PEQUEÑAS ANÉCDOTAS SOBRE LAS INSTITUCIONES

A few years ago a good friend borrowed me a bunch of Latin-American progrock he received from an Argentine record label. For me it was an excellent opportunity for a further investigation of the captivating Latin-American progrock scene, so often an unique blend of many styles.

Sui Generis is an Argentine band that made many albums, I would like to focus on their most progressive effort entitled Pequenas Anecdotes Sobre Las Instituciones from 1973. Here Sui Generis is a four piece band (including the inevitable keyboard player Charly Garcia who later founded La Maquina De Hacer Pajaros) with additional musicians and they present us wonderful and varied music: every track has its own climate and is loaded with interesting musical ideas and surprising breaks, they often use a wide range of instruments. The one moment the atmosphere is mellow with twanging acoustic guitars, flute, violin or Grand piano, the other moment it is blues with mouth organ or sumptuous symphonic rock with Moog synthesizer flights or beautiful strings. I cannot refer to symphonic rock dinosaurs like Yes, Genesis or Pink Floyd, this is an unique progrock band but you have to be up to moments that are close to soul or other musical styles, indeed, a very progressive musical experience! My rating: 3,5 stars.

Longer, bigger, deeper, angrier, and much more progressive. This is one of Argentina's best progressive rock albums out there. Nevertheless, it wasn't a critically acclaimed effort. It was actually received with a lot of criticism at the time. The reason is that Argentina was expecting more charming acoustic folk. This is not folk, this is electric, political, biting, and quite eclectic. Luckily, people eventually began to appreciate this different album and it is now considered a classic that is more well known than the "Maquina de Hacer Pajaros" albums.

The album begins with the title track, which at first (apart from electric drums) sounds similar to the second album's opener, just much better. Later, it goes to a more urgent vocal style and after the second chorus you get electric strings, synthesizers, powerful electric guitar, mellotron, angry vocals, and all of that stuff that we progheads just gotta love. This is possibly my favorite song from the band.

"Tango en Segunda" starts only with vocals and virtuosic, yet subtle, electric piano running in the background with a slight tango element. Afterwards, there's a memorable and quite ununsual riff which goes up and down one fret at a time. After the theme plays out once, drums introduce a loud, nasty moog synthesizer that gets wilder until it reaches the end. It sounds as if Keith Emerson was invited to play with Mahavishnu Orchestra.

"El Show de los Muertos" is yet another dark song, featuring electric piano and the saxophone as main instruments. It is less frantic than the previous two pieces and seems somewhat influenced by Supertramp.

"Señor Tijeras" is once again another social/political song, now about censure. The album is actually somewhat of a concept album because it deals with all the 'institutions' that made up Argentina's oppressive government at the time. The lyrics are effective, describing a "mr. scissors" as the censurer cutting a woman's body in dramatic fashion. The music is slightly light-hearted and sinister at the same time. Lots of minimoogs here.

"Pequeñas Delicias de la vida Conyugal" . This is like the catchiest thing ever, not only vocal-wise, but also due to that playful synthesizer theme during the verses.

The next two tracks are very interesting, but what comes next is special, a full instrumental inspired by the "Rock Progresivo Italiano" movement. The music is dynamic and features plenty of interesting musical ideas in its six minutes. I especially love the guitar solo in the beginning and the violin breakdown in the middle.

"Para Quien Canto Yo Entonces" is an acoustic and bluesy folk tune that closes the actual album. Quite pleasant with nice harmonica lines which come across as soulful. This was the last album because the last two tracks were too political during a difficult time before the beginning of the "dirty war"

"Juan Represion" is about police oppression. Musically it is not progressive, but it has excellent lyrics and a beautiful fadeout while "Botas Locas" describe Charly's feelings of alienation when being in the military (the lyrics are apparently not true, because Charly got himself out by feigning to be crazy). Anyways, the music for this track is uptempo acoustic music with Charly harmonizing with himself on vocals. It has catchy choruses.

Highly recommended for Latin Rock collectors and still recommended to any symphonic prog lovers.

This album is the best of Suis Generis. The more evoluated and is a real precursor to la Maquina de Hacer Parajos. It is a mix of folk and true sophisticated progressive rock (like the two first yes albums).

The opening track is very representative of the album : a wonderful folky beggining followed by strong instrumental developement. The singers are really emotional and coulb be compared to some south american Crosby Stills and Nash evolved in a early Yes style. The second song Tango en Segunda is decisive : a jazzy folky intro with pure vocals and herbie hancock like colors (period Thrust) is followed by a strong and nasty instrumental Theme a la Mahavishnu Orchestra (similar the second song of The Inner Mountain Flame) and King Crimson. This track is short but incredibly impressive! A Surpising and Instanteneous classic for early 70's jazz-rock prog lovers! Then the 3rd track comes with a folky early supertramp track (wonderful saxophone intervention). The rest of the album is between catchy songs (best of supertamp, who, early yes) and classic progressive rock tracks!

Highly emotionnal an inventive Prog Rock Classic from argentina (wich was definitely a proggy country in the 70's)! NB :with a wonderful cover and easy to find!!!!!

"Pequeñas Anécdotas Sobre las Instituciones" is the Sui Generis' third and last studio effort that incarnated the ultimate development of Charly Garcia's vision for this folk-rock act. In fact, this band had been born out of earlier acts devoted to the practice of late 60s art- rock, and so it came to be that when the influence of prog rock was beginning to catch flame in some areas of Argentinean rock (the first gigs of Crucis and Ave Rock, the reinforcement of Arco iris as a major fusion-rock name), Garcia became more than willing to instill this line of work into Sui Géneris. It is common ground that this was their most accomplished work and that it only made sense that it should sell more poorly to an audience that was determine to accept their usual folk-oriented side exclusively. Sure, songs like 'Dime quién me lo robó', 'Un hada, un cisne' and 'Tribulaciones, lamento y ocaso de un tonto rey imaginario' were artsy songs from previous albums that were highly acclaimed by the SG audiences all over the place, but now this same audience was asked to proceed with a leap of faith and embrace this artsy trend as their beloved band's redefining method and not just as a casual resource. Of course, only a limited range of their audience accepted it, but all in all, it didn't affect their appeal to the public's eye in terms of gig attendance. Well, musically speaking, the artistic satisfaction of Garcia's did not match Mestre's, so it was only natural that this peak of art should signal the band's descent into conflict and separation. In fact, a planned and aborted fourth release was supposed to enhance the new progressive trend started in this album. Another fact that revealed the chasm between the band's own evolution and the audience's appreciation was the limited acceptance of the band's augmentation as a quartet: this line-up change was the result of the need to have bassist/ guitarist Rafanelli and drummer/percussionist Rodriguez become active contributors to the band's refurbished sound, not just as back-up performers. Well, now that I have described the band's state-of-affairs to some extent, here are the tracks themselves. The opener 'Instituciones' makes such a lovely statement of the dominant symphonic factor: this band is headlong for a demonstration of how Genesis- meets-PFM would sound like, and they do it quite fine. 'Tango en segunda' is more like a jazz-prog attempt, soft and reasonably constrained, which is apt for the creepy lyrics: the amalgamation of guest David Lebon's guitar and Garcia's synth is well constructed. The segued follower 'El show de los muertos' continues in the jazzy vein and bears even more creepier lyrics and musicality. The symphonic thing returns for the warmly sarcastic 'Las increíbles aventuras del Sr. Tijeras' and the dramatic 'Música de fondo para cualquier fiesta animada', while the jazz thing returns in the vividly mischievous 'Pequeñas delicias de la vida conyugal', but nowhere does the artsy direction get as magnificent as in 'Tema de Natalio', the amazing instrumental that delivers an exquisite 6 minute sequence of genuinely progressive motifs. You can almost watch how Garcia enjoys his Moog excursions, gran piano phrases and ARP string orchestrations. Also, the guest presence of violin master Pinchovsky and master organist Cutaia (soon to become Garcia's keyboard partner in LMDHP) provides the ultimate touches of color for this one. The folk thing is also present in 'El tuerto y los ciegos' (arguably, the best acoustic song ever penned by Garcia, and that also includes Pinchevsky's involvement) and the closer 'Para quién canto yo entonces', a correct protest song that signifies the usual Bob Dylan influence. I very much prefer the serene beauty of 'El tuerto': incredible how Garcia felt inspired to write this tiny beauty in a couple of days in replacement of one of the completely censored songs (three or four actual songs also had a few lines censored each in order to be included in the final album). The ultimate Sui Géneris album makes a fine progressive album: I think it is a 4- star folk-rock effort and a 3.75-star prog one. A big farewell for SG, indeed.

SUI GENERIS (Latin phrase meaning "of its own kind/genus) was one of the most popular bands in all of the history of Argentina with huge popularity during the first half of the 70s. Originally experimenting with psychedelic music in the 60s, the group changed its sound to be a folk band. The band found instant popularity amongst the youth.

After two albums of folk music mainman Charly Garcia decided something new and fresh was in order. The band incorporated more musicians and became more of a folk rock band and the result was "Pequeñas Anécdotas Sobre las Instituciones (Small Anecdotes about the Institutions)." The album was disliked at the time mainly because it caught people off guard being much more progressive and abandonned the more simplistic lyrics for commentary about the social and political situations that plagued the country at the time. Although unpopular at the time it is now considered a classic in South America.

For me this is a very pleasant listen of progressive folk rock with catchy melodies, interesting song structures and instrumentation. It is also cool to have an insight into the history of Argentina, a country I know next to nothing about. All lyrics are in Spanish. This was their last studio album and mainman Charly Garcia went on to put together the more progressive bands of La Máquina de Hacer Pájaros and Serú Girán.

One of the most striking elements of SG - not detracting from their musicianship - is their lyrics, to the point that I do not know how a non-Spanish speaker can ever fully appreciate this band the way we Argentinians do. This last SG record, although subject-wise is a conceptual album, is I believe a carry over from the previous albums in that it rests on its individual pieces or songs (this of course is the merit solely of Ch.Garcia) who can conjure potent cinematographic images and words of surrealism mixed with the most everyday suburban to comic and memorable effect (cf. the misterious room where gentleman or judge-like diners discourse "one in English, another one in French, and another one in freakin' rage ")

4.5: The third and best album by Sui generis, an Argentina band that includes Charly Garcia one of the most prolific musician in the progressive area of Latin America. In this album, two new incorporation were added to the band, Rinaldo Rafanelli and Juan Rodriguez, who improved the sound of the band. the making of the album was pretty influenced by political situation of Argentina, there was a lot of repression, in fact they had to replace two track and change the lyrics of other of the songs because of its political content. Very progressive content, if you have to define album it would be a combination between symphonic, folk and heavy prog, there are a lot of good moments and the keyboard passages are very immersive in the music, also the change in the music rhythm make it very enjoyable. Lyrically it has a lot of metaphors and intrinsic meaning about the situation and in some times seems that he also talks about girls and romantic situations. Vocally, it continues with the Charly Garcia style of singing and how he makes beautiful melodies and added variations to the music. Finally, I considered it a excellent addition to any prog collection and an essential to know the evolution for the progressive movement in Latin America.

Listening diary 17th February, 2021: Sui Generis - Pequeñas anécdotas sobre las instituciones (progressive folk/rock, 1974)

Some really nice Argentinian prog folk that probably deserves more attention, both from myself and the greater progressive scene. It has that same pastoral ambience that bands like Harmonium are known for, but if I'm honest I prefer this. There's still a bit of a language barrier, not just in the lyrics but in the slightly abstract melodies and structures that crop up, but it's pleasant and quite charming and I think will grow on me in time.

6.3 (2nd listen)

Part of my listening diary from my facebook music blog - www.facebook.com/TheExoskeletalJunction

Review #20: Pequeñas Anécdotas Sobre las Instituciones

¿Cuántas veces tendré que morir para ser siempre yo?

The influence of Simon & Garfunkel marked the early days of Sui Generis, but that acoustic and almost adolescent stage transformed into a band loaded with synthesizers and very aware of the abrupt changes of reality.

Pequeñas anécdotas sobre las instituciones, Sui's third album (1974), is a brilliant concept work to know how censorship and state terrorism operated, and also a record about the meaning of art in violent times.

Charly García, in search of innovations, traveled to the United States and bought a series of innovative keyboards for the time. The lyrics of the songs have a strong political content and make direct reference to repressive social institutions (family, censorship, military, education, police repression), at a time when political violence and especially the terrorist action of the Argentine Anticommunist Alliance Triple A was raging against artists and intellectuals. To moderate its content, the original title, Instituciones, had to be changed; several songs were modified, such as "Instituciones", "Las increíbles aventuras del Señor Tijeras", "Música de fondo para cualquier fiesta animada" and "Para quién canto yo entonces", and two of them, "Botas Locas" and "Juan Represión", had to be deleted and replaced by others.

So that Instituciones could be published, without risking the very serious consequences that the musicians and their producers could suffer in the midst of the escalation of violence during the constitutional government of María Estela Martínez de Perón, which anticipated the dictatorship that would take power a little more than a year later, in addition to changing the title itself to Pequeñas anécdotas sobre las instituciones, Charly García had to modify several texts of the songs, mainly affected "Música para cualquier fiesta animada" and "Instituciones".

"Instituciones" (5/5) The album begins with a celestial atmosphere and a synthesizer that gradually indicates the fall of Nito's voice as the guitar appears. This song was a theme that showed the remarkable progress García had made in the instrumental and in the composition of more adult lyrics, not so adolescent. Lyrics that, on the contrary, already began to "put the finger where it hurts..." as Rafanelli once said. The theme reflected the oppression that the institutions put on the youth: "Los magos, los acróbatas, los clowns... Oye niño las cosas están de este modo... tenés sábados, hembras y televisores...no preguntes más!!!".

"Tango en Segunda" (4/5), as the name says, is a melodic tango, mostly composed of Garcia's synthesizers, half instrumental, half lyrical. This song is defined in; Charly sticking his head into city music and its fusion with progressive rock (booming at the time). The song included the duo's right to complain against their manager Jorge Álvarez: "A mí no me gusta tu cara, ni me gusta tu olor..." (I don't like your face, nor do I like your smell...). At the end, the song presents, for the first time, a melodic leitmotif that would be used again by García in later productions (in the album Películas, by Máquina de Hacer Pájaros and in La Grasa de las Capitales, by Serú Girán).

"El Show de los Muertos" (5/5). My favorite track on the album is, at the same time, one of the most unique, with its metaphorical lyrics and music that is both spooky and enchanting. This track includes a synthesized saxophone solo, which generates an almost "Floydian" atmosphere totally unprecedented in the duo's music.

Immediately afterwards, we hear the rapid scissors of Señor Tijeras, the central character of a brilliant fable based on the story of a famous censor of the time: Miguel Paulino Tato, an obscure official in charge of the Ente de Calificación Cinematográfica, a true inquisitor who decided what viewers could or could not see in the cinema.

"Las increíbles Aventuras del Sr. Tijeras" (5/5) (The Incredible Adventures of Mr. Scissors) contains changing climaxes as well as a quite interesting melodic structure, which includes an imposing and disturbing crescendo, when Mr. Scissors' madness leads him to confuse reality with fiction, murdering his wife, in the same way he "murdered" freedom of expression, with a clean scissors. Musically, top quality progressive rock, in the vein of Italian symphonic rock, like that of PFM or Banco; and lyrically, with verses as comic as they were brutally in tune with the times. They were the first touches of García as a composer of songs that reflected like no one else in rock, and with humor, the difficult reality of Argentine society. As in that part of the lyrics that says: "I'll see you in 20 years on television... cut and boring, in full color...", something that happened in reality with several of the films banned at the time.

"Pequeñas delicias de la vida conyugal" (4/5) opened the old Lado 2 of the vinyl edition of this work. This song was another typical Sui Generis teenage page, but, unlike the previous albums, its sound is very progressive. I find their sound quite friendly and full of good vibes, considering how somber and explosive the whole album can be. As I said moments before, another incisive moment in Sui's classic and youthful style, ending with an incredible and brief drum solo.

"El tuerto y los ciegos" (5/5) is, on the other hand, a little "folk" page, with a great performance by Pinchevsky on violin, and a very beautiful lyric by Charly. The harmonic combination of the violin with the flute, joining and complementing the splendorous bass that sounds behind Charly's voice, is a very powerful and very well achieved combination.

"Música de Fondo para Cualquier Fiesta Animada" (5/5). We come to a pretty interesting moment in the album. This song is a great metaphor for the Argentine reality of the time. A song with unfortunately timeless messages that would be prophetic, very soon after. The whole lyric was replaced by a completely different one, due to the problems faced in those years in Argentina, related to the government and the military.

"Tema de Natalio" (4/5). The only instrumental song on the album. Composed by García and Rafanelli. Supposedly inspired by the "music that Natalio Ruiz, the little man with the gray hat, would listen to".

"Para Quién Canto yo Entonces?" (4/5) A beautiful and melodic closer for this wonderful album, which, without a doubt, is the band's best, speaking of prog and speaking outside of it. At the beginning of the song, I noticed a great resemblance in the guitar riff "Que Ves el Cielo (El Jardín de los Presentes - Invisible, 1976)", and I wanted to comment on it. All in all, a great closing and perhaps Charly García's first public self-reflection on his status as an artist in such a controversial society as Argentina.

Just in 1994, the two self-censored tracks would be added as Bonus Tracks (according to Charly, again by Álvarez's idea): "Juan Represión" (dedicated to López Rega y Cía.) and "Botas Locas".

Conclusion:

Despite the meritorious sonic and lyrical search of this new Sui Géneris, the band could not retrace their steps in the dead end they were going through. The ballads were losing weight before the overwhelming advance of progressive rock, and, at the same time, the themes of Institutions had little to do with the adolescent spirit that gave the duo popularity and success at the beginning. Tired of struggling to impose their new songs, and faced with the prospect of reaching new musical horizons, Charly, in agreement with Nito, decided to put an end to this story. For that reason, in the middle of 75 both announced that Sui Generis was dissolving.

I will always remember how beautiful it was to see this part of Sui so progressive and innovative in the history of rock.

From whatever point of view we look at it, we can't deny how transcendental this stage of the band was for Charly, and indeed of his life, taking into account all he had to go through.

10/10, 5 stars. Definitely one of my favorite concept albums of all time, and a great teaching about the importance of things that come and go, but most of all, that you have to know how to make them come. And a great adventure to know the background of all the bad things that the dictatorship and the government had during those 70's in Argentina.