Tracing Russian roots of Argentine Tango

Does tango really have any Russian origins? In addition to the layers of Spanish, Italian, African etc. roots? I gave a talk about it in Russian, but I suspect that the English-speaking tango lovers might be interested too. The following is a brief summary of my presentation in Tyumen, Siberia, on October 19, 2018, followed by a "mini-longa" playlist.

Argentina, the nation of immigrants ... even its signature cultural heritage, the tango, is officially defined as a product of interaction and cross-fertilization of many cultures. Among the Europeans, Spain, Italy and France contributed the most. But "los rusos", the immigrants from the former Russian Empire (primarily Jewish), added quite a bit to the development of tango, too. Primarily through the poetry, through the sound of violin, and through the direct influences of Russian romance music.

The most influential of El Ruso poets was Luis Rubistein, a son of immigrant family from Ekaterinoslav.

Луис Рубистейн

Let's listen to his top songs - a beautifully nostalgic and at the same optimistic "Carnaval de mi barrio", subtitled "A street landscape in the style of tango"; a dark and hopeless tragedy of "Charlemos" where the final line is rumored to have meant "Forgive me for being Jewish" for the poet's circle; and "Samaritana", a vals of heartbreaking pain which finds a secret consolation.
(While we are talking about poetry, may I call your attention to the database of tango translations? )
01. Edgardo Donato - Horacio Lagos y Lita Morales "Carnaval De Mi Barrio" 1939 2:25

02. Carlos Di Sarli - Roberto Rufino "Charlemos" 1941 2:29

03. Los Provincianos (Ciriaco Ortiz) - Alberto Gomez  "Samaritana (vals)" 1932 2:58

Raul Kaplun orchestra

The 1940s are the high point of tango's Golden Age. It brought together the crazy rhythmic beat of the "D'Arienzo revolution" and the romantic lyricism of the violins. Especially the Jewish violins. Perhaps the most significant violin virtuoso of this period was Raul Kaplun, a son of immigrants from Kishinev. Together with the leader of their orchestra, Lucio Demare, Raul Kaplun led a veritable anti-D'Arienzo counterrevolution, fighting for the purity and tenderness of feelings of tango music and poetry. And their true manifesto is a beautiful tango composed by Kaplun, entitled exactly like this: "Una emocion", "A feeling".
04. Lucio Demare - Raúl Berón "Una Emocion" 1943 2:41
The historic video is almost 25 years old; the dancer is no one else but Saint Gavito, a tireless tango proselytizer of the 1990s who considered this song to be a symbolic representation of tango at large.

Simon Bajour is another must-mention tango violinist. Growing up in a town near Warsaw, Bajour fell in love with folksy, Balkan and Gypsy sounds of the violin he first heard on radio. After escaping to Argentina, he combined the paths of a classic violinist and a tango musician - and never forgot his folklore roots. Perhaps you were lucky to witness how, in some Hungarian or Serbian tavern, violinists try to outdo one another, and suddenly one of the violins breaks into cow's moo, another one responds by dog's barking, and the third counters with the dawn thrills of a nightingale? There are no nightingales in the Americas, and the Argentines may not even recognize the sound, but in Di Sarli's "El amanecer" ("The sunrise") Bajour's violins sings like a creekside nightingale back home.
05. Carlos Di Sarli - Instrumental "El Amanecer" 1951 2:29

Since we already mentioned the Roma tunes, I have to tell a few more words about the Gypsy  romances which influenced Russian music, and, by extension, tango in Argentina. I only mentioned one example in my lecture, and asked the tangueros to recognize more Roma motifs, so familiar to a Russian ear, later during the mini-milonga. The seminal role of the Gypsy choirs, especially the famed Count Orloff choir, in the development of Russian national romance is fairly well known in the old country. But it is a much wider regional phenomenon all across Eastern Europe. The folk music of all the ethnic groups living alongside with the Roma developed under the influence of Gypsy bands. One of my favorite examples is an American immigrant musician, Misha Tsiganoff, who is famous for his original Jewish klezmer compositions. So much so that many people believed that he was Jewish (but you can probably guess from the image his tombstone that it can't be further from the truth). Well, it turned out that Mishka had nearly two dozen artistic names, which all meant about the same "Mike the Gypsy" in various languages he sang in. If he recorded a song in Lithuanian, he used a Lithuanian name; for a Hungarian song, he was a Hungarian; same in Polish, Serbian, Romanian and so on! Another amazing story was a tale of a Maramuresh Roma musician who explained how they'd arrange the same piece differently for different ethnic and social groups, always making the song at home with their listeners. With a wink, he introduced the final arrangement as "a socialist realism creation for the Communist party bosses" :)
The Russian Gypsy romance below is instantly recognized by any Russian. You probably recognize it too...
06. Imperio Argentina  "Ojos Negros romanza rusa" 1934 3:39

This recording wasn't issued on a single. It was a kind of Youtube of the 1930s - a short "talkie" movie clip, likely the first one in Spanish, starring this black-curled dark-eyed Argentine beauty. The classic Russian Gypsy romance have been arranged into tango by a Spanish German composer. I described the story of the international migrations of "Ojos Negros" in great detail on this blog. Of course, for us dancers, the most familiar recording is different:
07. Francisco Canaro - Roberto Maida "Ojos negros que fascinan" 1935 2:51

"Wilno Carnival" -
a rare edition of Florian Hermann's sheet music,
glorifying his hometown

The "Dark eyes" had a really long history in Russia before the song became tango; it started from Valse Hommage, a popular score by Florian Hermann, a mysterious XIX c. composer. Just a few weeks ago, in the famous Pashkov House in Moscow, in an ornate library hall overlooking the Kremlin, I touched the first music score editions of the 1880s which turned Hermann's waltz into a Gypsy romance. And then in the National Library of Lithuania in Vilnius, I was privileged to see more rare sheet music of Hermann, the now-forgotten native son of Vilnius, and to confirm, for the first time, the span of Hermann's life (1822-1892). Looking for "the real historical Florian Hermann" was quite a quest of mine; you can read more in my blog.
Back to the "Dark Eyes" now ... in the 1930s, the song morphed not only into Argentine tango but also to a top-rated Russian tango song ... with its own distant echo in Argentine, but much later in the 1960s.
08. Frank Fox - Piotr Leschenko "Chernye Glaza (Dark Eyes)" 1933 3:15

09. Florindo Sassone - Instrumental "Ojos Negros (Oscar Strok)" 1968 2:28

Another "migrant tango" even got the title of "Russian Gypsy", "Gitana rusa". It is directly based on a composition with Russian lysrics smuggled into Argentina through the port of Odessa. But why is it subtitled "European tango", rather than "Russian"?

This Russian Gypsy turns out to have a really tragic story. Its creator, Saul Zhadan, a fiddler from Uman, has been murdered along with the rest of town's Jews in mass executions in the fall 1941. Zhadan's son Demetrio emigrated to Argentina (one has to remember that the United States virtually closed its doors to Eastern European immigration after 1923, so refugees from the Soviet Union had to go to South America instead). The father sent his son a wedding present - a tango! Entitled "Your eyes", it was dedicated to the bride, "beautiful Celia". The groom didn't seem to appreciate it at first, especially because the song's travel by steamers was too slow and it arrived late for the wedding. But in 1941, sensing that his father was no longer alive, Demetrio decided to donate his music into the good hands of tango musicians. Only, no one knew what the map of Europe will look like after the war, will there be Russia ever again ... so the song was subtitled generically "European"
10. Ricardo Malerba - Orlando Medina "Gitana rusa" 1942 2:47

... And, at last, the tango of Argentina completes a full circle and returns to Russia to its roots! The year is 1968. We see the only LP of Argentine tango ever recorded in the USSR, titled just that: "Argentine Tango". It is Cuarteto Buenos Aires, directed by Tito Bespros. With the help of late Julio Nudler's excellent book on the Jewish personalities of tango, and interviews of the descendants of Bespros's family, I was able to piece together the story of this amazing fiddler, born to immigrants  from Odessa in 1917, who played with OTV, De Caro, Juan Canaro and great many Golden Age orchestras, before convening his own band at the age of 39. Many international gigs and awards followed, until the Argentines managed to secure an invitation to the Old Country. And the quartet's invited vocalist, Siro San Roman, even left an amazing "Easter egg" in their "A media luz", where, from behind the Argentine classic, "Mommy Odessa" herself peeks out with a wink :) The album is available for download courtesy of Andres Wilks)
11. Tito  "Tito Bespros - Siro San Roman - Media Luz"  2:32
The singer, age 84, was the only surviving member of the conjunto when Andres made his discovery of the 1968 album. When the word spread,  with the help of this blog, Argentine TV journalists found Siro San Roman at a nursing home and brought him to the station for an interview. For a few months then, the old romantic singer shone as the newly discovered celebrity of his retirement community! Alas, Soro San Roman passed away in August 2018, age 85...

... and now on to a mini milonga where many of the songs from this story will sound ... along with a few which were just hinted  about ;)

13.  Carlos di Sarli - Roberto Rufino "Cascabelito" 1941 2:32
14. Carlos di Sarli - Roberto Rufino "Patotero sentimental" 1942 2:34
15. Carlos di Sarli - Roberto Rufino "Charlemos" 1941 2:30
16. Viktor Tsoy  "Red-Yellow Days cortina long 3"  0:33
17. Juan D'Arienzo - Instrumental "Ataniche" 1936 2:32
18. Juan D'Arienzo - Instrumental "Union Civica" 1938 2:28
19. Juan D'Arienzo - Instrumental "Champagne Tango" 1938, 1938 2:25
20. Zhanna Aguzarova  "Old Hotel cortina long"  0:38
Can you spot a "Gypsy Romance" tune in the following tanda, too? ;)
21. Los Provincianos (Ciriaco Ortiz) - Alberto Gomez  "Samaritana (vals)" 1932 2:58
22. Enrique Rodriguez - Armando Moreno "En el volga yo te espero" 1943 2:40
23. Edgardo Donato - Horacio Lagos, Lita Morales, Romeo Gavioli  "La shunca" 1941 2:35
24. Eruption  "One way ticket cortina slow"  0:18
25. Lucio Demare - Raúl Berón "Una emocion" 1943 2 :41
26. Lucio Demare - Raúl Berón "Que solo estoy" 1943 3:04
27. Orquesta Tipica Victor - Ortego del Cerro "Una vez" 1943 3:22
28. Viktor Tsoy  "Red-Yellow Days cortina long 3"  0:33
And in the next tanda, another Roma motif not mentionedin the lecture....
29. Edgardo Donato - Horacio Lagos "El Adios" 1938 3:09
30. Edgardo Donato - Horacio Lagos, Lita Morales y Romeo Gavio "Sinfonia de Arrabal" 1940 3:09
31. Edgardo Donato - Horacio Lagos y Lita Morales "Carnaval De Mi Barrio" 1939 2:23
32. Zhanna Aguzarova "Cats" 1987 0:21
33. Francisco Canaro - Ernesto Famá "Milonga Sentimental" 1933 3:10
34. Francisco Canaro - Ernesto Famá "Milonga Del 900" 1933 2:54
35. Francisco Canaro - Roberto Maida "Milonga criolla" 1936 3:01
36. Viktor Tsoy  "Good morning, last Hero cortina long" 1989, 1989 0:35
37. Florindo Sassone - Instrumental "Ojos Negros (Oscar Strok)" 1968 2:28
38. Florindo Sassone - Instrumental "Adios corazon (reverb)" 1968 2:16
39. Florindo Sassone - Instrumental  "Bar Exposicion" 1968 3:26
40. Zhanna Aguzarova  "Zvezda (The Star)" 1984 0:28
41. Donato Racciatti - Olga Delgrossi "Hasta siempre amor" 1958 2:57
42. Donato Racciatti - Olga Delgrossi "Queriendote" 1955 2:49
43. Donato Racciatti - Olga Delgrossi "Sus Ojos Se Cerraron" 19562:47
44. Vitas  "7, the element cortina" 2012 0:23
45. Rodolfo Biagi - Jorge Ortiz "Por Un Beso De Amor" 1940 2:46
46. Rodolfo Biagi - Alberto Amor  "Paloma (vals)" 1945 2:28
47. Rodolfo Biagi - Andrés Falgás "Dejame Amarte Aunque Sea un Dia (vals)" 1939 2:55
48. Boney M  "Daddy Cool cortina"  0:21
49. Francisco Canaro - Roberto Maida "Ciego" 1935 2:57
50. Francisco Canaro - Roberto Maida "Nada Más" 1938 3:02
51. Francisco Canaro - Roberto Maida  "Ojos negros que fascinan" 1935 2:51
52. Sandro de America  "Yo Te Amo cortina" 1968, 1968 0:23
53. Osvaldo Pugliese - Jorge Maciel "Remembranza" 1956 3:41
54. Osvaldo Pugliese - Jorge Maciel "El pañuelito" 1959 2:42
55. Osvaldo Pugliese - Alberto Moran "Pasional" 1951 3:26
56. Alfredo de Angelis - Instrumental  "La cumparsita (Matos Rodriguez)" 1961 3:33