Tango 1937
Dag Stenvoll and Michael Lavocah · 2020-05-13 · 2:56:20
1937 is the year Juan D'Arienzo breaks through nationally: his first Radio El Mundo broadcasts start 1 January, and his April recording of La Puñalada (a tango turned milonga on pianist Rodolfo Biagi's suggestion) becomes the hit that makes his name, though singer Alberto Echagüe, who joins the band this year, won't record until 1938. Established giants show the strain of staying current: Canaro records D'Arienzo's own hit as a straight tango, a sign he can't keep up, and Roberto Firpo starts a nostalgic old-style side quartet as his sales slip. Pedro Laurenz debuts as a bandleader with four recordings, including the advanced instrumental Arrabal, which some musicians mark as the true start of the 1940s Golden Decade, while Aníbal Troilo's new orchestra debuts live at the Marabú in July but won't be heard on record until next year. The episode also touches tango's international reach, from a Japanese singer recording for Victor (part of a Japanese fascination with tango predating the 1980s revival) to the music's growing hold on Buenos Aires dance floors, still shared with jazz.
What this episode gave Tangopedia
Facts said in the episode, each now cited to the minute it is said.
D'Arienzo's first broadcast on Radio El Mundo came on 1 January 1937, intensifying his band's beat and helping him break through after a quiet 1935 and 1936.
Canaro recording D'Arienzo's own hit La Puñalada as a straight tango, soon after D'Arienzo's milonga version appeared, shows Canaro was out of touch and unable to modernise further.
"Típica" doesn't mean typical but traditional: a marketing term coined by Canaro and Greco when they shared a band in 1909, meaning a tango band with standard instrumentation, as opposed to an "orquesta característica" playing varied repertoire.
Rodríguez debuted in 1937 as the leading orchestra outside Buenos Aires, selling well inland (though not in the city), which let him keep recording through 1938-40 while better, less commercial orchestras lost their recording contracts.
Japanese interest in tango predates the 1980s revival by decades: Baron Megata ("Tsunami") learned tango in Paris in 1926 during post-surgery physiotherapy, then opened a free tango academy in Tokyo for his upper-class friends; a Japanese cultural attaché around 1928 also shipped tango sheet music home.
Records played · 37
Transcript
Transcribed by machine from the audio, then punctuated; names may be misheard. Tap any line to hear it. The episode is in English, and so is its transcript.
Good evening dear tango lovers. It's 1937 and we have for real entered the golden decade of tango made for dancing. I'm Dag Stenvoll, Zooming Newfoundbergen and with me I have Michael Lavocah from Norwich, England. How are you Michael? I'm very well Dag. Great to be here in 1937.
“Good evening dear tango lovers. It's 1937 and we have for real entered the golden decade of tango made for dancing.”
Our plot for tonight is, as usual, to play some tracks from this specific year and this year only. And we're going to have a chat about the songs and the orchestras. The usual twist to make the program a bit unpredictable, also for us, is that Michael doesn't know what I'll be playing. But I must say, Michael, I still get amazed by your knowledge about tango music and culture. Whatever less known orchestra or obscure tango-related recording I can find, you seem to know something about it.
Mostly you caught me out when you played the coppler.
Yeah, I wasn't tango, so you're covered there.
So, and just like in earlier programs, please use the chat window, everyone, for questions and comments. Last week, Michael, we saw that tango, what tango was like in 35, the year that Carlos Gardel died and D'Arienzo started recording. And at the end, when I announced the next Tango by Year episode, you said that 1937, that's the year when D'Arienzo goes mega big. Does that say at all? You want to add something before we start listening to music?
No, it says it all. I should say something, I suppose. Because we know that D'Arienzo appeared on the scene and is very successful quite soon and goes on to shape history following on from that moment. But it does take him a little while to get started. In 35 and 36, he doesn't make so much of an impression. But 1937 is the year that he really has a huge impression on the scene. And it starts on the 1st of January. How about that?
Because that's the year, the date, the moment where he makes his first broadcasts on Radio El Mundo. And that's the mass media of its day. It's beaming you into every single home. And we see an intensification of the beats, the D'Arienzo sound. It becomes harder and stronger.
So we left D'Arienzo on New Year's Eve in 1935 and was his first recordings with Biagi on the piano. But we're not going to start with D'Arienzo. So I want to start with, well, you could hear maybe, if you were here before we started, you could hear the last song we played. It was Tommy Dorsey's 1937 jazz version of Orchichornia, or Dark Ice, it's called in English. It's an all-Ukrainian folk song that we played the tango version of last week because Canaro recorded it in 1935.
So let's, yeah, you just mentioned Tommy Dorsey and it's a shame to skip over that he's not so well known today compared to bands like Glenn Miller but he was a really important band early on and it was the first band that Frank Sinatra sang with so that's something to keep in mind.
Let's start this year with a slow Canaro waltz, slow and sad Canaro waltz, Mamita. It's a tribute to all you mothers out there. Well, actually, I'm not sure if it's a tribute. It's more of an insult, maybe. It depends on what you think about the image of women in this song. But maybe you could talk about the lyric after. But it's a duet with Roberto Maida and Ángel Ramos singing to their mummies. And Canaro recorded lots and lots of waltzes, you should say. I think I have 307 waltzes in my database. So it's crazy. Maybe this is why many of these are never heard, because there are so many to choose from. And also many of them are slow, like this one.
The second song is much more known. It's the tango Invierno, with Maida singing. Michael, want to say something? You know, but you've heard Invierno, haven't you? I think we've all heard Invierno, haven't we? It became the new poema a while ago. Invierno means winter. And let's always remember that when we're selecting it as DJs. You know, there are an awful lot of good Canaro Maida songs. So you don't have to play Invierno, especially not if it's hot and sunny. And we've got daylight here. I mean, a lot of you are sitting here now in daylight. And when we began these programs just a few weeks ago, we were sitting in darkness.
Yeah, I just want to say the reason I play Invierno today is actually that it snowed in Bergen today, because we have this really cold weather from the north. So it's extremely cold May. Oh gosh. So in that sense, it's kind of fitting. So let's start listening to Francisco Canaro, the vals Mamita with Roberto Maida and Ángel Ramos singing, and the tango Invierno with Roberto Maida.
A slow, sad waltz, a duet to mothers that Dag calls less a tribute than close to an insult, from an orchestra that recorded over 300 waltzes.
♪ Music · 4:58 ·
A very well-known Canaro/Maida tango, played because it had snowed in Bergen that day; Michael cautions DJs it's overplayed and shouldn't only come out in winter.
Yeah, someone commented the lyrics of this song is kind of heavy compared to the smoothness of it and the singing and the melody. Well, Troilo hasn't happened yet, has he? So until Troilo happens that's how it is, the sound of the music is often not reflecting the content of the lyrics and there's something nice about that as well. There's a negative side but there's also a positive side which you can then get a very bittersweet feeling to the music which reflects our real life also and for most of us who don't understand so much Spanish it's so it doesn't matter really. You're just listening to the melody. Just connect to the sounds that are going into your ears.
And about Mamita. Yes. Now that's not a common track that you pick there. I wasn't expecting to hear that. And I think a lot of people listening will never have heard that before. Canaro, like some other tango artists, but Canaro was totally dedicated to his mother. He really loved his mother. And Corazón de Oro which is one of Canaro's most famous and most important tracks, Heart of Gold, who's the person with the heart of gold, that's his mother, that tango was written for and dedicated to his mother. So yes sometimes in the tango lyrics we see something that's not, it's not Argentine, it's not even Italian or Catholic, it's just something that we've seen in our cultural history that the Madonna and the whore thing, dividing women into these two roles. You know either you're perfect or you're awful and mum normally ends up in the perfect box.
So yeah she's very in the category, let's not get hung up on that aspect of the lyric, but she's nothing more than a great sacrifice and she never complains about her, so it's interesting. She never complains. She's always there. Maybe, I don't know in which program it will be, may I never lack. There's two different versions of that lyric and the original one, which you don't hear at first because of censorship, is really an interesting lyric. I think the first time we hear it is with Alberto Moran in the fifties, but that's a story for another night.
Yeah, well, we need something to warm us after this chilling winter song. Yes, please. Yes, I want to play another Maida song because I think actually this is one of Canaro's best years. I love the sound of Canaro in 1937 and some of the Maida tracks are really nice. And I want to play another one about the guy who finds love like a son in Paris. So it's Recuerdos de París with Roberto Maida.
As the music comes on, notice the clarinet obligato, very simple accompaniment, counter melody, not a counter melody, an obligato part from the clarinet. Canaro was one of many orchestras that like to use these jazz instruments in his instrumentation. All right.
And I play a second song that's an instrumental. And I don't think I've heard this before I prepared for this program. It's actually the D'Arienzo milonga, La Puñalada, made into a tango version. And it's interesting because I think it's recorded a couple of weeks after D'Arienzo. And you know it's in the milonga version, but here it's recorded as a tango. Talk about that afterwards. Let's listen to Recuerdos de París with Maida and La Puñalada instrumento, Francisco Canaro.
About finding love like a son in Paris; notice the clarinet obbligato, one of the jazz instruments Canaro liked to use.
Danced to it
♪ Music · 2:56 ·
Canaro's straight-tango version of D'Arienzo's milonga hit, recorded just weeks after D'Arienzo's, which Michael reads as a sign Canaro could no longer modernise.
So that's the best possible illustration of what D'Arienzo does to this number because it's a tango. La Puñalada. Puñalada is a dagger. So puñalada means stabbing. And it's written as a tango. I mean, the extraordinary thing is not so much that Canaro records it as a tango, but that he does that at a time when D'Arienzo has appeared and performed it as a milonga. He's out of touch, obviously. He's out of touch and it's the real sign that he's not going to be able to modernize himself one step further.
So now we have to tell the story. How did this song, this tango, get transformed into a milonga in Uruguay? And I posted a picture on the Facebook group of three guys at a bar in Uruguay in 37, D'Arienzo and Biagi and the third face which a lot of people wouldn't have recognized is Pintín Castellanos who's a sort of minor musician from Uruguay and the composer of this number. And D'Arienzo is going over every summer to Uruguay and for an extended period six weeks or more and he knows Pintín Castellanos and he gets chatting and if you're a famous band leader people are always asking you to play their song, so he promises Pintín Castellanos that he's going to play his tango La Puñalada. So he goes back to the hotel with the sheet music, has a little meeting with Biagi, Domingo Mancuso the first bandoneon and Matzello the first violin and says right here you go lads we're gonna do this and the guys look at it and they go it's not very good is it.
The room goes quiet, there's an awkward hush, and then Biagi says, I hear it's Biagi, Biagi says, how about if we do it as a milonga? D'Arienzo says do what you like but I promised him we'd do it. And that's the genius of that band and it's a great milonga, we're gonna listen to that later, the D'Arienzo version, it's a great milonga and it's that number more than any other that is the one that propels D'Arienzo to fame in 1937, this recording of La Puñalada. And it's not played that often by DJs. It's much slower than the 51 version, which is perhaps a bit more common now. So not a number we hear so often.
Chapter · 25:28
The Milonga That Wasn't Supposed to Exist
D'Arienzo promised to play a song exactly as written. His band broke that promise — and it made him famous.
“Biagi says, how about if we do it as a milonga? Darienzo says, do what you like, but I promised him we'd do it.”
Yeah. You said earlier that you think Lomuto is underplayed at milongas. And I felt a bit guilty when you said that, because I do like Lomuto, but somehow he doesn't really come up when I DJ. But let's listen to some Lomuto now. And like Canaro, he records a lot, more than 30 songs this year. And we'll listen to the tango Carizas with Jorge Omar singing. And then the instrumental S.O.S., which is well known in the Canaro versions. So I thought that would be a bit interesting. And when I listened to it the first time, I thought, ah, this is strange. But then I listened to it a couple of times and I kind of like it. It has a different feel than Canaro. Generally with Lomuto, this is an oversimplification, but it's Canaro, but with a much heavier, more grounded beat.
Dag's pick to showcase an underplayed orchestra; Michael likes it a lot, especially Lomuto's upward key-modulation trick at the ending.
♪ Music · 2:26 ·
An instrumental also known from Canaro's versions; Lomuto's take has a heavier, more grounded beat.
I like Lomuto. I like him a lot. Particularly the first one, the Carizas. Yeah, it's strange what he does in the end. It's this modulation trick that he goes up a tone or a half tone or a tone, I'm not sure. It's something that you usually hear in Eurovision Song Contest, not so much in tango, but Lomuto does it. So I've noticed he does it in several recordings. Yes, there's quite a few and then the ending which always goes the wrong way, wrong the other way, instead of going, it goes in reverse and that's his signature.
Yeah, let's listen to a new orchestra that we haven't heard before on Tango by Year, Rodríguez, Enrique Rodríguez. It's not an orchestra typical of the tango. Michael, can you say what that is? Well, orquesta típica, the word typical doesn't mean typical, it means traditional and it's a marketing term invented by Canaro and Greco when they were in the same band in 1909. So then it came to mean that if you line up a tango band then it needs to be conformed with a certain instrumentation. And that's what Orquesta Típica came to mean. Now, an Orchesta Caracteristica is an orchestra that played a wider variety of music.
Let's suppose one of your children is having a 15th or 18th birthday party and you've got enough money, you're going to hire the local hall and put on a dance party. Then you might need to have two bands, which is expensive. Now you might need a tango band and a jazz band or as a compromise you would hire a orquesta característica which is one band that plays everything. So that's what Rodríguez does, it's a pop orchestra. It's a pop orchestra in a way, the distinction is a bit artificial because if you look at an orchestra like Canaro's orchestra and you dig deep and look at what he did, even in the 30s, because he started in 1915, even in the 30s, he's still performing a lot of numbers that are not tango, waltz and milonga. But he's not considered an orchestra característica, he's considered a tipica, which means a serious orchestra.
And okay, so Rodríguez starts in 1937. And as we listen to it, let's keep in mind that outside Buenos Aires, so there's Buenos Aires and the rest of the country. Outside Buenos Aires, of course, 1937, the top orchestra is D'Arienzo. But very quickly, the number two orchestra inland is Rodríguez. He sold a lot of records, but not in the city. That's maybe why he's allowed to keep recording through the years 38, 39 and 40, when other and to our taste, much better orchestras are stuck in these non-recording contracts because they're not popular enough.
That's a really good point that you make there, Duncan. So let's listen to one tango by Rodríguez, the tango Muñequita. It's very light and playful, like most Rodríguez songs. And the singer is Roberto Flores.
Rodríguez's debut year; light and playful like most of his output, about a man who decides he must find a girlfriend after all his friends marry.
♪ Music · 1:51 ·
Michael, someone says, Gabriel says, it reminds him of the sound quality of Aníbal Troilo the year after. Well, I understand the point. Of course, the sound world is completely different, but he's recording on Odeon there, and so is Aníbal Troilo, and their records in this time, in fact, for most of the period, are more detailed than those produced on RCA Victor. You can hear more in the records.
And there were different opinions about this music, but someone wrote, it's great fun. And I think also it's fun to dance to. And it's something that DJs usually put on early in the night. It's not like after midnight kind of music usually. But I liked it a lot. And I'd never paid attention to the lyric of this tango before, but I did just now. And it was very easy to hear the lyric, and the lyric was really a lot of fun because the guy was saying, all my friends have got married, so it's time for me to, you know, do something about it, sort myself out and find myself a girlfriend.
Yeah, let's move on to another, uh, debut orchestra this year, Ricardo Tanturi, who makes two recordings this year and two more the year after, then nothing until late 1940. Medical orchestra, what's that mean? Um, just very, very literally, this orchestra emerged from medical school, doctor school, so um, and he's, he sings this year, he records the tango which is a very well-known tango from other recordings, and the singer is Carlos Ortega.
It has a bit morbid, uh, lyrics, doesn't it, uh, Michael, A la luz del candil, by the light of a lamp. It's about a double murder. Exactly, yeah, yeah, it's, you know, it's the normal thing. The woman betrays the man so he stabs them both, um, and then in the second verse he describes what actually took place and actually, you know, almost nothing.
Yeah, and I think in the lyrics it also says that he comes to because he comes to the police station to confess this murder, and he has the first line. Yes, and he has a suitcase where he brings Don't tell them that, don't tell them, it's horrible. Okay, so we have a bag. We'll talk about the bag because it's not actually a suitcase, the word that's used. All right, I've forgotten what it is. It's the special bag that a gaucho uses that you can tie on to the, um, the saddle of your horse. You can tell what's in the bag after we listen to the song. Yes.
Tanturi's debut year (his band grew out of medical school); a morbid lyric about a gaucho who stabs his unfaithful woman and her lover, then confesses, carrying their hair and heart in his bag.
What's in the bag, Michael? The maleta. What's in the bag is her hair, the braids of his girlfriend, and the man's heart.
Put the chains on if I'm a criminal, God will judge me. It's the old thing, isn't it, when a man of honor is wrong, there are only two options, forgiveness and revenge. Mostly it's revenge. You think you'll be put in jail or excused for a crime of passion? Um, a crime of passion was a defense, it was a defense in French law until the 70s. Yeah, let's move on to the forgotten hero Roberto Firpo.
You said in, uh, in 35 program, Michael, that he's the second most recorded tango orchestra ever after Canaro, 2800 recordings. There's some stuff going on in the chat window. What are they asking about here? Is this the influence from medical school? No, it's not, it's just a murder.
Yeah, so Firpo is in a little bit the same boat as Canaro, a giant of a previous tango era who's struggling to stay modern and up to date. And in 1936, which we've skipped over between last week and this week, he's formed parallel to his orchestra a quartet to play in the old style, and he does that more or less because that's the kind of music that he likes to make, you know, his heyday was in the 10s and the 20s, not in the 30s. Now Canaro is also in 1937 going to start his old style quartet or quintet actually, the quintetto don pancho, which then is going to get renamed the Quinteto Perincio. But maybe as with most things Canaro, it's going to be a bit more of a commercial venture to ride or try to ride on the coattails of D'Arienzo's success.
So yes, there are some good tracks from Firpo in this time, but they're becoming increasingly rare. And Carlos Puente tells the story. Firpo is performing live on Radio Belgrano, and they've performed one number, and there's this really short break, and someone comes into the studio and says, have you heard about D'Arienzo's success, it's incredible. And Firpo's going, oh, and he rushes up to his pianist which who's Carlos Garcia, and he says, do something, do something, we must do something. So but you know, of course they can't really do very much. What are you going to play for us?
We're going to listen to two recordings from his orchestra, not from the quartet. El Compinche, the tango, instrumental. It's got a good energy. It's a little bit like the one we listened to in 1935, Carcajada. And then we're going to listen to a waltz that I discovered for this broadcast. It's with Carlos Varela singing. It's called Dicha y Dolor, Happiness and Pain. I like the title. And I hope some of you at least are going to like this waltz as much as me.
And just after Varela stopped singing, just noticed the violins, you were talking about this violins last time, Michael, this low tone vibrato. I love it. It's fabulous. I'm going to put my DJ head on the block here and say that right now this is my favourite 1937 recording. So let's listen to this, the first exciting instrumental tango, El Compinche, and then in my opinion fabulous was Dicha y Dolor.
An energetic instrumental from a fading giant trying to stay modern; pianist Carlos García audibly works to keep the music interesting.
Danced to it
Michael calls this his favourite 1937 recording so far: strong drive, swing (cadencia), and low-tone violin vibrato he loves.
I just love this waltz. There were two really nice tracks. First of all, in Compinche, we could hear exactly what I was talking about, the pianist, who's, I think, Carlos Garcia on that track, trying to do something to make the music sound more interesting. And in Compinche, I just checked, it's recorded in December of that year. So the year is going on, and Firpo's trying to do something to maintain his sales and his popularity. Although from our point of view, the music isn't suffering, but it's becoming stayed in comparison to the D'Arienzo phenomenon.
And that warts, there was many, many nice things about that warts. First of all, it's got a really strong drive. Secondly, what Argentines like to call the cadencia, this sense of swing. And the third thing is something, Teresa, I can see you here. Hello.
On your comparison of versions, you were talking about the different versions of Desder Alma, and how in the Tanturi version by sometimes having a very staccato treatment in the rhythm it creates a lot of excitement compared to the easy flow of the waltz, and that's something that we had again there. That's one of the elements that creates this swing, is this very particular treatment of the rhythm. That's a lovely, lovely waltz, thanks for playing that, and this beautiful low, low tone violins, I just adore them. It goes to my heart, melancholic person in a way, someone sentimental person, let's say someone with a great sense of beauty that we hear immediately in something like El Amanecer and Marejada, the tangos like that. Yeah, in 1931 he took a little break. He thought, I'll retire from tango, and when he came back, because he lost all his money in the crises of that year, the first thing he recorded, a new composition of his, was onda crista, deep sadness. So that he had that touch in his soul as well, and he brings it as well to the waltz, and I think that's makes it a bit richer. I think I'm going to play this in the first wall stand put on after COVID-19.
And Tango Tunes people, if there's anyone listening, we want the first Firpo 1935 to 42 edition. Let's bring this forgotten hero up on the stage again. I think it deserves it. I think there's a lot of really nice recordings, but as you could hear the sound quality is so-so. Yeah, I think that's because there's not that many people with big collections of Firpo from this time.
So last week in the 1935 program we did a little excursion to European tango and listened to some Polish, Hungarian and German recordings. I was actually thinking, Michael, you should write a book about European tango. Well, I'll tell you about that. Um, it's clear to me that we need that book, and it's a huge topic and it's largely unresearched. There may be, for example, something about the tango in France published in French, but I'm not aware of that work. In Poland there's two or three collectors who are deeply aware of their cultural heritage and I've approached these people, but you know, they're just, they're music lovers.
And I spoke to one guy and I said, look, you know, would you write a book about tango in Europe, and he thought about it for a while. And he said, no, I'm too busy. I don't have time for that. And then I thought, well, that's a pity because you know a lot. And then I sort of came back to him six months later and said, what about just tango in Poland? Could you write a book about that? And he thought about it for a bit. And then he wrote back and said, no, no, I'm too busy.
So I don't know. I mean, you know, when I've written about all the Argentine orchestras, then I'll take that on as my project, but not before. But there are people out there who have a really good knowledge of that period and an appreciation. Really, it's the interwar period that we're talking about, and that was a very special time in European history with a very particular sentiment.
Well, let's go to a different place this week. Just play a song without saying who it is, you can guess in the chat field, orchestra and vocalist. It'll be interesting to see if anyone knows this.
Played as a guess-the-song game; Victor's house orchestra recorded four songs this year with a Japanese singer, probably for the Japanese market.
♪ Music · 2:12 ·
No one guessed it. Even Shazam just know. No, two people have got it. Oh, I didn't see that. Well, Teresa's got it. And someone else has said, well done, Nigel. No, Nigel didn't get it. So Teresa wins. I lost the chat. What did you say? Alma de Bandoneón. Yeah, the title of the song. That's okay.
And it's by a vocalist, Japanese, as many took, Yoshie Fujiwara. But do you know who the orchestra is? I do. You do? Well, I think I do, but I'm not going to say it. All right. It's Orquesta Típica Víctor. It's the record company House Orchestra, which recorded four songs in 1937 with the Japanese vocalist, presumably for the Japanese market, I suppose.
But Michael, what's the thing with Japan and Argentine tango?
Well, as we hear there, it started before the war. Now, through trying to understand the Japanese CD labels, well, they were LP originally, CTA and AMP, yeah? Two or three Japanese collectors with huge collections. You know, Akihito Baba has got 30,078 RPM discs, 30,000. And he's counted how many times he went collecting records in Buenos Aires. And I can't remember what the number is, but it's something like 70 something. He made 70 visits there.
And he started, this is the important thing, he started before the Tango revival. So Tango Revival was what? That's the show. Tango Argentino, which is Paris, 1983, if memory serves. He started before then. So the Japanese were interested in this music long before the Tango Revival happened. Why? Well, the first part of the story is after the war, jazz was banned because jazz was American music. So Tango was not United States, North American music. So that was OK. But it goes back way earlier. So this is 1937. And there it is.
Chapter · 1:01:45
The Hip Operation That Brought Tango to Japan
A rich young Japanese man went to Paris for surgery in 1926 — and came home with tango instead.
It goes back to the guy whose nickname was Tsunami, Baron Megata, who in 1926 was sent by his dad, his very rich dad, to Paris for a hip operation, which was successful. And then for his post-op physiotherapy, he decided to learn tango. I don't know if he told his dad about that. And when he went back, he bought all the tango records he could get and all the tango sheet music he could get. Went back to Japan and opened a tango academy to teach his upper-class tango friends to dance Argentine tango. And it was free. You didn't have to pay.
And then there were two or three other transfusions like that, the Japanese cultural attache, a few years later, 1928. He also got really obsessed with tango and shipped all the sheet music out to Japan. So they really took to it very early indeed.
So let's listen to a couple of other Orquesta Típica Víctor songs. Let's listen to the Milonga de los Fortines, which is super playful and with a very characteristic beginning. And to Noches de Invierno. And this is with Lita Morales singing. And it's interesting because it's her first recording. She recorded with Donato, as we know, from 1938 or 1939, I think.
And she's probably the most played woman vocalist at Milongas, isn't she? Because she sings as a strabilista and cantoror. Yes, that's true. By no means the most recorded, but probably the one that we hear most often. Isn't it interesting that Donato is the top band to give women that kind of exposure? So, Milonga de los Fortines with Mariano Balcarce singing, and not just Invierno.
A milonga evoking the 19th-century frontier forts and the women who followed the soldiers; a military trumpet opens it.
Lita Morales's first tango recording here (her actual first recording was a paso doble a month earlier); she later becomes Donato's best-known female singer.
Lita Morales, second recording ever. The first was a Paso doble a month earlier. It's a beautiful word. It's syncopated. And it really maintains the interest. And did you, could you hear the guitar in the background? The guitar is still not 100% eliminated from the lineup.
Milonga de los Fortines. So a fortin is a fort, a little fortress. And this composition is taking us back to the time when there were still Native American people and the immigrants, because that's what they were, you know, the incomers were pushing their way through. And they had little chain of fortresses going out into the country before all those people were, well, murdered mostly, were cleared away. And whenever you've got soldiers, you've got camp followers. So women followed along with soldiers and some of them even fought. So Milonga de los Fortines is taking us back to that time, probably the late 19th century. Wouldn't have been written then, but that's the time it harked back to. It's the military trumpet we hear there in the beginning.
Yes, very military sound. So let's go on to Donato, Edgar Donato, because he was mentioned here. Lita went on to sing with him a year later, two years later. And in this year, 37, he only records six numbers, five with Horacio Lagos and one instrumental. Six recordings, that's not a lot to, you know, you know why? No, I don't know why, but they're good, aren't they?
We're going to call Gato, this cat song. There was a discussion about it in the Tango by Ear group a couple days ago and today, so you can check that out if you want. It is a tango that appeared in the film Asia sel tango, where it was sung by Tita Morello, making fun of this guy in the bar. Yeah, he's completely humiliated and he's forced to leave, as I recall. And the cat is some kind of slang for a guy who is not the man he looks like, or is pretending to be more than he is, or something like this. Yeah, it's got lots of meanings, but that's one of them. Somebody who always looks good, but it's all a sham.
And it's a fun song too. It's a kind of feel good song, like a lot of Donato songs, I find. He wants us to be happy, and we get happy from listening to him. And you can hear the accordion, right? That he has one accordion in his band and it's a more happy sound than the bandagnons. That seems to be the way it works for Argentine tango, although not in Europe. Yes, accordion makes happy sounds and bandagnon makes deeper sounds. It gives the possibility of lament and Donato just doesn't want to do that. Okay, Gato with Donato, Horacio Lagos singing.
A feel-good Donato number from the film Así es el tango, mocking a poser (a 'gato'); the falsetto 'meowing' is violinist Piovani.
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♪ Music · 2:36 ·
So some very interesting comments. First, let's just answer the question, who's doing the meowing? So on some of the Donato recordings, you hear somebody singing falsetto, singing in a very high voice. And that's one of the violin lines. Not the first violin, because that's probably Donato himself. He was sometimes still playing, but another of the violinists, what was his name, Piovanni, he would do the sound effects. So I guess, I don't know for certain, but I guess that would be him.
And just to pick up on the comments now, let's keep this a political free space because we have enough of that on the news at the moment. But very interesting that this tango has been repurposed in recent times, Heike tells us, and they've heard some lyrics in a clandestine malonga in Buenos Aires denouncing President Macri. And did you notice one of the lines in the lyrics is, we denounce your ambition? So, wow.
“There isn't very much political commentary in tango, but that's because it wasn't recorded.”
And what's interesting generally is there isn't very much political commentary in tango, but that's because it wasn't recorded. So that's another way in which the records don't give a completely representative view over what was happening, because they'll be censored if they tried to record it or play it on the radio. Yeah, no chance. No, yeah, that's another reason why we want to be present in one of the local gigs in Buenos Aires in 1937. Yes, that would have been interesting.
Yeah, okay, let's get to our man who goes mega big in 1937, Juan D'Arienzo. I'm going to play first Homero and La Puñalada. The belongables who we're talking about now, those are two good choices, first of all because they were two of the big hits that D'Arienzo had that year. How do we know what the big hits were? Well, what I did was I looked at which records got reprinted later on. So that's one of the ways you can know. So as you get into the mid 40s, people still like this 30s stuff and they're still buying it, so the records would get reprinted with new numbers, and we can see then which were the records that got reprinted, what are the really, really big hits.
And so of course La Puñalada is so important historically, that's a bigot. It's not paired with La Cumparsita. La Cumparsita comes right at the end of the La Puñalada, something like April, and La Cumparsita comes in December. They are two of the big hits. So obviously with this big gap, they're not on the same record in 37. But when D'Arienzo records them both again in 43, then they are on the two faces of the record. That's the coupling. And that coupling is then maintained into the future.
Paciencia, the vocal number, that's quite a big hit, but not as big a hit historically going forward, if you like, as you might think. And then a track like Homero. And what do we hear in Homero? We hear these hard syncopations. That's something to notice about tango music. It's one of the things that defines our genre, is the use of syncopation, particularly this syncopation that in Argentina they call sincopa a tierra, yata, that syncopation, and Homero is full of it. And that's the modern, harder sound, which is pushing out the jolly sound of bands like Bernardo as world history is looking increasingly less and less light.
Yeah. And as you said, there is one vocal from this year, but 23 instrumentals. So it's an interesting year because the year after, of course, there's a lot of recordings with a Shagwe. And we love those recordings and they're played at every Mlongos. But 1937 is kind of underplayed. I must say I rediscovered it while reading your book, Michael, on D'Arienzo, listening through all these 24 recordings. A lot of them are really great and they're not so much played as the later instrumentals and the ones with the Chagwe.
Yeah, I mean this period of D'Arienzo from 35 to 39 there are 116 numbers. Two of them are Polkas, so that leaves 114 that we can play at the milonga. And thanks to the efforts first of all of CTA in Japan and more lately of Tango Chins these recordings are available. So let's play all of them and not just the top 10. And you're really right to pick up on this fact of the instrumentals. Now Achagwe joins the band something like September, October, we're not really sure, let's say it's September, but he doesn't get to record until January the following year.
Now, why is that? It's because the public's used to an instrumental tango for dancing. That's what they're used to. And Echagwe's voice is not a voice like Roberto Rai with Fraseiro or Maeda. It's a street voice. So this is something that's a bit new for the record companies and the radio stations, so they're a bit resistant. So on the radio programs, we know they did these 15-minute slots and they'd do four numbers plus the commercials. And initially, Achagwe would sing only one of those four numbers. And so then slowly he becomes accepted by the public. And then by the following year, he's singing more than half the numbers.
So this is a change that's happening with D'Arienzo's orchestra, but also with other bands. It's something that's going to be important with Troilo's band. I don't know if you're playing. We can't listen to his recordings, but 1937, first of July 1937, that's the day that Troilo's new band makes its debut at the Marabou. So that's another really big event that's happening in tango history, but kind of silently, because we don't get to hear anything from the band until next year. What a shame. Yes, what a shame. Listen to these two, and they're from the same recording date, 27 of April, Homero and La Puñalada. Juan D'Arienzo.
“That's the day that Troilo's new band makes its debut at the Marabú. Another really big event happening in tango history, but kind of silently, because we don't get to hear anything from the band until next year.”
One of D'Arienzo's two biggest 1937 hits, full of the hard 'síncopa a tierra' rhythm defining his new, modern sound.
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♪ Music · 0:54 ·
D'Arienzo's biggest 1937 hit and the recording that made him famous; written as a tango, turned into a milonga at Biagi's suggestion, and now underplayed compared to the 1951 remake.
Danced to it
Lots of positive reaction from the public to this Milonga. So let's all us DJs present here tonight take that on board, because normally we have a look or we have a listen to the D'Arienzo milongas from that era and we pick the ones that have got harder and faster beats, because we think that's more exciting and is more energy, whatever that word means. And this seminal recording of La Puñalada gets overlooked. So let's listen to two more D'Arienzo tracks since it's such an important orchestra for this year. The tango El Cencerro and the waltz Alma Dolorida. El Cencerro is one of my all-time favorite D'Arienzo tracks. So I'd like to just explain.
Yeah, let's explain why. Now, the meaning of the title is the cowbell, you know, or the bell that you put around a cow or a sheep so that you can hear the animal as it walks around the countryside, and it really has this irresistible kind of walking pace, a little bit laid back compared to what D'Arienzo does a lot of the rest of the time. So it's unusual already, but the reason that I like it so much is in the middle section the band just lays down a backbeat and the melody takes over. So it's a very interesting combination. Yeah, strong D'Arienzo that you just can't resist, but then melody stretching around on the top. Let's listen to it, El Cencerro, and then Alma Dolorida, a waltz.
Chapter · 1:28:18
The Cowbell Tango
Why is Michael Lavocah's favourite D'Arienzo recording the one that just... strolls?
One of Michael's all-time favourite D'Arienzo tracks: an unusually laid-back walking pace with a backbeat section where the melody takes over.
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♪ Music · 2:00 ·
A thrillingly fast waltz (about 73 bpm) where the bandoneón section audibly struggles to stay together; so well loved it's replayed later in the show.
Oh, fabulous. This is so exciting stuff, isn't it, Michael? It's so exciting. What I especially love about the Bandagnon variation that you just heard is that it's not perfect. You can hear, I think there's still four players there, it's not yet five, it doesn't matter. You can hear that the band is struggling to hold it together. The timing of the four guys together is not absolutely perfect. Why is it not perfect? Because they're playing really fast.
“What I especially love about the bandoneón variation that you just heard is that it's not perfect.”
It's 73 beats a minute and it's the maximum they can possibly do. And there was one point in that variation where it suddenly went double speed. So it's going... And you can hear that the band is just losing sync and you feel the excitement. Let's remember that all these recordings were what we now call direct to disc. So there's no editing process. It's a live take.
And that's the only thing that existed then, whereas that's not true now. Even in an aria, you know, if the tenor cracks a note, they'll take that note out and splice in a note from another take. So the immediacy, you know, now we have to buy live albums and unplugged albums, but all of this is essentially live music, and that's what we hear. Very, very exciting, and it's amazing to think about, this is what, this is the stuff that got half of Buenos Aires to its feet at the time, and it means so much to, for the years to come, that this music was laid the foundation of. It's the reason why we're here tonight.
Yeah, at a certain point I just got a shiver in my body, listening to that. There's so much we could say about it, you know, I mean, people are asking to listen to it again, but you know, you can, we can listen to it afterwards because there's so much more great music to listen to. But there's a real sense of dynamic in that waltz. So something like, you know, El Chocolate, the volume is on or off, it's like that all the way through, but that wasn't true in this waltz. There were lots and lots of little waves. It's, yeah, change of volume, which is very exciting.
Who knows, maybe D'Arienzo is being influenced by Laurenz, because, you know, 1937 is the year that also Laurenz starts to get a bit more exposure from the broader public. We'll get back to Laurenz in a short while. I will kill you if we don't. I know you will.
But first you're going to listen to an orchestra that recorded very, very few songs. But he was a composer, Enrique Santos Discépolo. And he recorded a beautiful song this year, Desencanto, with a woman singer, Tanya. So let's just say a few things about that, if I may just cut in there. So Discépolo is known as a lyricist first and as a composer second.
And we know that he was one of these intuitive musicians. What do I mean by that? He couldn't write music. So I forget, but one of his famous, I think Sueño de Juventud, he would go to one of his musician friends and sing the melodies to them and they would write them out for him. And he wasn't the only guy who would do that, but by the 1930s there weren't many people still working like that. So completely intuitive musician, and here he is running an orquesta típica, the typical, no, not one of these big full-time ones that's working in the cabarets and so on, but still running an orchestra. That's really impressive that he's able to do that, and Tanya is of course his girlfriend, and they have this really tortuous on-off relationship that is, you know, one of the creative impulses in his lyrics and in his music.
That's nice, though, to put up a band with your girlfriend and then people listening to it like 80 years later. It's not bad, is it? That's quite cool, actually. Let's listen to Desencanto with Discépolo and singer Tanya.
Discépolo, chiefly a lyricist who couldn't write music, still ran his own orquesta típica this year, with his on-off girlfriend Tanya singing.
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♪ Music · 1:41 ·
Michael, do you want to say something about it more? The only thing I want to pick up on was the key change. So very often at this time, the bands wouldn't repitch the whole song for a singer. So the singer's got a range and you've got to fit that. But out of respect for the original composition, they'd start in the key that it's written in and then change key if they needed to and the entrance of the singer. And that's what you heard there.
Oh, what's the Troilo one? I can't remember. The name will come to me in a moment or Teresa will type it in the comment window. But Troilo does the same thing there. Starts in the key that it's written in and then modulates the key in order to fit Fiorentino's voice. It's only much later that people started to repitch the entire song to suit the singer.
Thank you so much, everyone. Yeah. Another example of that technique. There's also a nice argument going on in the comment window about the relationship and relative importance of Troilo, Laurenz and all the others, which I'm not going to get involved. I'm going to keep going until after midnight tonight. Yes, we will.
One of the many nice things about this tango by ear concept for me as a DJ is that I can also play some stuff that's not really playable at a milonga. So it's not primarily for dancing, like solo recordings. And I want to play one by a singer that you know from much later, Oscar Serpa. Because he recorded one song this year, actually. And as we know him from Fresedo in the 40s and Di Sarli in the 50s or late 40s and 50s. And this is actually this Niebla del Riachuelo. It's Serpa's first recording. And it's the only one we have with him before he joins Fresedo in 1942.
I haven't heard this before. You haven't heard it? Good. So it'll be like tonight's Joker. Yes. And we know this song from Fresedo version recorded the same year with Roberto Rey. But I think it's more interesting to listen to the Serpa one. And he's singing backed by guitars. So Niebla del Riachuelo with Serpa and guitars.
Chapter · 1:41:54
The Singer Who Sounds Like No One Else — Because He Couldn't Yet
This is Oscar Serpa's very first recording, and he doesn't sound anything like the Serpa you know.
Serpa's first recording, backed only by guitars, and his only one before joining Fresedo in 1942; its intimate style recalls Agustín Magaldi, before the orchestra-singer style existed.
♪ Music · 2:10 · The lyrics, on the song's page
Wow. Isn't that sweet? So touched, and many people very touched by that. Hard to recognize in that performance the Serpa that we know at the end of the 40s and the 50s singing with this early. Now, people are commenting about his youth here, but I'd like to suggest that that's not the factor. What you're hearing here is a different style of singing, because remember, it's 1937 and the cantor di orquesta hasn't really happened. It's just about to happen, this style of singing.
Now, when he began to sing, I mean, I'm surprised and touched, but it reminded me of another singer who sang only with guitars, which was Magaldi, Agustín Magaldi. There's quite, um, it's an intimate tone, so I think that's what we're hearing. We're hearing in the young Serpa that he can't be influenced by the style of the cantor du orchestra, because it doesn't exist yet. And he's influenced by the other guitar backed singers, particularly Agustín Magaldi, who's going to, yeah, I think next year he also dies. And then that's it, you know, Gardel's gone and then Magaldi, who kind of had the number two position in the public eye, he's going to go as well.
People know the name Magaldi because they sing about his death in one of those De Angelis Waltz duos. Por que te fuiste hermano? Why did you go brother? And Magaldi. Yeah, that's the title. Beautiful. Thank you so much for playing that. Thank you for saying that. I know that you haven't heard it. No, never heard it.
So we're getting closer to the end. And of course, we'll finish with Pedro Laurenz. We have two. It's the after the arjenso, it's of course it's the big happening of the year. But before we listen to Laurenz, we're going to listen to one another thing that we don't hear at the milonga. Because, Michael, when you give your Troilo lectures, you talk about the influences of three band on players on Troilo and one of them of course is Laurenz, the other one is Pedro Mafia and the third one is Ciriaco Ortiz, isn't it?
Ciriaco Ortiz from Cordoba, yeah, very different styles of the others, intimate, and he has a trio and he records some numbers in 37. And I'm going to play just one of these songs and there's something specific with his style of playing the band Anon, isn't it? I think you could describe it as a kind of voice that the band Anon makes, this kind of human voice. It talks, they call it conversando. And instead of getting a pure tone, he goes... And the way he does that, it's by blending a note with the octave note. You start with one and you blend it into the note one octave off and that's how you get that talking sound.
You hear this very clearly in this tango Yvette, and it's Ortiz with, I think, one more bandana player and a guitar backing. I think it's just Ortiz on bandana and two guitars. Is it? Okay, I might be wrong. That's what we see in photographs, but we'll listen together and see if we can hear a second band on young. Let's see. Let's listen to this.
Ortiz's conversational, 'talking' bandoneón style (blending a note with its octave), from a trio with guitars; one of the three bandoneón players Michael cites as shaping Troilo.
♪ Music · 1:30 ·
So, yeah, we can hear some charlo in this, can't we? Very, very much the tendency towards an introvert style of playing as opposed to the extrovert style which initially Troilo does both. But as he goes on, he goes back more and more to this introvert style, partly because he has to, because, you know, he lives so hard that he loses playing ability and he just can't play fast at the end of his life anymore. But also because he becomes more and more sentimental as he gets older. And it's very different from the band on playing of the next orchestra when you listen to Laurenz, which is much more vitruoso.
Yes, well, I can guess what we're going to hear. So would you like to tell us what order we're going to hear the tracks? We're going to listen to all four recordings by Laurenz in 1937. Okay, so we're going to hear the Ranchera as well. Yes, I want to play the Ranchera because I've never heard it before. It's the first thing he records, which is really very curious. A Ranchera and a Milonga, that's his first two recordings. Is that because he needed to try to be popular or what? Do you know what? I have no idea. No, it's interesting though. I really don't know.
Yeah, it's Milonga de mis Amores with Héctor Farrel singing. We know this from, it's a great milonga, and Ranchera called Enamorado, also with Héctor Farrel. Okay, what is a Ranchera, by the way? Okay, really good question. Now, um, there is a rhythm in Brazil called ranchera, but ranchera is a fake made-up rhythm. It's a fake made-up rhythm leveraging the Masurka. So it's in three. One, two, three, one, two, three. But it's neither European waltz nor Avanz Criollo.
And you hear straight away that there's something different when you hear the ranchera, because the three beats tend to have equal strength. But then the real giveaway is that when it ends, it ends on beat two. And which is why if you try to dance it you kind of feel okay for the first bit and then it goes wrong and it just doesn't work. So you cannot dance a waltz to the ranchera. It was one of these creations in the city, created in the city around 1930, came out of a stage show. And then, you know, people started to think, you know, city dwellers began to think that there was a countryside rhythm called a ranchera, but there wasn't. Just like the city milonga, you know, a created thing.
Yeah, I've never heard this played at the milonga, so so interesting for people maybe to hear it. But first the milonga, Milonga de mis Amores, and then Enamorado. And before you play the milonga, just to recall that Laurenz wrote this milonga, it's one of the big songs of the year in 1937. But also that there are two recordings by Laurenz. He does record it a second time in 1944, so this may not be the version you're familiar with, even if you think you know the Laurenz Milonga de mis Amores. I think this one is a bit slower, and the second one is instrumental, isn't it? The 44 version. I think there's no vocalist in that one. Yeah. So this is with Héctor Farrel singing. All right, let's listen to Milonga de mis Amores and then the Ranchera de Enamorado.
One of 1937's biggest songs, written by Laurenz; this earlier vocal version differs from his better-known 1944 instrumental remake.
Danced to it · 5 of 80
♪ Music · 2:58 · The lyrics, on the song's page
A ranchera (an invented folk-style rhythm in three, based on the mazurka) — an unusual choice, with the milonga, for Laurenz's first-ever recordings.
So many friends. A lot of people are still in shock at the ranchero. I mean, I told you at the beginning, it's like waltz, but it's not a waltz. The strong beats beat two. It's a fake folklore. And if people are going, it's a bit like waltz. Well, it's totally in shock. It's not like you associate with Laurenz, this kind of music. No, that's very true.
Now, did you notice you had to listen quite closely to the band-a-nyon sound? But in the milonga, when we got to the variacion, it was a true solo. So as dancers, we tend to use the word solo a bit loosely, meaning it's the bandagnons, it's a solo. But for a musician, that's not a solo, that's a soli. Solo means one person. It's a single word in Italian, and the plural of solo is soli. So when you listen to the sound of bandagnons, if you're not sure if it's one or two, it's two. Basically, that's how it works.
Now there in the ranchera, you could hear there was more than one musician playing. So it's Laurenz and Blasco, who's the guy with the bottle glasses, who he took with him out of Dicara's orchestra when they left in 34. But in the first one he played solo, it was just one band and yon, presumably because he wanted to phrase in such a precise and exquisite way that he couldn't use anyone else in his band and yon section to do that and he had to do it by himself. And a cracking pianist, the pianist is the arranger in this band. Laurenz is not the arranger, which is, it's not by no means criticism, you know. Troilo is not the arranger in his band.
So let's listen to the last two Laurenz recordings, and they're both masterpieces that we've heard many times. Abandono, composed by Laurenz's bandonist friend Pedro Mafia and with lyrics by Homero Amansi, and then the instrumental, Arrabal. Can I make a few comments before we hear them? Of course, you have to make a speech.
Abandono, the first thing you'll hear is the sense of dynamic. The opening phrase grows. It doesn't go... It goes... This is Laurenz, always the sense of dynamic. And then Arrabal. Now, we have to remember it wasn't a huge success in terms of selling a lot of records. This is advanced music that's appreciated by quite a small crowd of people, but as far as the musician scene is concerned, this is a revolution, and for many people the date of this recording is the date that the golden decade of the 40s begins.
Chapter · 2:01:33
The Record That Quietly Started the Golden Decade
It barely sold. Musicians still call it the moment everything changed.
“This is a revolution, and for many people the date of this recording is the date that the golden decade of the 40s begins.”
Wow. That's a good way to finish this program then. Before the Composita, we'll talk about that after. But let's listen to these masterpieces by Laurenz, Abandono and Arrabal.
Composed by Laurenz's bandoneonist friend Pedro Maffia with lyrics by Homero Manzi; Michael points to the dynamic swell in the opening phrase.
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♪ Music · 1:15 ·
A modest seller at the time but, to musicians, a revolution; some mark this recording as the true start of the 1940s Golden Decade.
I can see this is your favorite orchestra, Michael. It's so exciting. So many ideas. So complex. Count the ideas, like every five seconds he's got a new idea and he sticks it in there. It's tango meets jazz. Yeah, get out on the floor, people, and dance to that and follow the changes in the music. You know you're in for, you know, a roller coaster ride. That's not the easiest track. It's fun though.
So, um, 1937 is coming to an end and, uh, if I should try to do your job, Michael, and sum it up, it would be like renza goes mega big and Lauren starts recording. Do you want to add something?
Well, um, how different those two are, like if you compare, um, Arrabal that we just heard and compare that to La Puñalada, not saying one's better, one's worse, but they're poles apart and yet still within the tango world. So it's nicely set up for the golden decade of the 40s, isn't it? They're kind of marking out the space. And Troilo is going to appear in 38 on record. Sort of in the line of loud ends, but not really. He's going to do something slightly different. So yes, tango is very excitingly poised as we reach the end of the year.
And people are dancing much more and that tango is taking some space away from jazz. It's by no means completely displaced jazz. There's still a lot of jazz being played and that's still going to be true next year in 38. Still a lot of jazz, but tango is taking some space back and it's becoming a dance phenomenon.
Let's wrap it up. And at the end, as always, I'm going to play La Cumparsita from the year. But first, I just want to say the same as I said last week, that this event is free for everybody to enjoy. But those of you who can afford it, please contribute to Michael's fundraiser, which will keep him working for all of us through this period. And I want to thank Tango Abrazo and also Michael's local Tango Club in Norwich, Tango Norfolk, for sponsoring this week's programme. It's really nice for our local clubs to be connecting our communities like this, isn't it, Michael?
There's like a little bridge between Norwich and Bergen. So I'm really touched that both groups have sponsored. And I really want to thank all the supporters, all the people who've contributed in the past week. I really wasn't expecting so much response. So I'm touched by that. And it doesn't just support me financially. It gives me the energy to carry on investigating and deepening this work.
So yes, that's what we wanted to do, Michael. Keep doing it. And next week, let's go on to, I think, 1940. This is the year where D'Arienzo loses his old band, and it's Desarly who surges to the top of popularity.
Yes, Orchestra of the Year. Yeah, and we have some more exquisite stuff by Laurens and other highlights. So I'm looking forward already.
And I'm going to play two La Cumparsitas tonight because there were two recordings in 1937. First, there is a version by Firpo, which is a bit crazy, and then we'll finish with the D'Arienzo La Cumparsita.
The D'Arienzo La Cumparsita, beautiful, beautiful version. It's not till 43, the next one, that it really becomes the defining feature of the band's repertoire, but the violin at the end, you know, this long obligato, well, fourth string solo by Mazzeo. He always brings a really sentimental tone to the orchestra, which adds the emotional touch that otherwise D'Arienzo is something lacking. So the violin brings something very, very important, emotionally speaking, to D'Arienzo's music. So with those two La Cumparsitas, Firpo's and D'Arienzo's, good night and I hope you enjoyed it. And welcome back next week in 1940. Good night, everyone.
One of two 1937 Cumparsita recordings closing the show; Dag calls Firpo's version 'a bit crazy'.
♪ Music · 2:30 · The lyrics, on the song's page
The closing Cumparsita; Michael highlights Mazzeo's long fourth-string violin obbligato, the emotional touch D'Arienzo's sound otherwise lacks.
Well, folks, I'm your after-party DJ. And great, great choices. Great choices. Lovely music, so much good music in 1937. We can't play it all. Niebla del Riachuelo, you played us a beautiful and unexpected version, but it wasn't the only good track that Fresedo had in 1937. So it'd be a bit of a shame to let the year go without listening to any Fresedo. So how about No Quiero Verte Llorar, which we'll send to Joe, because the lyric means I don't want to see you cry. Here we go.
An afterparty pick so the year wouldn't pass without more Fresedo beyond Niebla del Riachuelo; the singer is not named in the broadcast.
Danced to it · 5 of 21
♪ Music · 1:54 · The lyrics, on the song's page
Nice. Now, we're not sure we listen to it over a glass of wine. How about a bit more Orquesta Típica Víctor? Not my favorite orchestra, I will confess, but there are some very beautiful tracks and in 1937 everything we get playing, including all the music Dag played while we were waiting for people to join, all the cortinas and stuff, it's all 1937. And in that year the Orquesta Típica Víctor make a really very interesting arrangement of El Amanecer, The Dawn, which probably mostly we think of as Carlos de Sali's piece, but it's a really rich and surprising arrangement. Let's have a listen to it.
A rich, surprising Víctor house-orchestra arrangement of a piece usually associated with Carlos Di Sarli; the bird-like opening sound is a 'water whistle' toy, not a violin.
♪ Music · 1:59 ·
So did anyone work out how they did the sounds, the beginning, the bird sounds? Because it wasn't a violin this time, was it? They were a bit different. So it's something called a water whistle, which is a little toy with water in it. And you blow in it and it makes these bubbling sounds. You can Google it and have a look at some pictures after the show.
Chapter · 2:24:37
The Voodoo Song Hiding Inside a Party Band
Europe's poshest hotels danced to this Cuban band without knowing what one of their songs was really about.
Now, it's nice to play some stuff that's not tango. Around these years in the 30s there was a Cuban band called the Lecuona Cuban Boys, which was as big in Cuban music as D'Arienzo was, but not in Cuba. It came to Europe and Ernesto Lecuona was a great Cuban composer. For example, he composed Noche de Ronda, which many of you will have danced to, that's a Cuban number. So he assembled a Cuban band and this band went to Europe and toured and they were the best Cuban band, really top musicians. They played in posh hotels, casinos, everywhere, with money that the band members said in those years money came to us like pennies from heaven. Now you can imagine that mostly when they were playing for Europeans they made the music a bit more European. Yeah, so you're not going to hear what Cuban music was like in those years really by listening to the band, but there's an exception.
So I'm going to play you, it's the most bizarre thing, the most bizarre thing. The name of the song is Chévere. Now Chévere is a word you hear in Colombian Spanish. Are there any Colombians here? And today it means something like great. If a Colombian person says Chévere, it means, you know, I'm doing really great. But here it has an altogether darker connotation.
Sometimes in Cuban music, you know, we try and classify the different styles like tango, warts and malanga. And one of them is afro. So afro means something more African with drums. Now, this is kind of afro, but it's really, really dark. I can't decipher all the words in the lyric, but it sounds like a voodoo sacrifice. It sounds like someone's taking a... Cuando canto el gargio blanco, when the white cockerel sings. And they take this bird and they kill it. And that's what this song is about. So somehow, amid all these fun party congas for the posh people to dance in the casinos of Europe, something escapes with a real dark voodoo tone to it. So let's listen to Chévere.
A detour to non-tango music: Ernesto Lecuona's Cuban band, big across Europe's casinos and hotels, here in an unusually dark, Afro-Cuban mode about sacrificing a white rooster.
♪ Music · 2:36 ·
“Isn't that spooky? It's just like nothing else... that's the great thing about these nights, we get a chance to listen to music and share that we wouldn't do otherwise.”
Isn't that spooky? It's just like nothing else. Nothing else. Really bizarre. That's the great thing about these nights. We get a chance to listen to music and share that we wouldn't do otherwise. Now, of course, we're going to have to end up with a D'Arienzo fest, including by, you know, popular demand, another performance of Alma Dolorida with the bandignon players almost falling off their seats. But before that, let's play one more thing a bit different.
And I mentioned Agustín Magaldi this evening, that the track Dag played by Oscar Serpa reminded me a little bit of Magaldi's voice. So let's listen to something by Magaldi, a really important and well-regarded singer, never sang with a dance orchestra ever. We'll listen to one number from him from 1937. This is called Sonata and the lyric, it's a bit like En este tardigris of Troilo of 41. En este tardigris the guy, it's raining and the guy says the rain drumming on my windowpane makes me think of you. It's exactly the same idea here, except the sound that he hears is a sonata.
Magaldi, a major singer who never performed with a dance orchestra, on a theme Michael compares to Troilo's later 'En esta tarde gris': rain (here, a sonata) as a trigger for heartache.
♪ Music · 3:03 ·
Okay, let's listen to some D'Arienzo ends. You know, there isn't a bad track there, just isn't a bad track of D'Arienzo in this time. And the music is, it's almost a la parisienne, it's almost improvised, you know, so you can just feed them any old tango and they'll come up with something in that style, in that quality, you know. So who knows what their repertoire was? They would have had a really huge repertoire. They would have needed a really big repertoire to fulfill the engagements that they have. But let's start with the Gallo Ciego. A classic track of Eduardo Rolas, many, many nice versions, is D'Arienzo's from the middle of 1937.
A tango classic from mid-1937, one of many versions recorded over the years; Michael says there isn't a bad D'Arienzo track from this period.
Danced to it · 5 of 28
♪ Music · 2:30 ·
It sounds simple, but it's a little more complex than it sounds. There was a lot to listen to there. Like, did you notice the two different violins? When you listen to these early D'Arienzo tracks, you have to develop an additional listening skill, which is to separate out what the low violin does from what the high violin does, because they're two different people and both of them were in action in that tango and doing two different things. They weren't even just playing in harmony as they sometimes do. At one point Mazzeo, he's the guy who plays the low violin, was just going and at the same time Mancuso, Domingo Mancuso, was playing a different line in the violin. So that's a particular thing about listening to early D'Arienzo. Now before we hit the waltzes, how about El Apronte? El Apronte, really unusual, like a bizarre introduction. Just listen to this.
A bizarrely unusual instrumental introduction, prompting discussion of the band's two separate, non-harmonising violin lines.
♪ Music · 2:30 ·
Looking at the comments, I see that we're making some converts to the sound of Mazzeo on the violin, and I'm really pleased about that. I love what he does. And try to remember how you feel, because unless Dag changes his mind before he publishes the Facebook event, and he may do, he's done that before, it's going to be 1940 next week. And in 1940, different band, different violin player. So although D'Arienzo preserves this aspect of his style, this very particular low violin solo, in the 1940 band, it's a different musician. And for me, it's a different emotion. The emotion I get from the first violin, the low violin, in the 1940 band, the orchestra assembled by Varela, is very different to the emotion I get. Okay, just like if I think technically about the sound, it's doing the same job. But the role that's performed here by Mazzeo from 35 to 39 is, it's unique and no one else does what he does.
Just about the comments, yes, there's already a lot of offbeats in this music. Biagi's contribution perhaps, hard to tell, but that's what Biagi's recording suggests to us. So let's start off with the waltzes. First of all, let's start with Passione.
One of Michael's favourite D'Arienzo waltzes, not too quick, good for opening a set.
♪ Music · 2:00 ·
It's Mazzeo again, isn't it? He's everywhere. That's Passione. That's one of my favourite Barians of Waltzes. Really nice one to start a tender because it's not too quick. Mentiras.
Prompts the reveal that Mazzeo plays his low violin lines with a heavier viola bow, for a richer but less agile tone.
♪ Music · 2:00 ·
Yeah, so Helen said in the comments, how did you make his violin sound like that? And yes, people are a bit hinting at the answer. He is playing with a viola bow and not a violin bow, which is a heavier bow, which means it bites deeply into the string. And so you get a richer tone out of it, but it's less agile. You can't do fast stuff with it. It's all in the D'Arienzo book, people. Stop me and buy one.
Chapter · 2:48:52
Two Violins, Two Men, One Sound
That aching violin line under 1930s D'Arienzo is actually two different musicians doing two different jobs.
Great. So we had Passione. That's Mentiras. So we've got two more to go because we should finish with Alma de Bandoneón. Valsecito Criollo. Now this is a fast one.
A fast waltz; by the end the band is audibly losing sync, and the violin solo is correctly identified as Domingo Mancuso's, not Mazzeo's.
Danced to it · 5 of 297
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Fausto Carpino & Stephanie FesneauMediterranean Summer Tango Festival · 2019
So the wheels are beginning to come off, aren't they? Can you hear that? And quiz question, we should have set up a poll, Dag. Who was the violin player on the solo? So the point is, it's not Mazzeo, is it? It can't be, because he only does the low stuff on the fourth string with his viola bow. So that violin solo, which was a normal violin solo, has to be the other guy whose name you don't need to remember. It's not so important. That was Domingo Mancuso, the other guy. Yeah.
Two different jobs, two different instruments, two different men. Now Alma Dolorida. Sometimes, you know, because obviously I've got quite a large music library on my computer, I just write down what I feel in the comment section on the tags. So I'll read you what I've written on the comment section for Alma Dolorida. I've written killer band of nuance just holding it together.
Replayed by popular demand from earlier in the show; Michael's own listening notes call it 'killer band of nuance just holding it together'.
Danced to it · 5 of 92
♪ Music · 2:00 ·
Tango By Year is Dag Stenvoll and Michael Lavocah's, published here with their permission. The audio plays from SoundCloud.