#danielravinovich

Today, one of the great comical geniuses died, Daniel Ravinovich from Les Luthiers.

There are many things I remember growing up. One of my earliest memories was being scared of the weird noises coming out of a record my mother played. This record also had a matching creepy looking cover that even though scared me a bit, I could not stop staring at. That was my first interactions with Les Luthiers. 

Many years later, YouTube started getting popular. One day my mom & I were in the living room. She was on the computer looking at videos, I was sitting next to her doing something else (I honestly don’t remember). For some reason I got curious and looked at the screen. The first thing I remember watching was a fan made video for the song "Teorema de Thales". Two things happened in that moment: 

1) I finally understood Thales of Miletus Intercept Theorem. 2) I fell in love with Les Luthiers.

I was so blown away. I can not begin to explain how awesome it was for me. Comedy with brains!

My dad always said that for someone to understand and like Les Luthiers you would have to be a very cultivated person. He was absolutely right. These guys made jokes about history, literature, social movements, all while playing PERFECT executions of songs that ranged from Ragtime, Tango, Boleros, Jazz, Opera, Mariachi... the list goes on and on. AND to top it all off THEY MADE THEIR OWN INSTRUMENTS!!! How freakin' ingenious of these guys to make a violin out of a metal containers for ham! Or a typewriter that plays the xylophone!! among so many other great instruments.

That's why they're called Les Luthiers. Luthier is the person who makes and/or repairs string instruments. AT LEAST half of what they used on stage is made by them.

And not only did they have witty jokes and mad skills as inventors. They had perfect comic timing and were excellent mimes.

It's not hard to see WHY I fell in love with them.

At first I watched as many videos as I could find and started memorizing my favorite sketches. I couldn’t get enough. Later I started to hear their albums. Turns out that the scary sounds I heard as a kid were kazoos and that creepy looking cover was actually their first album "Sonamos, pese a todo".

Discovering this band changed my life. I've tried to share them every time I get a chance. I’ve made friends because other people knew about them. And every time I meet someone from Argentina I’ve always asked them if they know about the group. The answer has always been yes accompanied by a very pleasantly surprised face. Followed by an awesome conversation.

It’s funny how life is. Just a couple of day ago I started to hear them avidly again. I never got a chance to see them live and I’d always joke by saying that I wanted to go see them before they died on me. Joke’s on me now.

Daniel Ravinovich was one of my favorite if not my favorite member of this group. He ALWAYS made me laugh. I’ll never forget how he made my mom laugh to the point of tears with “Se destetó Teté” where he would read a text for the audience and fail by reading it horribly and mixing up words and their grammatical emphasis. She used to say that it made her laugh so much because that was the way she read out loud (which is true, she had some dyslexia).

I will miss him dearly.