Practica del Centro playlist, November 2015

The Monday night practica caught me more tired than I expected, after a busy weekend including Milonga Sin Nombre, a pre-Thanksgiving cleanup, and harder-than-expected days at work. So the playlist choices reflected my mood with a mix of some searches and experimentation, and a great deal of comfort / pleasure music including lots of Donato, Rodriguez, and Biagi - including valses and foxes - and fav milongas of Di Sarli's and Quinteto Pirincho.

01. Francisco Canaro - Instrumental  "Hotel Victoria" 1935 2:49
02. Francisco Canaro - Instrumental  "El cabure" 1936 2:37
03. Francisco Canaro - Instrumental  "El chamuyo" 1933 3:11
Are Rodriguez's idiosyncratic endings OK for an early / warm-up tanda?
04. Enrique Rodriguez - Instrumental  "Zorro gris" 1946 2:37
05. Enrique Rodriguez - Instrumental  "La torcacita" 1940 2:28
06. Enrique Rodriguez - Instrumental  "El morochito" 1941 2:34
07. Ricardo Tanturi - Alberto Castillo "Con los Amigos (A mi madre) (Vals)" 1943 2:42
08. Ricardo Tanturi - Enrique Campos  "Al pasar" 1943 2:17
09. Ricardo Tanturi - Alberto Castillo "La Serenata (Mi Amor)" 1941 2:32
10. Carlos Di Sarli - Alberto Podestá "Nada" 1944 2:45
11. Carlos Di Sarli - Alberto Podestá "Junto A Tu Corazón" 1942 3:07
12. Carlos Di Sarli - Alberto Podestá "Tu!...El cielo y tu!" 1944 2:59
I play Troilo's tango tandas too rarely. But this time I couldn't resist this tanda with a song of unusual provincial Spanish folk roots - "Maragata". It is originally a very old tango cancion of Carlos Gardel, inspired by his trip far South to a small town of Carmen de Patagones, at the shores of Rio Negro. The area was settled by the Maragatos, as the residents of a small historic area in the highlands of Leon were called, perhaps because they once converted into Islam before becoming Christians again. The Maragatos were known (and generally denigrated) across Spain as mule-drivers with their stubborn traditional ways of living and their percussion music. But the folk song which Gardel turned into tango may have been originally not from Maragateria! It appears to be traditional in the neighboring historical province of Bierzo, and the girl in the song isn't even called Maragata but rather Morenica, "the swarthy one", as ladies of Ponferrada in Bierzo were called.

Macachines wood-sorrels

"Morenica mia" song asks for help from Virgin of the Oak, the holy protector of Ponferrada. Even the flowers which the beautiful girl picked in the opening lines changed too. In Leon, it was pedruelos, blue sweet pea flowers, the infamous famine food of the poor Spaniards which poisoned and crippled the peasants when they didn't have any other food to rely on. But in Carmen de Patagones, the flower is very local macachine, a wood sorrel species which is even named scientifically after Rio Negro: Oxalis melanopotamica.
And to add a childhood memory to the Maragatos' mule-driving journey, let me add a tune of Spanish folk-inspired Russian ballad about the mule-driver longing for his girl on a long trip in the foothills of the Sierras:

13. Aníbal Troilo - Francisco Fiorentino "Toda Mi Vida" 1941 2:55
14. Aníbal Troilo - Francisco Fiorentino  "Maragata" 1941 2:44
15. Aníbal Troilo - Francisco Fiorentino "El Bulín De La Calle Ayacucho" 1941 2:31
16. Quinteto Pirincho - Instrumental "El lloron" 1948 2:01
17. Quinteto Pirincho - Instrumental "Corralera" 1956 2:05
18. Quinteto Pirincho - Instrumental "La cara de la luna (milonga)" 1959 2:29
19. Osvaldo Fresedo - Roberto Ray "En la huella del dolor" 1934 2:48
20. Osvaldo Fresedo - Roberto Ray  "Adios para siempre" 1936 3:03
21. Osvaldo Fresedo - Roberto Ray "Sollosos" 1937 3:27
22. Edgardo Donato - Horacio Lagos  "Lagrimas" 1939 2:50
23. Edgardo Donato - Horacio Lagos  "Fue mi salvacion" 1940 2:29
24. Edgardo Donato - Horacio Lagos  "Soy mendigo" 1939 2:34
25. Rodolfo Biagi  "Pájaro Herido" 1941 2:18
26. Rodolfo Biagi - Andrés Falgás "Dichas que viví" 1939 2:16
27. Rodolfo Biagi - Teofilo Ibanez "Viejo Portón" 1938 2:27
28. Miguel Caló - Raúl Berón "Jamas Retornaras" 1996 2:31
29. Miguel Caló - Raúl Berón  "Trasnochando" 1942 3:04
30. Miguel Caló - Raúl Berón  "Lejos de Buenos Aires" 1942 2:54
31. Enrique Rodriguez - Armando Moreno "Que lo sepa el mundo entero" 1943 3:32
32. Enrique Rodriguez - Armando Moreno "Mi piba linda" 1943 2:51
33. Enrique Rodriguez - Armando Moreno "Llorar por una mujer" 1941 2:47
34. Carlos Di Sarli - Roberto Rufino "Pena Mulata" 1941 2:27
35. Carlos Di Sarli - Alberto Podestá "Entre Pitada Y Pitada" 1942 2:33
36. Carlos Di Sarli - Roberto Rufino "La Mulateada" 1941 2:22
37. Pedro Laurenz - Juan Carlos Casas "Vieja amiga" 1938 3:13
38. Pedro Laurenz - Juan Carlos Casas "No Me Extrana" 1940 2:43
39. Pedro Laurenz - Juan Carlos Casas "Amurado" 1940 2:28
I already wrote about Maruja Pacheco, the most amazingly multi-faceted female talent of tango - a composer, a poet, an award-winnng singer, and a movie actress at a time when the women just weren't "supposed" to create tangos. Here is the composition which jump-started her very short tango career - the 1937 "El Adiós" which convinced Maruja's mother that her 21 years old daughter must fight to overcome the prejudices and win a tango career. All those familiar with the Russian folk music can't help hearing, in the opening bars of "El Adiós", an allusion to the famous "Gypsy Girl" a.k.a. "Two guitars" - a Hungarian-inspired 1857 composition which I occasionally play in cortinas (read more about the history "Gypsy Girl" here).  The fiery motif has already been remixed as tango in Germany too, as "Zwei Guitarren". Here are the clips of a very classic violin and accordeon performance, and of the actual Hungarian Gypsy dance from a 1964 movie.

Maruja Pacheco's creative life in tango lasted just 4 years, and she most closely cooperated with Edgardo Donato's orchestra, I think not surprisingly because Edgardo famously paid no heed to the conservative social conventions of the day. The closing tango of the following tanda, "Sinfonía De Arrabal", is another of her compositions; and in the Donato tanda just above, hers are the lyrics of "Lagrimas". Alas, when Donato's orchestra disintegrated, Maruja also left tango for good, to compose music for chidren and religious themes.
40. Edgardo Donato - Horacio Lagos "El Adiós" 1938 3:09
41. Edgardo Donato - Horacio Lagos, Lita Morales y Romeo Gavioli "La Melodia Del Corazón" 1940 3:21
42. Edgardo Donato - Romeo Gavioli "Sinfonía De Arrabal" 1940 3:08
43. Enrique Rodriguez - Armando Moreno "Brindis (vals)" 1943 2:33
44. Enrique Rodriguez - Armando Moreno "Uno que ha sido marino! (vals)" 1944 2:57
45. Enrique Rodriguez - Roberto Flores  "Fru Fru (vals)" 1939 2:57
46. Ángel D'Agostino - Ángel Vargas "Ninguna" 1942 2:59
47. Ángel D'Agostino - Ángel Vargas "Adiós, Arrabal" 1941 3:10
48. Ángel D'Agostino - Ángel Vargas "Ahora No Me Conocés" 1941 2:35
49. Francisco Canaro - Ernesto Famá "Te quiero todavia" 1939 2:54
50. Francisco Canaro - Ernesto Famá "Lo pasao pasó" 1939 2:36
51. Francisco Canaro - Ernesto Famá "Tormenta" 1939 2:35
Haven't played Rodriguez's amazing tango foxes for a long time - I already wrote about the story of the 2nd song in the following tanda, originally a forbidden-yet-eternal Russian Gypsy romance. This time, let me just include a great clip of "Se ve el tren", the train song, the good-bye to the unfaithful Margot.

52. Enrique Rodriguez - Armando Moreno "Se ve el tren"  3:11
53. Enrique Rodriguez - Armando Moreno "No Te Apures Por Dios Postillón"  2:59
54. Enrique Rodriguez - Armando Moreno "Noches de Hungria"  2:57
55. Rodolfo Biagi - Instrumental "El Yaguarón" 1940 2:28
56. Rodolfo Biagi - Andrés Falgás "Son Cosas Del Bandoneon" 1939 2:44
57. Rodolfo Biagi - Andrés Falgás "Cielo!" 1939 2:31
58. Pedro Laurenz - Alberto Podestá "Garua" 1943 3:11
59. Pedro Laurenz - Alberto Podestá "Recien" 1943 2:43
60. Pedro Laurenz - Alberto Podestá "Todo" 1943 2:37
61. Edgardo Donato - Horacio Lagos "Quién Será (Vals)" 1941 2:20
62. Edgardo Donato - Félix Gutiérrez "La Tapera" 1936 2:54
63. Edgardo Donato - Hugo del Carril  "El Vals De Los Recuerdos" 1935 2:18
64. Lucio Demare - Juan Carlos Miranda  "Manana zarpa un barco" 1942 3:22
65. Lucio Demare - Juan Carlos Miranda  "Malena" 1942 2:54
66. Lucio Demare - Juan Carlos Miranda  "No te apures, Carablanca" 1942 3:34
67. Osváldo Pugliese - Roberto Chanel "Rondando Tu Esquina" 1945 2:48
68. Osváldo Pugliese - Instrumental "Malandraca" 1949 2:52
69. Osváldo Pugliese - Jorge Maciel "Remembranza" 1956 3:41
70. Angel D'Agostino Angel Vargas "La Cumparsita"  3:00
71. Damour Vocal Band  "SWAY - Damour Vocal Band"  3:49
72. Israel Kamakawiwo'ole  "Over The Rainbow" 2001 3:32
(72 total)