Paulo Gutierrez (Manteca) was born 1974 Cerro Montevideo Uruguay.
His love for Uruguayan music and percussion started when he was seven years old, performing at the Children’s Carnaval festivals and Parades with (La Murguita del Cerro) a street theatre Choir in the form of Uruguayan Murga.
At 16 he was already touring, on this occasion with the Uruguayan Murga “Las Geishas”.
In 1992 he moved to Melbourne and joined La Murga de Melbourne and Urucandombe, both communities full of Uruguayan traditions and sounds, both based at the Footscray Community Art Center.
In the year 1993, Manteca and a bunch of other musicians created “Tintillo” a seven piece candombe music band that performed in Melbourne and Sydney.
1998 He joined the “Multicultural Choir” that sang in different languages. With them he started the project “The color of water”, it was and still is the only Murga project composed in English language by local Melbourne artists, sang and performed by a 70 piece Choir, the project was completed in 2001.
In 1999 he was part of the “Pedro Figari Drumming Group” that was part of the murga project and performed all over Melbourne’s festivals and events with the idea of integrating into the Melbourne community the Uruguayan culture and music. With Andres, Magela Varela and more amazing people from this group, Manteca had this vibrant projection to showcase Candombe and Murga to this beautiful city.
In 2008 with long time friend and performing partner Cecilia Correa they embarked on the project called Rimbombe –Momo’s Groove, Momo being the god of Uruguayan Carnival, the group was focused on detailed choreographic movements, esthetics and creativite, it was an explosion of colour, movement and tradition.
In 2018 he had the opportunity of going back to Uruguay, to perform at the Carnaval with “Negranzas” a candombe comparsa group that performed in the biggest stage of candombe: “Las Llamadas”.
Nowadays he found another way of candombe, fusioning it with tango, then the result is Tango Mood (Tango+Candombe).
Photo: @MailenRamirez