Gabino Ezeiza

Biography Gabino Ezeiza was an Afro-Argentine born in the San Telmo barrio (a former slave neighborhood), and lived at a time when there were a considerable number of black Afro-descendants in the area of present-day Greater Buenos Aires. His teacher in the initiation of the payada, Pancho Luna, was also Afro-Argentine.

Ezeiza was one of the most famous payadores, both in his homeland and in Uruguay. His counterpoints became famous and the one held on July 23, 1884, at the Artigas Theater in Montevideo with the oriental singer Juan de Nava was particularly memorable, witnessed as it was by a large auditorium.

Ezeiza had memorable payadas with other rioplatense singers such as Nemesio Trejo (1880), Puanes e Hidalgo (unknown date), Pablo Vázquez (at Teatro Florida in Pergamino, 1894), Arturo de Nava (at Circo Anselmi), Cazón (both in 1896), Luis García (1900 in San Antonio de Areco). in particular, for his work in the committees of the Radical Civic Union adhering to the movement led at the time by Hipólito Yrigoyen, He made friends at the popular Café de los Angelitos in Buenos Aires. Upon his death, the duo sang Heroico Paysandú in his tribute, which years later led to the Gardel album. Ezeiza toured on the south of Argentina. In 1905, he married Petrona del Carmen Peñaloza, whom he had met during his shows in San Nicolás de los Arroyos.

Contribution to Argentine folklore

There are those who consider that Ezeiza was the one who introduced the milonga rhythm to payada, and its popularity caused other payadores to spread it to other areas of Argentina, Uruguay, and Brazil (on all in the south of this country).

Ezeiza affirmed that the milonga (campera) came from the candombe, a style of music and dance that originated in Uruguay among the descendants of liberated African slaves.

In an interview to Argentine payador and journalist Nemesio Trejo, published in the newspaper La Opinión of Avellaneda on April 15, 1916, he recounts:

Ezeiza considered that the milonga rhythm would have been an evolution, in classical guitar (named "creole guitar" in Argentina), of Afro-Argentine candombe carried out by Afro-Argentines in the Argentine Pampas.