ARGENTINA:
Doctors Band Provides Remedy for Hearts and Souls

Marcela Valente


BUENOS AIRES, (IPS) - The popular conception that music is therapeutic is especially true in the case of the Argentine rock band Diga 33.

The keyboard-player is a gynecologist, the singer and drummer are pediatricians, the bass-player is an orthopedic surgeon, the lead guitar player an anesthetist, and the saxophone-player a cardiologist.

''Anyone can form a band, but we speak a common language,'' Mariano Toziano, gynecologist and keyboard-player, told IPS at the Naval Hospital, as his patients -- the group's biggest fans -- sat outside in the waiting room.

The band has been together for eight years, but only became known in Argentina in the past two years, after the release of its first compact disc, and thanks to its first hit, ''Diga 33''.

After that, the group began to hold concerts at a ''wide range'' of venues: medical congresses, hospitals, nightclubs, and on television programmes.

It has now produced its second compact disc, ''Silence Hospital'', presented in the form of a package of medicine, with a prospectus that divides the songs into categories: ''therapeutic action - produces pleasure and heals''; ''instructions for taking medicine - concerts Fridays and Saturdays''.

''There are no side-effects to listening to the group,'' reads the cover.

The lyrics are taken from hospital life and the typical complaints and questions of patients, and the songs complain sarcastically about the precarious conditions of health care in Argentina, which has just begun to pull out of a recession and economic crisis that has dragged on for several years.

Over the past eight years, the band has explored a number of genres, but it has finally settled into its own style, a combination of rock, jazz and soul. It has the respect of other musicians, like Gustavo Ceratti, the head of the now-defunct popular local rock band Soda Stereo.

''We don't want to sound like amateurs,'' says Toziano, and they don't. All of the members studied music -- either voice or an instrument -- for years, one is a guitar-maker, and at least two had already embarked on musical careers prior to forming part of the band.

''If I was born again, I would choose medicine. But I've been singing practically since I was born,'' pediatrician Griselda Berberián told IPS. While she was in medical school, she sang in choirs and studied opera. Since her children were born, she tries to ''shout at them in tune,'' she joked.

Diga 33 is not the first band made up of doctors in Argentina. At least one, Mala Praxis (malpractice), continues to perform, and some still remember the folk group Los Tordos (''the doctors'' in the slang of the Rio de la Plata region).

But Diga 33 is the first all-doctor band, and the first to grow beyond a limited circle of followers. ''No doctors' group had recorded an album, and we already have two,'' enthuses Toziano, although for now the music merely covers the band's expenses.

In medicine, ''we often have to deal with really complex problems, which is why you need other activities,'' to let off steam, said Berberián, who works at the Garraham Hospital, a specialised pediatric institution that receives referrals and patients from all over South America.

In their music and work, the members of Diga 33 have run into many medical colleagues in the world of music, and many musicians in the world of medicine.

Journalist and neurosurgeon Nelson Castro confessed that he is also a pianist, during a televised interview with Diga 33. The choir director at the Colon Theatre, Gabriel Senases, is an oncologist, and also plays the saxophone, sometimes teaming up with local rock bands. And the president of the Happiness Society is a violinist, to name just a few cases.

Drummer Carlos Riganti is head of pediatrics and of the allergy department at the Pedro de Elizalde Hospital. The veteran musician in the band, Riganti used to play with the well-known rock and jazz-rock groups Materia Gris and Alas.

Toziano and Riganti studied at the National Conservatory of Music, and Toziano previously formed part of the band Marabunta.

Cardiologist Daniel Ferrante played the saxophone in a television orchestra until one day, as he was driving a patient to cardiovascular surgery, a colleague remarked that he had seen an ad for a saxophonist. That is how he joined Diga 33.

The band was completed with guitarrist Roberto Pérez, an anesthetist at the Naval Hospital, and bass-player Daniel Marcó, an orthopedic surgeon at the Mitre Hospital, who also makes hand-made guitars.

Patients are proud that their doctors are also musicians, said Toziano. ''Sometimes they call us up at the office to ask where we're playing.''

The doctors' patients and colleagues are the group's biggest fans and best source of publicity.

''Over the past few weeks, I've been noticing that nearly 80 percent of my patients tell me they saw us on TV, read something about our new album in the newspaper, or heard one of our songs on the radio,'' says Toziano.

One verse of the song ''Diga 33'', written by Toziano, says ''I have 10 minutes to do check-ups/The list of patients is long, and can't be shortened/Don't make any mistake with the patient/ In a trial they won't give you any prize/''.

Other songs are ''I Gave You that Scar'', ''No Remedy'', ''They're Taking Me to the Operating Room'', ''There's Your Doctor'', and ''Another Birth in the City''.

''Neither chicken, nor eggs, nor meat/ And don't even mention vegetables/ If he sees a piece of lettuce/ He throws up'', complains a mother in the song ''My Little Darling Won't Eat'' -- a typical problem pediatricians run into.