Jazz Articles about Pipi Piazzolla

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Pipi Piazzolla: Argentina's Rhythm Shark

by Eric Benson
May 10, 2008

Ask the Argentine drummer Daniel 'Pipi' Piazzolla about the role of claves in his music and you shouldn't expect an answer so much as an exuberant lesson. Piazzolla, the leader of the celebrated Buenos Aires-based sextet Escalandrum, loves claves--the way they “naturalize" complex time signatures; the infinite rhythmic possibilities they present; the mathematical derring-do of fitting the square-peg of a clave inside the round-hole of a given meter.“I lived in Los Angeles for a year," Piazzolla tells me ...