently plays in a blues band and a conjunto band. The other singer, Gustavo Manzur, just got off the road touring with Morrissey.


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