Chango Spasiuk

The passionate accordion player and composer Chango Spasiuk transforms the chamamé, a rural dance music, into a highly elaborate art form presented mainly in concert settings. His role can be compared to that of compatriot Astor Piazzolla, who added jazz elements and a classical note to the tango.

The music Chango Spasiuk plays is chamamé, a warm-hearted, accordion-based rhythm that taps into native Guarana Spanish, Brazilian, Criollo and European traditions. Its natural home is northwest Argentina.

Spasiuk was born in 1968 in Misiones, a small province near the Brazilian border. Its society is the product of a complex process of fusion and interaction between the disparate elements of its population: the original native communities (mbya-guarani), the Creoles, and those foreign settlements established at the beginning of the 20th century. Among the latter were Ukranians, to whom Chango is intimately linked by virtue of his two Ukranian grandparents. —Courtesy Calabash Music