Chango Spasiuk

Of Ukrainian heritage, Argentina's Chango Spasiuk is a virtuoso of the accordion and a leading performer of chamamé. This powerful, accordion-based folk genre of northeast Argentina blends complex African and Creole-Spanish rhythms with the sounds and styles of the indigenous Mbya-Guaraní Indians and of Central and Eastern European immigrants. The award-winning Spasiuk has revitalized chamamé, much in the way that fellow Argentine Astor Piazzolla bred new life into the tango.

"It's music from the country a place where the earth is red, the temperature is always high and there are jungles and big rivers," Spasiuk explains, eager to distinguish his rural folk style from tango, its more familiar urban cousin. And though these days, Chango calls Buenos Aires home, it's the sub-tropical idyll of his beloved Misiones province that his art so vividly evokes."Music is a way to go to a place you've never been before, or as the poet Yupanqui said: 'Music is a torch with which to see where beauty lies'."