Tango 1959-1969

0:47Hello from Bergen and welcome to Tango by year 1959 to 1969, a reunion and the 40th. The program of Tango by Ear, Michael. How are you in Norwich?

1:21Well, I'm simultaneously very excited about the program, but also wondering if I can remember how to do it. Me too. Yeah, it's been almost two years. And we thought we were done, but kind of played with the program on the 60s. And I remember we discussed it sometime this spring, how to continue supporting Ukraine, financial and morally, and we decided to do it.

1:43So uh yeah, but uh we stopped in 1958, I mean we stopped really in 1955, but then we did an extra program on 58. Why didn't we go further into the 60s, Michael, at the time? What's wrong with the 60s? It's not what's wrong with the 60s. Well, we got bored apart from anything else.

2:01You and I were born, but if you were here for the 55 program in particular, then you know that tango is over as a mass phenomenon. It's not over, but as a mass phenomenon, which means in particular a social dancing phenomenon, this comes to an end around 1955. People are finding other things to do with their time. New kinds of music is coming along. People are tired of the suffering of the war years and the post-war years, and they want a simple kind of life.

2:40So 55 is really the key year, um, also the year where the haran government falls, coincidentally or maybe not so coincidentally, because he supported popular music quite a lot. So maybe that's a part of the reason, but only a small part. Other kinds of music are going to come to the fore now. Rock and roll has been going on, and pop music is going to happen in a big, big way in this decade.

3:14And I reread parts of your Pugliese book, Michael, before this to prepare, and it gives some political context to the start of the 60s. There are military coups, there is social unrest, martial law. And this must also have affected the tango scene, I suppose.

3:31Well, it is affecting the tango scene. There are two military coups in the 60s. There is actually a democratic government as we begin. The government of Frondizi, but it's under real pressure from the military, so it's not really a free government. And there's a coup in 62. Do you see that in the music? Not so much, although there is the tango Bronca, rage, which is the only tango that really articulates that experience. And that's followed by a second coup in 1966.

4:04But a bigger factor is the new music that's displacing tango music. In Argentina, they call it La Nueva Ola, the new wave, which means pop music. Initially in Spanish, but soon they're singing in English as well. And the year that's seen as really important for that is 1962, because then it gets its own TV show, which all the Argentines here will know it was called Club del Clan. And Pugliese in particular thought this was terrible, the idea of foreign music being imposed on Argentina. And he was kind of right, because by 64, the Argentine pop scene was suddenly eclipsed by a new pop group called The Beatles. After that it wasn't so important to have local pop music anymore, because things went really global. So it was quite a short-lived, quite a short-lived time, the Club del Clan.

5:08And also the time, let's just mention this now, when the masters, the master records, began to be destroyed. That's why we listen to these scratchy old shellacs. There were two companies, Victor and Odeon, and in 1959 Victor appointed a guy from Ecuador, in fact, but that's not really important. His name is Ricardo Mejia, a name which lives in infamy in tango history, because he started promoting pop music. Naturally, that was the new thing, and he thought, well, I could get rid of this building and save lots of money. And what have we got in this building? We've got all these rooms full of old record masters. We can just send those for scrap. So that's what he did.

5:57In 1962, all the Victor masters were sent for scrap. And Odeon were not much better. They kept them a bit longer. And then when they prepared their LPs, they prepared many of them from the original masters. But then after that, they threw them away. So none of the original masters survived. They were sent for scrap. Terrible. So oh, that's, uh, it hurts every time. It does. But uh, let's listen to some music.

6:26You know, when I was listening through uh some 2000 songs or something for this program, uh it struck me that there's a lot of danceable stuff still, but uh there's also a lot of much less danceable stuff, let's say, modern music, that's obviously not meant for dancing. Like Piazzolla, for instance. Piazzolla is the tango orchestra that most non-dancing people will recognise and think about as the number one tango orchestra. So we know him from before, of course, from the Tango by Youth programme from the 40s. But what's he doing in the 60s?

7:06Well, he's been to Paris and come back determined to make his own music. People are not dancing tango so much. So it's natural that non-dancing music is going to be made, because it's a different audience to the audience that we had before. So it's quite hard to give a coherent story. Yes, there are bands like D'Arienzo, who's just doing the same thing that he's always done. Troilo is becoming symphonic. Pugliese is still developing very clearly. But then you've got other bands that are not making dance music.

7:39Piazzolla is only one of those musicians. They call them the Generation of 55, so the generation that really arises after the dance phenomenon is over. So they're not addressing dancers, but some of them are making really interesting and complex music. Yeah, Piazzolla is the name that we know, but there are other names like um Atelio Stampone, and especially Eduardo Reviera, who you all think you don't know this name, but you do. You will know it by the end of tonight, um, for a couple of reasons which we will reveal later.

8:12Yeah, so but let's listen to a recording by Piazzolla, Prepárense, which is from, I think it's from 61 or 62. I forgot to mark the year, but it's from the early 60s, and you can comment on it in the after, maybe. Okay, let's listen to this. Prepárense by Piazzolla.

11:33That's not something you hear often at Milongas, is it? Well, it's not a new theme, is it? It's not a new tango. This tango is 10 years old, and uh we've heard it in 1951 from Troilo, at least with the Piazzolla arrangements. But now he doesn't care what it sounds like anymore. He doesn't care if Troilo likes it. He doesn't care if the rest of the scene likes it, and he doesn't have to, because the dance, but the dance scene is kind of gone. It's a scene more of listeners, so he can be much more true to himself. The arrangement is much more interesting than the 50s arrangements.

12:36Antonio Agri on violin, wasn't the violin player fantastic? Really, you have a sense of it's a quintet that's playing there, five musicians. So you know, not an orchestra típica of 10 or even a sextet, five musicians, and you can hear all five of them and what they're doing. Really exciting music as soon as you let go of having to dance to it. Yeah, I like it a lot. I've also got some uh some Piazzolla numbers in my list. Good, good. I was just going to play this one, so you can play the rest in the after party, if there is one. Uh, but maybe there'll be an after party. Yeah, yes.

13:14The reverb is on the master, just someone commenting it was recorded like that. Don't forget that what's happening in the 60s and the 70s is people are starting to record LPs. I'm not talking about tango music, I'm talking about music, so you start to get reverb just used as a standard technique in recordings. So tango is not immune from that, and it's increasingly used by the tango bands.

13:42Let's listen to another non-dancing orchestra, like, say, let's say, um, that we've heard before, Horacio Salgán. He doesn't make a lot of recordings, but I found an interesting one where he plays the piano, which is his instrument, and there is a guitar by Ubaldo De Lío, which is a really good guitar player. And I found the guitar actually quite frequent in these 60s tango music, which is interesting. I think the electric guitar, it's electric guitar? All right, electric guitar has arrived, and there are fewer instruments. I mean, the previous one you said just five, five musicians, five musicians, and here they're just two.

14:24So um, it's about money partly, isn't it? Yeah, if tango isn't super popular, then it's much cheaper for a venue to pay for five people or a trio of three people, and it's very expensive to run an orchestra típica. And many of the típicas by the early 50s had 10 people in them, so economics is a big factor. Yeah, well, this one's just with piano, guitar. It's called El pago de Ricardo, so we know this song from a lot of earlier recordings. Listen to this, Horacio Salgán.

16:33So jassy. It's very jassy. Why do we think it jazzy? Because Salgán loves to play on the offbeats. The Salgán marcato, his way of marking out the beats, they often call umpa, umpa, umpa, umpa. And that's why he's chosen this tango as one of the ones he wants to perform, because you're da, da, da, da, all these upbeats, which creates the uplifting, happy energy in the body.

17:28And the thing that most strikes me about that, just a duo, is that the electric guitar does not sound out of place. It fits really well with the piano, which um, you know, 10 years previously the idea of hearing electric guitar with an orchestra típica, inconceivable, but now it works. You know, you imagine immediately some smoky basement bar, don't you? I wasn't expecting to hear this music tonight. I was expecting to hear, as a musician, Ubaldo De Lío, but this successful duet is going to be amplified into a larger group. I won't reveal their name just yet. Maybe you're going to play something from them later, maybe, maybe. But now we're going to a more familiar territory, the Pugliese part of this. And um, interesting.

18:18Yeah, yeah, well, I told you I was reading your book again, and uh you write that 1958 is the year where the violinist Camerano quits, and you write that he's irreplaceable and that the departure marks the end of the best period for the orchestra. I stand by every word. When Enrique Camerano goes, he is irreplaceable. Pugliese called him the best violinist he ever heard, and he's replaced by two people effectively, because he's replaced not just by another violin player but also a viola, viola, cellist. They've never had a cello before, because they didn't need one, because Camerano's tone was so rich.

19:02Yeah, and Pugliese offers the role of first violin to Julio Carrasco, who's the guy who composed Flor de Tango, and he turns it down, so it goes to the third player, Oscar Herrero. And despite the fact that he played side-by-side with Camerano for 20 years, Ruggiero had to explain some of the tricks he needed to be first violin. The violin sound starts to change. So she would just skip Puglia's 60s then, because it's not worth listening to. It's wonderful music! What are you talking about? It's modern.

19:43Pugliese is squaring the circle, because he makes more complex arrangements, modern arrangements, interesting harmonies, but he manages to keep it inside a dance wrapper. I agree. And you hear a lot of those still at Milongas. I was listening through all the tracks and it was difficult to pick some, but I did. And first, there are some pretty good instrumentals from this decade. There is Gajosiego. How many do we actually hear? I'm going to disagree with you there, but maybe you're going to different Milongas to me. It's more about marathons. Typical marathons, you hear the 60s Pugliese tracks. How many of them do we hear?

20:27I feel that we don't hear much variety. I think there's a small number of tracks that we hear a lot, like La Mariposa, El Adiós, 66. But I think you only need the fingers of one hand to count the ones that we really hear. And there's a lot more really incredible stuff that we don't hear. Yeah. I wanted to play one from the last year of the 60s, A Varisto Cariego, because as you wrote in your book, this is a song that's with completely new musicians. All the musicians in the band that's been blessed for a long time, most of them, quit in 68, right?

21:04Well, yeah, to say they quit is maybe not quite the right. It was a bit more complex, because there was so little work for the full orchestra. Pugliese encouraged his musicians to start a sextet in 66, and that sextet got so much work that eventually it had to leave the orchestra. And Pugliese had to replace them. And he nearly gave up at that time. He said, I nearly hung up my boots, but his wife Lydia said no, no, carry on, so he had to train up the musicians from scratch. Mostly he got young musicians in.

21:41This is so interesting, what Pugliese does. He doesn't replace them with experienced people, and there are plenty of experienced musicians available in the 60s, because there's not much work. No, he replaces them with young musicians, because he wants to shape and mould them into the tools that he wants. Yeah, and he does that pretty successfully with the bandoneons, the violins. Yeah, it's not Camerano, but you know what I like about this song also is that it starts with the piano solo, and I guess it's Osvaldo himself, right? It's not very often you hear that. Very, very seldom, extremely modest as a pianist, but yes, this beautiful opening motif on the piano. Yeah, so let's hear it. I have Aristo Carrego with Pugliese, 1969.

25:58So yeah, as many people saying in the chat window, this is extremely danceable, so it shows that the 60s have a lot to offer in terms of dance music. And what's so interesting about that comment is the pace, the tempo of that, which was changing throughout. It wasn't like mostly fixed and then changing, it's completely plastic now, the tempo. But that's the miracle of the Pugliese sound, is that we're not bothered by that. He does it, you know, he tells us what he's doing. We always know when it's going to slow down and when it's going to accelerate. So he keeps us dancers informed, and it doesn't catch us out by surprise. And we follow it with great pleasure.

27:03And it's advanced for dancing. And maybe that's also the reason that DJs tend to play the same tracks from the 60s, because if you play some of those many that no one's heard, it's going to be really hard to dance to, I think. Well, we're used to dancing to this one. I think we can be a little bit more adventurous. Yeah, you always say that. Is that what I always say? Yeah, you want DJs to push it out of the comfort zone. But yeah, of course you can do it, you know, within a tanda. Within a tanda you can play one that they might not know, because otherwise we'll never hear anything new, will we? That's true. So no, not a whole tanda of new stuff, then you'll be disoriented. And not choosing things that are deliberately difficult. No, never. Yeah, no.

27:43So let's listen also to some players, uh, with the singers. Jorge Maciel, he's been in the band since 54 and he stays until 68. For many people he's their favourite singer with Pugliese. There's some really great numbers from the second, there's Silencio, there's Panolito Blanco, La Viliare and El Adiós, as you mentioned, Caminito, Recuerdo. But I want to listen to one of the very last they recorded together, from 1967, Arrepentido, which means regretful. It's an old tango about the woman left by her love, leaving her for another woman. She tries to forget about him, but she's not able to. And in the end, she's ready to take him back despite everything. So it's not exactly a feminist manifesto, but it's tango. Yeah, it's 1967. Jorge Maciel, Arrepentido.

31:29Marcial really sings high octane, doesn't he? Yes, he's the guy who took Moran's place effectively in the orchestra, isn't he? High octane voice. Sang almost from the beginning to the end, actually, didn't he? We got the full lyric.

31:49And it's typical for 60s tangos, isn't it? That there's more vocal. It's more about the performance, maybe for listening also to concerts and stuff like that. The singer enters earlier, I mean, we heard that already in the 50s, and they sing a lot more of the lyric, and by the same token though, that's what can make a whole tander of that sound a bit too much.

32:13Yeah, that's true, yeah. By the way, uh, speaking of concerts, because I read in your book also that Pulise went on a tour to the Soviet Union and to China. I mean, he was a communist, as many of you know, and he played like something like 100 concerts or something in Soviet Union, and uh and China. Was it in the late or around 1960 or something? No, this tour was a little bit later.

32:39Okay, seven, I think. Ah, okay. But uh, and that must have been for concerts, because I guess those people weren't dancing tango, they were just listening. He, he played in a football stadium in Georgia, he played in the Dinamo Tbilisi football stadium in front of 40,000 people.

32:54Oh, my God. That must have been one of the biggest tango concerts ever, or maybe the biggest. Must have been the biggest ever. Yeah. Wow. Yeah.

33:03So anyway, in 1960, there's a new singer, Alfredo Baluzzi. And coincidentally, I'm going to play the tango you mentioned in your introduction, Bronca. Bronca. Bronca is a fantastic word. If you want to understand Argentines, you need to learn this word, Bronca.

33:08 · They playBronca1962

The tango that expresses the rage of the 1962 coup, with a lyric that openly refers to it; the data says 1961, but the events it describes make 1962 likely.

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• Arttu Artkoski & Carina Quiroga2015

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33:20No, no, Gerardo will correct me if I'm wrong, I'm sure, and uh, please do, but Bronca is this kind of simmering rage, the rage that you feel where there's nothing you can do about it. Yeah. And the rage is about the political situation, and this is from 1962, so it's about the the coup, and the lyric openly refers to that. It's an incredibly brave thing to write the lyric, to write this tango, and secondly to record it. Let's hear it. I'll post the lyrics also in the chat window. Yeah, I think it's very useful to post the lyrics to this particular tango, because it really helps us to to understand it and therefore to enjoy it. Yeah, Bronca with Alfredo Belusi from 1962.

37:20Things were better before, weren't they? That's really heavy, isn't it? Really heavy. And it's not just, it's not an exaggeration. The new administration was very ineffective, partly because there were competing factions within the military. So the country went into a much steeper decline. It had been recovering a little bit. It went into a steep decline. There was another recession, and there was nearly a civil war in the early part of 1963. So this is not exaggeration. Things were really bad.

38:02Interesting that, bad as they were, the language of this is very common with sort of talking about the past, like courtesy has gone out of fashion, there are no manners, no decency, no respect for all people. It's a very common theme through the times, isn't it? I mean, here it's very appropriate, but it's sort of diving into this very common vocabulary about how things were better before and people had respect and so on.

38:27Yes, Tango is born nostalgic, isn't it? But that's because of the emigration, because what people were really nostalgic about was the homelands that they'd abandoned in Europe. So nostalgia is completely in the DNA of Tango.

38:42Yeah, yeah. Pulez is great as always, and we could have could have listened to just Pulez all night, but we got to move on to listen to some other stuff. And we're going to make a bit of a leap here, because the next orchestra I'm going to play is Alfredo De Angelis, and he was one of the big ones. He was one of the big ones since the 40s, as you've seen, like not just the big four but the big five. We commented on this in Tango by Ear many times, and he's still big.

39:09By the mid 40s, Alfredo De Angelis is the number five orchestra, and they are very successful with the youth. Yeah. If you're a tango fan in the 40s, there's people of all age groups. But who's appealing to the really young people? It's Alfredo De Angelis. I know he's terribly unfashionable now. The 60s is maybe not his very best period, but there are some good numbers.

39:42Yeah, um, I read about him that it's considered a nice orchestra, like offensive, he didn't sing about murders and people being horrible with each other. They used to say it was an orchestra that you could take your family to. That was one of the more complimentary things. Yeah.

40:02Yeah, let's listen to two, uh, two different ones. One I want to hang out con, Sin aliento, is an instrumental from 1963. I like this one because it's like it has really nice pizzicatos, uh, and I think, really think this is really dance music. You could play this in a mixed tanda or a Angelis tanda later in, and the second one is the waltz that we know, Angelica, that we heard. Yes, and the original one, much loved, much loved, yes. If you were here for the warm-up, Angelica, the waltz was initially a folk tune, a tune from Argentine folklorico, and Canaro played the first really famous version in the warm-up. And this one is with Juan Carlos Godoy singing, Angelica Singer.

40:20 · They playSin alientoAlfredo De Angelis · 1963

An instrumental with nice pizzicati, danceable in a mixed tanda.

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40:46May I just make a comment before we go forward? Because people are asking about the dates of Pugliese's 60s recordings in the chat window. And the thing is, we don't have the exact dates. Sometimes from the matrix numbers, we can guess a month, but that's it. So there's a lot of guessing about the exact year. So exactly, the data says 61 for, um, for Bronca, but it has to be 62 because of the events that it's talking about. So there's quite a bit of uncertainty, unless it's looking into the future, maybe. Yeah, okay, but it's from the 60s, we're sure about that. We're sure about that. Yeah, probably 62. Yeah, so let's listen to the Angelis, the first one, Sin aliento, a tango, and then Angelica with Godoy singing.

45:00 · They playAngélicaAlfredo De Angelis · 1960s

A waltz that started as a folkloric tune; much loved and played by De Angelis.

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46:39I like this waltz. I use it often for birthday tangos. It's modern, it's energetic, and rhythmically it's quite interesting. There's quite a bit going on. I feel a bit more conflicted about the first one. Just sitting here, listening, it doesn't do much for me. But I can imagine at the milonga, especially late at night, late at night, maybe in a mixed tander, it could have a great effect. But musically, it doesn't inspire me. I don't start moving, but nevertheless, I know at the milonga, I might dance.

47:18You don't move that easily, Michael, so that's okay. I'm a snob, tango snob.

47:26So we're going to have a bit of fun now, because we're going to listen to late Canaro. Do you know what? I've got one in my playlist as well. You do? Maybe it's the same one. You know, it's not a secret that you and me think that everything Canaro recorded after 1938 is mostly rubbish. My man, my man. It is. It's mostly rubbish. But, you know, there's 3,900 tracks. So there's got to be some good stuff in there.

47:50Yeah, yeah. And I wanted to play also one, because he actually died in 1964. And this tango, actually, I don't think you're going to play this one. I chose it because I really like the title. It's called Al Novia del Alcohol from 1959. No, it's not mine. Mine's a different one. I like it because of the title and this killer punchline. So, caste tus ojos puros por un novi gasco de alcohol. You traded your innocent eyes for a courtship of alcohol. So, Canaro 60s. It's not something we hear often at milongas, is it? So, it's more a curiosity, isn't it? Never. Never, exactly. Entertainers, Dag. Let's hear it. 1959, Canaro. So, let's go.

51:11Party, as opposed to the peaceful countryside. Mostly it's the woman that's criticized in this fashion. Yeah, it's a pretty girl from the, from the poor outskirts of town who's social climbing, and she's condemned for that, right? Now something very different, to a guitarist. This is the brother of, uh, of Raul Baron, uh, his eldest brother, who was guitarist Adolfo Barón. And I wanted to play this because it's a pure guitar song.

51:43And I was thinking, when I was listening to 60s, there's a lot of guitar, and Gardel, of course, in the 20s or the 30s, they often sang backed by guitars. So why didn't the guitar enter the Orchessa Typica, you think, Michael? Why wasn't it used more often for dance tango? Because there's a piano. What is the role of the guitar for Gardel? It's the background accompaniment. Accompaniment, it's the accompaniment, and the accompaniment was replaced by a piano beginning in around 1913, just before the First World War, beginning with Firpo. So as soon as you've got a piano, you don't need a guitar anymore, but the conjunto, the group of guitars, and it's always more than one, continued. So Adolfo Barón, he's on my list, although it's very hard to get the actual dates. I found on those old LPs, so it's, it's his name and picture on the front, but it's a group. There's three or four guitarists playing, probably one of them is a guitarron, so that's a guitar that's one fifth bigger, so it makes deeper notes, and it's, it's very effective. It's all instrumental music. It's good to dance to, I think, Adolfo Barón, and from time to time it's something that I do play as a DJ.

52:59All right, I never played it, never heard it about before, actually, but uh, but let's here it is, called Guitara Mia, My Guitar, by Adolfo Barón. It's marked 1960, but as you say, the date is a bit uncertain.

55:02Little candy there for your guitar lovers, I thought that was absolutely beautiful. Absolutely beautiful, not typical of the work that Adolfo Barón does, because he really delivered the song that he didn't just strum along for the dancers to dance to, halfway between a waltz and maybe in a stilos, really performed in the style of the countryside players of the Gauchos. Beautiful, exquisite, thank you for that one. Yeah, so maybe you'll hear some more of him in the after party. No, I've got too much other stuff. Okay, all right.

55:53Um, yeah, his brother, uh, well, he played for Caló and we're moving towards the Caló universe, let's say, but we'll listen to Armando Pontier, who was, we played for Caló in the 40s and had his own group with, of course, with the Francini, and he's one of the most recording orchestras in the 60s. Band and non-player, can you say anything about him at this time, because I found some of his songs quite danceable actually? It's not moving too much in the modern direction, let's say.

56:29Yeah, he's, how shall I say, his thoughts about tango are similar to proyos. So he's fairly modest as a player, he's a bandagnon player. Francini was the violinist and Pontier the bandagnon player in the Caló orchestra in the early 40s, which later people called the Orchestra of the Stars. They left in 1945 and co-led a group, the Francini-Pontier Orchestra, for exactly 10 years, so from September 45 to September 55, and then quite amicably they said, that's it, we're done now, and they went their own separate ways and each formed their own group. So Francini formed his own group where his violin was very dominant, and Pontier formed his own group, which was really quite roundly balanced and, yeah, a more traditional sound but trying to do it in a modern way.

57:23Uh, in 1968 he helped Troilo, by the late 60s Troilo was in very poor health and kind of lost his mojo, lost his creative power, lost his strength, and there's an LP of troiler from 1968 which it says on the sleeve that adamant de pontier co-led the orchestra, but actually Pontier did the whole thing and it just kind of carries troiler's name. So, okay, an extraordinary thing, but tells you what a good musician he was. Yeah, and maybe also because of that he made recordings to a lot of really good singers like Podestá, Marino and Rufino. He makes good choices and it's easier to choose the good singers because there's not so much work for them.

58:13But I'm not going to play a vocal ton. I'm going to play an instrumental, actually called A tus pies bailarín, from 1964. To Your Feet Dancer. Yes, this is fantastic. This is fantastic. Oh, you know this one. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. And it's its own composition. And as far as I know, no other orchestra ever recorded it. I had the same feeling, and it makes a pair. It reminds me somehow of tracks like A Los Amigos of Francini Pontier and also Pontier's El Recordo. It's kind of shimmering introduction we'll all hear in a moment. Okay, let's hear it, it's from 1964. On your feet dancers!

58:14 · They playA tus pies bailarínArmando Pontier · 1964

A fairly modest, danceable instrumental from the most-recorded orchestra of the 60s.

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• Nick Jones & Diana Cruz2019

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1:01:35I'm going to consider making a tanda out of this sub-60s Pontier. It's great for dancing. I love it. And what I want to say is on the one hand, it's modern, but on the other hand, it stays within a kind of traditional framework. And despite the presence of all the different effects, it never sounded cheesy, which is not something, you know, when we listen to De Angelis, definitely, it's always a bit on the edge. It's like, it's a bit cheesy but I sort of, you know, kitsch, but we like it, but here there's none of that, you don't think, oh, we shouldn't have done that. So modern and traditional at the same time, which shows it's possible.

1:02:14So let's move on to Miguel Caló and he's one of the big ones in the 60s and, uh, he had more than 100 recordings and you said something about him collecting some old musicians and making this orchestra of the stars, right? With Pontier and others. Yes, around 1962, because there's not that much work, he manages to reform the orchestra of the stars temporarily and gets a lot of these old guys who now got their grey hairs, gets them back together. So there's a reformed orchestra of the stars for a few years. And Podestá also come back to sing on a few recordings.

1:02:51And the most known one is Kefalta Kemé Assest, this, uh, but you know this one so well, you've heard it a thousand times, so let's instead hear what I found was a radio recording of the walls. And this is something we know from Caló from earlier, from, he recorded it in the 40s with the velvety voice of Raul Beron. So this is a more than 20 years later version with Podestá, and the sound isn't good because it's not studio quality, it's a radio transcript, but it has a glossa and there is applause in there also. So it's live. Fantastic. Yeah, let's hear it. El valsonador with the, this is Caló, radio recording with Alberto Podestá singing from 1963. It's a romantic vision of an eternal spring of love that always waits, that never suffers or dies. This dance I bring now is not for anyone who wants, but for anyone who loves.

1:07:13It's great with the studio audience when they're doing these radio shows. It's great with the audience and the screaming frontman who rolls his R's. La Orquesta de Armando Pontier, but it's the same arrangement that they played in 1942, isn't it? A slightly different speed, but the arrangement, the written parts for each musician, it's the same as what they played 20 years ago. So it's a trip down memory lane for them. By the way, it's really great to see a lot of you on the camera swaying, like it reminds me, back at the Tango Bay year, there'll be more than 100 people listening again to the music. It's really, really nice, wonderful.

1:08:05Yeah, beautiful. So, uh, next orchestra Lucho de Mara, and the Mara is not something you hear at milongas later than, I don't know, 45, 46, maybe 45, I think. Well, there are some nice tracks in the 50s, but they're incredibly hard to find and difficult to combine in tandas also, I suppose. Yeah, I guess so. Well, Tango Time Travel has all of the Mara edition, haven't they? Including the piano. It has a lot of piano, single piano numbers, solo piano. Well, they do now, but when it was first released, there were a few tracks missing because they couldn't get them. All right, yeah.

1:08:47But in Tango Bariera, we did listen to a lot of recordings with women singers, which were not meant for dancing usually. And I wanted to play one of the Mara with Tania from 1959. And this is a song we know from Biagi, Andrajos. Well, this is Tania backed by Lucio Di Mare, rather than the orchestra of Lucio Di Mare with Tania as his singer. So he's taken the secondary role, and it's about her. So let's hear that one. But I want to play a second Di Mare. I guess it has a really great solo piano numbers, and he released an album in 1968, and I want to play a milonga from that album called Luna, Moon. And it's so super jazzy. And we know the tune actually from the 40s when it was recorded with Raoul Beron singing. So you'll recognize the song, the tune, I mean, the melody. But it's not that common. I mean, you don't really often hear Dimare milongas played. But it's an old milonga. But here it's just Dimare on the piano. So first, Andrajos with Tania singing from 1959, and then Luna, just Dimare on the piano, from 1968.

1:09:53 · They playAndrajosTania · 1959

Followed by a pure piano piece from 1968.

1:15:04Really extraordinary and not really typical for him because he often plays stuff that's more tinged with romance and nostalgia and he's very good at that, but there that rhythmic treatment, so interesting, wonderful, great choice. So that was a pure piano. Uh, let's move on to some vocals and I came across some, uh, some songs by, uh, Héctor Mauré, who sang for, uh, D'Arienzo in the early or in the early and mid 40s, let's say. And still in fine voice. And he's still in business. Do you know what he's been doing the last, I don't know, 20 years? Well, he's been performing both with his own backing orchestra. He started pretty soon after he left D'Arienzo. He recovered his health and also more just as a soloist with guitar. So he's been doing both formats quite successfully.

1:16:25 · They playMátalaHéctor Mauré · 1960s

A tango known from Biagi with an unpleasant lyric about killing a woman; Mauré's voice is deeper and helped by closer microphone.

1:16:25Yeah, he wants to play a song that, like Andrajos, we also know from Biagi, actually called Mátala, kill her, it translates. It's not a very politically correct lyrics, but at least he concludes in the end that he's not going to kill her. So that's kind of a happy ending, isn't it? Right. So this is Héctor Mauré, D'Arienzo singers from the 40s with guitars also, and Mátala is from, it's recorded in 1963.

1:19:37Oh, isn't that something? He hasn't lost it at all, has he? The voice has not aged at all. If anything, it's got better. Yeah, that's what I feel also. It's really good. More expressive, a slightly deeper tone. It's also helped because there's fewer people playing so he's closer to the microphone, so the microphone's picking up more of what he's doing, but not just that, yeah. Great interpretation of this song, I think so.

1:20:20Uh, Mauré, I associate him with D'Arienzo, of course, and the next orchestra is also very D'Arienzo, uh, close, Héctor Varela, which we haven't listened to much entangled by you actually, because, uh, well, let's face it, Michael, we're not big fans, are we? No, we're not. But, uh, he was the lead band or non-player of the answer through the 40s, right? And, uh, yeah, yeah, he leaves D'Arienzo in, uh, 1950 after 10 successful years and at the beginning his band is a bit like D'Arienzo but trying to make advanced music, but he soon gives up on the advanced music thing and just goes back to making middle of the road kind of music and there's not really that much development. There's Fueron tres años in 1956, which is a real favorite of the public. So, um, I kind of skipped over, I didn't spend much time listening to 60s Varela in my prep, I'll confess. So I'm really curious what you've got for us now.

1:21:21I listened to a few songs and, uh, I like it. I mean, and he was one of the most recording orchestras of the 60s. I wanted to play him also. And I want to play a song that we also actually associate with Héctor Mauré, Lilian, which Mauré recorded in the mid 40s, I think, 44 or 45. And this singer this time, this is from 1962, is Luis Correa. And he has an incredibly dark voice. I don't think I've ever heard such a dark voice in tango. So it'll be interesting to hear what you think about it. I'm excited. And it's Varela's own composition, actually. So he composed it and Lorenzo performed it with Mauré in 1944. And there's an interesting introduction on the band-on-one.

1:22:13I suppose it's Varela himself, because he was a band-on-one player. He's the band-on-one player, and I don't know if he's going to do it on this particular track, but something he does quite a lot is he does the vibrato thing where you shake the instrument and you get this very, very much trademark Héctor Varela sound, like you hear on the introduction of Tira negra of D'Arienzo, for example. Okay, so let's hear this Lilian with the Varela from 1962.

1:25:47A dark voice. Yeah, very dark. And an interesting arrangement. I was more moved by the singer than I was by the orchestra, but that's me. I always want to be moved by things.

1:26:08Well, I agree, I'm not moved by Varela. Sorry, guys, for those of you who love Varela, but it's not my thing anyway. That's okay if you like it, uh, but let's move on to D'Arienzo, and he's one of the traditional guys. He plays a great dance music, traditional style, through the 60s also with just more punch and power, doesn't he? So that's just put on more energy, particularly in the mid 60s, the early 60s he kind of loses a bit of power, but by the mid 60s, by 66, he's on fire, I should say. Although it's, um, it's not the same as the 50s style, D'Arienzo 60s style is a little bit more measured but still very successful and playful, very playful. I like it a lot, and yeah, I find many occasions to play it, and it's in stereo, folks, because we're in the for export era, aren't we?

1:27:06Well, not everyone is. It, everything is, everything in stereo? No. Well, it depends when we're talking, and stereo only officially comes in 62, 63. Before then they were recording in stereo, but, um, but from like back 1960 they started to record in stereo but to issue everything in mono. And then they make a big thing of it in 1963, and we get this series of albums called For Export. There's Troilo for Export, D'Arienzo for Export, four LPs of those, um, and folk albums too, Los Chalcelleros for Export in 1963, all in stereo. Yeah, we will listen to, uh, one of those, uh, in a while, but they're mostly instrumentals, aren't they? And I wanted to listen to a couple of, uh, to two vocal tangos first, and we've heard both these singers before in the early 50s, earlier in the 50s. First one is Mario Bustos and the other one is Jorge Valdez.

1:28:04Um, different singers, can't you say, Michael, like that answer had different singers, didn't he? He had two singers. There was one street voice and there was one softer. Yes. So here Bustos is the slightly sneering, darker voice who delivers nasty lyrics with tremendous punch, very effective singer. Um, Valdez is the high drama guy and become very popular in the past 10 years, before then quite little known. So they're very contrasting singers.

1:28:33Yeah, well, this, um, we remember, I will, I listened to a 1960 recording for him in our love special called Un Solo Minuto de Amor. So, and he has this super like floating tone. I think we could call it a mezzé voice, right? This really high register voice, a bit like Salamanca's violin, you might say, like floating on top on the orchestra. Mezzé refers to the technique of pulling back the volume to half volume and then going strong again.

1:29:10Mezzo meaning half in Italian. Yeah, I remember back in Tango 1958 you said that, well, there's things like it just had six cans of Red Bull. I've forgotten I said that, but I stand by it. You did say.

1:29:27So, and, uh, Bustos is more the Achaga kind of guy, isn't it, the kind of, uh, angry street guy? Yes, angry, rough street guy but really packs a punch. Yeah, and you brought in your D'Arienzo book, Michael, that, uh, he had a bit of, uh, irritating fights with the D'Arienzo. Uh, he didn't like that the answer would come up to him during concert and like do this thing with his finger in his face, and once, at once he just bit him on direct TV.

1:29:58I think that was Oracio Palma actually, wasn't it? Okay, I thought it was that was Palma. Okay, yeah, sorry. Yeah, sorry for misinformation. Did get his finger bit on live TV, and it was in the 60s.

1:30:10Okay, so let's listen to two, uh, the power tangos from D'Arienzo. The first one is, uh, Llamarada pasional with Bustos from 1959, and the second one, El último café with Valdez from 1964. Two power tangos that we hear at milongos also, right? They are two power. I'll comment on the second one after, but for the first one, can you just tell us who wrote it, please?

1:30:40No. I have no idea. I don't know. Yes. Do you know? I do know, without even looking it up, one of the... Tita Marello, right? Yes. Yes, yes, yes. A woman composer.

1:30:53Tita Marello, who we think of as a singer, a woman who had a hard life here, writes a tango about her doomed love affair. She had a long love affair. I forget the name of the guy. He was an actor well-known in the scene. Sandrini, with Luis Sandrini. That's right.

1:31:12And she finally wrote this tango about all the torment. And llamarada means when flames break out, a sudden outbreak of flames. This is Llamarada and Llamarada pasional, a passionate outbreak of flames. Tita Marada must have been one of the coolest women in tango. She's one of the strongest characters ever in tango. So let's see these songs, Llamarada pasional and El último café, D'Arienzo.

1:34:00 · They playEl último caféJuan D'Arienzo · Jorge Valdez · 1964

One of the great tangos of the 60s: two people breaking up over a cup of coffee, with Valdez as the high-drama voice. Lavocah asks why there is no Troilo version.

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The lyrics, on the song's page

1:38:02A lot of enthusiasm in the chat window for this one. Very soft, D'Arienzo, isn't it, for like, uh, yeah? Beautiful, relatively speaking. Yes, it's, yeah, one of the great tangos of the 1960s. And that's a comment that we need to make generally about the 60s: there are fewer tangos being written. So far fewer, in fact, which means there are far fewer really great new tangos being written, but this is one of them.

1:38:53The picture it creates, we can all imagine two people in a coffee sitting there, he's stirring his cup, you know, to give himself something to do maybe, and they're breaking up over a cup of coffee. It's such a strong image. Um, yeah, why isn't there a Troilo version? That's what you've got to ask, isn't it? So it's like what great lyrics well matched to great melodies, sounds like a shoe in for Troilo, but you won't find it, I think. Yeah.

1:39:26Yeah, and with these, uh, two songs, Bustos and Valdez, what different singers, but both is like really strong character. It's very different, they have two strong characters but very contrasting, which is just what you want when you've got two singers so you can present different emotions. So let's hear an instrumental, uh, that ends. So, and, uh, you mentioned that ends up for export, Michael, and in your D'Arienzo book you say that the second album from 1966 is by far the best. Absolutely, it's by far the best.

1:40:00Let's hear one of the classics, uh, Hotel Victoria or Gran Hotel Victoria is called at this point. And, uh, I don't know why did, why did they change the name to from Hotel Victoria to Gran Hotel Victoria? It's the same song, isn't it? It's the same song, but actually the name changed the other way, but because it's an extremely old tango from before 1910, I think so. I think initially it was called Gran Hotel Victoria, but the gran got dropped.

1:40:08 · They playGran Hotel VictoriaJuan D'Arienzo · 1966

From the 1966 'for export' album, in Lavocah's view by far the best; the stops get so long that dancers must count to know when to restart.

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1:40:30So we can all play a game as we listen to this, because one of the effects that D'Arienzo uses in the instrumentals is he makes stops, and in the 60s the stops get longer. They're so long that as dancer you really have to stop, and of course you have to have a rough idea when to go again. So when we get to the stop, you can all try and count your way through it like this and get an idea of when to start. That's the game. It's super fun. I mean, I play this a few times at large events, and it's fun to see who stops and who don't, and the general confusion that breaks out, and then some laughter. So it's a fun song to play at events. So Gran Hotel Victoria and Instrumento with that answer. This is from 1966.

1:43:44That's a lot of power, and this silence is, uh, so funny. Yeah, and there's quite a few D'Arienzo tracks from the same period with a similar flavour, with that same kind of trick. It's a great effect when you're dancing to do this, completely freeze to the silences, if you know the song. I know a DJ who during the silence presses the pause button on his laptop to make it even longer, so that the people who know the track still get fooled.

1:44:39So that was it for D'Arienzo for tonight. Uh, we could have played more, but, uh, that's what you get. And, um, but we're gonna listen to, um, to another, uh, D'Arienzo related orchestra, Fulvio Salamanca, who also played with for a long time, but, uh, he formed his own orchestra in 1957, and he's recording through the 60s. Pianist of D'Arienzo? Yes. Salamanca left D'Arienzo only because D'Arienzo nearly retired in 1957 because he was ill. So during that time he lost his singers and Salamanca started his own orchestra.

1:45:11He had lots of trouble with the authorities because he was a communist. Like Pugliese. Like Pugliese. But he managed to keep going. And through the 60s he gets some support from Japan. Japan is an active tango loving nation in the 50s and 60s already, and they commission LPs, which are recorded in Argentina from a number of artists. And one of those artists is Fulvio Salamanca.

1:45:40Wow. So the love of the Japanese for tango in general and for Salamanca in particular is one of the things that keeps him going. And they didn't care about his political tendencies. No, they didn't. All right.

1:45:58Yeah, I want to play a song that I actually, I didn't hear this version before. I was preferring. It's El huracán. It's an old Donato tango, but I, the version I prefer is actually D'Arienzo's from 1944, and that's with Salamanca on piano. So it's interesting to hear this one from 1967 when he has his own orchestra and his version. Do you know this, Michael? I don't think I do know the Salamanca or El huracán. No, I don't. I hope you find this interesting, and there is a lot of things happening here, but I would suggest that you'll try to listen to the piano. That's Salamanca himself playing. Yeah, he's a great pianist. Yeah, a lot of interesting things happening there. So El huracán with Salamanca from 1967.

1:46:17 · They playEl huracánFulvio Salamanca · 1960s

Salamanca, D'Arienzo's pianist, formed his own orchestra in 1957; listen for his piano.

1:49:00Isn't that cool, the piano! Oh! Crazy inventive. Crazy inventive. Yeah. No, I'm really glad you played that one. I spent quite a lot of time listening to Salamanca for this program, and I didn't even come across that one. Yeah, it was by chance, but I really liked it. Fantastic. I never heard it before. Very inventive, full of ideas.

1:49:38Yeah, all this going up and down. And it's interesting because Salamanca as an orchestra, it's not so much about the piano, it's more about this floating violins. But here it's all about him going crazy on the piano, I think. So it stands out in that sense. It's powerful. Piano playing is really powerful. That's why D'Arienzo hired him. Yeah. So

1:49:59Now something completely different. Let's have a little sorbet to clear our sound palettes or listening palettes for something else. Let's listen to a song by Atahualpa Chupanqui. He's a guitarist, and he plays all kinds of stuff, but he plays this tango milonga or Los Ejes de Micareta that we know from Gadel, right? Troilo. From Troilo. Oh, yeah, yeah, of course, Troilo, Rivero. Yeah, it's something different. And he plays it on the guitar. And this is from 1960. Do you want to say something about Atualpa or not?

1:50:41Well, Atualpa is just a total icon, isn't he, in the Argentine scene. He's from the far north getting towards the Altiplano, so the high mountain area that's bordering with Bolivia and Peru. And as a young man, he would just roam around, and there were no borders up there, up in the mountains. So his music reflects the loneliness and the spirituality and the wide open spaces of the high mountains. A prolific composer.

1:51:14In the 70s he had to go into exile because he was, he was quite political, so in the 70s he was arrested, and they tried to break his hands, and they did break one of his hands, but they didn't know that he was left-handed, so he was and it's a terrible story, isn't it? But I think they did something that put a typewriter on his right hand and sat on it to break his fingers. Oh my god. Guitar player, uh, but he was left-handed, so afterwards he was still able to play, but there was a certain chords he found difficult. Okay, and a great composer, wrote many, many great songs.

1:52:03Well, let's listen to this one to get a little kind of cortina in this program. Los Ejes de Micareta, Atahualpa, from 1960.

1:55:06Oh, that's music for the campfire, isn't it? It is. It's completely changed the mood. We're there. We're there in the mountains with him. So much emotion. It's a song about the difficulty of peasant life, isn't it? How hard it is.

1:55:28All right. Where to go after this, Michael? I think you've got a plan, Dag. Yeah, I have a plan. I have a plan. Let's follow the plan. Yeah, I want to go to another singer, let's say Alberto Castillo, who sang with Tanturi in the early 40s, and he's one of the first singers, as you pointed out in our Tango by Your Program, who went solo, right? And now it's been 20 years and he's still singing. One of the first to go solo successfully, others tried and failed but he tried and succeeded. He's still extremely popular and singing with his inimitable larger than life style, but his voice is beginning to change, I think. Yeah, maybe we'll hear that, artistically speaking past its best.

1:56:18And I played some non-tango Castillo songs in the warm-up, but also you came early, but let's listen to a tango, and this is one I came across, uh, list to in this uh database that I use, tango DJ dot at, which is a really good resource for anyone interested in tango music. And I couldn't find it on Spotify, on YouTube, I didn't have it. It's Una carta, it's recorded in 1959, and you know this from Troilo Fiorentino from the 40s. It's a very heavy, heavy lyrics sung from a man's perspective who's in jail, and he writes a letter to his mother asking if it's true that his woman has taken another man into their house and kick their son out and put him in the orphanage, and if it's true that when he gets out of prison he'll settle his debt with his dagger. It sounds like he won't be out of prison long, but uh, it's a very, very heavy, so very heavy lyrics and tragic song. And I had to ask the owner of this database, Bernard Gebaga in Vienna, to send me this song, and I got it from him. So I'm curious if you've heard this before.

1:57:24No, I don't think I have. No, it's Castillo singing Una carta and it's backed by Angel Condesuri, Condesuri, which is, I think it was his backing orchestra for a long time. Yeah. Do you want to hear it? Let's hear it. Una carta, Alberto Castillo.

2:00:04Heavy stuff, man. It is heavy stuff, yeah. And you say his voice has lost some of its quality from the 40s. Yeah, I think his voice is beginning to go. Yeah. I posted a video of him singing in the 90s in the Tango Baye group, and then you can really hear that his voice has gone. But then he was like, I don't know, 85 or something. He kept going. It's hard to tell these guys to retire.

2:00:28Two words about the translation. I mean, if you can't find Tango lyrics translated into English on the internet, usually I, or before during Tango by Year I used Google Translate or DeepL, but the reason that I discovered is ChatGPT. And it's interesting to compare the translations from DeepL, which I think is the best one from before, and ChatGPT. And we talked about this, Michael, that ChatGPT tends to give a more like streetwise translation of the tangos. I mean, of course there are errors and everything, but they're quite good, I think, some of them. Yeah, it's a tool, isn't it, to help us. The ones you've shown me, yeah, it gets the street flavor much better. Yeah, right.

2:01:04D'Agostino, he's not dead yet, is he? He's still recording. Yeah, he's made a small comeback after almost retiring, and I wanted to play one song. I mean, there are some good vocal ones, uh, there's one called Corazón cobarde with Tino Garcia singing, that's wonderful, that gives me goosebumps, but I don't want to play that one because something happened in 1989, sorry, sorry, 1959. Maybe you know, Michael, what happened related to D'Agostino? Um, no, I don't know what you're going to say now. Angel Vargas died, he's a star singer from the 40s. So D'Agostino recorded a kind of tribute, like a death song to Vargas, a homage to Vargas, who died in 59. He was just 55 years old. And it's with a guy called Roberto Alvar singing. And the song is called Ángel Vargas, El ruiseñor. The Nightingale. The Nightingale. So I want to play it as a kind of homage to Ángel Vargas.

2:04:37When you know what the lyric means, it's very, very touching. It's nice how he steps away from the microphone also towards the end, kind of fading away, just like Vargas did.

2:04:48Right, so we passed two hours, Michael, and we're approaching the end. And I wanted to finish with a guy we know from before, Aníbal Troilo. I've been waiting for him. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So what's to say about Troilo in the 60s? That's been running out of steam, hasn't it? But there's some good stuff. The 60s is a long time. And we started in 1959 as well. So there's going to be a huge difference between the beginning of this 10-year period and the end. As we get more towards the end, the sound becomes more and more symphonic. And there's fewer and fewer good new songs to perform. But particularly with Goyeneche, there's still some great stuff. I have no idea what you've selected for us.

2:05:40Well, let's start with Goyeneche, the lead singer when we entered the 60s, and as I've read the greatest tango singer of the 60s and 70s, nothing less. That's quite amazing. Yeah, and I think a lot of people would agree with that, so it's not just a wild claim, it's a wild claim that has a lot of support. And why is he a great singer? It's because of his phrasing. He's what we would call a decidor, he speaks the lyric with the most remarkable phrasing. And despite the fact Goyeneche himself said in an interview, from a singing point of view I prefer to be a soloist because I'm more free, but actually from a singing point of view I prefer his performances with Troilo. His phrasing is extraordinary and there are a good good numbers by him, but I want to play, uh, Como se pianta la vida, this is from 1963. And we know this from more upbeat versions from the 40s by Tanturi and also Rodriguez. This is very different. It's much darker and more introvert. And I would say it's less for dancing than for dying, actually. So should we hear it? Como se pianta la vida. 1963, Troilo, Goyeneche.

2:10:08Wow, he really spits out those words, doesn't he? It's a really tough lyric, and um, I'm thinking about a friend of ours who I won't name who said once, this tango is like a challenge to me, makes me think about my life and how I'm living it as a tango person. So you know, it's great fun to listen to the lyric, imagine it's about something else, but if you're living the tango lifestyle, I think that's a really interesting comment that our friend made. You know, maybe it's about us as well. Yeah, time, time is going by, how are we spending it? Great lyric. Yeah, let's listen to another great singer, Roberto Rufino, who sang, yeah, we need to listen to him, finally get to sing.

2:10:58Troilo really joined in 1943, but Troilo took Troilo instead, but 20 years later he joins, and Troilo improved the quality of every singer that he had. He's like one of the world's great football managers, he's the Jürgen Klopp of tango music. And Rufino said only under Troilo did I really learn how to be a great singer and to really phrase. Extraordinary. And so late into his career that he was still able to improve. And there's some incredible performances. Which one are we going to hear? I want to play the one I like most, which is a magnificent tango, Quién lo habría de pensar? Which is actually Rufino's own composition, which I also thought was interesting. This is from 1963, and there are very few, very few tangos that Rufino composed, so that's particularly special. Let's hear it. Who would have thought. 1963, Troilo, Rufino.

2:15:07Stop hating people, that's the moral of his song. Incredible lyric, incredible performance. It's one of the best Troilo performances of the 60s. It's amazing. Sometimes we feel that it's becoming a bit top-heavy with Troilo, a bit too symphonic, but not here. Not here. The instrumentation is matched by the quality and the delivery of the lyric. Fantastic. And we've got other great Rufino Troilo songs, haven't we? There's Mensaje, there's Maria, which is a Troilo hit from the mid-40s, the Troilo Rufino Maria, also exquisite. Maybe a Troilo Rufino, tambours going to break out over the continent. Yeah, and Mensaje we played in the Troilo special, for those of you who want to hear what Michael said or talked about then you can go to the Troilo special recording and listen to that. It's from 1965, I think.

2:16:15Right, one more Troilo song with a singer, this time a woman singer, Nelly Vasquez, who recorded with Troilo in the 60s. Yes, and in the Troilo special I played the Cadenemos aquí, which is a great one, and you played the Madrugada, Michael, in the after party. This is in non-published song, it's also great, so we have to find something different because we're not repeating ourselves in Tango by Year, are we? We try not to, yeah. So I want to play a tango with one of most shocking lyrics in tango history, and Michael, I have this vague memory that you said once that this tango was the reason you decided to learn Spanish, Sombras, nada más. I think you said that because the lyrics was like someone told you at the seminar that, uh, no, it wasn't this one, but this is one of the most shocking lyrics because it's kind of, um, it's kind of like a suicide tango, isn't it? Yeah, it is. It's kind of like a suicide tango, and at the time people, because it comes out in 44, doesn't it? And there's Troilo with Marino and there's also Lamutos, whose version is somehow a bit easier to digest, and a lot of people said these lyrics are not tango lyrics, it should be a bolero, a Mexican love song. But um, it's hard to take it seriously or not, you know, it's a man being over dramatic, isn't it? So I'm gonna slash my wrists and I'll show you. You'll be sorry when I drop down dead in a pool of my own blood. Exactly. Then you'll be sorry. It's a bit laughable. You can't really take it serious, can you? It's hard to know. I mean, you know, Latin people can be very dramatic. Yeah, anyway. So let's listen to it. Sombras, nada más. Shadows, nothing more, with Nelly Vasquez. It's from 1966.

2:21:29After playing a song like this, which is the name, Michael, that people should, if they need someone to talk to, they should call 911. It's terrible. It's hard to find a female voice that can stand up to Troilo's orchestra, but she does it. And I love the beautiful, gentle ending as well, which kind of lets you down after all that drama and passion, rather than leaving you screeching at the top.

2:22:01So last Troilo track before we round off this part. It was very tempting to play Nocturno de mi barrio from 1968. It's a very special track. But we ended the Troilo special with that one. So I don't want to repeat it. Nope. And since there's so much music out there, let's play something else.

2:22:21So I want to play the Troilo and Grella quartets, and I found this really interesting track from a radio transcription disc with Rivero singing Mi Noche Trista. Yeah, fantastic. You know this one? Yeah, yeah. Because I think it's year 62, but the year is a bit uncertain. So but it's early 60s I think, unless you have other information.

2:22:46So the thing to say about this is that we think of the Troilo Greta quartet and all of Troilo's small groups as instrumental groups, but in live performance, sometimes they were joined by the band's regular singer, whether it be Goyeneche or Rivero. So those were never recorded in the studio. There's a video fragment of the quartet with Goyeneche and a few tracks from radio transcription discs. So this is fantastic that we're going to hear this. We've got a photograph of Rivero singing with the group, and there's just five guys around the microphone. So very intimate music making.

2:23:31Yeah. And the sound quality is not the best, but this is just amazing music, I think. I think the feeling will come right through. Yeah. Let's listen to Rivero singing Nosso Tristo.

2:26:48Wow. And the way Rivero goes down in the end is lowering the volume that makes it hard to play him at Milongas sometimes because it's hard to hear his voice. This was the Troilo way. Troilo never believed in overpowering an audience, remember. I can't remember, we spoke about this on the Troilo special, we must have spoken about this during Tango by Year.

2:27:30Troilo's philosophy was if you start playing in the milonga and people are chatting away at the tables then you play quietly and after a while they realize they can't hear the music properly and they shut up and then you turn the volume up, but Rivero would love to really bring it back. So not the Mezzet thing of going halfway, but bringing it back almost to a whisper. And do you remember what he said when they premiered Sur? He said the room went so quiet you could hear the girls breathing. That's a wonderful performance. Really glad you played that.

2:28:08Yeah, I think we have come to the end of this programme, and I want to end it with a medley of all things, a mix of tangos. I guess you weren't expecting that. I know what you're going to play now. You know now, yeah. So there are five tangos in this medley and it's nice, Michael, that you mentioned earlier, Tita Morello as the composer of this tango because she's the one singing here, the coolest women tango singer of all times, Tita Morello. And the song is called Apologia del Tango. Can you say something about the lyrics here, Michael?

2:28:43Because I think we talked about this in Tango by Ear because we played a version from, I don't know, 1930 or something, before, really, really early one. Um, I think the version that we played was by Usenna, my zani, the old, old one, 20s, 20, apologia, apology, but in the old sense of the word, meaning an argument supporting something. So it's tango declaring itself and its qualities. And I can say as much as of the five tangos that will hear it. The last one is La Compasita. So this is the Compasita version you'll hear in this Tango by Year program. Let's hear Tita Marilau sing Apollegiala Tango.

2:29:23I'll post the poem also. She's talking, she's not singing in this song. So it's more about like a poem, a sung poem. 1969 also I want to say, because it's at the end of the decade.

2:31:49Isn't that true, Michael? It's still in there. And a nice way to end maybe, or I think, the last Tango Wee program with a woman singer because we had so much nice moments listening to female singers during all these hours of tango music. And you don't hear them much at milongas. So, yeah. No, we don't.

2:32:12So it is fantastic to see all of you again, amazing, some new ones also, that's really nice. And I repeat what I said at the beginning that it's possible to listen to the recordings of all these programs. I will post also this one in a while at SoundCloud Tango by Ear. And for this specific night I will also remind you that it's a charity for Ukraine, so please, if you can afford it, go to the web page and donate some money to the projects that are specified there. It's important. Michael, you want to add something or should I play Grig?

2:32:50What do you want, a little after party? Yeah. So, um, first of all, before we do the after party, Dag, I want to ask you, compared to the other programs that we've done, how difficult was it for you to choose the tracks tonight, to make your selections?

2:33:08Uh, it was a bit difficult in terms of, um, the mass of, uh, recordings and orchestras for a decade, and also because I know the 60s is much less than the earlier music, so I had maybe 10% of the music on my computer and I had to look up a lot of the others. So, um, yeah, it's not a decade I'm very familiar with. What about you?

2:33:31Similar. I realized immediately that I didn't know it as well as the music from earlier decades, which is really understandable, and yeah, I found it very difficult to make selections. And now I'm really in a quandary because tomorrow's a working day and, you know, the pandemic's over. Normally when we get to this point you've played like at least half or maybe three quarters of what I wanted to play, but not tonight. You've played about two or three tracks that I would have played, because there's quite a variety of music. It's not like a holistic scene, the scene is kind of fragmented into these different strands. So I really don't know what I'm going to play first, but I'll try not to play too much and I promise you you will be weeping before the end of the show.

2:34:30That's promising. Gosh, what, um, okay, let me just, uh, take over the audio. Let's do that first, shall we? Yeah, do that. Yes, uh, sharing. Oh, oh God, have they changed this? No, it's the same. Share screen and you go to this screen, uh, advanced, computer audio, share, that's it. So I'll try it.

2:34:47I might even not repeat any of the orchestras except for Pugliese. So I want to play, what do I want to play? I want to play, first of all, really good music. So Dag's played a wide variety of music, you've got an idea of the decade, so I can afford to be a bit less representative, but to play what I think is really good music, and I want to play a few more songs by the solo singers with guitars, and also something Ukrainian right at the very end. And I want to play more Pugliese as well.

2:35:34No, there won't be a Tango by Year 41. Just commenting on the chat window, this is definitely it. This is definitely it. We got back together for a special reason. So just as a little sorbet to get us going, I have shared the music. So tell me immediately if it doesn't come out. I want to play something by Miguel Caló. You weren't expecting me to say that, were you? We're going to start off with Miguel Caló, and I'm not going to play Portanissimo, because you all know that anyway. Something you're not expecting, I think. This arrangement, this is going to be Hotel Victoria, this arrangement was copied by the Sexteto Majore 30 years later in the mid-90s, but this is 1966.

2:39:47Wow. You like that? Yeah, that was interesting. Interesting arrangement. Not what you really expect from Caló. A little bit more. Not typical to them. I would never have guessed. Maybe I should have just put it on and asked you to guess the orchestra. That would have been fun.

2:40:02Now let's go straight on and listen to some of those male vocalists that we haven't heard. For example, Jorge Vidal, that powerhouse of a voice that had just 18 months with Pugliese in 49 to 51, with Puente Alsina and Barra Carida and all those great tangos. So he went solo. And although sometimes he played with orchestra, he went solo because he wanted to sing mostly with guitars, which was what he loved. And he told Pugliese, if I stay with you, I'll have to be an orchestra singer, and that's not what I want. So what did he want to go back to? He wanted to go back to stuff like this.

2:40:42This is, initially it was a Mexican song, I believe, started out as a bolero, but it changed into a tango. I don't know if it was Jorge Vidal's idea or not, but have a listen to this, the wonderful baritone of Pugliese's ex-singer singing Confidencias.

2:44:14What a voicer, how about that? He sounds so good with guitars. You can hear why he left Pugliese to go back to that, even though we wish he stayed. And there's lots more like that. Check it out if you're in a hurry, because there's so much to listen to. As soon as you hear an orchestra in the background, just skip over those. Go for the guitar ones.

2:44:44Right now, Dag, you surprised me by playing Salgan just with De Lío. So this duo was asked, Salgan the pianist, De Lío the electric guitarist, this duo was asked, you know, couldn't you make a bigger group? So Salgan asked a couple of his friends, there wasn't much work in the environment in the 60s, how about joining me to make a little quintet? So the musicians who were free were Pedro Laurens for Bandungon, he wasn't doing anything in the early 60s, and a double bass player and Francini, Enrique Francini, the star violinist of the Calot Orchestra, and they formed a quintet which was called the Quinteto Real, and it's an awesome quintet.

2:45:29Now because the core of the quintet is the duo that you played us before, Salgan and De Lío, the piano is maybe a little bit too dominant, so it's not like a jazz group which is completely balanced between all the different people. We don't hear quite as much of Lauren's as we might like and Salgan takes a very strong role, but it is incredible music, it's almost like jazz. I remember when I first got the compilation CD, there's a two CD compilation album of the Quintetoria and it must be the Quinteto, not the Nuevo Quintetto which came later after some people had left. I sat down with a friend and we just listened to the whole double album right through going, what is that?

2:46:13So this will be a change of mood, this will be something a lot more light and joyful. So how about a tango that you've heard a million times from different bands? This is A La Gran Muñeca.

2:49:13This is D'Arienzo, a milonga from 1962, Prometadora.

2:51:41I thought we had to have a milonga. We hadn't had one yet tonight. That was a fun one also. It's fun. A lot of these D'Arienzo milongas, you have the feeling like a racehorse. Gosh. How about a little bit of Pugliese?

2:52:11I wanted to play some instrumentals of Pugliesi. A little bit challenging, maybe. I'd be very interested to get the feedback of the group, how they feel about these. So the first one, let's start with Don Agustín Bardi, which has got this kind of wild joy. Does that make sense? Wild joy. The first time I hear something like that in Pugliesi is with Malandraca in 1948, because it's kind of violent almost in its power, but it's very joyful at the same time.

2:52:48And I feel that a lot about some of the later works like this one, Don Agustín Bardi. The tempo is changing quite fluidly and the real climax comes at the end when the piano goes absolutely mad, and mad not with playing lots of notes, mad with discords. Pugliese himself is playing these discords on the piano and the feeling that it gives you is one of a kind of wild and crazy joy. That's how it is for me, you tell me afterwards. This is 1961.

2:53:17 · They playDon Agustín BardiOsvaldo Pugliese · 1961

Lavocah's 'wild joy': the tempo goes mad through discords, played by Pugliese himself.

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♪ Music · 2:58 · What the transcriber heard

2:56:15We haven't had the good bit yet. Isn't that mad? The way the piano goes at the end, you just can't predict when it's going to hit it. Wild, wild joy. Gosh, that's got my juices flowing, that has.

2:57:14I hope you liked it. If you didn't like it, feel free to say so in the chat window. Now let's go the whole hog. If we're going to play music that's that intense, I'm going to play Locura tanguera. Now this is a bit of a weird song. Locura tanguera, it's in the title, isn't it? Madness, tanguera madness or crazy tanguera. What's actually crazy about the music is that the elements appear in the wrong order.

2:57:41So what normally happens in a tango, you start off with a beat and then you get a melody on the top. And then finally, you get maybe a counter melody with Pugliese, like a stretchy violin bit. Yeah, yeah, that's like the climax. This one backwards. So the first thing that happens is you get the stretchy violin bit by itself and then you don't get the melody, you get an ostinato, a repeating bass motif. So this is a really advanced composition in the sense that he's taken the elements, beat, melody, counter melody, and he's shoved them around in ways that you don't expect. I'd hesitate to play this at the milonga, but it's very danceable and I love this tango very much. 1966 or so, Locura tanguera.

2:58:24 · They playLocura tangueraOsvaldo Pugliese · 1966

The elements of a tango appear in the wrong order: stretchy violin first, then an ostinato bass, no melody; still very danceable.

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3:02:19Wild, isn't it? Wild. Now, I've got 25 of you on the screen in front of me, and I just want to make a little comment about how to punch the air when you're listening to Pugliese. Yeah, because this is going to be really difficult on the audio transcript. But if I'm going bang, bang, bang, bang, four to the bar, then actually I'm banging D'Arienzo style, because when you listen to D'Arienzo, all the four beats in the bar are equally strong. So you're with D'Arienzo, but Pugliese goes strong beat, weak beat. So I would recommend you, when you're shaking your fist in the air in time to the music, to shake it only on the strong beats and just have a little pause, so to go yeah, rest, yeah, rest, yeah, which is zhumba, zhumba. Otherwise you've got zhumba, zhumba, which is not really what the music's inviting. And you'll feel different if you shake your fist two to the bar instead of four to the bar, you really will, and it will improve your Pugliese dancing as well.

3:03:29Now I need something to calm me down after all that intensity and we're going to listen to Edmundo Rivero, ex-singer of Troilo, performing here with guitars on a very rare LP called Rivero en la Intimidad, Rivero in Intimacy, and the cover of the LP shows him sitting at home with his family. Now you may have heard this tango performed by an orchestra, but here he is singing by himself, just with himself on the guitar. Kien Si No Tu. It's super, super romantic, the title means who if not you.

3:06:47A pure love song. We don't get so many of those in tango, do we? Who if not you? Wonderful, wonderful lyrics. Sorry I didn't have an English translation for you.

3:07:09Let's listen to something really modern. So I said at the beginning, in the introduction, that Piazzolla was not the only modern voice in tango music. And we especially as tango people should remember that. This is Eduardo Rivera, the composer of Evaristo Cariego, with his trio. This is called Tango en Tres, Tango in Three, and you can hear immediately why. Ravira himself is abandoned Yonclerc, you'll hear him in a moment.

3:12:07Now, what I really loved about that is how many different moods it had. Suddenly there were really dark and tense bits, and then suddenly it opened up and it was light and joyful. But emotionally, it covered so much ground. As Rachel said, it tells a whole story. I'll play something light for you.

3:12:27Now, I mentioned before that a few artists, amongst them Fulvio Salamanca, were supported with recording contracts from Japan. And one of the things they asked him to do was to record some Japanese tangos. And there are two LPs. There's one that's Japanese tangos, which is not very well known. And there's one that's even less well known where he was asked to arrange some traditional Japanese songs as tangos. So I thought we could listen to one of those before we reach the big stuff. This is called Sakura, which means cherry. So cherry tree blossom. And I think this is from about 1968 but I don't know for sure because it's really hard to get any data on it. Have a listen to this.

3:15:03Something very strange. Traditional Japanese song arranged as a tango. I'm going to take a terrible risk now. I'm really nervous. I just tell you, just share with the group. I'm really nervous. If you're Ukrainian, you may want to look away now. Oh, gosh. I want to show you a clip from a film from 1961.

3:15:32The name of the film is Ukrainian Rhapsody, and it's directed by a guy called Pariyanov. Pariyanov was Armenian. He was born in Georgia to his Armenian parents. When he became a filmmaker he went first to Moscow where he had his first marriage, he lost his wife in very tragic circumstances, and he then moved to Kiev and learned Ukrainian, and he made the rest of his films there with great difficulty because the Soviets didn't like his films. And I should tell you that he rejected everything that he did later on in life that he'd made before 1965, including what I'm going to show you now. You'll see why, but nevertheless, I think it's worth showing you this.

3:16:22The song you will hear is by the Ukrainian folk choir, the Ukrainian national folk choir, which was formed in Kharkiv after the liberation of Kharkiv in 1943. It's a traditional Ukrainian song called Svite terén, if I'm saying it right. The blackthorn is blooming, and what you see in the film is a man and a woman saying goodbye because the man has to go to war. Extraordinary bit of filmmaking and a beautiful piece of music. This always makes me cry.

3:21:49Now, two years ago, I might have thought that was a bit cheesy, but not now. That's the real life that many of our friends are experiencing. So I'm very touched by that and glad to share it with you. Hope that was OK for you to share that. And if you do watch the film, which is on YouTube, I can tell you that the guy makes it back. So there's a happy ending.

3:22:12Now I've DJed myself into a corner now, haven't I? What can you possibly share after that? I think we'll finish with something strong and beautiful. And I think we'll finish with Pugliese's Recuerdo from 1966, with Jorge Maciel making the most spectacular vocals. This arrangement of Recuerdo was designed to show off just how good Jorge Maciel's voice is. So there's new lyrics were written specially, and there's also a change of key quite early on in the vocal, which makes it even more difficult to sing. He does it absolutely perfectly. We'll listen to that, then we'll say our good nights, and I think we'll have to listen to the Pig in this week because that's what we always do here. So, from 1966, the Pugliesi Maciel Recuerdo.

3:26:01Pugliese dedicated that piece to his friends, didn't he? That's what the sheet music says, to my friends from the old cafe, and he lists their names at the top of the sheet music, writes them all the names out. So that kind of inspires me, so I'll dedicate that song to all of you, who some of you I've seen and danced with since the pandemic but others not so. I look forward to the time when we're all together and dancing again, and that's all the music I think I want to play for tonight. And Dag, that's it for Tango By Year, that's it, isn't it? We made our finish.

3:26:42And yeah, I really enjoyed it. Me too, beautiful ending also, Michael, thank you. Yeah, and thanks for making it happen and for all the music you played. The 60s is surprising, there's quite a variety of music, and of course we don't know it because we don't hear it so much in the milonga. It's been great to see you everybody, thank you so much. Let's play out in the traditional way, flying like a seagull above the fjord in Bergen.