Milonga Loca playlist, May 27, 2017

This holiday weekend, I was asked to take over a mixed-traditional and alternative milonga at a venue where I never played and never set up anything. We arrived 40 minutes early to make sure there are no big surprises. Soon, I started playing music - not for dancers yet, but more like a sound check and a mood-setter for the setup
01. Bajofondo/Ryota Komatsu  "Pa' Bailar (Con Ryota Komatsu)" 2007 3:59
02. Bajofondo "Leonel, El Feo" 2005 5:40
03. Otros Aires  "Perro Viejo" 2016 3:21
04. Leonid Bykov  "Smuglyanka cortina long"  0:33
05. Haris Alexiou  "To Tango Tis Nefelis" 1998 4:07
06. Hindi Zahra  "Beautiful Tango" 2011 3:57
07. Souad Massi  "Ghir Enta" 2008 5:06
First dancers show up, as if on a cue, right at the beginning of the first "scheduled", traditional tanda

08. Aya RL  "Skora"  0:33
09. Enrique Rodríguez - Armando Moreno "Adios para siempre" 1943 3:11
10. Enrique Rodríguez - Roberto Flores  "Te quiero ver escopeta" 1939 2:38
11. Enrique Rodríguez - Fernando Reyes "Alma en pena" 1946 3:05
12. Maya Kristalinskaya  "Nezhnost (Tenderness)"  0:17
13. Francisco Lomuto - Instrumental  "Criolla Linda" 1942 2:39
14. Francisco Lomuto - Instrumental  "Sentimiento guacho" 1942 2:55
15. Francisco Lomuto - Instrumental "Catamarca" 1943 2:34
16. Maya Kristalinskaya  "A za oknom"  0:16

Todotango picture

May is the birthday month of one of the tango pioneers, an Afro-Argentine Félix Gutiérrez. "El Negro" Gutiérrez, born on May 19, 1909, has made his way into tango by a lucky chance. In his teens, Félix Gutiérrez was a promising amateur boxer, and, having won a championship in his hometown Mar del Plata, he decided to move to Buenos Aires to pursue a professional career. But he also liked to play guitar and to sing, so he wanted to continue taking guitar lessons in the capital city. The music school Gutiérrez chose was run by ... Julio de Caro's father. And soon, the 17 year-old aspiring boxer started singing in De Caro's orchestra, and abandoned plans of a career in sports. The times were getting tough with the start of the Great Depression. Like most musicians of the time, Felix tried making a living in different groups and in different styles, but nothing lasted. At last, he was invited to join the orchestra of Edgardo Donato, and won instant acclaim! Their first, seminal song, "El huracan", will be played late during the milonga. Let's start honoring Félix Gutiérrez with his stellar 1936 vals:
17. Edgardo Donato - Horacio Lagos "Quién Será (Vals)" 1941 2:15
18. Edgardo Donato - Horacio Lagos "Con tus besos" 1938 2:20
19. Edgardo Donato - Félix Gutiérrez "La Tapera (Vals)" 1936  2:54
20. Pink Floyd  "Goodbye Blue Sky cortina long 2"  0:29
21. Soha  "Mil Pasos" 2008 4:07
22. Alacran  "Reflejo De Luna" 2010 3:44
23. Cirque du Soleil "Querer" 1994 4:34
24.  "Noladeti La shalom cortina"  0:36
25. Fool's Garden "Lemon Tree" 1999 3:11
26. Jason Mraz  "I'm Yours" 2008 4:20
27. Damour Vocal Band  "Sway"  3:49
28. Lyube  "Bat'ka Makhno cortina 1"  0:18
29. Otros Aires  "Los Vino`" 2010 2:43
30. Kevin Johansen + the Nada "Sur o No Sur" 2002 4:53
31. Juan Carlos Cáceres "Tango Negro" 2003 3:45
32. Zhanna Aguzarova "Old Hotel" 1987 0:22
33. Pedro Laurenz - Juan Carlos Casas "Vieja Amiga" 1938 3:13
34. Pedro Laurenz - Juan Carlos Casas "Desconsuelo" 1940 2:29
35. Pedro Laurenz - Juan Carlos Casas "No me extrana" 1940 2:44
36.  "Nature doesn't have bad weather"  0:24
The 2nd tanda with the voice of Félix Gutiérrez and Donato's orchestra. I believe that "El huracan", "The hurricane", with its powerfully rhythmic, accelerated music was the forerunner of the D'Arienzo revolution, which is credited with saving tango a mere 3 years later. In the early 1930s, when the popularity of tango dancing waned and the economy was in the dumps, few tango orchestras could survive playing music for the remaining dancers. Many disbanded altogether; others, like Canaro's and Fresedo's, transitioned to performances, theaters, and movies. But Donato's mostly immigrant Uruguayan outfit stayed course, modernizing the vibe of the tango music in the process, getting the younger generation to pay attention to what once was their parents' dance form. In 1932, Edgardo Donato won a contract with a new recording studio, the ascendant "Victor". The orchestra needed to make a bold opening statement, and Donato hired Félix Gutiérrez and recorded "El huracan" for its debut. As it was customary for the era, the vocalist sings just a part of one of the three stanzas, and a part of one bridge - but in this case, the verse libre stanza about a rose bush destroyed by the hurricane is recited, bitterly, rather than sung. The lines of the bridge then tell of an insincere woman who destroyed the dreams, whose kisses were ice-cold and whose heart was full of hidden venom ... but without knowing the skipped lines, you might not guess that it was the woman who was metaphorized as the hurricane of destruction in the opening stanza. 
37. Edgardo Donato - Félix Gutiérrez "El Huracan" 1932 2:56
38. Edgardo Donato - Instrumental "El Estagiario" 1938 2:26
39. Edgardo Donato - Félix Gutiérrez "Santa Milonguita" 1933 2:23
40. Maya Kristalinskaya  "A za oknom"  0:16
41. Quinteto Pirincho - Instrumental "María Esther" 1943 2:31
42. Quinteto Pirincho - Instrumental "Francia" 1943 2:40
43. Quinteto Pirincho - Instrumental "Vibraciones del alma" 1956 2:51
44. "Hagedel Sheli"  0:28

Orquesta Romantica Milonguera has just released its first album, and the raspy voice of Marisol Martinez sounded quite remarkable, so I couldn't resist putting together a tanda. But with the studio speakers, I got an impression that the sound was somewhat dull, not as juicy as it seemed on the laptop... 
45. Romantica Milonguera - Marisol Martinez  "En esta noche de luna" 2017 3:37
46. Romantica Milonguera - Marisol Martinez  "Oigo tu voz" 2017 3:13
47. Romantica Milonguera - Marisol Martinez  "Solamente ella" 2017 3:22
48. Zhanna Aguzarova "Cats" 1987 0:21

Hector Maure

I often play tangos from D'Arienzo's earliest periods, both instrumental and with the voice of Echague, accented by ringing-crystal piano keys of Biagi (until 1938) and Polito (until 1940). Both Biagi and Polito left to lead their own orchestras, and took a number of key musicians with them (the first one achieved remarkable success, while the second one was kept off best venues and recording studios by the increased clout of Juan Polito's former employer). But as it happened repeatedly, "The King of the Beat" rebuilt his orchestra with a remarkable continuity. Fulvio Salamanca, another genius of piano, came to replace Polito. With the changing tastes of the times, D'Arienzo's music of the 1940s becomes slightly less exuberant, darker and deeper, while still true to the trademark domination of the beat. Some of the most beautiful records of this period feature the voice of Héctor Mauré (hired in the end of 1940), another aspiring teenage boxer (he fought for the Students Sports Association of BsAs) who abandoned boxing for tango. After the 1955 military coup, Héctor Mauré was blacklisted from TV and radio waves for his Peronist sympathies, but he fought back by contributing a lot of time and energy to keeping tango alive during its "darkest years" in the 1960s and 1970s. Let's celebrate Héctor Mauré by a 1941 tanda!

49. Juan D'Arienzo - Héctor Mauré  "Dime, mi amor" 1941 2:40
50. Juan D'Arienzo - Héctor Mauré  "Infamia" 1941 3:07
51. Juan D'Arienzo - Hector Maure  "El olivo (El olvido)" 1941 2:51
52. Endless Boogie  "High Drag cortina" 2017 0:22
The rhythmic energy continues with a tangofox tanda
53. Enrique Rodriguez - Armando Moreno  "Se va el tren" 1942 3:11
54. Enrique Rodriguez - Armando Moreno.  "No Apures Por Dios Postillon" 1945 2:59
55. Enrique Rodriguez - Roberto Flores "Para mi eres divina" 1938 2:28
56. Sergey Nikitin  "Pesnya Sleptsov " 1988 0:26
57. Lhasa De Sela  "La Cara de la Pared" 2005 4:23
58. Carlos Libedinsky  "Vi Luz y Subí" 2005 3:18
59. Shigeru Umebayashi "In The Mood For Love" 2001 2:29
In another intersection of my hobbies, tango and genealogy, my newly found third cousin Yakov, a great fan of brooding and foreboding music, shared a new album of Endless Boogie and I couldn't resist using some of the tracks for cortinas.
60. Endless Boogie  "Trash Dog cortina" 2017 0:21
A classic non-traditional tanda with a super-traditional arrabal vibe.
61. Orquesta Tipica Fervor de Buenos Aires "Quien Sos" 2007 3:08
62. Orquesta Tipica Fervor de Buenos Aires "E.G.B." 2007 2:26
63. Analíá Goldberg y Sexteto Ojos De Tango "El Adios" 2011 3:13
64. Maya Kristalinskaya  "A za oknom"  0:16
65. Zazie "J'envoie valser" 1995 2:52
It's close to midight and to milonga's end and it looks like folksy waltzes aren't cutting it, so I scrap this tanda and make a plan to keep playing only tangos in the remaining time. But, see below...
66. Zhanna Aguzarova "Old Hotel" 1987 0:22
67. Francisco Canaro - Roberto Maida "Solo una novia" 1935 3:23
68. Francisco Canaro - Roberto Maida "Condena (S.O.S.)" 1937 2:39
69. Francisco Canaro - Roberto Maida "Ojos negros que fascinan" 1935 2:51
70. Sandro de America  "Yo Te Amo cortina" 1968 0:23

March 1943 newspaper ad for Angel D'Agostino and
Angel Vargas. From late Michael Krugman's  blog

We've just marked birthday of Angel D'Agostino (25 May 1900 - 16 Jan 1991), a wonderful musician whose tangos, simple and beautiful, are so welcome at almost any moment in the milongas. D'Agostino was the milonguero's musician, and like the old milongueros, he not only liked dancing tango himself, but also partied, gambled, and forswore marriage. Almost all recordings of D'Agostino are with the voice of Angel Vargas, and the two Angels set a high standard for joint work of the orchestra and the singer in tango for the dancers. I already wrote about life of Angel Vargas, about his hardscrabble beginnings and a long road to recognition. The life path of Angel D'Agostino is, in some ways, exactly the opposite. He grew up in a family of classic pianists and received great musical education, but chose the bohemian life of a tanguero. A funny tidbit to add: as a child, D'Agostino played piano in a trio where the little violinist was Juan D'Arienzo!
71. Ángel D'Agostino - Ángel Vargas, glosas: Julian Centeya "Cafe Dominguez" 1955 2:58
72. Ángel D'Agostino - Ángel Vargas "Caricias" 1940 2:44
73. Ángel D'Agostino - Ángel Vargas "Ninguna" 1942 2:57
74. Marek Jackowski   "Oprócz blekitnego nieba"  0:23
75. Lucio Demare - Juan Carlos Miranda "Manana zarpa un barco" 1942 3:24
76. Lucio Demare - Juan Carlos Miranda "Pa' mi es igual" 1942 3:18
77. Lucio Demare - Juan Carlos Miranda "No te apures cara blanca" 1942 3:31
78. Alla Pugacheva  "Winter Night (Svecha gorela) cortina"  0:19
Wait, wait! A birthday girl walks in during the penultimate tanda ... and with a request to play Piazzolla's "Dede", a record which isn't even in my collection. But a vals it must be...
79. Osváldo Pugliese - Instrumental "Desde El Alma" 1943 2:56
80. Gypsy Folk  "Autumn Dew"  0:30
81. Osváldo Pugliese - Instrumental "Malandraca" 1949 2:52
82. Osváldo Pugliese - Instrumental "Tiny" 1945 2:42
83. Edgardo Donato - Instrumental  "La Cumparsita"  2:19
84. Harry Roy - La cumparsita [rumba] " 1936 2:58