after the Creole singer-songwriter with a smile as a vital attitude

By Martin Maidana

“In music, I define myself as a Creole singer-songwriter, because I have realized that I have a great influence from our Creole history, from our Creole rhythms, and this is what I am transmitting through my music, through what I love. as a person; even with my suits”, he tells her
Portal Montevideo Catherine Vergnes (Paysandú, 1996) when asked to define herself.

Its connection with folklore has different dimensions, but they are all related to the environment, the territory and the family as the first space of socialization. “I have a great relationship with the field. My father is a beekeeper and my mother is a teacher and both have lived in the countryside all their lives. My mother, as a teacher, is also passionate about traditional learning. I am very grateful to my mother who always kept the Uruguayan history in mind, that she knew about us. But the relationship with the field comes from both of us, more than anything from my father, who has always worked on the field. We have had a farm for years, which has grown day by day and is now where I live. So, on the one hand there is the village, the village itself and on the other hand everything that is a lesson about our roots, about our traditions, which makes me like folklore so much”, he explains.

In that environment, since childhood, he followed a path of continuous growth alongside the guitar. First hanging around what his mother had and then learning to master the strings to choose what range of sounds and silences would accompany his singing. “At the age of 7, I started lessons. I used to spend a lot of time with the guitar and when I could I played strings, but without knowing anything. From there I never stopped. Within a week I was with La ariscona, with Milagro… It was as if I had a very great fluidity and spent myself closed, rehearsing, because I liked it”, says Catherine, who feels the guitar as a childhood companion .

Sapucai to be afraid

At the age of 8 she was already on the local stage, in Paysandú, where she was invited to participate. “Little by little, like that, I added scenarios. I was at Paysandú’s celebrations, at Leandro Gómez’s events, at the school party… I became an artist from a young age and I also overcame a personal fear, because I was a very introverted, very silent girl. Suddenly the thing of being in front of people, of mistakes and accepting them or letting them go unnoticed happened to me”, he explains, showing that the support of his family has been essential throughout his artistic process , which was not only that. of his parents.

I remember my brother saying ‘come on Kathy, it works for you. “If I hear you play guitar every day,” he says. With her he spent a lot of time listening to music and singing, as well as sharing the faith through the Salesian experience. “I did ballet with my sister all my childhood. I shared what the body expression was, the mood… I got all those things with him”, he adds, emphasizing that the support of his brothers is a support that he continues to feel: “They continue to get excited and continue to take nervous when they see me on top of the landscape”.

Family support has been cardinal, as well as education. “It gives you an opening and you overcome yourself and realize that you can achieve more”, he emphasizes, also emphasizing the personal attitude that he summarizes in “having courage”. “It makes one brave, that no matter how much fear or shame one may have, in the end you always end up going on stage and destroying everything.”

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Laura, the ‘little classmate’ who encouraged that girl

The daughter of a popular singer and the granddaughter of a lyricist, it was not surprising that Laura Elduayen became, as a mother, the main channel for the transmission of artistic concern. It has been a fundamental pillar in her daughter’s career, as Katerina herself points out. To explain the relationship between the two, it is perhaps sufficient to show that they refer to themselves as “friends”.

“He has had the gift since he was a child, with which he was born and cultivated with years of study; “She never stopped learning,” says Laura, recalling that it wasn’t just the lessons with her first teacher, but also the music school, as well as lessons in Montevideo and a bunch of training sessions. “It gave her a lot to learn, but it also happened that Cathy cultivated what every child has, and this should be encouraged by attentive parents. We encouraged what he liked, as we did with the three children,” he says.

As a child, Catherine “also entered her own world, she closed herself off with the jukebox and CD player. We bought a lot of material from different genres, not only folklore, and she listened to everything, but she gave and gave folklore”.

When she started taking guitar lessons, she focused on “classical folk, which was what she liked,” and that’s how it developed, Laura says. In adolescence, he could no longer contain the need to compose. Although Catherine “has many songs written”, one in particular, which the artist does not include in her public repertoire, sums up who “is a person with a guitar and another without a guitar”. “The song is called “My guitar speaks for me”. That’s how it was and that’s how it has been until now,” emphasizes Laura.

The smile that infects

In 2019, Vergnes won the Revelation Award at Patria Gaucha; in 2020, the Muse of Hum; in 2022, Charrúa de Oro. They are landmarks of a journey that has seen him travel across Uruguay from end to end and perform in some of the most important places in the region, such as Cosquín and Jesús María in Argentina, or Expo Esteio in Rio Grande do Sul, Brazil. He represented Uruguay at International Folklore Festivals in Serbia, Hungary and Italy, as well as in Brazil and Argentina. His recording work has won awards, such as the best folk album in Graffitis.

Her voice, as well as the energy she transmits from the stage, have been established as some of the characteristic elements of the artistic profile of someone who is also a psychologist.

Katerina admits that she feels comfortable being defined as ‘the smile of folklore’. “That nickname is divine. Years ago, at a festival, a presenter said ‘now we will welcome the smile of folklore’. And that was very nice because smiling is part of an attitude I have towards life: smiling at it. Behind that smile there are definitely many disappointments, downs and overs. But despite all this, the smile should always be there, because the positive attitude should always be there in all circumstances. It’s my daily attitude and, obviously, it’s something that’s reflected on stage. Many people accept it and are infected. There are people who tell me about the energy that I transmit to them, about the energy that my group transmits, which today I call ‘The smiles of folklore’ – he says and laughs-. You watch them on the show and there is really a lot of joy, a contagious smile; It has an attitude that is contagious.”