Name: Pedro Canale aka Chancha Via Circuito

Nationality: Argentinian
Occupation: Producer, DJ, remixer, composer
Current Release: Chancha Via Circuito's new singles "Cometa" and "El payo real" are out now. They're harbingers of his upcoming full-length album La Estrella, slated for release November 11th 2022 via Wonderwheel.
Recommendations: The book The flight of the eagle by Jiddu Krishnamurti, Paula Duro´s paintings, the work of my friend El Búho, who is also a producer.

[Read our El Búho interview]

If you enjoyed this interview with Chancha Via Circuito and would like to know more about his work, visit him on Instagram, Facebook, twitter, and Soundcloud.



When did you start writing/producing/playing music and what or who were your early passions and influences? What was it about music and/or sound that drew you to it?

I started when I was eleven, playing electric bass in a band with schoolmates in primary school. After that I continued playing bass or guitar in many bands. I started producing electronic stuff in the year 2000, after my eldest brother installed the program Fruity loops on the computer we used to share with my five brothers.

I already discovered my passion for music in my childhood, because my parents had tons of cassettes at home, and listening to all of them was one of my favourite hobbies, among playing football.

I was very lucky that my oldest brother also started to buy tons of cassettes when he got his first job. Thanks to him I had the oportunity to discover many bands that were out of the radar of what my parents used to listen daily. These included Nirvana, Massive Attack, Tricky, Portishead, or Björk.

When I listen to music, I see shapes, objects and colours. What happens in your body when you're listening and how does it influence your approach to creativity?

It depends on what kind of music I'm listening to. When I hear something that has a catchy rhythm, I notice that my body starts moving without will, like when I hear some cumbia or African rhyrhm patterns.

I used to have the tendency to choose melancholic music for years, I don't know why. But everything changed when I rediscovered folklore and Latin music from South America, Central America and México in 2005. After that year I decided to try to make music to dance to, with a more positive spirit.

It was the breaking point of my musical life. It was the moment when Chancha Via Circuito begins.

How would you describe your development as an artist in terms of interests and challenges, searching for a personal voice, as well as breakthroughs?

I can describe my development as an ongoing search that always keeps me alert, without a certain notion of what I want, or where I want to go when I compose.

Curiosity is always the rudder of this boat, and the need for surprise myself in the process of creation has been key.

Tell me a bit about your sense of identity and how it influences both your preferences as a listener and your creativity as an artist, please.

My musical identity is something that I normally don't pay so much attention to, because I like to change, to keep looking for new sounds and rhythms that inspire me.

But I can recognise the colours that are always present in my songs. These South American flavours that come back again and again, I can't hide that. I'm still in love with the traditional music from this continent.

What, would you say, are the key ideas behind your approach to music and art?

My key ideas are changing all the time. But I see that I normally feel attracted by hybrid or experimental music and by what sounds fresh.

But beyond that, there is also something that I can't put in words, that remains a mystery to me.

How would you describe your views on topics like originality and innovation versus perfection and timelessness in music? Are you interested in a “music of the future” or “continuing a tradition”?

I like originality a lot, even knowing that it would be impossible to attain without inspirations and ideas from the past. Perfection is something that I feel one will never reach. But one can touch or be very close to beauty with good music, dance, or painting, and maybe that is something that can be considered as perfection. I don't know.

I feel timelessness in art is the real goal, but it's something that is out of our control. I can't decide to do something timeless. It can happen or not.

I don't know what the term "music of the future" means exactly. After all, the future has already arrived. But I find it very interesting to take into account traditional music as a big source of inspiration.

Over the course of your development, what have been your most important instruments and tools - and what are the most promising strategies for working with them?

My most important instruments now are the Kontakt sampler, which allows me to use instruments from all over the world, and also Ableton live, with the drum rack. I use it to store the sounds that I collect from different sources and libraries to start the beats.

Also I've never left my acoustic instruments that I still adore, like the guitar, the bass, my African Balafon, my charango and flutes.

The most promising strategy to me to start a song is to pick up the right sounds, to choose them very carefully. And when I say sounds I refer to sounds that have to sound special, like a beautiful colour to start a painting.

Take us through a day in your life, from a possible morning routine through to your work, please.

I'm not a person that has too much of a daily routine, luckily.

But in the morning I normally start by having breakfast, preferably a fruit smoothie, with coca leaves tea at 8 am. After that I do some yoga, and then take a walk with my two dogs around my neighborhood. After having a meal I like to take a small nap, and I have the privilege of having the afternoon free to do whatever I want.  

Around this time, I am supposed to sit and work on music, but honestly I don't sit and work every day. Sometimes I just work in the garden, cleaning my house, putting things in order, or just go out to visit some friends.

Could you describe your creative process on the basis of a piece, live performance or album that's particularly dear to you, please?

I always start with the beats. If I have a bunch of new sounds to start a rhythm, that is enough for me to get inspired. After having found a good and powerful beat I go on with the acoustic instruments or synthesizer.

If I like what I did I start thinking of who can be the person that could add its magic to this idea, like a friend that sings, or plays an instrument very well.

If I really like the song I send it to my friend Andrés Oddone, who is my go-to-guy for mixing almost all my music. He is very good at that, and after this, the mastering follows with Sebastián Cordovés.

Listening can be both a solitary and a communal activity. Likewise, creating music can be private or collaborative. Can you talk about your preferences in this regard and how these constellations influence creative results?

I prefer to start playing alone, like an only son, and when I reach the point where I'm happy with my part I like to invite the friends or other musicians to join this creative process. I also enjoy a lot continuing what other friend started.

Over the last two years I did three collaborative EPs, one with the producer El Búho, another with the songwriter Luvi Torres, and the last one with the songwriter Loli Molina. The results are always a surprise for both sides and a good challenge.

How do your work and your creativity relate to the world and what is the role of music in society?

I want to believe that music helps to make this chaotic world a little bit better, or helps people in their inner processes of change. But honestly I can't claim that's a true.

I've always tried to do my best in sharing a good musical meal with the people, putting all my love in cooking every song over a slow fire, taking care of every single ingredient, to result in something nutritious. But it can be like fast food for someone else and that's fine.  

Now that I'm a little bit older, I trust much more in silence than in music as a factor that can help us to know ourselves much better and contribute to our wellness.

Art can be a way of dealing with the big topics in life: Life, loss, death, love, pain, and many more. In which way and on which occasions has music – both your own or that of others - contributed to your understanding of these questions?

Music provided me with an emotional support on many occasions. But always more in the sense of giving me good company, not as something that is a real healer in essence.

And saying this I'm not downplaying the power that good music can potentially have.

How do you see the connection between music and science and what can these two fields reveal about each other?  

I've never explored this area, but I have a couple of friends that are going deeper than me in this direction, and I'm trying to learn from their insights.

Creativity can reach many different corners of our lives. Do you feel as though writing or performing a piece of music is inherently different from something like making a great cup of coffee? What do you express through music that you couldn't or wouldn't in more 'mundane' tasks?

I've always used music as a language to express emotional needs, the things that one can't express in other way.

That is something that you can't do with mundane tasks, because when you need to talk about deeper things, you have to find a way to do that.

Music is vibration in the air, captured by our ear drums. From your perspective as a creator and listener, do you have an explanation how it able to transmit such diverse and potentially deep messages?

One tries to be as faithful as possible to the feeling you have in the moment of creation, and you know if it worked when someone comes to you and says "this song made me feel this way".  

The highest you can reach is when you (without knowing) imprint in a piece of art a sense of love, or divinity that every human being has, very deep in the heart.

But I suppose that it can happen only when you're connected with that dimension, and I had only free samples of it.