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
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
Having pre-announced plans to play loads of Canaro and De Angelis (and even Raul Kaplun, who was also born in November), I found myself in a stronger bind than I expected. I only have real taste for very late, very rich tangos of De Angelis ... and a fair-quality tanda of Kaplun may in hindsight be a "mission impossible". Worse yet, I planned to play many eternal hits in the tail section of the milonga, but ran out of time and nixed Lomuto, Laurenz, and most of Pugliese :(
Many of the planned experiments worked well, but nevertheless I ended up with a feeling that I need to cut some on the experimental stuff / educational materials in the playlists, and to concentrate more on the stuff which just simply works :) Maybe tomorrow?
I already played tons of 1950s Di Sarli instrumentals for Irene's paradas-and-embellishments class before the milonga, could have skipped the first planned tanda (which usually helps to transition from a class to a milonga with beautiful but at the same time accessible music)
01. Carlos di Sarli - Instrumental Carlos Di Sarli "El ingeniero" 1952 3:25
02. Carlos di Sarli - Instrumental "Milonguero viejo" 1955 2:48
03. Carlos di Sarli - Instrumental Carlos Di Sarli "El amanecer" 1951 2:30
04. Goran Bregovic "Old Home Movie" 1993 0:25
05. Juan D'Arienzo - Instrumental "El internado" 1954 2:35
06. Juan D'Arienzo - Instrumental "El irresistible" 1954 2:31
07. Juan D'Arienzo "El Chupete - Instrumental - 1955" 2:33
Is this instrumental intro from the Russian original underworld classic of an escape from the Odessa slammer too danceable? The song, which we only knew as a street ballad in our childhood years, is irresistible on so many levels, from its inimitable Odessa Jewish accent to its tale of a fallen mobster and the betrayed dreams of the ex-fighters of Ukraine's brutal and messy Civil War of 1918-1920 - a supposedly solemn tale yet narrated with hilarious "only in Odessa" flourishes. For those in the know, let me add a modern stanza :) Товарич, товарич, за чо же мы сражались, за чо ж мы проливали свою кровь? За резвенькие ножки, за энти комильфошки, за музычку сороковых годов" 08. Leonid Utesov "S Odesskogo kichmana (cortina)" 1932 0:22
09. Francisco Canaro - Roberto Maida "Milonga Brava" 1938 2:35
10. Francisco Canaro - Ernesto Fama "Milonga del 900" 1933 2:55
11. Francisco Canaro - Roberto Maida "Larga las penas" 1935 3:09
17. Alfredo de Angelis - Carlos Dante, Julio Martel "Pregonera" 1945 2:48
18. Alfredo de Angelis - Carlos Dante "Remolino" 1946 3:06
19. Alfredo de Angelis - Julio Martel "La vida me engañó" 1946 2:48
20. Leonid Utesov "S Odesskogo kichmana (cortina)" 1935 0:22
I mentioned the story of Canaro's different orchestras (including two quintets) a few months ago, and where the names "Pirincho" and "Don Pancho" came from. Here is a vals tanda by Quinteto Pirincho (and a rhythmic tango tanda of Quinteto Don Pancho follows soon)
23. Quinteto Pirincho (Francisco Canaro) "Vibraciones del alma (Vals)" 1956 2:53
24. Anzhelika Varum "Autumn Jazz" 0:20
Raúl Kaplún (born Israel Kaflún to a family of Jewish immigrants from today's Moldavia on Nov. 11 1910) was a virtuoso violinist, famous for performing arrangements which literally no one else could master. Raúl Kaplún played the first violin with Calo and Demare, before forming his own tango orchestra. Several of his very romantic tango compositions were performed by Demare's orchestra - let's dance to these three, before moving on to a tanda of Kaplún's own orchestra:
25. Lucio Demare - Roberto Arrieta "Cancion de rango (Pa' que se callen)" 1942 3:04
26. Lucio Demare - Raul Beron "Que solo estoy" 1943 3:04
27. Lucio Demare - Raul Beron "Una emocion" 1943 2:42
A special inserted here - a birthday vals, Klezmatics' "Goldene Pave". And on to another brand of Canaro's:
29. Quinteto Don Pancho - Instrumental (Francisco Canaro) "El flete" 1939 2:55
31. Quinteto Don Pancho - Instrumental (Francisco Canaro) "El garron" 1938 2:27
32. Leonid Utesov "S Odesskogo kichmana (cortina)" 1935, 1935 0:22
33. Carlos Di Sarli Roberto Rufino "Pena Mulata" 2004 2:27
34. Carlos Di Sarli Roberto Rufino "Zorzal" 2:40
35. Carlos Di Sarli Roberto Rufino "La Mulateada" 2:22
36. Goran Bregovic "Old Home Movie" 1993 0:25
A Guardia Vieja tanda. I was totally spellbound by Di Sarli sexteto's "La estancia" (which John Miller matched with "Chau pinela" in Albuquerque ... also sung by Ernesto Famá but IMVHO a bit too fast to fit well). These early hits are hard to mix, of course. Here I tried adding Ernesto Famá with a different Guardia Vieja orchestra (possibly a tad too slow), then capping with another hard-to-match hint, a Firpo instrumental. You be the judge.
37. Sexteto Carlos di Sarli - Ernesto Famá "La estancia" 1930 3:25
38. Osvaldo Fresedo - Ernesto Famá "El carrerito" 1928 3:09
39. Orquesta de Roberto Firpo "Una Noche En La Milonga" 1929 2:56
40. Anzhelika Varum "Autumn Jazz" 0:20
Orquesta Raúl Kaplún
The unlucky tanda of Raúl Kaplún, the only Jewish fiddler to lead an Orquesta Tipica. Listening again and again, I imagined a genius who would insist that he's right and the dancers are wrong. Raúl Kaplún can be described as D'Arienzo detractor who fought for the Tango of pure emotions and romanticism, and sort of lost the fight. I mean you don't necessarily need humility to strike it with the dancing crowd; of course a combination of talent and persistence may substitute ... but there are simply too few surviving records of Kaplún's.Three pieces?I started to get cold feet but couldn't figure out how to convert it to a mixed-band tanda. In the end the compact dance floor of the North Church was pretty full, and a tanda of vals hits which followed quickly recharged the dancers energy - whew!
56. Leonid Utesov "S Odesskogo kichmana (cortina)" 1935 0:22
Alberto Castillo, from todotango website
A different take on Aces de Candombe. Listen to the vocal in Demare's Carnavalito, its folksy fused and missing syllables ... I'm told that the nosy Porteños don't appreciate this way of talking... but I do. Alberto Castillo may have excelled in the downclass / provincial / Afro sound of words even better, and people always linked his hoarse voice to his poor-barrio upbringing. But at the same time he was one of the few tango performers who were successful professionals by the day - as Dr. Alberto De Luca, a gynecologist. There was a persistent rumor that some of Dr. De Luca's patients were actually Castillo's fans ... and after he married, he had to drop his medical career. Castillo may have been the first tango musician to pick the Uruguayan beat for candombe, and to add black dancers to the performances, and it became an instant success. The one Castillo candombe I included in this tanda is recorded more than a decade later ... can one resist a song full of meowing and purring cats?
57. Lucio Demare - Raul Beron "Carnavalito" 1943 3:16
58. Alberto Castillo (Jorge Dragone, Dir.) "El Gatito en el Tejado" 1957 2:37
59. Romeo Gavioli y su orquesta típica "Tamboriles" 1956 2:56
60. Anzhelika Varum "Autumn Jazz" 0:20
61. Lucio Demare - Juan Carlos Miranda "Manana zarpa un barco" 1942 3:22
62. Lucio Demare - Juan Carlos Miranda "No te apures, Carablanca" 1942 3:29
63. Lucio Demare - Juan Carlos Miranda "Malena" 1942 2:59
64. Anzhelika Varum "Autumn Jazz" 0:20
65. Carlos Di Sarli - Alberto Podestá "Junto a tu corazon" 1942 3:00
66. Carlos di Sarli - Alberto Podestá "Lloran las campanas" 1944 2:58
67. Carlos Di Sarli - Alberto Podestá "Tu!...El cielo y tu!" 1944 2:59
68. Leonid Utesov "S Odesskogo kichmana (cortina)" 1935 0:22
69. Edgardo Donato - Hugo Del Carril "El vals de los recuerdos" 1935 2:18
Tango and its roots - is it a point of contention (as befits its being "rite and religion", per the famed quote) - or a point of connection? The connection which brings together ourselves, the music, the orchestras, the singers ... and where the lyrics may be the most elusive of the interlocking connecting elements?
In a presentation combining printed handouts, a slide show, and music, and titled, in proper Lunfardo slang, Chamuyo de Gotán, Talking Too Much about Tango, Derrick del Pilar tries to cover the history of Argentine tango from its obscure beginnings to the storied Golden Age - through its lyrics. With Derrick's permission, here are my annotated notes.
Enrique Binda, "Clarin" interview on the occasion of the 2nd edition of the book: "tango was born into a normal society, as existed in Buenos Aires at the time"; "[by 1910] it existed in the city center as well as in arrabal, in as many academias as prostibulos"; "who do you think was buying tango sheet music for piano by the thousands, hoodlums and whores or people who actually owned pianos?"
It all starts from the contention, obviously. The much-touted, much-discredited Borgesian brothel-to-Paris-to-high-society narrative is largely debunked, with the help of the 1998 book by Hugo Lamas & Enrique Binda, El tango en la sociedad porteña, 1880-1920, a product of 35 years of research which extensively analyzed the materials of the formative years of Argentine tango, from news reports to police records.
The brothel-to-Paris-to-beaux-mondes narrative of tango history may be traced back to a 1936 book of Hector and Luis Bates where they romanticized and exaggerated its outlaw, pimp-and-prostitute roots, and declared that tango remained totally unacceptable in the middle and upper class society at home until its return from Paris ca. 1913. However, Lamas and Binda prove that between 1902 and 1909, 3 millions copies of piano sheet music of tango have been sold, and at least 350 gramophone recordings pressed. Given that a gramophone cost several months worth of salary, not to mention what a piano cost, there is simply no question that tango was gaining very substantial following in the middle and upper classes of Buenos Aires much earlier. Even some of the earliest tangos from the 1870s and 1880s, formally anonymous, are thought to have been authored by a Spanish noblewoman and concert piano player, Eloise D'Hebril Da Silva. The police reports and regulations show that dancing took place in "academias" (dance schools/clubs which often had women for hire, and which were aggressively pursued by the police for violations such as ... staying open too late), drinking establishments, and theaters (including the most upscale ones, such as the Opera, where the parterre seats may have been removed for the occasions), rather than in BsAs brothels where the local law forbade dancing as well as drinking (one would have to leave the city to find brothels which also operated as bars and dancing halls). This said, of course sensual borders sexual, and an ethnic and social mix of a big city with its city music and dances juxtaposes against the homogeneity of the provinces and their native-born folk dances ... so it comes as no surprise that the early tango found many detractors among the conservatives and nativists, and was widely depicted as half-vulgar and déclassé in the media of the day. It also seems likely that upper-classes acceptance of tango as a national music form preceded the wider acceptance of tango dance and especially tango poetry. The macho underclass hero of the early tango letras (literally "letters", as the Tango lyrics are known) tells us a compelling story of tango's lowlife beginnings. Enter Villoldo's 1903 El Porteñito, the Little Son of Buenos Aires:
El Porteñito (1903)
Letra: Ángel Villoldo
Soy hijo de Buenos Aires,
Por apodo “El Porteñito”
El criollo más compadrito
Que en esta tierra nació.
Cuando un tango en la vigüela
Rasguea algún compañero,
No hay nadie en el mundo entero
Que baile mejor que yo...
Little Porteño
translated by Derrick Del Pillar
I'm a son of Buenos Aires,
they call me Little Porteño,
the toughest, coolest criollo
ever born in this land.
When one of my buddies
strums a tango on his ol' guitar,
there's no one in the whole world
who dances better than me...
The most classy milongas of the late 1890s and 1900s may have been held nightly at Lo de Hansen, or Restaurante del Parque 3 de Febrero, in Palermo, in the city's largest and fanciest park inspired by Paris's Bois de Boulogne (and, of course, commonly known as Bosques de Palermo). Mr. Hansen, a German immigrant, remodeled his 1869 park restaurant in 1877, as a part of redevelopment of the park. The new concessioners in the 1900s kept a fleet of five cars to ferry the guests around town at night. The daytime orchestra from Milan was being replaced by a tango orchestra for the night, and the rich and pampered daytime clientele, by the tango crowd with its share of malevos and shushetas and occasional fights and shootouts. The tabletops were made of very heavy marble slabs, lest anybody swings a table in a brawl. A posted sign asked the customers to please avoid tapping spoons or plates or bottles to the beat of their most loved tango tune, Villoldo's "El Esquinazo" (because the earlier ban on "tapping the rhythm with hands or shoes" proved to be inefficient, as the crazed guests invented other ways to accompaniment the music)! By 1908, quality tango salons started appearing elsewhere in the best neighborhoods of Buenos Aires, and the golden days of old Hansen were gradually winding down. It was demolished in 1912. But the scene of tangoing at Lo de Hansen is lovingly reenacted in a 1937 movie, complete with fighting over choices of music, quebradas, boleos, and even a soltada. And the location has even seen an archaeological excavation in 2009, which unearthed bits and pieces of French floor tiles! (but the Porteño historians still argue if it was "the" dancing floor - in fact some oldtimers even insisted that the tango music there was only for listening, that dancing wasn't allowed and that there wasn't even room for it; while others, like Leon Benaros, wrote that many "disallowed" things were simply relegated to the back of the building, with its outdoor patio floor of white and black tiles ... and lots of bugs at night, so the women didn't sit in there - they were out in the front).
If you listen to the recorded versions of El Porteñito, you'd quickly realize that the words of the 2nd and 3rd verses are just never the same. They are always improvised or perhaps intentionally tinkered with, as it would have been the rule in the era before the recordings, when the boastful and crude letras would change with the neighborhood. It was always the guys from this street who were the toughest fighters and the best dancers in their couplets.
Another accepted narrative links the birth of tango cancion, tango as a romance with set lyrics rather than improvised in the old payadores tradition, with the 1917 Gardel's performance of "Mi noche triste" (a.k.a. "Lita"). The fame may be exaggerated, what's so special about a song bursting onto the scene of some 3rd rate cabaret - we don't even know for sure which one - but there is no denying that "Mi noche triste" ended up being the first recorded tango romance, and that the talent of Carlos Gardel truly electrified this formative epoch of tango. The letras by Pascual Contursi are, well, sorrowful, even though the character may be the same porteñito of the previous decade, a pimp at the prime of his life, now speaking in Lunfardo of his lost chica (or rather percanta), in his empty bachelor pad (cotorro or bulin)
Mi noche triste (1915)
letra de Pascual Contursi
Percanta que me amuraste
En lo mejor de mi vida
Dejándome el alma herida
Y espina en el corazón.
Sabiendo que te quería
Que vos eras mi alegría
Y mi sueño abrasador.
Para mí ya no hay consuelo
Y por eso me encurdelo
Pa´ olvidarme de tu amor.
Cuando voy a mi cotorro
Y lo veo desarreglado
Todo triste, abandonado
Me dan ganas de llorar,
Me detengo largo rato
Campaneando tu retrato
Pa´ poderme consolar...
My Sorrowful Night
translated by Derrick Del Pilar
Deceitful woman, you left me
in the prime of my life,
leaving my soul wounded
and a thorn in my heart,
knowing that I loved you,
that you were my joy,
my burning dream.
For me there is no more comfort
and so I'm getting wasted
to forget about your love.
When I go up to my pad
and I see it all messy,
everything sad, abandoned,
it makes me want to cry;
I hang back a long time,
pining after your portrait
so I can console myself.
Ever since the 1872 epic "El Gaucho Martín Fierro" by José Hernández immortalized the image of the fearless outlaw, poet, and dueler of the Pampas in a classic payada verse, the gaucho remained a poetic symbol of Argentine people. But the times change. The 1926 "Mandria" makes a gaucho of a different era throw a poncho in a duel challenge - and then refuse the fight.
Mandria (1926)
Letra : Juan Miguel Velich y Francisco Brancatti
... Esta es mi marca y me asujeto
¡Pa´ que peliar a un hombre mandria!
Váyase con ella, ¡La cobarde!
Dígale que es tarde
Pero me cobré...
Wretched
translated by Derrick Del Pilar
... This is my mark and it has kept me in check -
Why should I fight a wretched man?
Go with her, that coward!
Tell her that it's late
but I've made my claim.
"El Mocho", "the Stub" David Undarz was called so because he lost a finger to an accident. El Mocho danced with his wife Amelia "La Portuguesa" (or sometimes remembered as "La Brasilera") under the scenic name Los Undarz. In the cabarets of the 1910s, in the fine theaters of the 1920s, wildly popular. El Mocho's trademark style was to showcase the follower, to make her moves and her footwork look stellar while the steps of leader himself remained understated. I'm sure you can recognize El Mocho's legacy in the unwritten rules of gender roles of today's tango dance! Progressing tuberculosis made El Mocho Undarz leave the city just before "Adios Arrabal" was composed; soon, he died, aged only mid 30s.
The other legendary dancer from the lines of Adiós, Arrabal, Ovidio José "Benito" Bianquet, was better known as El Cachafaz ("The Troublesome" / "The Outrageous" as the lunfardo word may be translated). In truth, both of his nicknames predated his tango fame - his mother called him "Buenito", "sweet little boy", to the cops who wanted to punish the nice little guy for some broken windows in the neighborhood, and his father called him "El Cachafaz", "the incorrigible rascal", after he's got a bit older and got in trouble with the girls. El Cachafaz must have been the first Argentine to try teaching tango in the US, before WWI; not much came out of it. But in 1919 he went to Paris and dazzled the City of Lights - he was remembered in Discepolo’s lyrics of "El Choclo" as "Caracanfunfa", a dancer with a fancy footwork who "carried the flag of tango across the ocean, and mixed Paris and Buenos Aires barrios into an intoxicating drink". As it turns out El Cachafaz wasn't finished at all in 1930, when Carlos Lenzi wrote the letras of "Adiós, Arrbal" - what happened was that he parted with Emma "La Francesita" Boveda, after more than a decade of dancing together. But in a year or two, "Cacha" met Carmencita, and they went on to win movie roles and awards together. Their photograph accompanies every article about El Cachafaz, but since we paused at a page of tango history when the two haven't yet met, I'm not going to include this picture. El Cachafaz died in 1942, age 55, slumped at a piano dressed in his best dance attire, waiting for a drink after a performance.
The Great Depression delivers a final blow the the figures of the compadrito and the gaucho - actually a horrible blow to the whole fabric of the civil society in Argentina. September 1930 brings what's known as Década Infame, the decade of corrupt governments and stolen elections. The 1930 "Adiós, Arrabal" is a song of longing for the sweetness and integrity of the days of the past.
"I won't ever change, but the old life of my mother neighborhood is gone forever" - insist the verses. It mourns the departure of the best dancers, of El Mocho, El Cachafaz. It bids farewell to "Rodríguez Peña", officially known as El Salón San Martín at Rodríguez Peña 344, just off Corrientes, which was one of the best tango salons of the early XXc. ( immortalized by a 1911 tango composed by Vicente Greco, who played there )
ADIÓS, ARRABAL
Letra : Carlos César Lenzi
Mañanita arrabalera,
Sin taitas por las veredas
Ni pibas en el balcón.
Tus faroles apagados
Y los guapos retobados
En tu viejo callejón.
Yo te canto envenenao,
Engrupido y amargao
Hoy me separo de vos.
Adiós, arrabal porteño,
Yo fui tu esclavo y tu dueño
Y te doy mi último adiós.
...
El baile “Rodríguez Peña”
El Mocho y el Cachafaz,
De la milonga porteña
Que nunca más volverá.
Carnavales de mi vida
Noches bravas y al final,
Los espiantes de las pibas
En aquel viejo arrabal.
Goodbye, arrabal!
translated by Derrick Del Pilar
Sweet morning in the arrabal,
no tough guys on the sidewalks,
and no dames out on the balconies,
your streetlamps all put out
and the pretty boys all passed out
in your old alleyway.
I sing to you venomously,
boastfully and bitterly -
today I'm leaving you.
Goodbye, arrabal of Buenos Aires!
I was your slave and your master
and here's my last goodbye
...
The dances at Rodríguez Peña,
el Mocho and el Cachafaz
of the milongas of Buenos Aires
that never shall return,
my life's great parties,
awesome nights and in the end
the blow-offs from all those dames
in that old arrabal.
As the 1930s march on, the things look increasingly bleak for Argentina. In 1932 Great Britain, the main export marker for Argentine beef, institutes a trade barrier system of "Imperial Preference", putting Argentine economy on its knees and forcing the country into a near-colonial dependence under Roca–Runciman Treaty. By 1935, Enrique Discepolo, perhaps the most pessimistic of the Great Bards of Tango, doesn't see any hope. The life is a hopeless mess, a pile of things which lost their past meaning on a shelf of a pawnshop. All the human beings are piled together there, and honesty and wisdom do not matter anymore:
Cambalache (1935)
Letras de Enrique Santos Discépolo
¡Que falta de respeto,
que atropello a la razon!
Cualquiera es un señor!
Cualquiera es un ladron!
Mezclao con Stavisky va Don Bosco
y La Mignon,
Don Chicho y Napoleón,
Carnera y San Martín…
Igual que en la vidriera irrespetuosa
de los cambalaches
se ha mezcla’o la vida
y herida por un sable sin remache
ves llorar la Biblia
contra un calefón.
Pawnshop
translated by Derrick Del Pilar
What a lack of respect,
what an affront to reason!
Anyone can be a baron!
Anyone can be a bandit!
Stavinsky and Saint John Bosco
go hand in hand with La Mignon,
Don Chicho and Napoleon,
Carnera and San Martín,
just as the rude window displays
of every pawnshop
have mixed up life itself
and you can see a wounded Bible
weep next to a boiler somewhere,
hanging on a hook.
Juan "Chicho Grande" Galiffi was
an infamous 1920s/30s hit man of
the Sicilian Mafia in Argentina
(Derrick explains that Stavinsky was an infamous swindler; Saint John Bosco helped underprivileged youth; La Mignon was slang for a call girl; Don Chicho a mobster, Carnera an itinerant boxer, and General San Martín, a national hero of Argentina's wars of independence; and the sable sin remache was a hook nailed on a toilet wall to spear newsprint or book pages for use as toiler paper)
Tango is reborn and reinvented with a new generation of dancers of the 1930s, most notably the D'Arienzo fans; new role for vocalists in the danceable tango - not just tango cancion - is pioneered by Canaro; Sebastian Piana revitalizes the obsolescent genre of a milonga, allowing it to become a vibrant dance. Yet the new milonga laments the bygone 1900s, and the sympathies of its main character remain with the honesty of the past:
Milonga del 900 (1933)
Letras: Homero Manzi
Me gusta lo desparejo
y no voy por la vedera;
uso funghi a lo Massera,
calzo bota militar.
La quise porque la quise
y por eso ando penando—
se me fue ya ni se cuando,
ni se cuando volverá.
Me la nombran las guitarras
cuando dicen su canción,
las callecitas del barrio,
y el filo de mi facón.
Me la nombran las estrellas
y el viento del arrabal;
no se pa’ que me la nombran
si no la puedo olvidar.
Milonga of the 1900s
Translation by Derrick Del Pilar
I like mismatched things
and I don’t go out on the sidewalk;
I wear a Massera porkpie hat
and military boots on my feet.
I loved her because I loved her
and ‘cause of that I’m hurting now—
she’s left me and I don’t even know when,
don’t even know when she’ll come back.
Guitars remind me of her
when they are speaking their songs,
so do the little neighborhood streets,
and the edge of my dagger.
The stars remind her name to me
and so does the wind of the arrabal,
I don’t know why they remind me of her
since I could never forget her…
The final verses of Manzi are almost never sung on the records, the lines there become palpably political, professing distrust to the changes of modernity, and loyalty to the legacy of Leandro Alem, founder of Radical Civic Union and the leader of 1890 Revolution, who took his own life in 1896.
Tristezas de la Calle Corrientes (Horacio Coppola - Buenos Aires 1936)
It's hard to count all the tangos which sing of Avenida Corrientes; a simple search in the Argentine tango lyrics website returns 159 texts! They tell of the old, narrow street of tango's formative years and the new wide Corrientes nearly purged of its tango history; of the grandeur and the squalor; of the real landmarks and the fictitious addresses, like the number 348, an illicit den of love, tango, and dimmed lights from Donato's 1925 "A media luz".
The 1933 "Corrientes y Esmeralda" charts all the contrasts of the city to just this one intersection, two blocks East of the Obelisk, where grand theater Odeón (#782) and popular cabaret Royal Pigall (#825) faced across the street not 200 ft from one another ... the street corner which was home to great poets and artists and to the thugs and drug-addicted call girls. In 1955 Julían Centeya recited a moving tribute to Café Dominguez, a few blocks West near the intersection of Corrientes and Parana, immortalizing the first Buenos Aires tango bar to stay open 24/7, where the quartet of the bandoneonist "Liendre" De Leone played in the 1910s and 1920s ... the cafe which was no more. The actual verses of "Café Dominguez" belong to Enrique Cadícamo who lived a block away, at #1330. And Enrique Discépolo's home was half mile further West, at #1990.
The sense of loss of tango history turns most palpable in Osvaldo Pugliese's 1961 tango, "Corrientes Bajo Cero", "Corrientes Below Zero". Roberto Chanel sings of Corrientes reborn as the crib of gotán, a place where Piazzolla's bandoneon sounds again, where the doors of "El Olmo" (at #948) and "El Germinal" (at the corner of Maipú, where Juan Maglio Pacho once debuted) have reopened, where the music of Pugliese himself rings at Teatro el Nacional (#960) ... but it turns out to be just a dream, and we wake up to find a frozen place where "El Marzoto", "El Ruca", and "El Tibidabo" are shattered, too! Yet, just close you eyes again, and then you may see a monument to Carlos Gardel rising side by side with the Obelisk... (Needless to say Pugliese now got a plaza named after him, and a monument, at the corner of Corrientes and Scalabrini Ortiz).
But the best known Osvaldo Pugliese monument must be the one at the very end of Avenida Corrientes - at his grave at Chacarita Cemetery, with the maestro's piano traditionally graced by red carnations as a symbol of his absence (whenever Pugliese was detained - and there were times when the authorities locked him up almost every weekend - his orchestra kept playing, but with a red carnatios placed on his piano to signify that the maestro can't be there with them, but is present in spirit). The whole world of tango's past is there at Chacarita. Its first band leaders, Villoldo and Arolas, are buried there; Gardel's chapel crypt is there, as is the modest grave of El Cahcafaz. A parcel purchased by Francisco Canaro has the graves of the greatest of tango's golden years as well as his own. Its greatest poets are there, Cadicano, Contursi, Discepolo, Flores, Manzi, Exposito, Centeya... Orchestra leaders - Troilo, de Caro, Laurenz, Fresedo, de Angelis, Malerba, Gobbi, Maffia, Varela, Maderna, Pontier, Bianco, Filiberto, Cobian... And, ever a maverick, Juan D'Arienzo rests in a different section of Chacarita.
Corrientes Angosta
Teatro Odeon
@ Corrientes & Esmeralda
At Royal Pigall,
Canaro's orchestra
played alongside
a US ragtime band
We return to Corrientes street and tally our losses.
In a decade which passed since "Adiós, Arrabal", the famed avenida has lost more than half of its buildings, demolished in Depression-era public works for a massive widening of the old street, the street still remembered by the porteños with the one epithet, "Corrientes Angosta", "the Narrow Corrientes".
There is sadness, poverty, and despair under these street lines of the grand boulevard of the Obelisk and fine theaters and bookstores, and there is also acceptance of the fate. The song takes life as it is.
Old Corrientes by night
Tristezas de la calle Corrientes
Letra: Homero Expósito (1942)
Calle
Como valle
De monedas para el pan.
Río sin desvío
Donde sufre la ciudad.
¡Qué triste palidez tienen tus luces!
Tus letreros sueñan cruces,
Tus afiches, carcajadas de cartón.
Risa
Que precisa
La confianza del alcohol.
Llantos
Hecho cantos
Pa´ vendernos un amor.
Mercado de las tristes alegrías
Cambalache de caricias
Donde cuelga la ilusión...
Triste, sí,
Por ser nuestra...
Triste, sí,
Porque sueñas...
Tu alegría es tristeza
Y el dolor de la espera
Te atraviesa.
Y con pálida luz
Vivís llorando tus tristezas...
Triste, sí,
Por ser nuestra...
Triste, sí,
Por tu cruz...
Corrientes Street Blues
translated by Derrick Del Pilar
Street
like a valley
of coins for buying bread,
dead end river
where the city suffers -
what sad pallor under your lights!
Your signs dream of crosses,
your posters, cardboard cackling
Laughter
that requires
liquor's confidence,
laments
become songs
to sell us a love,
market of sad joys,
pawnshop of caresses
where they hang up all our dreams.
Sad? Yes.
Because you're ours...
Sad? Yes.
Because you dream...
Your joy is sadness,
and the pain of waiting
cuts across you
and with faint light
you live weeping your sadness.
Sad? Yes.
Because you're ours...
Sad? Yes.
That's your cross...
Taking the cue from Homero Expósito, an actor, singer, and comedian Marcos Caplán, the Jewish enfant terrible of tango's Golden Era, made the "premature rumors of the demise of tango" the centerpiece of his show at Teatro Maipo. "It's a lie that tango has died!" - he would exclaim - "I'm going to slaughter it myself, right now!" - and then sing, mockingly, some tango hit of the season.
Marcos Caplán
But has tango lost its soul? Its rough edge? Has it become tame and tired? (Have you heard the story of the newspaper article declaring that tango has died? "El tango ha muerto", it appeared in "Caras y Caretas" ... in 1903)
Yo soy el tango 1941
Letra : Homero Expósito
Soy, el tango milongón
Nacido en los suburbios
Malevos y turbios.
Hoy, que estoy en el salón
Me saben amansado
Dulzón y cansado.
Pa´ que creer
Pa´ que mentir
Que estoy cambiado,
Si soy el mismo de ayer.
Escuchen mi compás
¿No ven que soy gotán?
Me quiebro en mi canción,
Como un puñal de acero
Pa´ cantar una traición.
Me gusta compadrear
Soy reo pa´ bailar,
Escuchen mi compás
Yo soy el viejo tango
Que nació en el arrabal.
Hoy, que tengo que callar,
Que sufro el desengaño,
La moda y los años.
Voy, costumbre del gotán
Mordiendo en mis adentros
La rabia que siento.
Pa´ que creer
Pa´ que mentir
Que estoy muriendo,
Si yo jamás moriré.
I Am the Tango
translated by Derrick Del Pilar
I am the tango of the milongas
born on the outskirts,
rough and tough.
Now that I'm in these fancy halls,
they think I'm tamed,
sappy and worn out.
But why lie,
why believe that I've changed,
if I'm the same as yesterday?
Listen to my beat:
don't you see that I am gotán?
I bust myself in my song,
like a steel dagger,
to sing about a betrayal.
I like to strut around,
I'm cool for dancing,
listen to me beat:
I'm the same old tango
born in the arrabal.
Now that I have to quiet down,
that I suffer from disillusionment,
fashion and the years,
I'll follow the tango custom:
I''ll bite my tongue
at the anger I feel.
But why think,
why lie
that I'm dying since I'll never die?
In the days "Una emoción" was composed, the listeners might have read its message of cleaner, humbler tango as a call for purge of the remnants of the underclass origins of tango (culminated several years later with the ill-advised Peronist proscription of lunfardo, which replaced letras and even titles of the tango pieces with censorship-approved mediocrity) or maybe a jealous partisan attack on the irreverence of "El Rey de Compás" D'Arienzo and his followers. Indeed Raúl Kaplún, its composer (and probably the only Jewish fiddler to ever direct a tango orquesta tipica), firmly belonged to the camp of tango romanticism. But we now see the message of "Una emoción" through the prism of Gavito's legacy - as a passionate call for humble respect to tango's roots and for the mutual respect and community-building.
Finally - Una emocion 1943 - the beat of tango has permeated the city, its every corner. This nostalgic feeling, this loving and longing reflection of its past days, grows only more sweet and more enchanting every time when we hear it. Tango has become timeless; it no longer needs to pretend to be something convoluted, because it's so natural for this humble and deep emotion to resonate in our hearts. That's what we call Tango, and nothing more.
Una emoción (1943)
Letra : José María Suñé
...Envuelto en la ilusión anoche lo escuché,
compuesta la emoción por cosas de mi ayer:
La casa en que nací...
la reja y el parral...
la vieja calesita y el rosal.
Su acento es la canción de voz sentimental...
su ritmo es el compás que vive en mi ciudad.
No tiene pretensión,
no quiere ser procaz.
se llama tango... y nada más.
An emotion
translated by Derrick del Pilar
Wrapped up in a dream last night I heard it—
an emotion composed of things from my yesterdays:
The house where I was born,
the iron fence and the ivy,
the old carousel, the rosebush.
Its accent is the song of an emotional voice,
its rhythm is the measure that lives in my city—
it has no pretensions,
it doesn’t want to be lewd,
it’s called tango, and nothing more.
At the start of our era of the rebirth of tango, it was Gavito who carried the message of Una Emoción as an article of faith - so I must close this long post with an old, grainy video of Gavito's dance. See you on the dance floor!
