Audio By Carbonatix
Argentine guitarist and producer Erico Schulz has spent the past few years showcasing a higher-falutin’ musical fusion at the city’s five-star hotels and restaurants. In fact 2008 marks his band’s fifth year in residency at Baleen, at Grove Isle Resort. What’s kept it there is a decadent instrumental mix of nouveau flamenco, zambra mora (Moorish rumba), South American folkloric styles, and electronic loops recorded and reinserted on the fly.
“I liked flamenco, but to tell you the truth, I started playing it out of necessity,” Schulz says. A funk-rocker and graduate of the Argentine Folkloric Institute in Patagonia, he discovered flamenco was a marketable genre in Miami when he moved here in 1992. As time went on, he developed a taste for the Moorish roots of the music, and numerous trips to England in the late Nineties would help the artist modernize his work with electronica.
Since then, Schulz has continued to layer the sound, expanding its cultural depth by adding Brazilian percussionist Thiago Ribeiro and Cuban horn player Carlos Huerta to his band. The overall effect is complex yet smooth, not unlike the artists themselves. On the outside, all three are soft-spoken and reserved, but when they take the stage, it’s evident they bring in all sorts of emotional roots from their heritage. “The layers we add make it sound like a 15-piece band, when in reality it’s just the three of us doing the creating,” Schulz says proudly. “I really believe in our roots.”
The band’s spontaneous instrumentation flows effortlessly. Sometimes it’s jazzy, even a little funky, but almost never to the point of becoming a disruption — unless, of course, the spirits call for it. About halfway through the band’s performance on a recent Saturday, the ambiance becomes downright mystical. Schulz alternates between revved-up guitar picking and electronic loops that imitate wind rolling across sand dunes. Ribeiro pounds on his hand drums. And Huerta calls diners to attention with his trumpet, giving them the impression that a belly dancer might come wiggling through the sheer curtains draped around the venue’s central banquet table. Instead a waiter appears with a fat glass of Pinot Noir, followed by a round of absinthe to encourage more of the delirium on which the music already has its audience floating.
