Aliverti Galeano Once inside, while the echo drops on the roof of the fibro easy, it accelerates the pace to cross the garden by a brick road. With wet hands, opened a glass door and enters his study, a kind of barbecue acclimated to it. The place, painted in red, is lit by a window of three leaves with white frame. There are two L-shaped desk with two notebooks, numerous books and notebooks. The walls extend seven shelves crammed with books and two CD's, up from the parquet to the ceiling.
"I have over 2500 books of twentieth century history, communications, popular music and English books on jazz and rock because there is not much translated into Castilian-walks to a kichinet in the corner, where she prepares coffee smoothie. Sergio, relies on his workplace, a hand-painted tray with three cups white and sits in a black chair recliner. 
"I put cream, is a vice that I have a fat-suppressed opens on powder and ensures that the recorder is in place. "I'm a pretty voracious reader." -Leo all. Things that give me, things I look for historians. Some very specific, very historiographical bat. There is an Italian, Carlos Ginzburg, who has played such topics as witchcraft in the Middle Ages. Hobsbawm also really like. Dehistoria Argentina read some things, I'm not a big fan. Like Halperin Donghi, Romero, of course, but I'm not a guy who is extremely aware of what is published in Argentina, because my obligation as a teacher is the history of the twentieth century, sipped coffee, sat back and legs folded after several authors like me. Fiction, essays, for example-there are people who are not well known Guinz-Dari, a jazz critic writing in America. I have all his books in English because there is no translation here.
In terms of fiction, says he has read Borges, Cortazar, Emmanuel Puig, Tomas Eloy Martinez, Vargas Llosa and Gabriel García Márquez Kafka. However, very few states that buys books, but that "manguea."
"The fiction does not need them because it is rare to re-read them. If you work in literature itself, but it is a pleasant read, thoroughly enjoyable. Sergio Pujol
gotten down to writing books based mostly on research carried out at different times of his life.
"Since I entered the CONICET in '92, I am a research assistant. My obligation to work is to propose a research topic. From the beginning I had two options, or let my works within the academia, basically could publish reports following a college career, or turned into books that have a wider audience, an audience of more general interest. My books are narrative, I am very interested in narrative. There are novels are works of research, but in some cases, for example, in the biography of Yupanqui did a few years ago, I started telling a story of him with his father in the fields of Pergamino and music heard in the Gauchos that time. Are used as narrative strategies. In the last I wrote, tell personal stories, not many but there is a more subjective view, fees that would be inadmissible CONICET.
- What is your new book? About
-Argentine songs, called "Songs of Argentina, 1910-2010". Every song I dedicate an essay of three or four pages. I begin with a tango and ended with a song by Lisandro Estimunio. Are a hundred years of national music. I actually had ordered a book on the bicentennial, but the truth is that I found many songs of the nineteenth century. Then I started at ten, and where are the cultural industries, mass media, radio appears shortly after. It is very essay where I tell stories because they are listening to songs that I come from my childhood and I consider the great songs Argentina.
Seconds later, turn the chair to the notebook and in silence, looking the picture of the cover of his next publication. Points to the monitor with your finger and says: "This is a jukebox here are four stickers Charly, Atahaualpa, Maria Elena Walsh and Carlos Gardel." While watching the display says he seeks to convey is the idea of \u200b\u200bhistory that is represented by the jukebox and the gender difference discussed in the book: tango, children's songs - popular, folk and rock. Moreover, the continuity through time, start with Gardel and ends with Charly García. Pujol
seems proud of his new product, even in the screen saver image appears on the cover.
"Of the books you wrote, what is your favorite?
-The latest always seems the best but there is one called "History of Dance. Candombe to disk "which took in '99 which is great. Is it wrong for me to say that ... (laughs) I'll see if next year he reissued at another house, stopped, took a library book, Emecé edition, which has a pair of tango in the front-Always I grab the doubts in the pre-departure stage the book. What happens is that when I published the first nothing happened, had no comment, however now the books are annotated, that's nice but you feel exposed. In the worst say "a slip of Pujol" ... not going to shoot me, smiled and leaned back in the leather chair. Sergio, who knows a lot of national historiographical production at present referred to this issue.
He is working hard on recent history. Furthermore, the present political situation Argentina is very suitable for the seventy books, there is much political turmoil and are interesting subjects. Today a history book in 1500 copies can shoot in the sixties and early seventies, did not lose a successful one hundred thousand. Has fragmented the market is a bit more fragmented, more diverse, the picture is richer and, at the same time, no authors have achieved a mark on the market. Now, in general, there are many low arrival historiographic the general public and what arrives is not the best, say, is very digestible, very tame to be material for disclosure. I refer to a reading public, "cult" that goes to the movies, sometimes going to see an exhibition of pictures, going to the theater, read the newspaper every day ... that reader is, I think, has moved away a bit of history as reading material. I realized when I did "Rock and dictatorship", a book on the music of '76 to '83, the impact it had on guys, people who were not born or was born more or less for those years.
"As a music lover, I would say that," The two peak hours and wear all day in my house, an hour and a half is jazz "
Sergio Pujol, sets his sights on the white shelf says it has about 1500 albums, the most diverse genres. Some bought and others went down to the computer to record on a disk and add them to the collection. He began to hear in long play, followed with the cassettes, which still, but now listen to CD and then do not plan to move. His fondness for reading is evident, but the music also plays a very important in your life.
"Maybe not so important for me to make music driven. It is a passive, a place of pleasure, recreation. Actor I'm not there, I'm not musical protagonist. I chose to sit in an armchair, and public. But on the other hand, music journalism, music criticism, let me out of this situation as passive spectators and intervene in the artistic event, reviewing, analyzing ... a most "intellectual." As the critic of literature, film.
- Do you play any instruments?
"Yes, the guitar ... but too bad (laughs) My son plays well, approached the ledge where he took his right, front row of books, a photograph of her eldest son, Ulysses, when he was small. Sergio
When talking about music can not help but go back to his youth because, as he studied his college career, he wrote a column for the newspaper's Music Day sent it to every concert that was in the city and it means "touch the sky hands. " Pujol preferences are indisputable. Behind them, in the bookcase that holds about five hundred books on musical topics, highlights, from the loins of colors, the word Jazz.
"As a music lover, a lover of music, I would say that the two peak hours and wear all day in my house, an hour and a half is jazz. I love and I updated with that though I hear a little of everything. I went several times to New York, I love to stay in a hotel which is near Broadway and go to every bar in jazz.
-In today's music, what do you like?
Tango "Some things they are doing now that I think are brilliant. Songwriters in which is rock, that came now, I like Gabo, Lisandro Estimugnio, some things ... "Giovanni Molina, his dog, barking in the rain and Sergio loses the thread of what he spoke. With his chin resting on his hand, looked into the garden, and after a few seconds, took up the conversation I also like Bob Dylan, the Beatles, the Rolling Stone, these classics. Always hear them and know them very well, if I hear one or two chords, I can tell you what it is because the music is heard as a teenager and what marked me forever. I created a very big psychological impact because it is what he did enter the world of music. Do not forget it again that is in your DNA forever.
"Teaching is an immediate way to give back to society what one has studied in a public university."
Sergio Pujol is a professor of the Chair of History of the Twentieth Century, School of Journalism and Communication at the UNLP, since it was received as a historian at twenty years. This is the only campus where he teaches because, academically, the school teaches in EMU Buenos Aires music on Jazz Styles. For him, teaching is very rewarding because she considers it "an immediate way to give back to society what one has studied in a public university. Is a back and forth between knowledge and new generations. "
Another aspect that stands out from the profession is that, when in contact with young people every year faces the same challenge, attracting the attention of students defined as those individuals who live "this very intensively and have developed a historical mindset of be part of a long process. " To achieve its goal using different strategies, for example, the story of their experiences. A classic, is his visit to Berlin in 1989, which led him to be at the time and place: the Berlin Wall. During his stay bought a portion of it, and since years leads to classes to show and tell them that on one occasion, went to the shelf where he kept the piece of history and not find it. When asked if her maid had seen, it replied that he had thrown the "rubble." Sergio rummaged through the trash until he found him.
Anecdotes are a resource that Pujol used to confront the lack of communication students who work, especially with today. Such a challenge is that, as Bernard Shaw says: "Journalism is a vast sea of \u200b\u200bknowledge with an inch deep." Contact
abroad
Sergio
Pujol has given lectures and seminars in different American universities such as Princeton, Grinnell and Birmingham, whose exhibits were on tango because according to him, this genre is "Trojan horse" that allows entry into the international arena. In 2001 he spent four months in Iowa, invited by a grant, a program for writers around the world whose only obligation was, every fortnight, a presentation on Argentina. At that time, his talks were about Perón, Evita, Maradona and Che Guevara, but also took the opportunity to introduce other issues such as folklore, tango, country rock and a little history. Referring to this, the historian and writer said it was an unforgettable experience because I never had the opportunity to work from morning to night, only to write. From that time in this "dreary small town, farms, streets and houses ordered the same," came his book about the '60s called "The Rebel decade", published in 2002. While his experience abroad was pleasant, the fact is he never wanted to leave for a long time due to family relationships. Pujol, who is considered a "familiero guy" prefers to stay in Argentina with his wife, his son Philip for three years and twenty-three Ulysses.
