With the album "Del Cerro", Mandy Lerouge follows in the footsteps of a little-known composer from the land of the gauchos

May 2014. Somewhere along the road, very early in the morning, a bus rolls between Salta and Tilcara, in northwest Argentina. The landscape of the Andes mountain range passes by the window in the light of sunrise. When the driver turns on the music, passengers begin to clap their hands, humming softly while drinking the first mate of the day. Mandy Lerouge wakes up to the sound of the chacarera, the zamba, the local folk music. She is 23 years old. For her love of horses, she has treated herself to a wonderful escape to the land of the gauchos. She dreamed of it all her childhood spent in the Hautes-Alpes, with her French mother and Malagasy father.

This moment on a bus speeding along an Argentine road will be a decisive turning point in her story with traditional Argentine music, says the singer, when we meet her in a Parisian café, a few days before her concert on May 26, at the Café de la Danse in Paris. She will present Del Cerro there, her second album, a delicious dive into the poetry of guitarist and singer Atahualpa Yupanqui (1908-1992). An album that she will also promote on tour starting this summer. This one was produced by the alchemist of the sampler Nicolas Repac who seduced her with his sense of sound color, "his way of creating universes where he sends all possible spaces and times waltzing, without forbidding himself anything."

You have 72.44% of this article left to read. The rest is reserved for subscribers.