Tango By Year, by year
Dag Stenvoll y Michael Lavocah · 2021-09-01 · 4:24:01
This is episode 38 of Tango By Year, a one-off reunion special that Dag Stenvoll and Michael Lavocah broadcast together in Norwich four and a half months after the main series' last 1943 episode. Instead of one year, they play roughly fifty recordings in chronological order from 1926, the year electrical recording reached Argentina, through 1955, the year they both call the end of tango's golden period, tracing the sextet era and the Dicarian school, the 1931 crash that wiped out many orchestras, D'Arienzo's rhythmic revolution from 1935, the early-1940s flowering of the 'big four,' wartime lyric censorship from 1943, and the genre's early-1950s second wind under Salgán, Gobbi, a returning Di Sarli and an increasingly ambitious Pugliese. 1952 and 1958 are explicitly skipped. They close, outside the stated range, with Troilo reciting his own 1968 poem 'Nocturno a mi barrio' over bandoneón and guitar, closing both the episode and the series itself.
Lo que este episodio dio a Tangopedia
Datos dichos en el episodio, cada uno citado al minuto en que se dice.
Electrical recording (microphones) reached Argentina in 1926; before that all recording was acoustic, with a horn driving a stylus straight into wax.
In Julio De Caro's orchestra Maffia was the number-one bandoneón and Laurenz the number two, so Maffia usually took the solo even in passages that suited Laurenz's style better.
Bands of this period were sextets (piano, double bass, two bandoneóns, two violins) though they still called themselves orchestras; the format grew to three-and-three by the late 1930s and four-and-four by the 1940s.
The 1940s 'big four' were D'Arienzo, Di Sarli, Pugliese and Troilo; the late-1920s equivalent was a 'big three and a half': Canaro, Fresedo and Firpo, plus the less commercially successful Julio De Caro.
Fresedo stopped recording in 1928 to go travelling, cutting short what Lavocah calls his best period, 1926-28.
Discos que suenan · 49
Transcripción
Transcripción automática del audio, luego puntuada; puede haber nombres mal oídos. Toque una línea para escucharla. El episodio es en inglés, y su transcripción también.
Tango By Year, with Dag Stenvoll and Michael Lavocah.
Welcome everybody to Tango By Year! We're here together broadcasting from Norwich, England. Oh my god. Welcome everyone to Tango By Year By Year. Yeah. In the same room. Yeah. In the same room to a new and unique format. A unique night never to be repeated. Gosh, I've no idea what kind of night it's going to be, but it's going to be a good night. I think so, yeah. A bit different dynamic than usual, but I mean we're here, we can talk. It should be easier.
And the format will be different. We'll be playing music from all the years, and in the chronological order it's the plan. So it hasn't been easy to make a selection, but I made it go. Are you ready for a long night? It could be a long night. It's going to be a long night, I'm pretty sure. If you miss the end, we can always go to the recording that we might put on South Valley. Yeah. Yeah, we'll see. Keep sending in the champagne.
So, four and a half months since we did our last 1943 program in April. It feels like not long at all. And it feels, yeah, no, it feels like not long at all, actually. But I've missed all everyone. We missed you. And dancing is picking up again. That's good. I hope you're all able to dance a little bit. Yeah, I hope so. I've danced three, twice. I've been to three Malongas, DJ'd one, danced twice. I've danced a thousand times. He went tango crazy. I've had the best summer ever. But this event is the only COVID-proof event you've ever been to. True. You didn't need to show your vaccination pass. I don't care if you took a lateral flow test this morning on what the result was. If you did, it doesn't matter. It's the ultimate COVID secure tango event. How about that?
So we did a poll just before we started about when we should open the champagne. Yeah. Did you see the results? Maybe some of you are jotting late. So what year should we open the champagne? England, well not England, the English champagne industry is benefiting from climate change because it's getting better and better to grow champagne grapes in England. So, lucky us. So we've got a very nice bottle of English champagne here, if you're allowed to say that. Sorry to the French people, of English sparkling wine, méthode champanoise. Okay.
And we had a poll what year to open it because my idea was wait till 1941, which was our very first year. Uh, March 2020, yes, or late March, and Dag said, you know, that's like hours away, so we asked, we asked you, we asked you. And what were the results of the poll? Uh, I think about even between now and 1941, which is okay because we've got two bottles. So how was Tango By Year for you? It was an adventure. It was looking back at the pandemic, it's, it was maybe the one really thing that made a difference and made it able to live through without dancing really. Yeah, for me it helped me a lot because it gave me something to give my energy to when suddenly so many activities came to a halt. Yeah. So I'm very grateful for it. It's been marvelous.
So should we start talking about the early years? Oh, yeah. Because we started in, I mean, we started in 1941, but then at some point we went all the way back to 26, 27. And why did we go back to those years? Why didn't we go back to 1912 or 1917? We have recordings. Because that's when it starts getting interesting, really, for all kinds of reasons. And also, by an amazing coincidence, it's the year that electrical recording is introduced in Argentina. Before then, all recording was done acoustically, with a horn driving a stylus, cutting the wax directly. But microphones were introduced in Argentina in 1926, so we can really hear what the music's doing, and it develops really fast. No one listens to 1926, 1926, 1927 and says, oh, these are the best, it's the best music ever. But there's some very charming things, and in a really short time, just in one or two years, the music is very, very satisfying.
And let's start with something a bit unusual and charming, I'd say, because an important instrument in tango is the bandoneon, and from the early years we have some very special recordings by duos played of bandoneons. I want to start with Pedro Laurenz and Pedro Maffia playing Mocosita, and you don't often hear those two playing together, at least not in this format. Well, Pedro Maffia and Pedro Laurenz were the bandoneon duo in Julio De Caro's orchestra, and Julio De Caro let all his musicians shine and display their talents. So people really noticed what Maffia and Laurenz were doing musically, so he started to record bandoneon duos. And he wasn't even the only person to do that, other artists tried that as well, and there were 10 numbers performed in all. It's a nice game to play to ask yourself which man is which as you listen to the music. You can't really tell, but it's still nice to play the game because they were two very different personalities, and that's one thing that makes the music so interesting to listen to. Maffia, smooth phrases, velvety tone, dark and melancholic, Laurenz more bright, more attacking, more joyful. So let's hear it. Mocosita from 1926.
“Mafia, smooth phrases, velvety tone, dark and melancholic, Laurens more bright, more attacking, more joyful.”
Opens the episode with a bandoneón duet so listeners can hear the two players who, with Ciriaco Ortiz, most influenced Troilo's bandoneón style: Maffia dark and velvety, Laurenz brighter and more attacking.
♪ Música · 2:52 · La letra, en la página del tango
Beautiful, isn't it? It's so beautiful. And Maffia's the number one. And so textured. So textured. So much interesting sounds to listen to. Yes, the thing to remember when you listen is that Pedro Maffia is the number one bandoneon player in the band. Laurenz is the number two. So if there's a solo part, probably Maffia will be playing it, even if it's a more Laurenz thing. But it was like an alchemical reaction, these two, they influenced each other a lot. But Laurenz maybe is the most affected because he incorporates the Maffia sound, and he can make it, but it's not his personality, so it really broadens him as a musician. And for those of you who didn't read Michael's Troilo book, these were two of the three main influences on Troilo. So that's also a thing. I wanted to start with this. Perfect.
Okay, so let's go to 1927 and Osvaldo Fresedo because he was your favourite in that programme, remember? You said he was by far your favourite orchestra in 1927. In 1927, yes. So who are, let's just talk about this period, say from where we are now up till 1931. We often call it the era of the sextettes because the bands were sextettes. Piano and double bass and then two bandoneons and two violins making six. Whereas by the end of the 30s normally there were three and three, and then by the 40s four and four. But don't get confused, the bands still called themselves orchestras even though they were sextets. But it's a handy way for us to differentiate, to say, oh, Di Sarli sextet, Di Sarli orchestra. That's very useful, but it's not actually historically accurate.
So we're in the time of the sextets, thanks largely to a school of people that's led by Julio De Caro, but he's not driving it. We call it the De Caro school just because that group demonstrates that, but there were many, many people, so it wasn't his project as such. They are driving music forwards, music's developing really fast. And in the 40s we talk about a big four, and then in the late 20s you've got like a big three and a half. So in the 40s who's the big four? It's D'Arienzo, Di Sarli, Pugliese, Troilo. Now you know some of these people, Troilo is, he's 13 years old, he's still in short pants, so these people are not the big people now. Who are the big people? There's a really big three, which is Canaro, Fresedo, Firpo, and then there's Julio De Caro, who's also successful but not as successful as the other three.
Now why is Fresedo my favorite? Because Canaro doesn't get really, really good till next year. I mean there are some amazing Canaro tracks in 27 like Tigre Viejo and Tintin, but when Charlo starts singing with him, that's when he gets really good, and he doesn't have Charlo yet, so we're going to come back to him. And Fresedo is just exquisite in 1927, unbeatable. And let's hear a sweet little thing called Frases de Amor, Phrases of Love. Oh, that's a good time, and it's an instrumental like most of his tracks, I think, at this point. Do you want to say something about it? Should we hit it? No, let's hear it.
Picked as Lavocah's favourite orchestra and favourite Fresedo period (1926-28): sparse, playful, still showing off Fresedo's own bandoneón.
♪ Música · 3:23 ·
It's perfect, isn't it? In the break, I was saying to Dag, not just my favourite orchestra in this year, but also my favourite period of Fresedo, this 26 to 28 period. Fresedo's a bandoneon player. It's so easy to forget, particularly when you listen to the 1940s, because you don't really hear the bandoneons very much. And here, you can hear his own personal contribution as a musician. The music has the romance and the sweetness that we know, but it also has this beautiful sparse texture. There's space, there's not as much sugar as there is later on, and it's still very playful. All this music is really playful, like the Fresedo Lorenzo, for example, any of them. There isn't a bad track from Fresedo, and there are hundreds. It only stops in 1928 because he decides he wants to go off on an adventure, and he just goes.
All right, let's hear one more track from 27. You mentioned De Caro, the experimental guy, and we need to hear something from him also, I think, from this early period. I want to play Flores Negras, which is a piece we also know from later recordings, but this early one is one of the most beautiful ones. Flores Negras, Black Flowers, a composition of the brother, the pianist Francisco De Caro, who really is the musical engine of the orchestra. Julio is the name. He's good at getting the contracts. That's what you read in the memoirs. The musical brains really was Francisco. A big influence on Osvaldo Pugliese, especially in his piano playing. Pugliese said that.
So you'll hear the piano playing of Francisco, which is going to be more advanced than what you just heard. You'll also hear one of the most beautiful melodies ever in tango music. It's a tango romanza. So, so romantic, the melody, which is why, despite its greatness, there's no Pugliese version. As Pugliese said, when I started my orchestra, I had to choose for the milonguero or the other strings. And I thought, no, I'm making dance music. Because otherwise, all the good, the really great De Caro contributions are recorded by Pugliese, but not this one. So, we have to listen to this. Let's hear it. Flores Negras with the De Caro Brothers. With the De Caro Brothers. 1927.
A showcase for pianist Francisco De Caro's melody writing; so purely melodic and undanceable that Pugliese, who loved it, never recorded his own version.
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♪ Música · 2:50 ·
So Inesh asked a really good question in the chat window which made me think for a moment. She's asked us, well why can't you dance to this? Why did Pugliese agree not really for dancing? So how could you put hard beats into that? Or not necessarily hard beats but strong clear beats. That piece was dominated by melody. It was a song. And the presentation of the melody was what we call melodía cantada, a sung melody, long and smooth and linked and legato, and there was almost no points it didn't go. And if you tried to do that, you know, even if D'Arienzo did a version of that, it would be destroyed, it would not survive. But there are melodic tangos that are not like that, so you could still dance to melodic tangos, I think. So dominated by these really long melodic lines and their waves and their cadences. Maybe Di Sarli could have done it, but he never did.
All right, next year is 1928. You're going to hear one song for that. You didn't mention the part show, Juan Maglio. Yeah, the more I listen to Juan Maglio the more I like him, and I don't need to say early Juan Maglio because that's not all there is really. He dies in 1934, and when we say early Juan Maglio normally we mean the recordings he made between 1912 and 1917. Which we never danced to. Which, well, I have been at Malongas where they're played. Yeah? Yeah. But that was in the old days when, you know, we only had 20 CDs.
So Juan Maglio, the more I listen to Juan Maglio from these early years the more I like it, and what I hear in it is the orchestra that most influenced the D'Arienzo sound from 1935, because strong, clear beats. Yeah, and some stop moments also. Moments of stop time, and these recordings are very charming because most of them, Juan Maglio is on the Victor label, and as a session violinist, so not a member of the band but just someone who's, you know, around the building, and you can say, come and play on this, Elvino Vardaro. So nearly all these recordings have got Elvino Vardaro as a session musician making his exquisite tone. When you hear the tone of Elvino Vardaro you know immediately. At the end of this, if you don't know him already, just listen to this song. I don't even know which one he's playing, but I'm sure Elvino Vardaro is playing violin. Right, and then at the end of it you will know what he sounds like. The quality of his vibrato is really particular, and then in the future, if ever you're not sure, it's not him if you're listening to a tango, anything is it for Vardaro, it's not. When it's for Vardaro you know, I know he said that to me also, but it doesn't work for me.
I give you some blood, and it's with the singer Carlos Viván. I guess it's a house singer of the record company, then I don't know. No, actually, no. I think he's independent, yeah. Okay. All right. So let's hear this. From 1928, El Cuatrero with Juan Maglio.
Picked to show the strong, even, no-arrastre four-beat pulse that the hosts say directly influenced D'Arienzo's 1930s sound, with Elvino Vardaro as uncredited session violinist.
So just proving once again that Tango by It is a live show and I don't know what he's going to play, that wasn't Vodaro. Nice song, but not the Vodaro. The song began and I said, is it Vodaro? And Dane turned to me and he said, if you're not sure, it's not Vodaro. He learns fast.
“If you're not sure, it's not Vodaro.”
But could you hear why I said this is influence on D'Arienzo? What did the beats do? Did the beat have an arrastre? Did it go zoom? No, it just went boom boom boom, and all four beats were the same volume. It didn't go boom boom boom boom. It just went boom boom boom boom. That's typical D'Arienzo, which is the D'Arienzo formula. Four beats, no arrastre, same volume, just faster.
So it was a kind of ideal for him. Do you know anything about the stories in between them or did there as a play for him at some point? No, I don't think so. But when you look at the early D'Arienzo repertoire, it's full of songs from Juan Manuel, like Sabado Inglés, a classic example.
Yeah, so 1929, 1921 was a eye-opener for me because it was the first like really early year we went to a tango way we started in the 40s then went to the 30s and then went all the way back to 1929 and I didn't know anything about 1929 almost. I love 1929, it's one of my top five years. It is for me now also, yeah, yeah, yeah, but I, it was a huge job to prepare for it and I asked lots of DJ colleagues what should I play and so on. So much nice music. So we're going to hear more than one song from this year. I hope we hear some Canaro now.
Yeah, we'll start with Canaro. And an instrumental called Chiqué. Yeah, so now Canaro is reaching, I would say, his creative peak. His creative peak. He's never more creative than he is in 1929. Why is that? For whatever reason, he's not quite as obsessed about just making money as he is later. He's still interested in making art. And Ada Falcón has come into his life, so she's his muse, she's inspiring him, he's got great musicians, he has Charlo as his male singer as well, it's very exciting, it's Canaro's best year in my opinion.
What surprised me with this particular track Chiqué is that it's quite complex for Canaro. I always thought Canaro with much more square beats. And this song is more like arranged music. And I think you talked about this, that you had made this kind of series, Symphonica, this period. And it is arranged music. So on the record labels, it actually says Symphonic Series. Serie Sinfónica. And there are about 20 numbers or so. The first ones at the beginning of 1927 and the very last one, the Inspiración from 1932. So normally it's not arranged. What does that mean? It means you've got six musicians and everyone knows their job. The violinist knows how to do a counter melody spontaneously. Not planned, he just knows.
So the band can say, okay, here's a new tango. So I'll start on the piano, then you take it. Then we get to the verse repeat. You take a violin solo. So it's improvised. Yeah, but they'll just chat about it for a couple of minutes and produce something that's good enough to record. But when you listen to this, it's clearly more complex than that. So it's arranged music. And the main arranger is the pianist, Luis Riccardi, who's struggling to adapt himself to the strict tempo of the Canaro Orchestra. But here you'll hear he breaks free. And Chiqué is an inspiring track that inspired many orchestras to record it, but a very wide variety of orchestras to record it. Like, you know, there's Pugliese Chiqué. Yeah. Not so much overlap between Pugliese and Canaro. Not usually, no. Let's hear it. Chiqué.
An instrumental from Canaro's arranged 'Serie Sinfónica,' chosen as proof of his creative peak in 1929, with Ada Falcón as his muse.
Lo bailan
♪ Música · 3:11 · La letra, en la página del tango
So subtle and sensitive for Canaro, isn't it? I wish he did more like that. Very creative music. Teresa has it right when she comments it's kind of complex and square at the same time. But still, there were moments where it really breathed. The band, like when the piano, you said, it sounds like it's going to end, but it doesn't. And it doesn't end. And the piano makes this really delicate descending run. And then the violin came in. So there it really breathes in a way that Canaro seldom does. And I just want to compliment the violin playing there. Maybe you know, maybe you don't know. The next book is a Canaro book. So one of the things I'm doing is working out who's playing, and that playing that you hear there has got real character. And the violinist is a guy called Eduardo Ponzio. And for me, it's my favourite of all the violin players that Canaro ever had because he has real personality. After him come people who are perhaps better musicians, more technically able, more adaptable, but in terms of his emotional contribution.
Feelings. Yeah, from the feeling side, he's my favourite. And he gets sacked in 1932 because a better musician becomes available. Canaro's not too concerned about feelings after that, I suppose. Less so, you know. He thinks, I've never got access to the better guy, I'll take him. Yeah. Business decision.
Yeah, well speaking of feelings, let's move on to a track by Pedro Maffia, Inspiración, which is also one of the great tracks from 1929, I think. Yeah, it's amazing, and I like it especially because of the cello. This is a year where the cello tracks just really comes forward. It's before the cello gets submerged in other instruments like later into the 30s, those who kept the cello, it was kind of much harder to listen to. But here it has a solo. There's so many things I can say. I try and keep it brief. So in the early years, it was not so easy to record the double bass. It could be done. It could be done. We hear on the Di Sarli recordings from these years that we can hear the double bass. But in some bands, you can't hear the double bass at all. But the cello was easier to record. So that's one reason why it has such a prominent role.
And Maffia loves anything that's dark and melancholic, so the cello, that's made for Maffia. And when it comes to Inspiración, this tango was completely forgotten and Maffia's version that we're going to hear brought it to the attention of the musical scene. So without this Inspiración you would not have the, for example, Inspiración is completely forgotten. Let's see it. Pedro Maffia, Inspiración, 1929. Enjoy the cello especially.
A cello-led instrumental chosen because Maffia's recording rescued a forgotten tango and is the reason Troilo later recorded his own version.
Velvety and delicious, like a really good chocolate sorbet. Yeah, it's beautiful. Introvert and velvety. And the phrase, the long smooth phrases. Inspiración means breath, doesn't it? Breathe in. Inspiration, inspire. That's the perfect name for the music.
Let's hear a third song from 1929. What is it going to be? A late night. It's such a great year, we can't get around Firpo 1929. One of the most fantastic songs, not by Firpo but ever, is, it's cello time, yes, it's 1929, it's the international year of the cello. But it's the sound of early Firpo that just really grabs you by the guts and tears your feelings out and it's wonderful. And this is an instrumental also, so do you want to say something more about it? For me the Firpo beat is really irresistible and it's one of the inspirations of the beat of Di Sarli and in Pugliese you'll hear it's a arrastre, this dragging beat. It goes, not as heavily as Pugliese will do, but yeah, this heavy dragging feeling, he pushes you across the floor and Firpo always has a intense sense of melancholy and sentiment, a bit like Maffia but heavier.
Yeah, I think that's one thing that's come out during the programs, is a number of people have commented to us over the year that they got to appreciate Firpo more than before. He's still neglected, the second most recorded tango orchestra of all time, 2,800 tracks. That's more than the big four put together. Yeah, so yeah, you know, I'm hoping we're going to hear a bit more Firpo in the milonga. Let's hear one of those now.
Played to demonstrate Firpo's heavy dragging arrastre beat, an acknowledged ancestor of Di Sarli's and Pugliese's rhythm; no title was stated on air.
♪ Música · 2:52 ·
Wow, isn't that amazing? It's so intense. He's like a magician. There's this spell, this velvet darkness descends over the dance floor and I feel completely hypnotized. There's a hypnotic quality to the Firpo beat, not just in this track, but yeah, yeah, it's like La Jumbo, isn't it? I think it is, yeah, and you asked what do you play after this? And I said to Dag, if you play this, you know, okay, everyone has a fantastic tanda, but what do you play next? It's like you can't play anything next. DJ yourself into a corner. Suggestions in the chat window please. How do you continue in a milonga if you've just played an amazing Firpo tando culminating in that? Where do you go? Maybe that's why he's really played, you know, he indeed has known this, the experience. It's the last tando then, obviously.
Well, we have to play something more and we got to 1930 and let's listen to Carlos Gardel because he has a really interesting track in 1930 called Tortazos, which is one of the really first milongas recorded. It's one of the first milongas recorded, we should say, that as far as Gardel's concerned he is recording a folk rhythm that has got nothing to do with dancing, because milonga and dancing it's a complex topic, but as far as we're concerned it's not until 1932-33 in Milonga Sentimental that Canaro, that milonga becomes something for dancers. This time it's a folk rhythm and it does have tremendous rhythm and it's a fun one too. Listen to the lyrics. I'm not posting the lyrics this time because, no, it's not a night for studying the lyrics, it's a night for feeling all the different years and celebrating the year of music we've shared together.
But Tortazos is, it's like a slap or something, or yes, yeah, you talked about it. Yeah, it's also recorded by Polizzi with Chanel much later and the guy is talking about his ex-girlfriend and how posh she's become and she pretends that she's French and he really hates her new boyfriend. Who wouldn't? He's got so many insults for her and the last couple of lines say something like, so if I see you on the street with that thing on your arm, that's how he refers to the new boyfriend, with that thing on your arm, don't be surprised if I give you a slap because I just can't stand it. Typical tango lyrics. Typical tango lyrics, yeah. Violence is the solution. That's serious. Tortazos. A very early milonga. Or a milonga campera, I guess you could say.
One of the first milongas ever recorded, picked to show it is a folk rhythm, not yet dance music; the lyric is a jealous rant at an ex-girlfriend's new boyfriend.
♪ Música · 2:33 ·
Michael forgot to unmute us so we'll start all over again. I have to say that again. So, yeah. It's his job. His only job. It was the only thing I have to do is at the end of each song I have to press this button. I messed up. You can edit this out afterwards. No one's going to know except us. Yeah. You were there. So, what do we miss?
There's an even, there's another milonga which I think is got more swing even which is a Soy Una Fiera. So if you like that, check out Soy Una Fiera. And just about Gardel, because when I talk to tango dancers, and I mean the experienced ones, and I ask them, who's your favourite singer? They never say Gardel. Even when we're talking about this period, they might say Charlo or they might say Corsini, and they never say Gardel. And yet Gardel is this myth and he's untouchable and he's the best.
And Teresa and I and maybe some others here, I don't know, are following this diploma in the history of tango that's being done in Argentina on a Zoom show at the weekends and Marcelo Castro, who organizes it, said something that really made me laugh last time. He said Gardel, what we say about Gardel, and then he didn't repeat the cliche Gardel sings better every day. He says what we say about Gardel is he's not my favorite but he is the best. And that seems to be my experience for so many people, not the favorite but a great singer. Yeah, right.
“He's not my favorite, but he is the best.”
One more track from 1930 and I think on several of the programs we talked about the economic crisis combined with the introduction of talking movies was a big hit to Argentine sex deaths and of tango bands at the time. Yes. And a lot of them lost their contracts. And if you lost your contracts, maybe it wasn't even possible to continue, so you had to disband. So yeah, 1931 is the real crisis year for tango. Yeah, and that's for a lot of bands. We won't listen to all of them. This one, Ricardo Luis Brignolo. Who is the guy who composed Chiqué, which we heard earlier. Ah, I didn't know that. Good connection. Yeah. And he recorded a song this year called La Retirada, which I really like. It's a beautiful song.
And yeah, so he'll symbolize what could have continued if it wasn't for this crisis, double whammy of the talking movies and the world economic crisis, we should say. I mean, Di Sarli also lost his contract the year after and so we lost a lot of music because of this, many, many bands. Yeah, let's listen to this. La Retirada with Ricardo Luis Brignolo, 1930.
Chosen to represent the orchestras whose careers the 1931 economic crisis and talking pictures cut short; Brignolo also composed Chiqué, played earlier.
♪ Música · 1:41 ·
Yeah, that fourth string violin, I thought maybe it was a cello, but you say it's a violin. Violin. And we love the bubbly piano. There's other bands that sound like that. The Orchestra Typica Brunswick, very bubbly piano from Juan Polito.
And the original formation of Donato, the Donato's Regio Orchestra. That's really nice music as well. With this bubbly piano, but a happier feeling. Both those make a happier sound. This one's bubbly piano, but more sentimental.
Nice, so the last year in this first period that Michael introduced, 27 to 31, is 31, and, uh, let's hear a waltz. And this year, uh, Ada Falcón recorded Sueño de Juventud, backed by Canaro. This is a beautiful waltz, a dream, he started, a recorded lots of times later, and as you've said, I think he would have recorded it if he didn't just lose his record contract this year. So Discépolo was a personal friend of Carlos Di Sarli.
Capítulo · 59:52
The Tango His Best Friend Never Got to Record
He wrote it for his friend — then lost the contract before he could record it.
Of course, everyone knew each other in this scene, but they were personal friends to the extent that Discépolo, who was a self-taught musician, he couldn't really write music very easily. So he was dependent on other people to write down. He'd go and visit someone and say, I've composed this, and he would just sing it, and the other person would write it down. And Di Sarli did that for him for, I think it was Soy un Arlequín. They had a really good connection.
And Sueño de Juventud, some of the greatest performances come from Di Sarli. But in July 1931, he loses his record contract and the song is a hit in September. So we don't get to hear how that sounded. But Di Sarli is often the greatest interpreter of Discépolo, as we find later with the song Tormenta, another Di Sarli, Discépolo partnership.
Yeah, and Canaro's backing here is not so important. It's Falcón's solo singing that really makes this waltz, I think. Her voice is impossible to ignore. She's a diva. She's a diva. Let yourself be seduced by the voice.
And that's been a really interesting part also about Tango by Ear, that we've gone into the women singers that didn't sing for dance tango, but as soloists. Yeah, they sang in the theater to huge audiences. They were successful. They sold a lot of records. They were rich. But we don't realize that because we're just listening to what is played for dancing. Let's listen to Ada singing Sueño de Juventud.
A soloist's vals chosen to show the non-dance side of the catalogue; the song Di Sarli, Discépolo's close friend, never got to record because he lost his contract the same year it became a hit.
♪ Música · 3:10 · La letra, en la página del tango
That's so expressive. Isn't that amazing? So around this time, with a big song, Canaro would record it three times. He would do a dance version with Charlo singing just an estribillo, so one verse of 30 seconds. Then Charlo would do a solo version, backed by Canaro, and then Ada Falcón would do a solo version. But it's really interesting comparing the two Charlo ones because often they're very similar. The only difference is that he sings much more of the lyric.
The kind of diving, soaring flight that you just heard, actually Charlo doesn't do that. She's a much more expressive singer, one of the most expressive singers of this period. Definitely. Wow. Beautiful. Yes. Yeah.
So let's go to Di Sarli, because this is his last recording here before he disappears for like eight years. So let's hear one song by Di Sarli. I'm glad we'll hear him in this time. Let's hear a vocal by Ernesto Famá called Maldita.
This is a really heavy lyric. The guy sings, damned, damned, I damn you to death. It's like the biggest curse he can think of. Very tango. Yeah, so, and yeah, you talked about with Firpo, the Arrastre, it's also very audible in these early tracks, sex death tracks, this really kind of beat. There's so much in common between this Di Sarli and the later one, really. He's already, it's clear he's already Di Sarli, he's already mature as a musician and knows what he wants to do. Yeah, it doesn't change much through 1958, last recording. Let's see it, Maldita, with Ernesto Famá, 1931.
Di Sarli's last recording before an eight-year gap, chosen to show his mature sound was already fully formed by 1931.
♪ Música · 2:01 ·
Roberto Cuisado, first violin. Wonderful, wonderful sound. Old-fashioned violin sound. So you hear that the sound, it's the beat and the violins that stays with him until the end. All of it stays with him until the end. You can hear what the double bass is doing. The left hand of the piano is always already going, doing some interesting little jazzy touches. It's all there, but just fewer instruments, a cleaner, thinner texture.
Right, third song from 31. I think 31 is also one of the best years. Three songs from 31, I wasn't expecting this. Let's listen to Lomuto, because you didn't mention him as one of the three and a half big orchestras, but he's recorded a lot of stuff these years in this period.
Yeah, I mean, Lomuto kind of started out as an apprentice to Canaro and then he records a lot of the same repertoire. A lot of the time he records them with Charlo as well, just as Canaro is recording with Charlo. But what's the difference there? There's a heavier beat with Lomuto, which is nice for dancing. These early Lomutos I really like for dancing. Yeah, I like them too.
And this track I want to play, it's a really special one, it's called Mar de Fondo. It's an instrumental. This is not typical, folks. No, the ending is typical. That struck me. Staccato Lomuto ending. OK, yeah, it has the funny backwards Lomuto ending.
But in terms of a piece, there's this mad piano break. After 30 seconds, everyone stops. And the pianist, I don't know what he's had for dinner, but he just goes bananas. It's like everyone just waits until he's finished doing this totally mad stuff. It's very unusual. It's very unusual. Yeah, it's not typical of Lomuto, definitely. So let's hear it. Mar de Fondo, with Lomuto, 1931.
An unusually wild instrumental with a manic mid-song piano break, picked as an atypical Lomuto track.
Asked if you only play songs who didn't play in Tango by Ear. No, we only play songs who did play in Tango by Ear. So yeah, they were long evenings, you know, we can't remember. That's an amazing piece, isn't it? So the pianist is a really, really good player and it's like he, the band got permission, oh, go for it, boys, what the hell, just this once. And that first piano break, it's, well, I don't have any words for it. But then the second time when he plays the solo on the left hand, a number of you reacted really positively to that and you said it's like Gong, it's a little bit like Orlando Goñi, the solos he makes with Troilo, in the sense of timing. Yeah, and the variation also is great.
So that was the first period. What can you say about what will be the next, 32 to...? Well, it's going to be a much less diverse period, isn't it? Because a lot of bands have lost their jobs and it's a lot of the more interesting bands, really, the people making more advanced music that's less commercially successful, they've all wiped out. So who's left? And so in this period now, say 32, 33 to 35, Canaro is really dominant. He starts producing his stage shows and he bestrides the scene like a colossus. He's clearly ahead of Firpo and Fresedo by quite a long way.
And all the advanced music that's going to come at the end of the 30s isn't there. Troilo's not there. D'Arienzo's not there. Di Sarli's no longer there. That doesn't mean that advanced music isn't being made, but it's so unsuccessful and uncommercial that it didn't leave any trace. But as time goes on, it starts to leave a few traces. So to sum up, it's less diverse on the records. And what we have on the records from 32 until, say, 37 is not really representative of the whole scene. But it's representative of the commercial scene.
Yeah, so that's not necessarily a good sign for, uh, practiced dancers today. Maybe not, but there's still some very, very charming music in this time. I'm going to start with, from 32, a really special track that I came across when I was preparing for the 32 program and I don't think you'd heard it. And, uh, it's, um, it's a duo with, uh, Lucio Demare on piano and, uh, Agustín Irusta singing Mentira. Yeah, I hadn't heard this.
Capítulo · 1:16:52
The Elevator Accident That Created a Solo
A broken leg turned a trio recording into one of tango's rawest solo vocals.
And the story behind it, because you looked it up after the show and it turned out that why did, because usually there was a trio, right? That's right. And Fugazot was the second. Yeah, so Lucio Demare is the pianist and he formed this trio with the two singers Agustín Irusta and Roberto Fugazot, which was very popular and they were extremely popular in Spain. They'd come back to Buenos Aires and they were booked to play at a theater, but there was an accident in a lift. It fell from the second floor. It fell from the second floor.
Roberto Fugazot was in it with two other people who were both well known in the tango scene, and Fugazot broke his leg. So he couldn't take part in this recording. He couldn't take part in the recording. So that makes it a really special recording, I think, because it's his solo voice and singing this Mentira, which is much better known from later versions.
Yeah, and something to say about Irusta, because Irusta has been around for a long time. You can hear him singing in 27, but I don't like, mostly, there are exceptions, but mostly I don't like how he sounds before, but I like him here. What's different? It's that he's got used to electrical recording. So before electrical recording the singers had to be really loud, you know, imagine a noisy milonga and there's no microphones. Yeah, you've got to be loud. So a rooster, like many people used to sing with a megaphone and if he didn't have a megaphone he'd roll up a newspaper and sing like this so you could hear him at the back. Now that's a style of singing and then, you know, electrical recording comes in, one day you're still singing the same way for like six months until you slowly change your style to take advantage of the new technology.
But so now we hear how he really can sound in a more natural way. Yeah, and this is literally Demare ten years before we know him from his own band in the 40s. But he's a brilliant piano player. He's a brilliant piano player, romantic piano player and also a great composer. Songs that become famous later he's already composed at this time. All right, let's hear it. Very special track. You'll never hear this at a milonga, I can assure you. Mentira, with Lucio Demare and Agustín Irusta singing.
A rare solo vocal recording, made because trio member Roberto Fugazot had just broken his leg in a lift accident and could not sing his part.
♪ Música · 2:34 · La letra, en la página del tango
Yeah, you can recognize Demare from his piano playing. Someone wrote, like, his solo numbers from 1950s. Yeah, but let's turn it around. His 50s numbers are like this. I imagine this basement piano bar, you have to go downstairs, and then when you get down, it's like a cava, like a bodega with stone walls and stone arches, something really atmospheric. I love it. I can't really describe what it is, but immediately we recognize the same style that we hear in the 50s and the 60s.
So one more song from 32 that you also don't hear so much at milongas. It's the first recorded version of Milonga Sentimental, which is not the Canaro version that we know from 33 but with Mercedes Simone. And if this didn't exist, Canaro wouldn't probably have even heard it. Then he wouldn't have picked it up and we wouldn't have milongas. So it comes down to Mercedes Simone, who's also one of my preferred female tango voices because it's a deeper, darker voice, more in the alto range, which I enjoy very much.
Capítulo · 1:22:40
The Milonga a Diva Didn't Want
The song behind every milonga tanda was rejected twice before it was a hit.
So Mercedes Simone was singing at this time in a little radio station that was above the Casa América music shop. And Sebastián Piana and Homero Manzi had written this milonga at the request of Azucena Maizani, who's another female singer that we've heard on this programme. And they presented it to her, she had commissioned it, and she said, I don't really like it, I'm not going to use it. So that was that.
And Sebastián Piana used to sometimes, um, play music in the music shop, I don't know if it was to earn money or it could have been, you know, and he was playing Milonga Sentimental out in the shop and a man heard her and said, oh, that's interesting, you should show that to Mercedes Simone, I'll arrange it. It was Mercedes Simone's manager. She came downstairs, he said, what's the new song? He give me the sheet music and if I like it, I'll perform it on tour, which she did and the rest is history. And this is one of the major reasons we're dancing milongas at milongas today. Yes, so we should be really grateful for this song, Milonga Sentimental, by Mercedes Simone from 1932.
The first-ever recording of the song that later became Canaro's famous 1933 milonga, after Azucena Maizani, who had commissioned it, turned it down.
So let's move on to this Mother of All Milongas with Simone in 1932 to 1933. And I want to play the third of what you write about in the Trolleybook as the main inspirations for Troilo's bandagnón playing. Ciriaco Ortiz and a song called Soledad.
Oh, so this is him playing with a guitar background. So charming. It's charming but it's also so melancholic, deliciously melancholic and a lovely piece to dance to. I have wonderful memories of dancing this piece. And it's a perfect example of this conversando that you just talked about.
The conversando technique of the bandagnón, which Troilo incorporates, is he makes a sound that goes muah muah muah, which is done by blending a note with its octave but not at the same time. You go from one to the other and you get this muah sound which they call conversando, conversing. So, Soledad, Ciriaco Ortiz, 1933.
A bandoneón solo with guitar backing, picked to demonstrate the 'conversando' technique Troilo later adopted from Ortiz, Maffia and Laurenz.
♪ Música · 2:46 ·
Isn't that just beautiful? It's perfect. It's two guitars. Two guitars backing, backing the main one is a guy called Vicente Spina whose name you'll see sometimes as a composer. They don't need anything else. Yeah, how common is this? Rachel has asked in the chat window. Well, not super common but there are a number of outstanding examples. The other one that comes immediately to mind is Troilo with Roberto Grillo in the 1950s and 1960s.
All right, one more 1933 track, or actually, last week we learned that maybe it's not 1933 track, it could also be 1934 track, but we'll never know. Tigre Viejo, with the only one song recorded by Elvino Vardaro, his own orchestra. You never made it, but this song, what a potential and what a shame. I just quickly recap. So Elvino Vardaro, as well as being one of the best violinists of all time if you're a tango lover, was an innovative musician who wanted to make leading-edge modern music and he had several attempts and none of them were successful. He tried with Pugliese in 1929, they went on a tour, they became so bankrupt that they were dependent on a well-wisher to pay for their hotel bill and Vardaro had to pawn the bow of his violin to pay for the train tickets back to Buenos Aires. That's how much of a disaster it was. But he was not put off. In 1933, he had another go. And this time, he had an even better line-up.
Capítulo · 1:32:38
The Record So Advanced the Label Said No
RCA Victor heard the future of tango in 1933 and rejected it on the spot.
OK, he didn't have Pugliese, but he had Troilo as one of his bandagnón players. He had Gobbi as the second violin, I think. Not sure if it's on the record, but certainly at one time. And they made the most advanced music that anyone had ever made, tango wise, up till that day, including any name you care to mention, the most advanced music. And there was one test recording, so not an acetate, a proper record made for RCA Victor, and the commercial directors of RCA Victor listened to it and said no. And Osvaldo Vardaro, who is the son of Elvino Vardaro's nephew, told me that when Vardaro got the news he was in a music studio and he was so angry that he picked up his bow and smashed it and broke it on the edge of the piano. He was outraged and it's a miracle that this disc survives. There was a single disc and it was kept by the family of the second bandagnón player, who inherited the disc, Jorge Fernandez, and then when he died his family covered it in olive oil to preserve it. But the disc survived and we can hear what was considered too advanced for the time.
“It's a miracle that this disc survives.”
And what you'll hear is the many different phases of the music. It doesn't just go verse, chorus, verse, chorus, verse, chorus, finish with good music. There are more sections of music than you expect, not new pieces of music, melodies they've already introduced, but taken in a completely different way every time. So every instrument gets to shine. Yeah, there's a piano solo first, I know the pianist, and then there's a bandagnón solo with the get his Troilo, and then Vardaro himself towards the end. Beautiful. And it reminds me of like Laurenz five years later. It's that advanced. Yes, Laurenz is the person who continues these ideas forwards. Yeah, because... So listen to this, Tigre Viejo, it's 1933, people. For tonight it's 1933. It's amazing.
The only surviving recording of Vardaro's own, highly advanced orchestra, which RCA Victor rejected as a record at the time.
♪ Música · 3:16 ·
It's tango jazz, isn't it? It's everything that tango is, but also everything that jazz is. Top musicians, all of them being allowed to do what they can to the maximum. There's no limit being placed on them by the format of the orchestra. José Pascual on piano, the composer of Laurenz's Arrabal, which is going to come in 1934-35. Clearly the same influences as Orlando Gogni. So that's a school. It's not just one man playing that way. Troilo is so exciting, the young Troilo. And then Vardaro at the end, heart melting.
And OK, this band wasn't successful, but they were playing for dancers. They had a repertoire. So it's not like in the 40s when you had a repertoire of 120 pieces. Let's suppose they only had 30 pieces. What were the other 29? Sorry to leave you with that thought. Let's move on. Let's move on.
Yeah, let's go to 1934 and hear one song by another female singer, as was then, Azucena Maizani, you mentioned earlier, and there's a great song from this year called Venganza. Venganza, revenge. It's beautiful, I post the lyrics also because it's really heavy, but I love this song. It was also difficult to get actually when I was preparing for this. Yeah, so you wouldn't have heard this often, you know, the era of the soloists is about to come to an end. You know, Gardel dies in 1935 and that accelerates the process, but it also, it's a process that would have happened anyway if you look at the recordings of Azucena Maizani, who's a great singer, her peak is in 27-28, she's not recording nearly so much now. So it's one of our last numbers actually. Yeah, so let's hear it, it's Venganza from 1934 as Azucena Maizani.
Picked as one of Maizani's last strong numbers before the era of star soloists faded, accelerated by Gardel's 1935 death.
It's so different to most of the things that we hear, even from soloists. Yeah, and the simple accompaniment, so nice to this. I'm going to try and find out who the violinist is, or maybe only one, but sometimes double stopping, because the violin accompaniment was so sensitive. Thank you. We need something lighter, so let's go to 1935 and D'Arienzo, the last recording he made, and not, no, never the Hula, but on the B side of that is the waltz Orillas del Plata, an old Juan Maglio number.
So D'Arienzo has arrived. He never really went away, but he's arrived with his more intense sound and things fall into place. There's a cabaret that likes him, so he's permanently installed in one of the more important cabarets. He gets a record contract. He gets on Radio El Mundo, which is a new radio station and the most important one. So everything's set and he just needs the pianist. And he gets Biagi on board and this is the first recording with Biagi on piano. So, New Year's Eve, 1935. The new era is beginning. It is. Do you want to say something about the continuation? Or we should just take it year by year? No, let's just listen to it. Let's listen to this waltz. So joyful. Or is that the Plata on D'Arienzo?
Rodolfo Biagi's first-ever recording session with D'Arienzo, played as the start of the orchestra's new rhythmic era, though it was not yet commercially successful.
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♪ Música · 2:22 · La letra, en la página del tango
Michael was so excited about this song, he went to put the pizza in the oven. I waited until 1935. It's not bad. It's not bad. So, what's going on in 1935? This is going on, but don't forget, it's not so successful at the beginning. D'Arienzo doesn't make it big until 1937. So people are aware that this thing is happening, but they don't worry about it too much. And this is really obvious when you listen to Canaro and Fresedo, because they don't change what they're doing at all. Canaro and Fresedo just carry on like nothing's happening and their style is pretty much constant through these years until 37, he becomes successful, and then by 38 they're having to try and adapt.
And now people are still mourning the death of Gardel, just six months before, I guess. They're still mourning. They're looking for a new Gardel maybe or something. They're looking for a new Gardel, but of course there is no new Gardel. What comes into the space is the dance phenomenon. Yeah. We're happy about that now. We are very happy about that. Laurenz is performing. Laurenz, 1935, he's performing in the bar Los 36 Billares. It's a billiard bar with 36 tables, the 36 billiard table bar. It's still there and they've still got the billiard tables, something for your next trip to Buenos Aires, go to that bar. One of the notable bars, but of course that's like really specialist, super advanced music that not many people like. Um, yeah, so the establishment kind of carries on and ignores this, but more and more new entrants are going to appear, aren't they?
Now, Laurenz will finally get to record in 37, Troilo will get to record in 38, Vardaro will make his comeback in 39 and eventually the old guard just gets swept away. Yeah. That's what's coming in the next few years. And before 37 we had 36 and the big hit from that year, which we used as a sum for the event photo for Tango 1936, is Nostalgias. And the version I played was the solo version by Charlo, which is really interesting when you're here at milongas, but it's an exquisite version with guitars backing. Yeah, Juan Carlos Cobián, the composer of Nostalgias, is one of tango's mystery men because he was extremely talented but he didn't really care much about his musical success. He was much more interested in pursuing women, so like three times in his career, just when everything was going really well, he stopped everything and ran off on some affair, and otherwise as a bandleader as well as a composer he would have been a much bigger figure. But he left us these compositions and this is one of them. Yeah, let's hear it, Nostalgias with Charlo, 1936.
Charlo's solo, guitar-backed version of Juan Carlos Cobián's hit, used as the image for the original Tango 1936 event.
♪ Música · 3:19 ·
Lyrical evening, someone wrote. That's going to change now, folks. We're getting into the late 30s. Yes, but let's not forget that Tango by Year was also an opportunity to explore so much repertoire that we don't necessarily hear in the milonga. So yeah, sure, we played lots of dance music, but we also, and you especially took a lead on that, took the opportunity to play stuff that we don't normally get to hear because maybe it's not danceable. Yeah.
Well, it was two reasons. One is really interesting to get into a new, more broader tango culture, but the second one is that after the first couple of programs we realized that people were just really frustrated if you just played that really good dance numbers because you couldn't dance. So it's better also for this format to listen to tango also and get into this more lyrical and sound pieces. Yeah, and I've enjoyed the breadth of that very, very much. It's really expanded my horizon of tango music. And when I got back to dancing, I feel that I have a broader understanding. Even though I get back to the dance numbers, I feel I have a better sensitivity to the immense richness of tango. So that's a nice effect of this series. Yeah, and we've had nice feedback about that from other people as well. It seems you find so too.
So are we moving into 37 now? Yes, and there's one track from this year that we need to listen to. 37 is the year that dance music gets big, because D'Arienzo, it's La Puñalada, it's a breakthrough hit, and he changes his style. No one else can ignore it. It's clear the dance revolution is here, but that's not who you're talking about just now. It's a great answer here, but we've got to listen to Laurenz's first recordings. And the one song, yes, of course. We have to listen to Arrabal. It's a masterpiece.
They've already been performing this for at least two years when this comes. It's extremely rhythmic. You will hear the marcato, the model of background accompaniment, move between straight beats, syncopation, and 3-3-2. Dun, dun, dun, dun. And there's a really long passage of 3-3-2 full of ideas. If you like, count on your hand like this, every time you hear a new idea in the music you'll run out of fingers in the first 20 seconds. Let's hear it. All right, masterpiece, Arrabal.
Laurenz's first recordings, chosen as a masterpiece full of marcato-to-syncopation shifts, already road-tested live for two years before being recorded.
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♪ Música · 3:14 ·
Ready or not. Troilo's not far behind. Music is not going to stay the same, that's for sure. It's a new era. Let's go straight on to Troilo 1938 and his first recordings. Comme il Faut is also a fantastic track, and if you think about the contrast to what the other bands are recording at this period.
Yes, so, gosh, yeah, Troilo, he starts his band in 37 with a group of musicians who were already working together, and to them it was obvious that Troilo would be the leader, which is interesting. So 38, he records a test record on Odeon. So he signs a contract, but they don't sign it because they believe in him, they're just going to put a record out, and if it sells he'll get more records. He doesn't get more records because it doesn't sell.
You can hear that it's musically rich and interesting, just like the Laurenz track we just heard, but it's also maybe more complete, you know. Troilo was famous later on for eliminating anything that distracted from the main message of the piece. He had an eraser, and he would rub out bits of the arrangement which he thought took away from the clarity, and there's something of that here compared to Laurenz's but very rich. What I especially like about it is the sense of volume, dynamic, the way it makes this crescendo and then it pulls back and then very exciting, much more like Laurenz and D'Arienzo than he will be in the future.
And this is the only disc we get, and then there's a three year gap. It's like if the first three years of the Beatles was missing. Let's not talk about it, we've got this and that's good, and this is a Tango Tunes golden edition from last year, and the sound quality is sensational. They're really good, incredible. Listen to this, coming for Troilo 1938.
Troilo's only 1938 recording, a one-off test disc for Odeon that did not sell, leaving a three-year gap before his next session; chosen to show his extrovert-to-introvert mood shift already present at the end.
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♪ Música · 2:47 · La letra, en la página del tango
So the thing to really notice about that piece, because it's so easy just to enjoy it because it's exciting and go, oh yeah, everyone played amazing, but there's something very particular, which is the Troilo solo comes only at the end, and when it came the mood changed. Did you notice that? There's all this and then finally after two and a half minutes of all that excitement Troilo comes, just plays a few notes, changes the mood from extrovert to introvert and kills you. And that's the Troilo does time and time and time again, and it's something that no other band does, to be both extrovert and introvert in the same song.
And this is what we're gonna see again in 1942 when he gets back into this, what we're gonna see as we move into 42, 43 with Troilo is, so here we had an extrovert, extrovert, extrovert, introvert, but he's gonna explore all the gradations between these two emotions inside each song. Troilo, baby, we already did a Troilo special, it's on SoundCloud, go listen, all right. 1939, that's also a good year. We're gonna play two songs.
First we need to listen not leap would lead to this truck by Biagi, who left D'Arienzo in 38 and started his own band. He did, and we're glad he did. Yes, different style, yeah. So let's see the instrumental Pura Clase, which is a very, it's playful and joyful. It's so very quickly what Biagi does, the pianist, when he leaves D'Arienzo and forms his own band, is not to do something very similar but focusing on his piano playing, but to try and make an orchestra that has in the whole orchestra the qualities that his piano has by itself as an instrument, your feet, which is the offbeat. So he gives that to the whole orchestra.
He still has to play some solos but mostly because of pressure from his record company, it's not like he's got a big ego. Be actually I had a very small ego, a really nice guy to be around, not not too worried about selling records and commercial success. I love you but it's really difficult to dance it musically, because to go on the offbeats it's like really counter intuitive for your body, because it's so used to going on the beats. There's different ways to do it, aren't there? Watching the videos by Murat and Sigrid is wonderful, they dance this Biagi, the best Biagi dancer. Anyway, this is Pura Clase with Biagi from 1939.
An instrumental chosen to show Biagi building his signature off-beat piano feel into the whole orchestra after leaving D'Arienzo.
It's so much fun, isn't it? So much fun! Get on YouTube and see Oa Ackermann's video where he synchronises Laurel and Hardy dancing in the Western, the Trail of the Lonesome Pine, to this perfectly. All the movements are absolutely perfect. It's great fun. Someone can post it in the chat window, I'm sure.
So moving on, who else are we going to hear? 1939. In December 1939, Carlos Di Sarli comes back and records. He certainly does. Corazón. He's been back for a year, actually, but it's a year before he's able to record with his extraordinary, exciting young singer, Roberto Rufino. 17 years old. 17 years old, singing like he knows everything about love.
Although you can hear it's a young voice and you can also hear the spectacular quality of his voice and how he got the nickname Terramoto, which means earthquake. An uncontrollable young man and suddenly he's the toast of the town. You're beginning to need a good singer to be successful as a typica and Rufino's voice is so spectacular that all the girls are melting, and suddenly he's young, rich, and all the women are after him. And it creates a lot of problems for him, I think, in his career. It does, it does.
It's not until he gets married in 1946 that he gets on an even keel. He's all over the place. His head is turned by fame. So let's hear a 17-year-old Rufino singing about the hearts.
Di Sarli's December 1939 comeback recording, introducing his 17-year-old new singer nicknamed 'Terremoto' for his powerful voice.
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♪ Música · 2:31 · La letra, en la página del tango
A new voice has erupted onto the scene. Excitement. And the 1940 Di Sarli's Orchestra of the Year. And yeah, new kids on the block. I was planning to move to the 40s but you said he's not going to play in the late 1930s, it's D'Arienzo. 1939 is one of D'Arienzo's most exciting years because he's got the original band and there's this acceleration, this intensifying. So the 1939 is extremely strong and then that band leaves him.
But we can't play everything, so you can't play everything. But yeah, the late 1939 and D'Arienzo is extraordinary, the final session, the Por Que Razon and Trago Amargo with a chugway. Classic stuff. We're gonna go to next year and start with D'Arienzo and his new band and his new singer. Which one? Miedo with Mauré sing, Mauré.
So Héctor Mauré is the voice that D'Arienzo is going to need, because from 1940 we start to see a new trend. The kind of lyrical music is going to try to combine with the very rhythmic music we've been listening to for the past half an hour. So you need a different kind of voice for that, and Mauré turns out to be the voice that leads D'Arienzo along a more lyrical path. But not at first. At first it's just fast.
Yeah, and this is also the addition from Tango Time Travel with Jacingo and Benedicte. I think I saw you here earlier. Yes, welcome. We're still thankful. Yeah, we're glad you're here and I'm still listening to that. The sound quality is amazing. So let's hear it. Miedo. Really fast waltz with D'Arienzo Mauré.
A very fast New Year's Eve vals from D'Arienzo's fastest period, introducing Mauré as the voice that would later pull the orchestra toward a more lyrical style.
Lo bailan · 5 de 332
♪ Música · 1:46 ·
D'Arienzo doesn't get any faster than that. That's the fastest period of the orchestra. It's tremendous fun, but I think I'm going to enjoy D'Arienzo with Mauré even more in 42 and 43. We get a slightly slower pace and then the texture kind of opens up a little bit. It's a very special time. Yeah.
And this is the last couple of years. 4041 is the last year of this fast period, this Varense period. Well, the change from fast to slow happens really very suddenly at the end of 1941. So let's move to 41. This is the year we started with. Our first year!
And as I wrote in the description of the event, the idea to start with this was kind of in the middle of the golden decade. But also I felt it was kind of appropriate. In the end of March last year, the pandemic was so dramatic. And I got the sense that the world hasn't seen a dramatic event like this since 1941, when the World War II turned into a global war, the attack of the Soviet Union and the US. So of course that's an exaggeration, the pandemic wasn't that dramatic, but it kind of affected the whole world in a similar way, so it's a good year also.
Troilo, Fiorentino, 1941, yeah. We should have like an emergency tanda, you know, different DJs have different solutions, you know. I don't know what to play, I'll play, but one of the possible solutions is Troilo, Fiorentino, 1941. Everything going wrong at the milonga, played Troilo Fiorentino 41, everything will be fine. And we're going to hear one of those, but first we're going to hear a Tanturi song, and he's back also after a recording break, I think, because a little bit like Troilo, it was exactly the same situation as Troilo, he's signed by the label but they don't promote him.
So yeah, we miss a lot of the repertoire, but I don't think it matters too much, because when we listen to the first sides, which I think are from 1937, yeah, you can hear the band, it's good but it's not quite. Yeah, so another rhythmic band with a simpler presentation perhaps, but another great vocalist, Castillo, yeah, man of the street, and this is what we're going to hear. La vida es corta.
Chosen for Castillo's street-smart delivery and the 'life is short, live it' lyric, picked as advice for dancers returning after the pandemic.
Lo bailan · 5 de 241
Life is short, you have to live it. That's what he sings. Good advice for all of us as we go back to life, quite tentatively. It's quite strange getting back to old behaviours. So listen to the advice. Let's all, myself included, listen to the advice of Alberto Castillo.
Yes, as has just been pointed out in the chat window, the man of the street was in fact a gynecologist. And there was very soon a long queue of young women at his practice, very keen for an internal examination from the doctor. And he had to give it up. Even though, of course, Alberto Castillo was his stage name and he was practicing his real name, but yeah, the news was out. It was a medical band, a Tanturi band, really enjoyable band.
Capítulo · 2:23:01
The Singer Who Had to Quit His Day Job
He was a tango star by night and a gynaecologist by day — until his fans found out.
When I first started dancing we didn't know it so well, and then maybe I don't know, like between 5 and 10 years ago, it became a lot more popular. I love the instrumentals also, the early ones. So let's go to Troilo and his singer Fiorentino, first recordings.
So in 38 Troilo didn't record any vocals because he didn't feel he could, but now he insisted. And they've got three years of back catalogue, so that the songs that we hear from Troilo Fiorentino in 41, some of them are old songs that they've been waiting to record and some are new, and it's just perfect. The balance of the instruments is perfect. It's a more rhythmic Troilo. Troilo is going to become a lot more lyrical in 42, but favourites the world over. The first CD I ever had was El Bandoneón CD number one, which was Troilo Fiorentino 41.
What are we going to hear? We're going to hear the concession. I advise you to forget me. Yeah. It's over. That's the letter. It's a fast one, like the 41 Troilos. Yeah, it's more up-tempo. It's not as fast as D'Arienzo's always, but it's more up-tempo.
From Troilo and Fiorentino's first vocal recordings in 1941, an up-tempo track picked to show the mood shift from extrovert verse to a more introvert chorus already seeded there.
Lo bailan · 5 de 448
It's the influence. It's the zeitgeist, actually. Let's say that. It's the sign of the time. The world's blowing itself to bits, and Argentina is neutral and partying. So, understandable. Let's hear it.
“The world's blowing itself to bits, and Argentina is neutral and partying. So, understandable.”
So it was great to see so many of you rocking out to that, including my companion here rocking out. But did you notice, remember what I said about coming for 1938, when Troilo came at the end the mood changed? Now where was the change of mood in that song? You know, at first listen there wasn't one and we just rock out, but it's still there already. But you can ignore it, but by 43 you can't ignore it. Now you can ignore it, but it came in the chorus, didn't it? So there's all this and then suddenly Fiorentino sings.
Sonica, but you can't deny, and that's the change of mode, the change from a more extrovert to a bit more introvert, so it's still there but in a seed form, yeah. You don't have to notice that to enjoy dancing to it, but if you notice that change of move between the verse and the chorus, it will bring like an extra layer to your dancing, you'll be able to express even more. Yeah, right. One more 1941 track by another band, starts recording now, Ángel D'Agostino, the piano player, and the subtle interplay with the singer, also an Ángel, the two Ángels, yeah, yeah.
This band is super super popular in Buenos Aires, at least it used to be when I was going regularly, never been as popular outside, in anywhere in Europe, but it's got everything you need for dancing, but it's laid back. Strong rhythms. D'Agostino was a dancer. So the rhythms are clean but not loud. And it's spacious. It has this really nice, it's not so dense in terms of music. No, it is spacious. Sometimes the sound makes me think of a mountain stream, the way water runs over stones in a mountain stream. That limpid, clean sound.
And I want played El Choclo, which is a classic number, and I love it for his piano playing. Listen to D'Agostino on the piano. Very unusual actually, yeah. So beautiful. Crystalline. Crystalline, that's a good word. Listen to the Crystalline El Choclo with D'Agostino from 1941. Vargas singing.
Chosen for D'Agostino's unusually clean, spacious 'crystalline' piano playing on a classic number.
♪ Música · 2:04 ·
It's as well balanced as this champagne. Yes, it is.
All right, we're in for a change. 1942, Michael, something happens. D'Agostino was earlier, late 1941, with changing the pace, but most bands followed, or not followed, but it happened in 1942, right? It's true, and it's crystal clear when you follow the Troilo recordings through in chronological order with the recording of Malena.
So you were rocking out to Troilo Fiorentino in 1941, five minutes ago, but now in 1942, with the opening notes of Milena, I don't know if that's what you're going to play or not, but in Troilo's first 1942 recording, it opens with the piano tender and distant, arriving from far, far away, and then very slowly comes up to volume. It's clear that something has really changed. The music has slowed down and that creates the possibility for a more lyrical approach from all the bands. Yeah.
And I'm not going to play it through this, Malena. There we go. This is a live program. I'm going to play another one that shows the same thing. It's Caló's Al compás de tu corazón, which is also a landmark of this new style with Berón singing. It's a landmark of this new style. It's also a landmark in other ways as well.
Berón really uses the possibility that the microphone has to offer because Fiorentino, Echagüe, Castillo they would still sound pretty good without a microphone but Raúl Berón is a crooner, he's a crooner like Al Boli and Bing Crosby, someone who you couldn't hear without the microphone, and he's like whispering. He's going to the girl, come here, I want to tell you something very special. Yeah, he's whispering into your ear and a lot of people didn't like it. Caló didn't like it at first when Berón first came for a voice test, one of the other band members introduced him and after the voice test Miguel Caló said, tell your friend I'm looking for a tango singer. But he changed his mind and then this new style comes, this super romantic style, often with very positive lyrics which makes a bit of a change to some of the very negative lyrics that we've been hearing at times.
Al compás de tu corazón is a love story with a happy ending in a tango. How about that? And the title, To the Beat of the Heart. When you have a good tanda and you can feel the heart of your partner, beautiful moment, let's hear it. Caló, 1942.
Picked as a landmark of the new, more lyrical 1942 style, and of the crooner approach Berón brought that Caló initially disliked.
♪ Música · 2:04 ·
Some real engagement in calor there, eh? It's really great to see you all having a great time. Wonderful. Loving it. And there we go. A new style of tango music. It takes tango in a new direction through the 40s and that now we're reaching peak tango. Yeah, 42, 43, sensational year that we saved for our final program, really rich because of this balance between the lyrical music and the rhythmic music. Then 44 we're going to see the lyrical part really dominating and then by 45 tango's kind of looking for a new direction. Yeah, and then censorship's going to cut in, we'll talk about that in a minute.
So let's go to 43 and the change in Laurenz and let's listen to Nunca tuvo novio because this is also a song that it's so super sensitive and it's very different from Maravar, it's like you can hear his loudness but it has this new really new style I think. It's a beautiful tango. I'm surprised there are not more recordings. It's an old song. There's a typical Victor version from the late 20s. Laurenz picks it up. How do we know when we hear it, no, how do we recognize immediately that it's Laurenz? Because of the volume through the phrases. He doesn't do his phrase like this. Each phrase is like this. So you get all these little waves, which are quite intense waves. This volume dynamic is what gives it away, how you can recognize. Listen to this masterpiece from Laurenz and with Podestá singing, which was also one of the great vocalists of this time, 1943.
Chosen to show how a listener can identify Laurenz's phrasing by its characteristic volume waves within each phrase.
Lo bailan · 5 de 43
♪ Música · 3:01 · La letra, en la página del tango
It's heartbreaking lyrics. It's one of my favourite tangos. It never fails to move me. Really, really.
And from one of your favorite tangos to one of my favorite tangos, well this was also, but Rodolfo Biagi records Todo this year. This is for me that, I remember this from one of your seminars. I remember this seminar in Burdigan about counter melody. Exactly, it's such a good example and it's one of the, I think the most wonderful counter melody in tango history. For me it's like, it's incredible. Listen to the man.
What do we mean by the counter melody? We mean a second melody that's going to harmonize with the main melody. The main melody will almost disappear, you won't notice it. You will notice the violin which comes in in the gap in the voice. So Rufino sings a verse and a chorus, then the violins come and they weep. But listen to the violins from the start, from when Rufino starts to sing. You can hear the counter melody already. Already there but it comes to the top and yeah when he steps back from the microphone it's already there but Rufino's voice is so captivating that well we're not dancing now so we can maybe try, yeah, with that suggestion. So yes when Rufino comes see if you can listen to the violin as well as to his voice as well as to this Di Sarli's piano accompaniment.
Magnificent. Todo.
Picked as one of the best examples of counter-melody in tango, where a violin line answers and weeps against Rufino's vocal.
Lo bailan · 5 de 44
Yeah, I was thinking about why do I love counter melody so much. I think it's about it just brings another layer into the music that I can dance to. So it's not just the beat and the rhythm and the melody. It's like two melodies. And try to dance to this melody, the counter melody in this song. It's magical if you can find the right partner and do it. It's like it's so strong because it's kind of you hear Rufino singing and it's wonderful. But then you hear this violin. It's like, oh, my God.
And there's a particular style of counter melody. Like short phrases that weep, that you hear a little bit in Fresedo as well, which is a related orchestra and a lot with Di Sarli. It's typical of the band. Someone asked who's the arranger. Di Sarli did his own arrangements. He had an orchestrator, so the guy who formally writes down the notes for the different people, but basically Di Sarli did his own arrangements. And they're not that complex, so you don't need a super professional external arranger to do the kind of job that Troilo's arrangers are doing because musically it's quite simple, um, I can't remember who was it said I don't understand how it sounded so good because when if you analyze the music it shouldn't be fantastic but it is.
Yeah, so the final song from 43, um, Tanturi again with this new singer Campos because Castillo went solo and Campos comes in and this is also a wonderful singer and combination of orchestra and singers. Oigo tu voz, una emoción. These really thick, we're going to hear Oigo tu voz. Really thick, creamy violins. That's what I love about the Tanturi from this period. Yeah. Can we hear it? Hit it.
Tanturi's new singer after Castillo went solo, chosen for the thick, creamy violin sound typical of the orchestra's period.
Lo bailan · 5 de 187
So no one can deny that 1943 is one of the best years ever in tango. So rich, all the orchestra is producing really satisfying music, but the seeds of a decline have already been sown by censorship. The military government has introduced censorship in order to precate the right wing and the Catholic Church. It's not a policy they really believe in, but they want to be friends with these people. And it affects tango immediately. Pakal is banned because the girl in the lyric is only 15 years old. Talvez Hermiel Kol has to be rewritten as Talvez Saratouos.
“At the moment of tango's greatest flowering somebody is choking it off at the roots.”
So, you know, at the beginning it's not too bad. If it's an instrumental, you give it a different title when it's announced on the radio. And that's why there's two titles, like Shusheta, which is L'Unfado, criminal word is banned. So it's now the Aristocrat. Aristocrata. Mala Pinta becomes mala estampa and you can make some changes but it's not satisfying because people don't speak proper Spanish in Argentina, they speak Argentine Spanish. So when you deny them that right you're cutting off their connection to their roots, to the source of their vitality and creativity. So at the moment of tango's greatest flowering somebody is choking it off at the roots. Now the plant is very vigorous, but slowly it's going to lose vitality. And that's something that you hear in the second half of the 40s, where apart from the innovators, who I think we're going to talk about now, some of the mainstream starts to lose steam. But this is still a great year. We could have played many more songs for 43. There's a reason our Tango 43 program lasted for like six hours or something. We have to move on.
Let's move on to 44 and I mean in 43 already Pugliese came in and started recording after four years, four years with the band. Yeah, but in this case we're not suffering too much because it took him a while to find us his sound. Yeah, and I think in 44 he's found, at least in the instrumental Toggle, which is one of my favorite, at least early Pugliese songs. Fantastic tango. It's very nice and it's not played so much. No. Should we play more? Listen to the man play El Arranque. Arrancar is to start something up, so El Arranque means the start. It could be the start of a race, the start of a piece of music or starting up your old car and it's the car composition that he transforms into something much more interesting, uh, as he did so often. Yeah, so let's hear it. El Arranque, 1944, Pugliese, his second year recording.
An instrumental favourite from Pugliese's second year recording, chosen for its freedom of piano phrasing and liquid double-bass playing.
Exquisite. It's exquisite. We heard like three out of four of the Pugliese aces there because we didn't really have a big band d'union contribution, just a very short one at the end. But we heard what the double bass was doing. It was a beautiful liquid phrasing. The freedom of phrasing of Pugliese's piano playing is something to behold. Very few piano solos in Pugliese. He keeps himself at the back, lets the band shine. Wonderful violin from Camarano. And at a certain point when I was doing this, what was I doing? I was the double bass player thumping the back of the bass with my fist to make a drum sound. Which is what they did.
What's next? Troilo with Marino singing. New singer on board and, uh, he's, uh, he has a different quality to his voice than Fiorentino. It's beautiful and different but, yeah, also outstanding voice and I want to play a song that's not so often played I think during milongas called Alo sama. Yeah, so if we're in 44 Goni has gone, the wonder pianist, so the pianist is playing off arrangements now but that's okay in a way, the music's more complex so there's less space for improvisation, um, yeah. Marino had a full opera training, a full bel canto training, effortlessly could change his voice from maximum power to the barest whisper and, uh, Alo sam is I know it as a city in northern Morocco and this song is about a funeral and a black magic woman so it's an interesting lyric, we're not going to get into it, just so you know, that's the background of this. It's kind of a little bit oriental sound to it. Alhucema with Troilo, Marino, 1944.
An uncommonly-played track chosen to show Marino's full operatic vocal range; the lyric is about a funeral and the title refers to a city in northern Morocco.
Lo bailan · 5 de 8
♪ Música · 2:45 ·
He holds that last tone for like 10 seconds. His voice is effortless. I just love the colour of the voice, if that makes sense to you. The quality of the voice, beautiful colours, beautiful, beautiful colours and nice to, one could hear them really clearly on the transfer that you played there.
I think Marino's voice was not that easy to record, particularly as part of a whole orchestra. 44, super lyrical year, there's lots of music, there's just no time to play 40, Sali, no time to play them, the final tracks of Maurer with D'Arienzo, like Amaras. And I'm gonna play a D'Arienzo track with a new singer, Armando Laborde. The new guy, yeah. Color Cielo, I think it's from December or something this year we're at least late. So when you listen to Color Cielo, yes, it's from December. December is summertime in Buenos Aires.
The D'Arienzo band would go to Montevideo for like six weeks or sometimes eight weeks for partying, playing at the Carrasco Hotel and in the casinos. So they were just about to go when they found their new singer, and what you may find really hard to believe is that they only had three days to rehearse this. So Laborde joined the band and was sent to the second pianist to learn two songs and he had to learn them and record them in three days because they couldn't record once they were in Montevideo. It's amazing. Listen to this quickly rehearsed masterpiece, Color Cielo, with Armando Laborde, 1944.
Laborde's first recording, learned and cut in only three days before the band left for Montevideo.
Lo bailan · 5 de 144
♪ Música · 3:08 · La letra, en la página del tango
Let's move on to 1945 and there are lots of things happening there too but I just want to play one track and it's a milonga by Biagi, one of the best milongas ever, Flor de Montserrat. It's a classic. I love it because it's so dynamic. You can dance to the melody, you can dance to the rhythm. It's a very unusual milonga in that sense.
Picked as one of the best milongas ever, unusually danceable both to its melody and its rhythm.
It is an unusual milonga. At the beginning it sort of comes up out of the floor. It starts very quietly and then, but it has these nice little phrases, so it's not so much like off beats but the accents that are given endure and they give the suggestion of how to dance the milonga in little phrases. As a leader I find it really easy to dance as well as very satisfying.
Perfect. You know, I was just thinking about all the years that we've listened to so far. So these are great songs, but I imagine that mostly there weren't so many new songs for the 40s numbers. Most of us knew all the numbers, okay. A track like Color Cielo, where it wasn't so easy to find a good transfer, so then it wouldn't be played so much. But in the earlier programs, like from the late 20s and the early 30s, there were probably lots and lots of new tracks for even the DJs and more experienced people. It's more the core dance material we see from this area.
Yeah, I mean there's so many good tangos from there's a reason it's called the golden decade. Yeah, yeah, but now we're, the second world war is over and we're out of the golden decade and things are starting to deteriorate in the second half of the 40s. Censorship is really biting, there are fewer new tangos being written, that's something that you really notice. 46, 47, until 48, 49, tango enters into a bit of a crisis, a few orchestras give up. Yeah, but let's hear a track from 46 that still has the groove.
It's this only with his new vocalist, Durán. He has a darker, like, baritone voice. Yeah, special for this time, it's a bass baritone. Well, maybe in terms of tessitura, I'm not correct, I'm not sure or not, but it feels like a bass baritone. It's a much deeper register than we've heard previously and he's going to be followed by other people with deeper voices, like Edmundo Rivero for example in Troilo's orchestra. Both of them started out with Salgán, interestingly. So Salgán has just made his first recordings in 44. He had the idea of introducing these different vocalists and then they're stolen by more successful orchestras. That's life. We'll hear a Salgán track a bit later. Ah, okay. Okay. Let's see the first, La vida me engañó. Life deceived me. Yes. La vida me engañó. Life deceived me. It's from 46 with the round singing.
Introduced as a new singer with a dark, bass-baritone voice who, like Edmundo Rivero, started out with Salgán's orchestra before moving on; the orchestra's name could not be made out.
It's interesting, isn't it, Di Sarli works just with one singer when everyone else is working with two singers, but we don't mind, it's perfect, it's the right voice. Wonderful piano playing in his right hand there, so powerful. He really hits it.
So for me, 47 and 48 is Troilo years. He gets two singers on board, Floreal Ruiz and Edmundo Rivero, they're both outstanding. Difficult to play it in a milonga sometimes because the volume is so, so quiet that you need a quiet milonga to hear the song. It's really true in a song like Sur when Rivero drops his voice to a whisper, in a noisy milonga you won't hear a thing. Yeah. Yeah, Troilo, Troilo is, who is developing, who's really developing in this year at this time, 46, 47, Pugliese, it's Troilo and Pugliese. What we just heard was lovely and yes it has different qualities to the Di Sarli with Podestá and with Rufino that we've heard earlier in the 40s, but it's not radically different to what Di Sarli was doing a bit earlier on. But Troilo is really developing and Pugliese is really developing. They're going forwards, other people are kind of making good music but staying at a level. And we're definitely going to hear Pugliese too, but let's first hear two Troilo tracks from 47 and 48.
Yulapardi with Ruiz singing and Sur with Rivero. Two classics. Oh, both monsters. Yeah, Ruiz. It's interesting, isn't it? Because now so many places Ruiz is loved. But I remember more than 20 years ago at a really big tango event and all the Argentine teachers were really bored. And like at about midnight, and in those days, our milongas started earlier, so the milonga had been going like for three or four hours, and then at midnight, finally, the DJ played a Troilo Ruiz tanda, and all the Europeans sat down, and all the Argentines, who'd been bored and laughing and drinking, they all went, yes, like this, and they all grabbed their partners and rushed to the floor, and we didn't understand Troilo Ruiz, it was too difficult for us. But now it's mainstream, so times have changed.
Yeah, and then yeah, sort of it's, I'm not going to say anything about it because I'll be talking for hours, but we spoke about that before in other programs. Go to the Troilo special, go to the Troilo special. Monster of a tango and the way he whispers is extraordinary and it's also in part Manzi's farewell letter because when he says everything is dead and gone, I already know, he's also talking about his own cancer diagnosis. So there's these double meanings. So two Troilo tracks, masterpieces. La Paradis with Ruiz singing and Sur with Rivero. Enjoy.
One of two Troilo classics played back to back, introduced with the story of Argentine dancers rushing the floor for a Troilo-Ruiz tanda while European visitors sat out.
Lo bailan · 5 de 34
♪ Música · 3:57 · La letra, en la página del tango
Played as Rivero's whispered masterpiece, noted as partly Manzi's own farewell letter written while dying of cancer.
Michael says we've got to change the mood a bit. Listen to something more happy. I'm going to get too depressed. It's all good. We're together. We're together. Just to say, because we're going through the years now, so we've got the chance. Just think back to the music you heard at the beginning of the program compared to this, or even the music we listened to in 41, 42, 43. It's clear that the level of sophistication has gone up. Yeah, it's more sophisticated music, more complex music, two of us pushing the boundaries, what you can do with the tango. And the level of sadness too has gone up. The level of sadness has also gone up, yeah.
Well, let's listen to one of my favorite tracks from 49, maybe the favorite track. It's a tribute, let's say in the Troilo corner, but it's a tribute to Troilo by Julio De Caro, Aníbal Troilo, which is a great track. Yeah, personally speaking, this is my favorite period of Julio De Caro. So he comes back to the studio at the end of the 40s, and between then and 52, it's only about 20 tracks or so, but they're beautiful and they have a sense of dynamic warmth and phrasing that I don't feel so strongly in his earlier work. In my heart I feel that he's listened to Pugliese play his music and has absorbed some of Pugliese's reinterpretation back into himself. So it's my favorite period of De Caro, this final one. Mine too, and this is my favorite song from this period also. So let's hear it. Aníbal Troilo with Julio De Caro. It's an instrumento.
An instrumental tribute to Troilo from De Caro's favourite, final recording period, said to show Pugliese's influence folding back into his old teacher.
Yeah, Pulese, Lawrence, it's inspired by this. Well, De Caro's been inspired by his sons. He used to talk about Pugliese as his greatest son. So his sons have affected the father now. Really, there's a power there that we don't always get with De Caro. Special track. Thank you for that.
Great. Let's go to his son, Pugliese. And the third song in what you call his manifesto in your Pugliese book, the triptych, yes, Malandraca from 1949. Yeah, now Malandraca is the third one to be recorded but it's the first one to be written. Pugliese worked on all three of La Zumba, Malandraca and Nagracza from much earlier, possibly even from 43. We know he was, um, well we think we know when Malandraca was being performed already in 1943 and Pugliese wouldn't let them be recorded until he felt they really finished. So it took him six years to finish Malandraca, but when I listen to it I think Nagracza is a much more complex work than Malandraca. Nothing against it, it's a fantastic tango, but in terms of complexity and how advanced is it, Nagracza would be the third one.
Capítulo · 3:32:12
Six Years to Finish One Tango
He wouldn't let it be recorded until it was perfect — even though it was already being danced to.
Malandraca is just joyful. It's extremely powerful. It's the Pugliese formula, the collision of things that shouldn't be together. It's incredible power and it's incredible joy. Power and beauty. Power and beauty. The marriage of power and beauty. And you write in the, you know, the book has the most powerful rastre in tango history. It's like a... Yes. I stand by that comment.
And there's a passage near the end when the orchestra moves on to the offbeats. I always have an image in my hand of someone, the dance floor being completely covered deeply in rose petals. And people grabbing handfuls of rose petals and throwing them into the air. Keep that image in mind and listen to this. Malandraca with Tulosa, 1949.
The third piece of Pugliese's 'triptych' to be recorded, though the first written, held back roughly six years until Pugliese judged it finished.
The night would not be complete without some Pugliese. Yeah, Fals holding up his heart. Fantastic music. Yeah, it is.
Sometimes, it happens to me a lot with Pugliese, but it happens with other orchestras. Sometimes a song is so perfect and so logical, it feels like a fact of existence, like the moon or something. You know, it must always have existed and it's the only and perfect way to make tango music. So long as it's playing, then another tanda comes and that's perfect as well. Yeah, it changes.
So 49 is the last year of tango in real decline, and 50. Yeah, it's a difficult year for tango, not that many recordings, 48, 49, yeah, and then 50 censorship is lifted and tango gives itself a shake and reinvigorates itself and gets going. And that's really obvious with two bands, and in 1950 it's obvious with D'Arienzo, because D'Arienzo, it's like he says the 1940s didn't happen, it was just a bad dream where I was forced to make lyrical music, and now I'm gonna forget that and go back, go back to the 30s and just make hard beat dance music again. And that's what he does. And then Di Sarli makes his comeback in 1951 after three years off, two and a half years, but with a much stronger impulse. So you hear the new energy giving tango a second wave, a second breath.
And Pugliese continues his development with really danceable but more and more complex music. Yeah, tracks like Cattuso, Pinta Brava, 49, Dona Niseto, Olivero, it's intense, really intense music. Yeah, and Troilo, that also changes, more into a Troilo. And Di Sarli change their repertoire completely. So D'Arienzo changes his repertoire by going back 10 years. Troilo and Di Sarli change the repertoire by going forward. So when Pugliese, um, when Piazzolla was in the Troilo band, 40 to 44, there was all this conflict, and when he made arrangements he made them too complex. But now Troilo says, right, this guy, he's looking to the future, he's making complex music, I'm gonna make complex music.
So let's listen to a couple of the new bands from, not from 1950, they started earlier, but it represents a bit this kind of new music. First, Horacio Salgán, which is, yeah, I think you talked about him as a type of band that everyone got to listen to because it was so interesting musically. It's a musician's band. Yeah. And his track Don Agustín Bardi, it's a tribute to... To Agustín Bardi, yes. Yeah, who was a... Composer, Pugliese recorded lots of his work. Yeah, it's an instrumental. So, it's complex. Playful and joyful as well as complex. Let's hear it.
An instrumental tribute to composer Agustín Bardi, picked to represent the new, more complex 'musician's band' sound that began before 1950.
It's jazz! It's tango, but it's jazz! Anyway, there we go. Easy to see. Well, it's not very often played at milongas. Let's go to another that could be played more because it's more danceable, Alfredo Gobbi, which we had talked about in Tango by Ear. I love Gobbi. Enjoy it. But it took me a long time to really get into it. And I think it's an orchestra whose time really is kind of yet to come. And it's a group as well that I think can be appreciated by classical musicians.
When classical musicians get interested in tango, they often get interested in Piazzolla. First of all, because Piazzolla learnt classical music and understood its language, and therefore Piazzolla is well known in the classical music world. But just in terms of ideas that could interest a trained classical musician, I think Gobbi's got a lot to offer, and it's more milonguero. So for all these reasons I want more Gobbi. And I'm gonna play a song called Estás en mi corazón with José Maciel singing, which is a singer we know from Pugliese later, and it's really dark and meaty. I think this song, I really like it. Yeah, Gobbi with Maciel, it's not very well known, I don't think, and it's good repertoire. Maciel doesn't sound the same as he does with Pugliese, of course, because Pugliese changes the voice to the very quiet, very loud thing. Here it's a different style of singing but still Maciel.
And the first part of the lyrics go: Today your memory took me by the hand like a blind man, like a lost traveler who doesn't know how to get home. Beautiful. It is beautiful. Let's hear it. Estás en mi corazón, Gobbi with Maciel, 1950.
Picked to show Maciel's voice used very differently than it later was with Pugliese, and Gobbi's more milonguero, classically-interesting style.
Lo bailan · 4 de 10
♪ Música · 2:48 · La letra, en la página del tango
When I listen to that, as long as the music is playing, I like Maciel more there than I do with Pugliese. Because I think he has more chance to shade the volume of his voice. It's really expressive. There were some really blue notes. Did you notice that? He really slurred and dragged the... A lot of style, better, worse, it's rubbish, yeah, but I can't help thinking that way we all do, something goes to our hearts. But it's different, Maciel is different with Gobbi than with Pugliese. I think we can say that, just compare the two remembrances, they're really different. Yeah.
Well, it's got the Pugliese, but not with Maciel but with Alberto Morán, which is I think my favorite Pugliese singer. He has some fantastic tracks from the mid 40s, high octane. Yeah, wonderful. And one of his best tracks is Pasional, which was recorded twice, in 51 and 52. Yes. And the version you usually hear at milongas is the 52 version, so let's hear again the 51 version that we played in 51. The girls loved it. Yeah, because of the singer, when Morán sang the men found themselves without partners because the women rushed to the stage. So it wasn't very popular. That doesn't happen anymore, so it's much better. Now you get to dance with the girl. I like the dark beginning of this version. Pasional from 51 with Morán.
The 1951 of two recordings of this song, preferred by the hosts over the better-known 1952 version for its subtler, more relaxed vocal.
Lo bailan · 5 de 22
♪ Música · 3:10 · La letra, en la página del tango
Passion of music, literally this. Yes, literally this is fully, easy, taking the tango song to the edge, like in terms of stretching the form and what's possible. And in a couple of years in San José de Flores he's going to go so far that he's going to break, he's going to break the form from the dancer's point of view. So this is like going to the edge and pushing it, like how far can we take this. So it's extreme music. We were talking while the song was playing about how amazing this can be to dance, but it's not a song you want to dance every week. Yeah, so special occasions, but the right occasion, fantastic. I agree.
And the two recordings, you played the 51. So the 51 we don't find in such good fidelity compared to the 52 because the 52 was recorded on a Tate Master. But I think the... I much prefer this. Much prefer it. Yeah, it has some subtlety that the 52 doesn't have for me, both in the introduction, but also in the dynamic. Morán's voice, Morán's voice sounds more relaxed here, even at the same time as he gives everything that he has. Yeah. Great track. It is.
Let's hear a D'Arienzo track from the 50s, because as you said, he returns to the 30s and the bang bang style, but it's different still from the 30s track. It is different. Yeah, he's got a much better bandoneón section for a start. Four top class bandoneón players. It's a lot of energy to this music. And a lot of DJs play at least one time, though, this 50s D'Arienzo during the night. And people love it. Most people love it. Yeah, it gives a lot of fresh energy. Yeah.
Let's hear Independencia. This is from 53, an instrumental. And most of his songs from this period are instrumentals. Yes. As well as going back to the repertoire of the 30s, he goes back to a more instrumental repertoire. Very energetic, listen to this. D'Arienzo 53, Independencia.
An instrumental chosen to show D'Arienzo's 1950s return to his 1930s hard-beat, mostly-instrumental repertoire with a stronger four-bandoneón section.
Pure energy. What were we going to say about it? I forgot. We're not going to say anything. We're going to move straight on. Oh, that was it. Yeah. Because we're coming to the end of the show. We're coming to the end of the show. We're skipping 58. So what is this? 44, 54, 55 left. Just two years left to go. And we've still got over 100 people, 100 computers logged in. Yeah.
“We're not going to say anything. We're going to move straight on.”
So. We keep going for four hours. So I guess we have to run off soon. Yeah. He's working tomorrow. It's been a really nice revisit to the whole period of Tango by Ear. And we're very touched as well that so many of you are still listening with us. So let's hear a final Di Sarli track from 54 with Oscar Serpa singing. I love Serpa. It's an unusual voice. Yeah, unusual voice. Different kind of voice.
Quite a few of Di Sarli's singers were not porteños. They were from Cuyo, from the mountainous province which includes Mendoza and San Juan, the wine making region in the northwest of Argentina. And you can hear that, there's something different about those voices. I love Serpa. For a long time he wasn't fashionable and not everyone loves him, but I love him. So there we go, and so does my friend here. And he's singing about the ocean, Verdemar, which is the theme in Di Sarli, the ocean. There's lots of songs about the sea. Di Sarli was born on the coast, and the sea was a big part of his life. Yeah, so Verdemar, Serpa, Di Sarli, 1954.
Picked for Serpa's unusual, non-porteño voice and the recurring theme of the sea in Di Sarli's work, who was born on the coast.
That's romance. Yeah, her eyes were green like the sea. Beautiful. One more 54 track and it'll be the last three years for tonight, and it's also a masterpiece. It's not so often heard at milongas, it's an instrumental called Mi Lamento. Oh, but I play this. Yeah, this is like when I want to, my killer tracks. Well, I love this, this is one of the ones that gets a heart, exquisite, Mi Lamento. I can sing the whole thing but it's much better...
Well, Pugliese does, so I won't do that. The whole thing is recorded up here. Okay. Do you want to sing it first, and then we'll do the Pugliese version after? No. He's better than me. So let's hear it. Really, it starts, it's got a really, really short introduction, and then it kicks. Melting, melting violin work from Camerano. That's what I remember about this. Yeah. Fantastic.
Called a personal favourite by both hosts, an instrumental built around melting violin work from Camerano, rarely heard at milongas.
Lo bailan · 5 de 37
♪ Música · 1:56 ·
“Tango by year lasted a year, didn't it?”
I'm going to tell a story that I've told a hundred times before, but on the Tango in Chaos blog, um, the guy talks about going to a milonga with Ricardo Vidort, and there's this tourist there, and the tourist has rung him and said, oh look, I'm going to this milonga and I don't know anybody. And you know, and he says, oh it's okay, you know, we'll come and you know, we'll be there. So the guy is sitting there and this tourist is sitting there and she's not dancing with anybody, and the guy thinks, I should, you know, I should give her a dance. So he invites her for a tanda and he dances and he thinks, I did a good thing. I gave this poor tourist a tanda. And he sits down and Ricardo Vidort says to him, you, outside. So he goes outside and they stand in the doorway where it's raining, and Ricardo Vidort turns to the guy and he says, when you dance tango, you must give everything, everything. And he wraps him on the chest with his finger and he says, and if you can't do that, don't dance. And just turns, goes back in and leaves him standing in the right.
Capítulo · 4:06:57
Give Everything, or Don't Dance
A legend of the milonga once dragged a man outside to teach him this lesson.
“When you dance tango, you must give everything, everything... and if you can't do that, don't dance.”
And the reason that I think of that story is because this is what Poli is. He does, doesn't it, really demands it. It's like a hundred percent or don't bother. Yeah, that's a Poli. Is it with the wrong person can be really painful. Oh my god, those three minutes. An eternity!
Alright, let's finish off with two tracks. One is kind of pointing back in time because it's a vocal tango with Rivero that goes back to his... Well, we know him from the 40s with Troilo and he's still singing this solo tracks with guitar backing. And the second song will be a more modern thing looking forward, Piazzolla track. Perfect! So it's nice to get a nice finish of that. So we won't play anything from 58. That was the year, but let's finish in 55, which is actually the last year of the good tango period. I think we... Yeah, it's the year that everybody knew this is it. It's kind of over.
So Rivero first, Guapo y Varón with guitar backing. Nice, Guapo y Varón, which we know from Viaggio with Ortiz in the main. That's the most famous version. This is a different one, and Rivero's voice, and especially when he sings solo with guitar backing, you can really hear it. So special, yeah, and he preferred that. It's the best tango voice, I think. That's my opinion, but, uh, it is, you heard it here first. Let's go over on with Rivero, 1955.
A solo, guitar-backed vocal version, chosen over the more famous Biagi/Ortiz recording for the expressive quality of Rivero's voice alone.
♪ Música · 2:04 · La letra, en la página del tango
So that was Rivero. Uh, it's great with guitar style, and let's see the new style, it's Piazzolla with Nonino, which is a much more modern tango, and yeah, this is really a symbol of tango moving from the dance phenomenon to a concert phenomenon, I think. Yeah, and Nonino is a precursor of Adios Nonino, which I think he writes in 60 or 61 and then becomes one of his most famous compositions ever. And remember, this is, I mean, this is the guy who's probably known by most non-tango dancing people. Piazzolla is the biggest name in tango if you're not a dancer. That's absolutely true. Often the only name in tango if you're not a tangero. That's serious. We won't finish quite yet. It will be a little amuse bouche after, if you can put it that way, or dessert, it's a better way.
An instrumental closing the main 1926-1955 survey, described as a precursor to 'Adiós Nonino' and a symbol of tango moving from dance music to concert music.
So that was it for the main program, and wow, yeah, we finished, we got to 1955. Yeah, what a journey. It's been a great journey, what a journey. The year of the programs and now this recap. And Tango by Year lasted a year, didn't it, because we started in the end of March, beginning of April, beginning April 2020, and the last program was 14th of April 21 in the main series. 37 programs, and this is number 38. Yeah, and it'll be the last one, by the way, I'm pretty sure. Well, we got, it's like those rock groups that...
So what are you gonna do now? Now I'm gonna just dance, enjoy dancing, and hopefully DJing a bit too. Yes, I really like that also. Yeah, so it feels good too. Yeah, and this Friday I'm DJing here in Norwich, which will be really nice, the first milonga after the pandemic in this city. Yes, yeah, and you, what are you gonna do? What am I gonna do? I'm gonna dance as well. Yeah, I mean, enjoying doing that a little bit and finish the Canaro book. I really want to get that finished. Yes. Yes, looking forward to it really. Good.
So we have a tradition of playing a compasita in the end, but it doesn't make sense this time because it would have to play one from 55 or 58, I think, to keep the logic of the chronology. So I'm going to skip that one. But I'm still going to play a song we did play as a last song in one of the shows. It was a Troilo special. And then you maybe know what it is. I can't remember. Because we started with Maffia, Laurenz and the bandoneón duo. And we're going to finish with the bandoneón and guitar duo. Ah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Troilo and, what's his name? Ubaldo De Lío. Nocturno a mi barrio. From 1968, the year I was born. That's nice. Oh, gosh. And it's actually wonderful.
Played as a deliberate epilogue outside the 1926-1955 range: Troilo himself, not a singer, recites his own love poem to his barrio over bandoneón and guitar.
Capítulo · 4:16:41
A Love Letter to a Barrio, Spoken by the Man Who Never Left
His last recording wasn't sung at all — it was spoken, at a funeral's afterthought.
This is Troilo's love poem to his barrio. And he's getting quite old. Yeah. And he wrote the poem a couple of years previously, and he was at a wake, at someone's funeral at the wake, and Ubaldo De Lío was there, and they were sitting there together, and he turned to him and said, take your guitar out and give me something in D minor, and Nocturno a mi barrio was born. So the band on is Troilo, the guitar is Ubaldo De Lío, and the talking, the voice reciting the poem, is Troilo himself. It's Troilo himself. The coarse, tired voice from a long life of tango and hard, hard, yeah, I mean, lack of sleep and hard living. Hard living. We explain more about this song in the special, so you can listen to that, but just to say briefly, it's a love poem to his barrio and about how it's impossible for him to leave his barrier and how identified with it. And the final stanzas say something like, and if I were to leave, the stars would reach down, the stars which shine above my mother's house would reach down out of the sky and say to me, Gordo, stay here, stay here, stay here.
“Gordo, stay here, stay here, stay here.”
So with that, thank you everyone for following the Tango by Year series and this reunion. It's been wonderful seeing you again. And it's been wonderful seeing you. Thank you. Thank you, Dag, for this great journey, this great adventure, and for this invitation that you gave to me. And look where it took us. I had a great time. Yeah, me too. Yeah, special. Now it's time to dance, though. Good night. Thank you, everyone. Love you.
Tango By Year es de Dag Stenvoll y Michael Lavocah, publicado aquí con su permiso. El audio se reproduce desde SoundCloud.