“DEL CERRO
Broadcast from March 2025 (premiere 2023 at Festival de Chaillol) What if the greatest works of Atahualpa Yupanqui - one of the most emblematic artists in the history of Argentine folk Argentinian folk music - had been composed by a woman... and a French one at that! Born of a father of Quechua descent and a Basque mother, Atahualpa Yupanqui (1908-1992) was a poet, singer and guitarist. Poet, singer and guitarist who left a deep imprint on the history of Argentine popular music.

 

Mandy Lerouge's research into the work of “Don Ata” reveals that almost a hundred of the poet's most famous of the poet's most famous works are co-signed by a certain “Del Cerro”. Pablo Del Cerro. A mysterious A mysterious name, a discreet composer in the history of Argentine music.
A composer? Or rather, a composer... French! Antoinette Paule Pépin-Fitzpatrick (1908 - 1990). She fell in love with Argentina and became Atahualpa Yupanqui's companion. to discreetly sign her works in a complex historical and societal context.

 

It's in the landscapes of northern Argentina, in the heart of the village of Cerro Colorado, and in the mystery that surrounds mystery surrounding Pablo Del Cerro that French singer Mandy Lerouge set out to conduct her musical
with Roberto Chavero, son of Atahualpa Yupanqui and Antoinette Pépin. A collection of filmed by Italian director Francesco Garbo, in the footsteps of Pablo Del Cerro, discovering places the places, landscapes, readings and encounters that inspired and nourished his artistic collaboration with Atahualpa Yupanqui. An opportunity for Mandy Lerouge to delve into the history, scores scores, her personal library and her notebooks of compositions and confidences. Atahualpa Yupanqui nicknamed “Nénette”.

 

A repertoire highlighted and reinterpreted by Mandy Lerouge, to be discovered on stage, in concert and on album. album in 2025 (radio series planned for 2025), in the poetry of Atahualpa Yupanqui, in the footsteps of his double, his shadow, the woman behind some of his most beautiful melodies: Antoinette Pépin.

 

 

A self-taught singer who grew up in the Hautes-Alpes, Mandy Lerouge has been taming
the world of music for a good ten years, through adventures that lead her from jazz
from jazz to classical music through trip-hop, without forgetting her training as a sound
training as a sound engineer and experience as a journalist. In 2014, a first trip to
In 2014, a first trip to Argentina made her discover the culture of its northern countryside and she
and she fell in love with its music as much as with the horseback riding expeditions with the
Gauchos who roam the region guarding their herds - Mandy has been a rider
Mandy has been a rider since she was a child.

 

Now based in Marseille, she has matured her project and nurtured it through meetings with several
with several figures of Argentine music: Chango Spasiuk, Raúl Barboza, Melingo...
Then, at the beginning of 2020, she returned to these lands and, like a worthy heir to Alan
Lomax, collects what will become the repertoire of this first album so personal and at the same time so catchy.
and at the same time so catchy... Several fairies bent over her cradle: Vincent
Several fairies have bent over his cradle: Vincent Segal, who produced it by "encouraging recordings without headphones and the
musicians", Gérard de Haro who organised his studio-set-up in La Buissonne
Buissonne to adapt to this rare "live" configuration ("I've only seen this two or three times in my life!
I've only seen this two or three times in my life!"), and of course the musicians; the Argentine pianist Lalo Zanelli
who also wrote the arrangements, his compatriot the percussionist
Javier Estrella, all in restrained flamboyance, the Colombian double bass player Felipe Nicholls
a discreet architect, and as a bonus an intense appearance by Melingo.