The great journey of Iván Singh, the guitarist from Córdoba who plays in the major blues leagues in Chicago

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Iván Singh from Córdoba is making history in Chicago, the cradle of blues, the genre he has been playing for almost as long as he can remember. At 31 years old, the guitarist and singer got his ticket to the big leagues sponsored by legends like Buddy Guy himself, in whose club he regularly plays.

After five years without returning to Argentina, and with adventures worthy of a globetrotter, Singh was in Córdoba this summer to play at La Casita del Blues inside the Cosquín Rock, and at the Bebop Club in Buenos Aires.

Before returning to Chicago, he stopped by VOS to talk about the “American dream” that, after much effort, began to become a reality for him.

Ivan Singh, blues guitarist. (José Gabrel Hernández / The Voice)

Un “latin blues man”

Hat, open shirt with the chest exposed, ripped jeans and white snake leather boots (matching the strap of his viola). This is how Singh arrives at the Editorial Office, accompanied by his American girlfriend and his guitars.

One, his faithful companion: the “sweet potato”, neither more nor less than an old can of sweet potato candy converted into a four-string guitar, with a special tuning. That is his presentation mark, although for a year he has also been a Gibson guitarist, using an impressive Flying V.

But Ivan’s journey began five years ago in Sweden, where he had obtained a Work & Travel visa. That country was not a good place to play blues.

“I had to go to Denmark, that is, to another country, every Thursday to play. He would grab the bicycle, cross a whole field, leave it at the train station, cross from Malmö to Copenhagen, and play in a blues club called Mojo. He would earn a few mangoes, and I would return, again by train and bicycle.”

Ivan Singh, blues guitarist. (José Gabriel Hernández / The Voice)

Then he went to Spain, where he stayed for a year and a half, and then ended up in London, where the pandemic caught him. “I really wanted to return to Argentina. I was already running out of money, but you couldn’t fly from London here. Then a friend told me to go to Mexico, to a place that I still have in my heart called Puerto Escondido, in Oaxaca. I had about 600 euros left, I didn’t have money for Europe, but with that money in Mexico I was doing well.”

The jump to the United States and the strokes of luck

There a Yankee producer saw him play and invited him to a festival in New York. He took advantage of that opportunity to dust off some contacts he had from two previous times he had gone to Chicago, the birthplace of the blues. He spoke with the people at the Tony de Rosas Lounge (“I’m still playing there, but now we’re sold out”), a cult club that this year celebrates 40 years of history.

“The manager told me: ‘Come, I can’t offer you much, but you can sleep upstairs. I buy you some peanut butter and chicken to throw, and you play. “I can put you with the legends as an opener.”

He was going to stay for a week, but they offered him to stay for a month to do more shows. “I saw that each little show there paid me 10 times more than in Mexico.”

Luck was on his side again. At one of those shows he met Johnny Slim, who is Buddy Guy’s MC. “He told me ‘we’re going to reopen Legends, Buddy Guy’s club.’ Why don’t you come on Wednesday?’”

Iván Singh and Buddy Guy, pure and fine bluesy tune. (Courtesy Ivan Singh)

And that was the first time he was able to play with the iconic guitarist, without knowing that Buddy was going to be there. “They ask me, can you play a couple of songs until the band arrives? And yes, the guy when he’s not on tour goes to his club. He sits in the corner, sips his cognac and watches. And well, I was playing a note and I looked at him for approval. In one of those I see him stop and I thought he was going to leave. But then I see that the guy was actually walking on stage, and he got up and sang some blues with us. And that was like a click for me.”

Today he can say that that was a decisive moment in his life. “The manager of the club told me: ‘Buddy liked what you did, we want something like that, fresh, the sweet potato is good, you’re Latin.’ There it was like an (he snaps his fingers in the air) American dream. Because that’s where it all started, you see.”

Buddy Guy’s team began to help him manage his legal stay in the United States, with letters that endorsed his work and confirmed that they wanted to hire him.

“I even got support from Dave Guerrero, who is an incredible artist, through whom I met Gary Clark Jr., and from John Primer (he was Muddy Waters’ guitarist) and from Billy Branch. All of them, without really knowing me very much because they had seen me at a show and I, with the best respect I could in that situation, which is a bit desperate, I asked them if they could give me a hand.”

–Why did you turn around so much to try your luck there, and did you look elsewhere before?

–I always wanted to be in the United States playing, but… the psyche is very strange. At some point, unconsciously or consciously, I never felt like I was enough for that market. And I thought that Europe was going to be easier for me and ultimately, pivot, go learn and come back. I thought that being black, Latino, and playing with a can of sweet potato candy with strings, I was not at that level. In reality it was absolutely the opposite: all of that was what gave me the opportunity to stand out alongside artists who had everything else. So, I sang and said the verbs backwards, and people loved it. Every time I say, and it continues to happen, something in Spanish, there is applause and shouting.

–What public is going to see you there?

–I usually play at Buddy’s club once a month. At first he played every week. They have several formats: the acoustic, the opener and the headliner. At the beginning he only did acoustics and openers by good artists, like John Primer, Billy Branch, people with whom the public could also match. And it started to go well for me and for a year now I have only been a headliner. I do one Saturday a month and it goes very well, we get a lot of people. Many African Americans, Latinos and girls go. I put together my band with seven musicians, and we did the openning for Buddy Guy himself two days before I came here.

He understood the “business”

Singh understood the business and the different stages that a musician has to complete to have a successful career in the North American industry. Thus he put together a show that “starts paying respect, as they say there” to the blues roots, but from a side that he calls himself hoochie coochie latin boy, and then takes it to the Latin.

–You had the touch since you were here, but now I see that you gained another weight on stage. You have a different attitude, more confident. You already had the tricks, but now you do a complete “magic show”?

–Yes, I say it is the showcase of the United States. It is a complex market where playing well is fundamental and the main thing, and from there, is to see what you have to give. Here comes how you look, the important thing is that you are striking, or because you are cute, you are strange, you have a hat or whatever; Then you have to be able to sing and put on a good show, and the last little step that can put you in the first A is that you can also write good songs. I kind of understood that ABCDE, of how to work in the United States.

Iván says that on the guitar he feels like a fish in water, and that the less he thinks, the better he plays. “It has been a long time since I did the exercise of not seeing the mast anymore. I’m always either looking up or very focused in my head, but I don’t see it on the mast, I’m seeing it in front of me, as if they were little drawings.”

What he did do was focus a lot on learning to sing, even though he knows that he will always be “a guitarist who sings.” “All of that ended up matching the live product, now my big job is to be able to project that into albums,” he says.

His relationship with Buddy Guy, the great guitarist who has sponsored him, had a lot to do with that maturation. As if to give an idea of ​​Guy’s relevance, he is the idol of Keith Richard of the Rolling Stones. “I always treat him with great delicacy, respect and love. He turned 87 now. I saw him play a lot in the whole expression of him, and I saw how he runs the show. “I absorbed a lot from there.”

Ivan Singh, blues guitarist. (José Gabriel Hernández / The Voice)

Your trip through India

Last year, the man from Córdoba once again had an incredible sign of destiny, when he was chosen to be part of the Chicago delegation led by Buddy Guy at the Bombay Blues Festival, in India, in February 2023.

It was a musical meeting in which other living legends participated, such as Taj Mahal. The previous year Joss Stone had been there, and other times Susan Tedeschi, Derek Trucks and ZZ Top had traveled.

“Before I went I thought there was no way, it was a festival where all my idols went…, but it happened.”

In India he experienced an explosion, also because he has Hindu roots due to his last name. The country’s edition of Rolling Stone magazine did an extensive interview with him, and he played with his full band before 10,000 people, in addition to also playing as Buddy Guy’s guest together on stage.

That also opened the doors to Europe again, where he went to play three times during 2023.

“After that I was able to buy my first Mustang, because I expect several to come (laughs).” For now, it was now also possible to buy and customize a Harley Davidson.

Buddy Guy’s life lesson

There is a very good anecdote about the first time Buddy Guy invited him to his house, and how a cooking lesson became a life lesson.

While he wanted to ask him about the guitars, and he was teaching him how to make gumbo, which is a traditional Louisiana food, he started asking him the steps, to see if he had learned.

“‘How much salt and how many spices did I put in it?’, he asks me, and I tell him: ‘I don’t know, I saw you grab him and throw him like that at his hand.’ He tells me: ‘Well, you have to put what you think, what you feel. The best thing that can happen to you is that you find your own flavor. There he looked at me and said ‘I always wanted to sound like BB King, and the best thing that happened to me is that I sounded like Buddy Guy’, and there I understood the click that it has to be you, tell your own story and name yourself from your place”.

Ivan Singh, blues guitarist. (José Gabriel Hernández / The Voice)

That gave him extra confidence. “It is what also inspires me to be able to stand next to my idols and play, because, obviously, I recoil, but I come from so far away, and I represent the entire history that I learned at the beginning, which is Pappo, Botafogo, Manal , Skay, all the Argentine rock and guitar, and I can put them on a stage next to the legends of the history of the guitar, like Buddy Guy and Taj Mahal… I feel like it’s like the blues says: ‘I ‘m a man and I’m ready’. Chicago and the United States finished forming me, and I ended up finding myself there.”