Argentine Tango Blog

History of Tango - Part 8: Roberto Firpo and the acceptance of the piano in the Orquesta Típica

December 27, 2017

Born on May 10, 1884 in the City of Las Flores (today annexed to the City of Buenos Aires as a neighborhood). Firpo spent his childhood working in his family’s store. Although he showed interest in music and painting, his family could not afford an artistic education for him. Since they needed his help with the family business, his father took him out of school after fifth grade. Enrique Cadícamo tells us that, as a teenager, he felt terribly ashamed when girls in the town watched him working hard as a delivery boy for his family business. He confronted his father about his plan to leave Las Flores to find his destiny in the big city. Firpo displayed such determination that his father realized he could not retain him, and instead gave him the freedom to leave home and some money to start an independent life in Buenos Aires. There, he worked in a store located in the corner of Santa Fe and Callao streets. Then he worked in the shoe industry and, in 1903, at an important steel mill, Talleres Vasena, where he met Juan “Bachicha” Deambroggio. At the time, Bachicha was learning to play bandoneon with Alfredo Bevilacqua, one of the greats of the time, author of "Venus", "Independencia", "Apolo" and other classics. Firpo began assisting in these classes and learning the instrument of his choice, piano, and music theory. Having no money to purchase a piano, Firpo made himself an instrument. He constructed it with glass bottles filled with different amounts of water, each producing a different note, a kind of improvised xylophone, which allowed him to practice his lessons in some way. At 19 years old, Firpo was fiercely dedicated and he learned a lot. In 1904 he left Buenos Aires to work at the port of the City of Ingeniero White, where, at night, he played the piano at a bar of the port. This allowed him to round out his training, and when he made enough money to buy his own piano, he returned to Buenos Aires and did so. Firpo said he always remembered that day as "the happiest of his life”. On a quest to perfect his technique, he continued his studies with Bevilacqua. During the day, he took all sorts of odd jobs, while at night, he played in several neighborhood bars and cafés. Sometimes Firpo played in a duet with Bachicha, or others in a trio with Juan Carlos Bazán on clarinet and Francisco Postiglione on violin. In 1907, he received an invitation to play at La Marina, a famous place in La Boca neighborhood. That engagement increased his fame and lead to his temporary contract with another prestigious place of the tango scene, “Hansen”, in Palermo neighborhood, at the rate of three pesos per night and permission to pass the dish (hat). From this moment on, he worked exclusively as a musician. During this time he presented his first compositions: “El Compinche”, “La Chola” and “La Gaucha Manuela”, the last two would later be recorded by Pacho, adding the title of composer to his already great reputation as a musician. In 1908, with his “Trio Firpo”, he played at “Café La Castellana” on Avenida de Mayo, at “Bar Iglesias” on 1400 Corrientes Street, at “El Velódromo” and “El Tambito” in Palermo neighborhood, and at “Armenonville”, the famous cabaret. It was at "El Velódromo” (a place located close to Hansen), where Bazán began to blow a clarinet call, in order to attract the clientele that passed towards Hansen's. The result was that the latter was almost empty, while “El Velódromo” was filling up. To solve the problem, the employer of the first contracted them again, this time for the sum of two pesos for each of them! Later, that call made by Bazán would become the beginning of his tango "La chiflada". In 1911, he joined the recording company ERA, of Domingo Nazca, “El Gaucho Relámpago”, accompanying other musicians on his piano, and recording piano solos and duets with a violin player. Then he recorded briefly for the company Atlanta and soon moved to the recording company Odeón, of Max Glücksmann. In 1912, Firpo formed a trio with “El Tano” Genaro Espósito playing bandoneon and David Roccatagliatta on violin, performing at café “El Estribo”, on Entre Rios Avenue, where Vicente Greco had performed before with Francisco Canaro. Casimiro Aín was their star dancer. He also formed a trio with Eduardo Arolas on the bandoneon and Leopoldo Ruperto Thomson on guitar. This formation would evolve in a quartet with Roccatagliatta, and into a quintet with Roque Biafore as second bandoneon. Thomson eventually exchanged the guitar for double bass. In 1913, while playing at Armenonville, Gardel-Razzano premiered there. From then on, the singers would become great friends of Roberto Firpo, with whom he later worked at Odeón and toured Argentina. It was on that tour, in 1918, that the singers abandoned him one dark night and fled to Buenos Aires to witness the revenge of Botafogo and Gray Fox in the Hippodrome of Palermo. Recalling those days and the things that Gardel and Razzano did, Firpo said more than once: "With those jesters you could not have peace. They drove me crazy!" On that same night in 1913, Firpo premiered his compositions “Sentimiento Criollo”, “Argañaraz” and “Marejada”. Firpo was at this time one of the most recognized and celebrated composer of Tango, and for that reason, the recording company Lepage Odeón, of Max Glücksmann, summoned him to make their first recordings. Firpo would start a catalogue of recordings on discs, only surpassed over the years by his colleague Francisco Canaro. From the piano, he directed a set that counted on Bachicha on bandoneon, Tito Roccatagliatta on violin and Bazán on winds. At the time, recording the piano with other instruments presented challenges because the overwhelming sound of the piano would drown out the other instruments. Firpo was able to resolve the problem by simply placing the instruments in an order that is still kept at the orquestas típicas. Due to the advantage this gave Odeón over other recording companies, in addition to his talent, it is perhaps why Firpo achieved such special position in the company. Odeón was known at the time for having the best technical equipment. Firpo was hired by Odeón with an exclusive contract: he would remain the only musician recording tangos with an “orquesta típica” for them. Francisco Canaro recorded on the Era label. Following the success of his tango "El Chamuyo", a manager of Odeón spoke with him about recording for them, but since Firpo had an exclusive contract, he was able to block other orchestras from recording. That is why Canaro began recording with a trio at Odeón, and sought an agreement with Firpo, "which consisted of paying him six cents for each record that was sold recorded by my orchestra" - said Canaro. In 1914 came his greatest success: “Alma de bohemio”, which he composed for a play of the same name, at the request of the brilliant actor Florencio Parravicini. Other tangos by Firpo include “Fuegos Artificiales” (composed with Eduardo Arolas), "Didí", "El Amanecer" (the first example of descriptive music in the genre), "El Rápido", "Vea Vea", "El Apronte", “La Carcajada" and many others. He was also a passionate cultivator of the waltz, from which he produced a large amount, generally with great repercussion at the time: "Pálida sombra", "Noche calurosa", "Ondas sonoras", "Noches de frío" and others. In 1916 in Montevideo, he played what would become the tango of all tangos, “La Cumparsita”, by Gerardo Hernán Matos Rodríguez, which at that time was a two-part song. Firpo, in the style of the “Guardia Vieja”, composed the third. Some time later he would regret not having signed it jointly: the rights of "La Cumparsita" reported millions! With respect to this fundamental tango, Firpo recalled: “In 1916 I was at "Confiteria La Giralda" in Montevideo, when one day a man arrived accompanied by about fifteen boys - all students - to tell me that they had a humble carnival march, and wanted me to take a look and fix it because they thought there was a tango. They wanted it for that night, because it was needed for a boy named Matos Rodríguez. In the score, in two by four, appeared a little of the first part and in the second part there was nothing. I got a piano and I remembered two tangos of mine composed in 1906 that had not had any success: "La Gaucha Manuela" and “Curda Completa”, and I put a little of each one. At night I played it with Bachicha Deambroggio and Tito Roccatagliatta. It was an apotheosis, and everybody celebrated Matos Rodríguez that night. But the tango was then forgotten. Its great success began when they attached the lyrics of Enrique Maroni and Pascual Contursi”. In 1917, Firpo was hired for the dance parties of carnival at the Teatro Colón of Rosario, forming the giant orchestra Firpo-Canaro, integrated by: Roberto Firpo and José Martinez on pianos; Eduardo Arolas, Osvaldo Fresedo, Minotto Di Cicco, Pedro Polito and Bachicha Deambrogio on bandoneons; Francisco Canaro, Agelisao Ferrazzano, Tito Roccatagliatta, Julio Doutry and A. Scotti on violins; Alejandro Michetti on flute; Juan Carlos Bazán on clarinet; and Leopoldo Thompson on double bass. This orchestra achieved great success, so they were hired again in 1918. He then played with his formation in the play “Los dientes del perro” accompanying Manolita Poli when she sang “Mi noche triste”, the lyrics that Pascual Contursi wrote for Samuel Castriota’s “Lita”, which went on to be the first tango recorded by Carlos Gardel, and considered the first tango lyric structured in the the way that would become classical to Tango. On more than one occasion, Firpo shared the stage with the duet Gardel-Razzano, in addition to enduring their relentless jokes. Once, when Firpo played the pasodoble “Que salga el toro!” (Release the bull!), at the moment in which one of the members of the orchestra shouted the title of this song in the middle of the performance, Gardel - using his index fingers as horns - struck the musicians who went to the floor. Beyond such terrible jokes, Firpo and Gardel-Razzano recorded together once in 1917, the tango "El Moro", although in the label Gardel and Razzano do not appear, oddly, except - as it is - as authors. Revenge of Firpo? No. What actually happened is that no vocalization was planned. Gardel and Razzano just burst into the recording room and the joke, in this case, consisted of singing the lyrics of the song surprising Firpo. The recording company edited the record without modifying the disc label. The success of Firpo was also financial. He made lots of money for his performances, but even more for his recordings and composer’s rights. In 1928, he unexpectedly abandoned Tango for a while. He himself explained the reason to Héctor and Luis Bates: “With the money I received for the recordings, I felt like a cattleman. Everything I had, I invested in the hacienda. In a year, I got to earn a million pesos ... Then came that sadly famous flood of the Paraná River that decimated my farm; I wanted to make up for so much loss and I tried my luck in the stock market. It was in 1929. There I lost everything I had left. I had to go back to the work I had done before, I formed my orchestra and started again.” He also returned to the composition, with an eloquent title: “Honda Tristeza”. Firpo was one of the greatest musicians of Tango, of complete musical erudition, nevertheless, maintained his work within the purest traditional school. Some of the great tango musicians who started their career with him included Eduardo Arolas, Osvaldo Fresedo, Pedro Maffia, Bachicha, Cayetano Puglisi, Horacio Salgán and many others. For instance, Julio De Caro's first public performance and the beginning of his career playing tango was with Firpo, when De Caro was only 17 years old. His friends arranged for De Caro to see Firpo playing at the cabaret Palais de Glace, even though De Caro was not old enough to be admitted in a cabaret. At the time, boys would not wear long pants until they were 18 years old. Parents would give them their “pantalones largos” as a admission into adulthood. So, Julio’s friends had to get a pair of long pants that would be the credential of being old enough to get into the cabaret, and once he was there, during Firpo’s performance, his “barra” (group of friends) started to shout “Que suba el pibe!” (Bring the boy to the stage!). Julio joined his friends in the shouting, not knowing that “el pibe” (the boy) was him. In short, his friends carried him onto the stage, Firpo asked his violin player to give Julio the instrument and asked him what he would like to play, to which De Caro responded “La Cumparsita”. Eduardo Arolas was also there, and was so impressed by De Caro’s playing, that asked him to play in his orchestra. Roberto Firpo's recording work is immense and surely many titles have remained unregistered. During the time of acoustic recordings he made more than 1650 records and at the end of his career, back in 1959, close to 3000 recordings. Roberto Firpo is one of the first evolutionists of Tango as a director, interpreter and composer. In those initial days of the “Orquesta Típica", he definitively established the piano in the tango orchestra, which displaced the guitar, but his way of playing the piano borrowed a lot from the way of playing the guitar in Tango and in the native music of the gauchos, for instance the “bordoneo”, a technique used to embellish the melody with notes from the sixth string of the guitar -the lowest pitched string, called “bordona”. His orchestra was a model that pointed the way to go, signaling a trend that will germinate in future tango formations. As a performer, he owned a very fine style - as we can hear in his exquisite solo recordings - and was the first to use the pedal, which offered a greater resonance. As a composer, he introduced in Tango the romantic emotion, which until then was foreign to the genre. His personality had the same magnetism as his work - tells us, again, Cadícamo. He was always great and sweet to everybody. Even at the peak of his fame and his fortune, he never made display of it, always living modestly, having all that he and his family needed. He passed away at the age of 85, on June 14, 1969, being a living glory of Tango since a long time before. Read also: History of Tango – Part 1 History of Tango – Part 2 History of Tango - Part 3 History of Tango - Part 4 History of Tango - Part 5 History of Tango - Part 6 History of Tango - Part 7 Bibliography: Internet: Biography by Orlando del Greco http://www.todotango.com/creadores/biografia/438/Roberto-Firpo/ By Néstor Pinzón http://www.todotango.com/creadores/biografia/37/Roberto-Firpo/ By José María Otero http://tangosalbardo.blogspot.com/2013/02/roberto-firpo.html Solo de piano por Roberto Firpo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ihrHxZTfwkU Primera grabación de La Cumparsita https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uK1Hjh_pM5s Todo Tango http://www.todotango.com/english/ Movies: El cantor del pueblo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Jx_svJAA9s La Historia del Tango https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8hu2IyKjif4&t=328s Investigación http://www.investigaciontango.com/inicio/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=203:roberto-firpo&catid=42:orquestas&Itemid=62 Other: Botellas https://youtu.be/Y1_1IiBhdsA La revancha Botafogo vs Grey Fox https://youtu.be/bp0MQ1otyVA Books: “Crónica general del tango”, José Gobello, Editorial Fraterna, 1980. “El tango”, Horacio Salas, Editorial Aguilar, 1996. “Historia del tango – La Guardia Vieja”, Rubén Pesce, Oscar del Priore, Silvestre Byron, Editorial Corregidor 1977. “El tango, el gaucho y Buenos Aires”, Carlos Troncaro, Editorial Argenta, 2009. 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History of Tango - Part 7: Origins of the Orquesta Típica - Francisco Canaro

August 2, 2016

Francisco Canaro. According to Tango historian Orlando Del Greco “In this name, all the Tango is summarized”.

History of Tango - Excerpt: Tango and knife fight

March 7, 2016

“Nació en los Corrales Viejos allá por el ochenta. Hijo fue de la milonga y un “pesao” de arrabal. Lo apadrinó la corneta del mayoral del tranvía y los duelos de cuchillos le enseñaron a bailar” “El Tango”, Miguel A. Camino, 1877-1944. When Argentina took on the model of the “Generación del ochenta” (the governing elite which ruled the country from 1880 to 1916), the gaucho lost his habitat. The Pampa would be divided into "private property”, so Argentina could join "civilization". Many of these gauchos opted for the opportunity to adapt to a new way of life in Buenos Aires, with its rapid growth due to a large influx of immigration. They brought their knowledge and skills to the big city. They were expert cattle herdsmen, which fed the locals and the world, slaughterers, butchers, horse trainers, tram drivers, and carters, who knew the most efficient way of transporting cargo to the port. Their effectiveness in handling a knife was not limited to use with livestock. The gaucho was a man skilled in the art of fighting. The wars of independence, civil wars, and other less illustrious circumstances had trained him. But the gaucho was not a criminal. He had incorruptible ethics. In the chaotic origins of our country, a new state that had just begun to get organized, the police force and justice system were not as efficient as one would have wished. With the population increasing by the day due to a careless immigration policy, which also led to more diversity, the most vulnerable sectors of the population found in those gauchos someone who supported them in their daily disputes. They were arbiters of justice spontaneously elected by their neighbors, residents of the poorest neighborhoods of the city, the suburbs, the “arrabales”, and received in gratitude, the title of "compadres". Young people in these slums learned to admire those strong men. They admired his independence and self-reliance, and the skill with wielding his weapon, the knife, if necessary to defend those characteristics that defined them. However, these fans never came to incorporate the ethical values ​​of the compadre, arising from the moral of the Knight of the Middle Ages. You could say that they were already "tainted" by the modern city and its utilitarian pragmatism. The "compadritos", so called contemptuously, thus signaling its lowest moral stature in the shadow of the “compadre”, responded to the demands of a new historic moment: the birth of Buenos Aires as the great city of South America, incorporated into the global capitalist market. The visteo (knife fighting training) and tango, with cockfighting and pimping were compadrito features. The compadre, however, did not dance, did not amuse himself by fighting, had no commercial ambitions. He was a man who had made his life and now in the city, preferred to take a contemplative and wise position. During the formative years of modern Argentine state, which could be dated starting in the battle of Caseros, ending the government of Juan Manuel de Rosas in 1852, the flood of immigrants brought to the daily life of the inhabitants of Buenos Aires various manifestations of the many cultures that arrived here. Among them, new forms of partner dance that originated from the popularity of the waltz in Europe. Those who witnessed their arrival at the port of Buenos Aires called them “a la europea (in a European fashion)“. These dances were mainly the waltz and the polka, which were very fashionable in Europe. The novelty of these dances was that the woman was "in the man’s arms". This was a major change in relation to the minuet, the most popular couples dance until the appearance of the waltz, in which contact between members of the couple did not go beyond holding hands. Young men from the slums, the “compadritos", could see this way of dancing mainly in places of night life near the harbor, and adopted the technique of ​​bringing the woman in his arms, but with some important changes. The compadrito was fond of visteo (knife fight training). Knowing knife fight, not the larger gaucho or compadre knife, but a shorter one, that could be hidden under the lapel of his jacket, since it was not allowed by the authorities, was a direct way to express his status. The visteo was the physical education of these men (and many women, too) prior to the arrival of a more "civilized" sport brought to our land by Englishmen: football (or soccer). (The first football game was played in Argentina in 1867, and all participants of the game had English surnames). By taking a woman to dance, the compadrito used his "body language" which he had acquired in the visteo. That made it necessary for the bodies of the dancers to be completely united in an intimate embrace, which was very shocking for the time. Carlos Vega, researcher and historian of Argentine dances, differentiates the mode of holding the woman in waltz / polka, calling it "linked" as opposed to the "embrace" of tango. The tango is the first dance that is based on the human embrace. Another amendment introduced by compadritos, which completes the originality of the tango, which is also a consequence of their body language, their natural way of moving, and the embrace. In tango, there is for the first time in a dance linked / embraced the opportunity to stop and be still. So far, the dances which had static moments, called “figures", were separated couples dances, while in those linked the movement was constant and there were no moments of stillness. Tango’s intimate embrace made this innovation possible because the dancers now had more physical connection, which allowed them more accurate communication. And to complete, also due to the embrace and to the skills of the compadritos, the legs’ games "invading" the other partner’s space in the couple. At the time, these features were called dancing with “cortes y quebradas". In 1861, a police document mentions three couples detained near the port of Buenos Aires for dancing using “cortes y quebradas". The document does not mention tango. At this time, this dance technique was used by compadritos to dance all kinds of music. Later, in the last decade of the 1800s, tango would be adopted by the compadritos as their distinctive music, so the music of tango would be united forever to the dance with “cortes y quebradas”. Probably the tango music would have developed many of its features from the adaptation of street musicians the dance of the compadritos. In the origins of tango there is also an influence of the culture of the Afro-Argentines, who had enjoyed greater freedom of expression during the years of the government of Juan Manuel de Rosas. After slavery was abolished in Argentina, in 1853, the Afro-Argentines were the residents of the poorest neighborhoods of Buenos Aires at the time of the great flood of immigrants. The immigrants arriving in Buenos Aires, not only from the other side of the sea, but also from within the country (displaced gauchos, and the "chinas" or women from indigenous races who came to Buenos Aires after their men died in the wars of extermination of the natives), they met with the Afro-Argentines as locals. It was they who were responsible for the places of entertainment, dancing and drinks in the city of Buenos Aires. Thus, it can be said that the sociocultural characteristics of the poorest neighborhoods of Buenos Aires had definitive Afro-Argentine features. Many Afro-Argentines were gauchos, and many of them were then compadres and compadritos. The Argentine governing classes, as well as the country, were defined during the years of transition between the aristocratic / feudal and bourgeois / capitalist systems. In those years, everything about the aristocratic life style, still possessed an aura of distinction, which was looked up to by the nascent Argentine ruling class. Thus the “niños bien", the children of the most powerful families, saw in the compadrito, not without envy, virtues that were well appreciated in the aristocratic culture: the duel and seduction. When tango later became well appreciated in Paris, and from there the rest of the world, compadritos and “niños bien” undertook an exchange of customs and skills, which refined the first, and made good milongueros of the others. Resources: Jorge Emilio Prina, Maestro de Esgrima Criolla www.esgrimacriolla.blogspot.com.ar Bibliography: “Crónica general del tango”, José Gobello, Editorial Fraterna, 1980. “El tango”, Horacio Salas, Editorial Aguilar, 1996. “Historia del tango", Editorial Corregidor 1977. "Danzas Populares Argentinas", Carlos Vega, Instituto Nacional de Musicología, 1986. “El tango, el gaucho y Buenos Aires”, Carlos Troncaro, Editorial Argenta, 2009. "El Tango, una danza. Esa ansiosa búsqueda de libertad", Rodolfo Dinzel, Corregidor, 1999. "Historia del baile social. De la milonga a la disco", Sergio Pujol, Gourmet Musical Ediciones, 2013. "Masculinidades. Fútbol, tango y polo en la Argentina", Eduardo Archetti, Antropofagia 2003.  “Encyclopedia of Tango”, Gabriel Valiente, 2014. Todo tango http://www.todotango.com Movies: "El hombre de la esquina rosada" de René Múgica, con Francisco Petrone, Walter Vidarte, 1962. "Un guapo del 900" de Lepoldo Torre Nilsson, con Alfredo Alcón, 1960. "La guerra gaucha" de Lucas Demare, con Enrique Muiño, 1942. "Historia del 900" de Hugo Del Carril, con Sabina Olmos, 1949. "El Gatopardo" de Luchino Visconti, con Lancaster, Delon, Cardinale. "Tango" de L. M. Barht, con Tita Merello, El Cachafaz, Carmencita Calderón. SaveSave

History of Tango - Part 6: Orquesta Típica. It’s origins.

March 6, 2016

Orquesta Típica: It’s origins. The first stablished musical formation for the interpretation of tango music was the trio, integrated by harp or guitar, flute or clarinete, and violin. These trios did not produce any recordings, but we can be sure enough, according to testimonials, that they played a faster and more “staccato" rhythm, which was slowed down and shaped into a more “legato” sound with the arrival of the bandoneon. At the beginning of the 1900, the word “tango” was still considered inappropriate. As an example, when José Luis Roncallo performed for the first time “El choclo” at the restaurant El Americano, in 1903, he presented it as “danza criolla”. In 1910, Casa Tagini, dealership of Columbia Records, produced the first recordings of a formation dedicated exclusively to playing tangos. In need of an appropriated label for this formation, the term “Orquesta Típica Criolla” was born. Vicente Greco (1888-1924), conductor and bandoneon player of this formation, is recognized, together with Francisco Canaro (1888-1964), who played violin in it, as the creators of this term, which will from this moment, characterize the orchestras conformed for the interpretation of tango music. They both were neighbors of adjacent “conventillos” of the “candombero” barrio de Concepción, on Calle Sarandí 1356 and 1358 respectively. Their families were very poor and they had to work since their childhood selling newspapers in the streets of Buenos Aires. Vicente’s parents, Genaro and Victoria were from Italy, and his father played the mandolin. His siblings also played music and were passionated students of every subject. His nickname “Garrote” (club) needs an explanation. During one of those card games in which Don Genaro use to find entertainment, the eldest of Vicente’s siblings, Fernando, knockout of a slap one of the players, possibly because he perceived a cheat, or this man said something not nice to his father. From that moment Fernando got that nickname, and Vicente was first known as “Garrote’s brother”. As his fame grew up, people started calling him simply “Garrote”. Vicente started playing the flute, then guitar and singing. He had a talent for music, he worked hard and study passionately, self-taught and made each instrument sound in a personal way: concertina, bandoneon and also harmonium, in which he made many of his great compositions. He also aspired to have access to a comprehensive culture and deeply loved literature and theater. He self-taught himself to read and write by asking people in the street, while he worked selling newspapers, what the words in the signs said: “panadería” (bakery), “librería” (bookshop), “se alquila” (renting)… Julio De Caro told that “One day, by chance, discover a box over his parents' closet. At opening it, he is amazed by the unknown instrument. He interrogates her mother, who replied: "It is a concertina that we were given by a family friend." Vicente begins to practice with the instrument, and in one month he was able to play a Waldteufeld’s waltz, a polka and... Juan Tango! Studying day and night without taking a break.” Other version of how Vicente gets this concertina tells that a group of young boys were playing a serenade for a beautiful girl in a nearby conventillo. When, instead of the girl a policeman showed up at the opening of the conventillo’s door, the group of boys runaway, leaving a concertina behind. Since nobody came back to reclame it, it was given to Vicente, known for his talent. Another version of the story connect both renditions saying that this left behind concertina was keep by Vicente’s parents over the closet, were he will eventually find it. He was introduced to the secrets of the bandoneon by a colorful character of the Buenos Aires of those times, Sebastián Ramos Mejía "El Pardo", who worked as trams guard. We refer again to Julio De Caro: "After listening to Greco playing the concertina, Ramos Mejía, amazed, advised his parents to buy him a real bandoneon. Family and friends chip in and after a long search, being then very few of these instruments in Buenos Aires, they find the long-awaited bandoneon and give it to the 14 years old prodigy. Vicente soon dominates his new instrument. “ Almost simultaneously, he learned musical theory with Carmelo Rizzuti, but the intuitive musician will always prevail. Bandoneon player and composer of original realization ideas, he was always caught by a spontaneous musical inventiveness, without traces of academicism. Vicente Greco was the first professional bandoneon player. Other bandoneonists played before him, but at homes, in family parties. He assumed the task to take the bandoneon to the streets. At evenings, Vicente would practice his instrument at the entrance hall of the “conventillo” where he resided, opening the door for fresh air. The people passing by would by attracted to the hunting sounds of this mysterious instrument and would stop to listen. Night after night the crowd grew bigger. His professional premier happened in 1906 at “Salón Sur” (Pozos and Cochabamba), with a trio integrated by, in addition to his bandoneon, violin and guitar. With them he started a year long tour throughout the sprofitable brothels of the Buenos Aires province’s cities and Rosario, a great opportunity for all tango musicians of the time to make money, gain experience and achieve prestige. During this tour, Vicente suffered a serious accident, which will be, eventually, the cause of his early death, when the stage setup for his performance fell apart (some claim that following a violent fight), damaging his kidneys. But he also linked up with the most famous tango musicians of the time, who would influence him improving his technique and the way he conduct his formations. After recovering from the accident, he returned to his performances at the “cafés de camareras” (bars attended by waitresses) of La Boca neighborhood, with his brother Ángel Greco in guitar, and Ricardo Gaudenzio -author of  “El chupete” (listen to Anibal Troilo's rendition of 1940, click here) playing the violin. He continue playing for three years at the most popular venues of the area known as Suárez y Necochea, with great success, and premiering some of his compositions, yet without title. Then he was hired by “El Pardo Santillán”, a renowned milonguero, to play in downtown, at the “Salón San Martín”, known by the dancers as “Rodriguez Peña” due to the street in which it was located, where he played with a quartet integrated by his bandoneon, piano and two violins. It was so successful, that soon the salon resulted too small for such crowds. This hall was attended by the best dancers of the time, like the aforementioned "Pardo" and "El Vasquito" Casimiro Aín, “La Parda” Loreto, “La Chata” or María Angélica, to whom Vicente dedicated his tango of the same name (listen to Adolfo Pérez "Pocholo" rendition of 1934, click here). Greco performances at this venue contributed greatly to the acceptance of tango at Buenos Aires downtown. Vicente expressed his gratitude to his huge following with his composition “Rodriguez Peña” (listen to 1945's Carlos Di Sarli rendition, click here). Soon, he is hired to play at “El Estribo” (Entre Rios 763/67), where his musicians will be his disciple Juan Lorenzo Labissier as second bandoneon, “El Chino” Agustín Bardi at the piano, “Palito” Abate and “Pirincho” Canaro in violins, and ”El Tano” Vicente Pecci playing the flute. It was the year 1910. The police had to close Entre Rios street due to the amount of people that crowded in front of the café to listen to Greco even they could not enter to his sold out performances. Applauses and shoutings exploded at the end of each song. The public was most heterogeneous, and “compadritos" (marginals) co-existed peacefully with “niños bien” (rich family boys), at least for a while. Regulars were also famous “payadores” of the time, as José Betinoti and the duet formed by Carlos Gardel and José Razzano. Vicente composed the tango “El Estribo” (listen to Rodolfo Biagi's rendition, 1940, click here) dedicated to Mario Scolpini, owner of this place. He played also during this time at “Lo de Laura”, and “Lo de María La Vasca”. This is the time in which the nascent phonographic industry of Argentina, headed by the owners of Casa Tagini, decide to hire Greco to make the first ever recordings of tangos by a musical formation exclusively dedicated to this gender. The sponsors of these recording were not convinced of the piano as a instrument that belonged to tango music yet, and that is why Ángel Greco came to play the guitar instead of Agustín Bardi the piano. There are also some doubts about who played the violin, regarding Canaro and Abate. At the print label of the discs was written: “Vicente Greco y su orquesta típica criolla con bandoneón”. The firs recording was “Rosendo” (listen, click here). In 1912 Greco’s orchestra played at the opening of Armenonville, in Palermo, the first cabaret in Buenos Aires. It had beautiful gardens with tables and chairs, a sumptuous villa with ample dance floor and windows. The ground floor, generously lit by a stunning chandelier, contrasted with the semidarkness of the box seats. Vicente Greco did not created the “orquesta típica”, but devised its name, and contributed with the doubling of bandoneons and violins, which together with the substitution of flute by bass, done by Francisco Canaro, and the finalized acceptance of the piano instead of guitar, done by Roberto Firpo, will lead to the formation of the “Sexteto Típico”, core of the Orquesta Típica. From 1913 Greco recorded for other companies. In 1914 for Atlanta records, with the name of “Quinteto Criollo Garrote”, and at the end of this year, he takes a break and travels to Montevideo de Canaro to expend the money made with these recordings. Then he continue with his performances at “Petit Salon”, “Cabaret Montmartre” (Corrientes 1431), at the summer house of the roundabout of Las Heras 2500, the “Rowing Club”, “Cabaret Maxim’s), the hotels Plaza, Americano, Tigre… Also, the families of the ‘Porteña aristocracy” opened their doors to him and with him to Tango itself -another of Vicente Greco’s great contributions to Tango-, and he played at the residencies of Dr. Lucio V. López (Callao and Quintana), at the Lagos García, at the Lamarque, Green and many others. In 1916 he and Canaro put together one of the first known big orchestras, to play at the carnival dances at the “Teatro Politeama” in Rosario. The size of the hall and the amount of people assisting to these events, demanded the enlargement of the musical formations to increase the sound volume. This orchestra was conformed by Vicente Greco, Juan Lorenzo Labissier, Pedro Polito and Osvaldo Fresedo in bandoneons; Francisco Canaro, Rafael Rinaldi and Francisco Confetta in violins; Samuel Castriota in piano; José Martínez in armonio; Vicente Pecci in flute; Ruperto Leopoldo Thompson in bass; Pablo Laise in sandpaper; and Juan Carlos Bazán in clarinet. These idea would later be followed by Firpo and Canaro in 1917 and 1918. Then his health declined rapidly. His plays less and less often. His last performances were at the city of Córdoba in 1921. His demise happened at his home of Humberto Primo 1823, on October 5, 1924. Of his personality, what is more notorious is his extreme modesty. he loved literature and theatre, cultivated the friendship of Evaristo Carriego, with whom he coauthored a tango that remains unpublished, and Florencio Sánchez, great screenwriter. He frequented the literary cafés, like the one called "Los Inmortales", of Corrientes 1369, and left at the time of his death an unfinished screenplay. As a composer, he knew to intertwine in his creations the rhythms and melodies of the “criolla” music, of the traditions of a country populated by gauchos descendants of the Spanish colony, and the new sounds and idiosyncrasies arriving to Buenos Aires with the massive immigration of the end of 1800s. Some examples of his talented compositions are: "El pibe" (to listen to Vicente Greco rendition of 1910, click here) "El morochito" (to listen to Enrique Rodriguez of 1941, click here) "Rodriguez Peña" (to listen to Carlos Di Sarli rendition of 1945 , click here) "El flete" (to listen Juan D'Arienzo rendition of 1936 , click here) "El estribo" (to listen Rodolfo Biagi rendition of 1940 , click here) "Ojos negros" (to listen Anibal Troilo rendition of 1948, click here) "Pofpof" (to listen to Juan D'Arienzo rendition of 1948, click here) "La viruta" (to listen Carlos Di Sarli rendition of 1943, click here) "Racing Club" (to listen to Alfredo Gobbi rendition of 1948, click here) Read also: History of Tango – Part 1 History of Tango – Part 2 History of Tango – Part 3 History of Tango – Part 4 History of Tango – Part 5 Bibliography: “Crónica general del tango”, José Gobello, Editorial Fraterna, 1980. “El tango”, Horacio Salas, Editorial Aguilar, 1996. “Historia del tango – La Época Dorada”, chapter 2, "Vicente Greco", Luis Adolfo Sierra, Editorial Corregidor 1977. “El tango, el gaucho y Buenos Aires”, Carlos Troncaro, Editorial Argenta, 2009. “El tango, el bandoneón y sus intérpretes”, Oscar Zucchi, Ediciones Corregidor, 1998. "Encyclopedia of Tango", Gabriel Valiente, 2014. http://www.todotango.com/english/ SaveSave

History of Tango - Part 5: The appearance of the bandoneon in Tango

March 5, 2016

During the 1870s arrives to Buenos Aires a very particular immigrant: the bandoneon. Tango was in its infancy, as well as this new instrument, which was recently invented in 1846 in Germany by Heinrich Band, according to some versions, or Carl F. Zimmerman, according to others. None had patented it.

History of Tango – Part 4: La Guardia Vieja - II: The first dancers

March 4, 2016

  In the case of the dancers, in addition of the ones already mentioned, who were also musicians and we remember mainly because of their musical legacy, like Casimiro Alcorta (and his partner La Paulina), Lola Candales, Enrique Saborido, Ángel Villoldo, Alfredo Eusebio and Flora Gobbi, Ernesto Ponzio, or like Laurentina Monserrat (Laura), María Rangolla (La Vasca) or Concepción Amaya (Mamita), who are known after the places they managed, a special mention is deserved by Enrique Saborido, with the beautiful Lola Candales, Uruguayan as he and his muse, come tango dancers. In 1908, with the growing popularity of tango, he opens an academia in Cerrito 1070, which they managed until 1912. In that year he decided to go to Paris with other tango personalities. There, he taught to dance tango to the European aristocracy and show off as professional dancer at the Savoy and the Royal Theatre in London. He referred to other good dancers: Jorge Newbery (one of the first Latin American aircraft pilots. He was also an engineer, and is considered to be the architect and founder of the Argentine Air Force), his close friend Alberto J. Mascías, Alberto Lange, and Martin Edmund Hileret Anchorena. Concepción Maya, known as "Mamita". At her home, located in Lavalle 2177, Ernesto Ponzio composed his famous tango "Don Juan". Domingo Greco, in his unpublished memoirs, quoted by Dr. Benarós, among other things, says: "In this house, the clientele was selected. Men from upper class only. I met there the first professionals of tango:  Angel Villoldo and Sergio Mendizabal, Rosendo's brother. He played the tango ‘más compadrón', and was strongest in the accompaniment, more 'tempista'. He was one of the best tangueros of his time. Played, preferably, in Concepcion Amaya’s house. When this woman emigrated from Buenos Aires, she settled with a brothel in the village of 9 de Julio, and brought “El Negro” Sergio with her. I was then told that he died sitting in a bar, with the guitar on his lap. He played guitar and sang so well, improvising. Instead, Rosendo produced better tangos ... " Mamita, as Luis Teisseire told, "was tall, skinny, authoritarian. Of dark complexion, rather achinada, brave, black eyes. Always she wore long, dark silk suit. She looked all covered with high collar. At her house, among her women, she had la Ñata Rosaura, Herminia and Joaquina. After a glass door, it was a long courtyard with the rooms on the side and the classic dining room. " There, played the piano Sergio Mendizabal, El Gordo Mauricio and Teisseire, our informant. Other dancers from before 1910 who's names reached us are: El Mulato Sinforoso, who played clarinet next to Casimiro Alcorta and a guitar player, forming a trio that according to Lino Galeano, in an article written in the newspaper “Crítica” in 1913, signing as “Viejo tanguero”, was the first tango band. Carlos Kern ‘El Inglés’ was a man of "Maria La Vasca". He mastered the ‘vals cruzado’. He was an strong man of clear eyes, always quiet, but effective in placing order. He was recognized as a tough man, was heavy-handed and he alone was able to contain the aggressive ‘compadraje'. For a time he organized dances at Patria e Lavoro, in Chile 1567, a narrow hall, which was a difficult place to stop the excesses of pickpockets and rioters. According to César Viale, he finished serving as ordinance in the law firm of Dr. Carlos Delcasse. Carmen Gomez have been born around 1830, and began dancing at the Academia de Pardos y Morenos, located on Calle del Parque (current Lavalle). Around 1854s she opened what became known as the “Academia de la Parda Gomez”, in the vicinity of the Plaza Lorea (part of the current Plaza del Congreso). After selling it, in 1864, she opened another in Corrientes 437. By the help of an Afro-Argentine sorcerer, surrounded the house of her adversary, la Morena Agustina, in an effort to provoke misfortune. “The Afro-Argentines of the second half of the nineteenth century were the owners of the 'academias', as the ‘peringundines' where the ‘compadraje orillero’ used to attend, were called… The police report of the time recounts numerous incidents occurred there, where soldiers, Afro-Argentines from different neighborhoods and cart drivers were regulars" (R. Rodriguez Molas: Free Black River Plate Magazine Humanities, Ministry of Education of the Province of Buenos Aires, l year, September 1961, p. 114.). About la Morena Agustina, we know that also had an academia near Plaza Lorea. The dancer Clotilde Lemos began in the Academia de Pardos y Morenos, in the second half of the 1850s. Alejandro Vilela, was employed at the Academia de la Parda Gomez, where he played the piano. Luciana Acosta,”La Moreyra”, was a popular dancer of  the neighborhood of San Cristobal. She was a source of inspiration in the literary field: Jose Sebastian Tallón portrayed her in his book “Tango in the stages of forbidden music" (Buenos Aires, 1959); and Juan Carlos Ghiano makes her protagonist of his play "La Moreyra," released by the company Tita Merello in 1962. There is a film version starring by the same actress. She was the daughter of Andalusian gypsies, and lived with her man , “El Cívico", Bautista Salvini, at the room number 15 of the “conventillo” El Sarandi, located at the 1356 of the street of the same name, and where some rooms were occupied by the Greco family. Dancer of great fame in the early tango scene, she danced at the café La Pichona, at Pavón, between Rincón and Pasco (then district of brothels), where, as described by Jose Sebastian Tallón, “she was the business partner of her husband, a pimp, and skilled dancer. She was at night a woman of tango. In her veins bubbled the gypsy bravery, and being so feminine in appearance, and so beautiful, she was of great courage as dagger shooter, hence her nickname ... Her figure: not very tall, perfectly shaped, sensual voice, like her face, as her walk; olive skin tone, black eyes and hair, small mouth, optimum bust. She wore blue or red silk robe with white poke dots. Sometimes with colorful squares, or flowery dress with long sleeves and laced cuff. She closed her robe from the neck to the start of her breast, with a silken cord zigzaging the embroidered eyelets, finishing in a bun with tassels. Her waist was belted up to hurting by a corset. The skirt was pleated, gray or light green. Perfumed with Rosa de Francia, Agua Florida or Jour de Gloire. Hairstyle bun at the nape, with hairpins and combs of tortoiseshell, big gold hoop earrings, and a locket. Portrayed inside the locket was El Cívico." El Cívico, Bautista Salvini, descended from Southern Italians. was a pimp, a good dancer and a respected compadrito. Joaquina Marán, “La China Joaquina”, a wonderful tango dancer, was the favorite at “lo de Mamita”, and later herself manager of dance houses in the first decade of the 19th century. Tall, not pretty but very interesting and seductive brunette, of very pleasant conversation, Juan Bergamino dedicated to her his tango "Joaquina" (listen) (originally “La China Joaquina” (listen). She was involved in the death of a young dancer called "Ramayón" by Ñato Posse, as both loved Joaquina Maran, who besides being a lover of the two, had been of Mariano "Maco” Milani, another renown dancer, and of Pablo Podesta, actor, circus performer and singer. Fernando Ramayón was a young man of the Buenos Aires’ upper class, an Law student and a good tango dancer, who was killed at age 22, on January 31, 1898, by Juan B. Passo, el Ñato Pose, in the famous “Cuartos de Adela”, coffee, inn and dance place, in Alvear y Acevedo, Palermo. Homero Manzi wrote a tango inspired in this story, with music by Cristobal Herreros: “Resuenan en baldosas los golpes de tu taco. Desfilan tus corridas por patios de arrabal. Se envuelve tu figura con humo de tabaco y baila en el recuerdo tu bota militar. Refleja nuevamente tu pelo renegrido en salas alumbradas con lámparas de gas. Se pliegan tus quebradas y vuelven del olvido las notas ligeritas de Arolas y Bazán. Ramayón, ya no estás con tu noche tras el blanco calor del pernó. Ya no pasa trotando tu coche, ya no brilla tu bota charol. Y no está con su traje de raso la que entonces por buena y por leal, afirmada en tu inmóvil abrazo fue también tu pareja final. Aplauden tu elegancia las palmas de otro tiempo. Las cuerdas empolvadas resuenan otra vez. Y en el fugaz milagro de un breve encantamiento reviven las cenizas de todo lo que fue. Un plomo de venganza te busca de repente. Se aflojan los resortes violentos del compás. Se pinta en tu pañuelo la rosa de la muerte y el tango del destino te marca su final.” “Ramayón”, Homero Manzi, Cristobal Herreros, by Nelly Omar and guitars (listen). Juan Bautista Passo, el Ñato Posse, had been imprisoned for his criminal adventures, but thanks to his contacts with a leader of the Conservative Party, who paid for his services, fast out of jail. The movie “Historia de 900” (1949 -watch), written, directed and performed by Hugo Del Carril, portrays the relationship between the upper class and the marginal “orilleros” of Buenos Aires in the framework of tango: they accepted the same ideals of virile manhood, courage, true to their words, and a vision that sees life and love as a game to be played with your whole self. Mariano “Maco" Milani was another handsome and very elegant young man of the Argentine high society, of straight hair and very white skin. When he began drinking too much, lost his shape  and got a red nose. Tall, impeccable, he lived a truly pompous life. Margarita Verdier, or Verdiet, whom some called "La Oriental "and "La Rubia Mireya”, resident of the neighborhood of Almagro, Castro Barros 433. Daughter of French parents born in Uruguay, had a reputation for "night owl", given to the "dance of the compadritos”, as tango was stigmatized by then. She was immortalized by Manuel Romero and Francisco Canaro in the tango “Tiempos viejos” (listen). There a few movies in which she is portrayed: "Los muchachos de antes no usaban gomina” (Manuel Romero 1937 - watch), “La Rubia Mireya” (Manuel Romero 1948 - watch), and “Los muchachos de antes no usaban gomina” (Enrique Carreras 1969 - watch). Elías Alippi, tango dancer, actor and theater and film director, playwright of comedies and sainetes (1883-1942). He debuted on the scene in 1904 dancing a tango with Anita Posed in "Justicia criolla”, zarzuela by Ezequiel Soria, music of Antonio Reynoso, who that season replied the company of Jerónimo Podestá. He was also one of the best dancers of the local "María la Vasca" and other nightspots of that time, as well as on stage. He danced for the last time in the film ”Así es la vida" (1939 - watch), with the actress and singer Sabina Olmos. As playwright, he included tangos in many of his works. The troupe Muiño-Alippi played a decisive role in the advent of the tango-canción: on April 26, 1918, in the sainete of José González Castillo and Alberto T. Weisbach, “Los dientes del perro”, which premiered in Theatre Buenos Aires, appeared, in a cabaret scene, Manolita Poli accompanied by the orchestra of Roberto Firpo, singing the tango by Samuel Castriota and Pascual Contursi, “Mi noche triste” (listen). La Parda Deolinda shined in the Academias de Montevideo, milonguera and owner of a dancing place. Pintín Castellanos tells us that she was “gifted with a gorgeous body and a hell of a character, and an extraordinary ability to dance with 'cortes y quebradas' (...) the men, despite their proven courage, did not risked much with her. "Between 1880 and 1886, Police Chief Apolinario Gayoso deported her because of the many squabbles in which was protagonist, to Buenos Aires. Here, he continued with her dancing and bravery … She died in a duelo criollo!”. La Parda Loreto, also know for her willingness to get into fights, was born in 1860 and danced in the 80s, in the “peringundines” of Suipacha and El Temple (Viamonte), in the "Milonga de la Calle Chile" (actually called Patria e Lavoro, located in Chile 1567), in the Teatro Politeama (Corrientes 1490, demolished in 1950, today a parking), and already older, in the Salón San Martin, popularly known as "Rodríguez Peña". When her charms were dissipated, worked -always faithful to her environment- as manger of a burdel. La Parda Refucilo danced in the early 80s in the academia located in Independencia and Combate de los Pozos, famous for “la gente de bronce" that frequented it and the prestige of the dancers, and was partner in the milongas and in life, of a famous milonguero of that time nicknamed el Biundín. Francisco Ducasse, one of his dancing partners was named Mimí Pinsonette. He was married to the actress Angelina Pagano. He used to frequent «lo de Hansen». Francisco García Jiménez says that the very charming princess de Murat was intertwined with the tango skill of the fine handsome young man of Buenos Aires, on tour in Paris, in a tango competition organized by the journal Excelsior at the Fémina theater on the avenue of the Champs-Elysées. Obviously, they were awarded the first prize. He was born and died in Buenos Aires. María La Tero: In the article about tango published in Crítica newspaper on September 22, 1913, “Viejo Tanguero” included her in a list of prestigious female dancers that went to the well-known dancehall on Independencia and Pozos. Julián Centeya, in his book “El misterio del tango”, describes her as tall and skinny. La Parda Flora was very well known by 1880, so much that she is mentioned in "Milonga de Tancredi" ("The other night at Tancredi / I danced with Boladora / was the Brown and Flora; / what he saw me, he estriló"). She showed up her art in La Pandora of La Boca, in peringundines of Corrientes and had its own academia in 25 de Mayo and Viamonte, to spend her final years in Flores. It is also remembered in the milonga “En lo de Laura” (listen), of Enrique Cadícamo and Antonio Polito: “Milonga de aquel entonces que trae un pasado envuelto... De aquel 911 ya no te queda ni un vuelto... Milonga que en lo de Laura bailé con la parda Flora... Milonga provocadora que me dio cartel de taura... Ah... milonga 'e lo de Laura... Milonga de mil recuerdos milonga del tiempo viejo. Qué triste cuando me acuerdo si todo ha quedado lejos... Milonga vieja y sentida ¿quién sabe qué se ha hecho de todo? En la pista de la vida ya estamos doblando el codo. Ah... milonga 'e lo de Laura... Amigos de antes, cuando chiquilín, fui bailarín compadrito... Saco negro, trensillao, y bien afrancesao el pantalón a cuadritos... ¡Que baile solo el Morocho! -me solía gritar la barra 'e los Balmaceda... Viejos tangos que empezó a cantar la Pepita Avellaneda... ¡Eso ya no vuelve más!” “En lo de Laura”, Enrique Cadícamo and Antonio Polito, by Ángel D’Agostino and Ángel Vargas (listen). There is a movie, made in 1952, "La Parda Flora" (see here). Sisters Balbina (Rosa and Maria) acted in the Stella di Roma, in Corrientes and Uruguay, known as El baile de Pepin. It was the first dance house which was established in the center and the most famous doe to the attraction exerted by the Balbina sisters. This house was one of those that adopted the system of covering the organito with a mattress, so that the sound couldn’t be heard at the street and reach the ears of the police authority. La Gaucha Manuela, referred by Roberto Firpo in an interview with Dr. Benarós: "I started playing the piano at the Velodrome, in 1907, with Bevilacqua. Then I was twenty years old and came from the Corrales, of Rioja and Caseros. The owner of The Velodrome was Pesce, I believe the father of who was later the owner of Luna Park. The place occupied an area of about four blocks. In the center was a mound of dirt. Inside, a track, used by cyclists. To get there you needed to go through a dirt road, which sometimes became mud. It was two blocks from Hansen. Drinks were served on tables placed under the trees. It had rooms, also. From The Velodrome you could see when music was playing in lo de Hansen. The Gaucha Manuela was a regular there, and was the kept woman of a rich young man called Del Carril, which I believe expended on her four or five millions. She was brunette, very pretty, and very ‘criolla’ when speaking. She was a wonderful dancer, capable of grabbing a knife and start with the blows. I dedicated a tango "La Gaucha Manuela”(listen) to her. We were asked for these dedications, and sometimes the person asking for it payed us a hundred pesos. I dedicated the tango “To the distinguished Miss Manuela Lopez." I earned one peso a day and some tips. There were no women. Each men had to bring his own.” Juana Rebenque, referred by Juan Santa Cruz -brother of the author of “Unión Cívica" (listen) - (quote from Dr. Benarós): “She lived in small tin roof house, like all the houses at 'El Pueblo de las Ranas'. You get inside you had to bent down. She did not even had a rate. She charged whatever you gave her. She never came to downtown. She was tall, thin, with a big nose, and beautiful. She lived with a man called Fernandez. She was mentioned in some famous verses of the time: 'Hará cosa ‘e una semana / que un canfinflero mistongo / me convidó pa’ un bailongo / en el Pueblo de las Ranas. / Las principales bacanas / de la ranil población / cayeron a la función / lindamente enfaroladas, / porque habían sido invitadas / con tarjetas de cartón.'” El Flaco Saúl: A landowner who stands out among the first tango dancers. According to "Viejo Tanguero”: “he was able to interpret tango in two styles: the original, vivid, complex, full of figures and ‘quebradas', of great agility, with strength and character, and the smooth tango, which developed at the time called the ‘Guardia Vieja', as a necessity to adapt to female dancers who would not follow the primitive style, which later was defined as the characteristic style to dance the tango of the so called 'Guardia Nueva', or 'cabaret tango.'" Filiberto, Juan “Mascarilla”, father musician and composer Juan de Dios Filiberto. Eminent tango dancer of the first period; natural and spontaneous creator. Owner or administrator "Bailetín El Palomar", then the "Tancredi" (c. 1882), nearby recreational Suarez and Necochea, in the heart of La Boca. We quote from an interview by 'La Canción Porteña' (Buenos Aires, 1963) in which his son tells us: "'My father was cheerful, a bit careless of all things, but simple and good, had an easy laugh and good sense of humor in his eyes and always good jokes escaping from his mouth. He sang in a nice tenor voice, which I liked to listen. Dancer by nature, of the best tango dancers of La Boca; his reputation was well recognized. According to his character he worked on the most different and contradictory jobs, from owner of dance halls to sailor, wrestler or construction worker. He was a friend and often also bodyguard of Pepe Fernandez, strongman and leader of La Boca, which was first supporter of Mitre and then of General Roca. He possessed an extraordinary power, often acting in the circus Rafetto wrestling and weight lifter." Mariano, mentioned by "Viejo Tanguero" (1913) as a regular of “Scudo de Italia”. He was one of those which popularity was earned thanks to the correctness of his dance. The tango lovers stopped dancing and made a circle to watch hind dancing, to admire and applaud the difficult execution of figures invented by him and that no one else could imitate. He owned a large commercial establishment that was located on the street Sarmiento and Carlos Pellegrini. Arturo De Nava, composer, singer pre-gradeliano. Was born apparently in Paysandú in 1876 and died in Buenos Aires, where he had settled since his youth, on October 22, 1932 .... Initially, a natural dancer with great style, he was the first one to earn fame on the stage, prior to Ain and Alippi, dancing tangos in plays since 1903 in the Podestá troupe. He was very handsome. Because of his appearance, unmistakable, his photographs appear illustrating several editions of the popular magazine Caras y Caretas of Buenos Aires, in 1903. " Pancho Panelo, he belongs to the category of rich dancers. Domingo Greco told that this man had so much serenity to dance, and did it with a glass of champagne in his head without spilling a single drop of liquid. Pedrín “La Vieja”. Domingo Greco says in his memoirs: "Then came a certain Pedrín, that was my classmate: we nicknamed him ‘La Vieja (The Old Lady)". He used to live at Chile street, between Tacuarí and Piedras. He brought tango to its maximum refinement. Even before 1900 he was the best dancer known. He had a lot of initiative. He was elegant, very musical, and with an amazing speed in his legs. In a word, he was the best of all times. Benito Bianquet "El Cachafaz" emerged as his only imitator.” I have been asking myself why dancers often have a reputation for being sexual, feisty, rebellious, irreverent, marginal, indifferent to what people say about them, but also elegant, tough, self reliant, respectable, admired…? On one hand, I believe that a real dancer is a person for whom life is a dance (“La vida es una milonga”). This approach is not as easy to take as we may suppose. It requires strength and discipline beyond the majority of people’s possibilities and/or willingness. If not, why would a skill not make you rich, an approach to life that is not of great value from a utilitarian perspective on life, would be embraced with the passion, perseverance and stamina that to be a GOOD DANCER requires? On the other hand, all negative qualifications attached to dancers come not from other GOOD DANCERS, but from those who are not. It is perhaps a form of revenge from the ones whom value resides in being useful to society -a laudable situation- against those whose major contribution is an uninterested and useless beauty which can’t be sold in the markets. In my own experience, all the GREAT MILONGUEROS that I have met in my life, many of whom I had the fortune and the honor to have as my teachers, are (or were -in the case of those that have passed away-) GREAT PEOPLE, incredibly wise and have great sensitivity and common sense, reliable people, generous, respectable, and among many other wonderful qualities, the best at their day jobs and professions. And the bottom line is that for me, everything that I have achieved in my dance has made me a better person. And I still have room to improve. Read also: History of Tango – Part 1 History of Tango – Part 2 History of Tango - Part 3 History of Tango - Part 5 History of Tango - Part 6 History of Tango - Part 7 Bibliography: “Crónica general del tango”, José Gobello, Editorial Fraterna, 1980. “El tango”, Horacio Salas, Editorial Aguilar, 1996. “Historia del tango – La Guardia Vieja”, Rubén Pesce, Oscar del Priore, Silvestre Byron, Editorial Corregidor 1977. “El tango, el gaucho y Buenos Aires”, Carlos Troncaro, Editorial Argenta, 2009. Sex & Danger in Buenos Aires: Prostitution, Family, and Nation in Argentina. By Donna J. Guy José María Otero http://tangosalbardo.blogspot.com/2014/10/ramayon.html Guillermo Brizuela http://miescueladetango.blogspot.com/2009/10/los-malevos-parte-i.html Arcón de Buenos Aires http://www.arcondebuenosaires.com.ar/ Reseña de mujeres bailarinas. Por Luis Alposta and Oscar Himschoot: http://www.todotango.com/historias/cronica/326/Resena-de-mujeres-bailarinas-Segunda-parte/ Images http://www.tangology101.com/main.cfm/title/Tango-History-in-Pictures/id/1165 http://www.todotango.com/english/ SaveSave SaveSave

History of Tango - Part 3: La Guardia Vieja

March 3, 2016

Part 1 Between 1860 and 1915 Buenos Aires experienced an exponential growth. The “Gran Aldea” (Great Village) became a cosmopolitan city, which, despite its isolated geographic location, was one of the greatest cities of the world. It was during this period of time of multiethnic and multicultural interaction, that tango developed its unique characteristics and became a cultural identity, a philosophy of life and a lifestyle. Its name was not mention in well-mannered conversations. It was rising up protected and cared for by very strong people, the only ones who would not care about its bad reputation and defy the rejection by the comfortable, afraid and obedient society. It needed to develop in places that were prohibited to a society that denied that a completely new creature was coming to life. A creature that was not a child of a well established family, in the portrait of religions and hypocritical political speeches. A being that was happily excited to deal with the chaos of unpredictability, with all that can't be rationalized, accounted for and fit in the big plan laid out by the ruling classes for the population of that corner of the world. Even when tango began to enter family homes and broadly accepted social events, the name tango would not be used as the label to refer to it, nor would the musicians use this term to describe the orchestras. The dance technique that today we associate to tango and milonga, the “cortes and quebradas”, was in its origins a dance technique created by the “chinas” and “compadritos” and applied to all kinds of danceable music played in Rio de La Plata: “mazurca”, “polca”, “habanera”, “cuadrilla”, “lanceros”, waltz (called “vals cruzado” when danced in this way), “pasodoble”, “Spanish tango”, tango and milonga. Later this technique of dancing remained in Argentine tango (referred at the time as “tango criollo”), milonga and vals criollo, because these music styles were better suited to it. On September 9, 1862, four men and two women were put in jail for dancing “tirando cortes y quebradas” at a conventillo of Paraguay 58 (today, in Puerto Madero). The police report does not mention tango or milonga. It was on September 28, 1897, that for the first time we find that the “cortes and quebradas” are elements associated to the choreography of a particular music called tango. It is at the play written by Ezequiel Soria “Justicia Criolla”: “Era un domingo de carnaval Y al “Pasatiempo” fuime a bailar. Hablé a la Juana para un chats Y a enamorarla me decidí. En sus oídos me lamenté Me puse tierno y tanto hablé, Que la muchacha se conmovió Con mil promesas de eterno amor. Hablé a la mina de mi valor Y que soy hombre de largo spor, Cuando el estrilo quiera agarrar Vos, mi Juanita, me has de calmar. Y ella callaba y entonces yo Hice prodigios de ilustración, Luego, en un tango, che, me pasé Y a puro corte la conquisté.” And also: “Qué cosa más rica...! Cuando bailando un tango con ella, me la afirmo en la cadera y me dejo ir al compás de la música y yo me hundo en sus ojos negros y ella dobla en mi pecho su cabeza y al dar vuelta, viene la quebradita... Ay! hermano se me vá, se me vá... el mal humor.” The following year, in 1898, “El entrerriano”, the first Argentine tango registered by a known author, was published. This was the time before recordings, when the music was commercialized by publishing it in music sheets. The author, Rosendo Mendizábal, was an Afro-Argentinean born in 1868 (and died in 1913). Coming from a wealthy family, he was able to study piano. His lifestyle made him squander his fortune, and so he began to teach piano lessons and to play in all kind of brothels and dancing houses, from the ones of the poorest clientele, to those visited by the wealthiest people, like “Lo de Laura (Monserrat)”, in Palermo, Paraguay 2512, where he premiered “El entrerriano”, and dedicated it to Ricardo Segovia, a landowner born in Entre Rios, who gave Rosendo a $100 bill. This was a common practice among composers, before the benefits of authors’ rights. Before the publication of tangos, they became known only from the authors playing them over and over again in many places. When a tango was fortunate enough to be accepted by the audience, it was frequently requested, contributing to the recognition of the piece and its creator. Sometimes another musician would like a song and learn it by listening to it, and then incorporate it to his repertoire. But since the time that it began to be written, it was easier to propagate it. Eventually, musicians were able to play more and more varied songs, city sponsored orchestras, military and police bands and club’s orchestras would be able to play them, contributing to a greater and more efficient divulgation of tango. It was also the way it could surreptitiously enter the family homes, hidden between piano methods and Chopin’s waltzes. And, it made possible the printed rolls for “organitos”, which played a major role in initial spread of tango, and prepared the ears of those who liked tango from the beginning to accept a new instrument that became central to tango and transformed it: the bandoneon. Enrique Santos Discépolo’s father, José Luis Roncallo (who was presumably the one that first suggested tango music for them) and Ángel Villoldo (who probably wrote “El Choclo” to be played through this media) were involved in the construction of the first locally made cylinders for organitos. Related to this need of mobility that the primitive tango required to spread itself and survive, was the portability of the instruments of its origins. The guitar was the “criollo” (autochtones) instrument par excellence, which the payadores choose to accompany their singing. It is, indeed, a privileged instrument to accompany the human voice, but the payadores that were already laureate and socially accepted, wouldn’t, in general, risk losing their contracts playing such dubious music. The violin was also a very popular instrument. Wind instruments rose in popularity to the extent that they showed up more and more in bands and theatre orchestras of the time. The harmonica also played a powerful role, especially in the hands of Ángel Villoldo. These instruments that first played tango allowed its music to be frisky, lively and shaky because they were high pitch and light instruments than can easily be played fast. Later, with the introduction of the “bordoneos” (melodies and bridges played in the lowest pitch range of the guitar strings), the incorporation of the concertina and the Italian accordion, it will start a process of slowing down that will reach its depth with the bandoneon and the lower pitch string instruments. It is during this period that the bandoneon became the most characteristic instrument of tango. In 1899, “El Pibe” Ernesto Ponzio (1885-1934) publishes “Don Juan”.  “El Pibe” Ponzio played the violin “sacando chispas” (extracting sparks from it), according to the testimony left to us by Gabino Ezeiza. When his father (also musician) dies, he needed to help his family, and went to play in canteens, dance parties and on the streetcars. Soon he was asked to play at the most famous places of the time, like “Lo de Hansen”, “Lo de Laura”, “Lo de María La Vasca” and “Lo de Mamita”, Lavalle 2177, among many others. At this last one, it is said, he premiered “Don Juan”, dedicating it to Juan Cabello, a well known “compadre del arrabal” porteño.  This tango was the first one recorded with bandoneon by Vicente Greco and his orchestra in 1910. In 1924, when playing in Rosario, he shot and killed a man, and was condemned to 20 years in prison. He had other previous violent incidents on his record, but he was pardoned in 1928 and returned to playing. According to his wife, he was not a violent person. He was handsome, kind and always smiling, even when playing, but his talent, his overwhelming energy and charm as musician, dancer, artist and person, provoked the envy and jealousy of those for whom beauty does not regard respect and tried to impose their mediocrity with shear force. “El Pibe” Ernesto considered a lack of honesty with himself, with those who he loved and with his art, to retreat in the cases of being insulted by disrespectful attitudes to people and what it is beautiful in life. He stood for his thoughts and ideals in every moment, even difficult ones, and dealt with the consequences. The only recording of “El Pibe” Ernesto Ponzio is in this scene from the first sound film made in Argentina, “Tango!”, of 1933, playing his most celebrated composition: In 1899 they closed the last “Academias” that remained in Montevideo, while the tango came to wider audiences entering the theater, tents, circuses, dance halls and cabarets. Following this development, the original “tango canyengue” was transformed and made more “decent", smoothing or eliminating completely the “cortes y quebradas” and the most straight forward sexual elements of its practice, giving birth to the tango “salon”, also known as tango “de pista” or ‘liso”. Most of the precursors of tango music were also well recognized as great dancers. Ángel Villoldo (1861-1919) is considered by many “El padre del Tango” (The father of Tango), and unanimously considered the most representative artist of the Guardia Vieja. Little is known about his childhood, and the information about his youth is many times contradictory. From an interview made to him by the newspaper “La Razón” in 1917, we know that he was “cuarteador”[1] of “La Calle Larga” (The Long Street, today’s Montes de Oca) at the time that his interest in music appears, and that he sung and played guitar and harmonica. Between 1879 and 1886 he was typographer at the newspaper “La Nación” and Jacobo Peuser's print, conductor of the carnival choir “Los Nenes de Mamá Viuda”, libretista for choir societies, herdsman in two slaughterhouses of Buenos Aires, clown at “Raffeto” circus. Around 1900 he began to be known as payador, composer and singer in “Corrales Viejos” (Parque Patricios), Barracas, La Boca, Constitución, San Telmo, Palermo, and in Recoleta for the celebrations of the Virgen María in September. At these celebrations, big tents were erected for several days. They started to be frequented by “compadres” and “cuchilleros”[2], so its original character was replaced for another, less family oriented, of alcohol, dancing and knife fighting. At these gatherings, in which the life of a man was of little value, everyone respected Ángel Villoldo, who performed there his first tangos. The tango was still in development and had not yet achieved a defining shape. The first works of Villoldo were milongas of payador style that described characters and current events of the places that he frequented. These first songs are very valuable testimonies of these times and its people. Like this milonga that makes reference at the known rivalry between cart drivers (carreros) and streetcars drivers (cocheros): "El Carrero y el Cochero", listen... Villoldo’s lyrics are “cheerful, wittily talkative, sometimes in jest, but never bawdy. The compadres of his stories are reliable criollos, as its creator, who recently left the horse on the outskirts of the city, men in whom the knife is not yet ostentatious bravado, but defense of honor and cause”[3]. His rise to fame came in 1903 when the singer Dorita Miramar sung “El Porteñito” in the varieté Parisiana, of Esmeralda Street, obtaining a great success. Pepita Avellaneda had already sung several of his compositions a year earlier on Avenida de Mayo. Soon other female singers included his songs in their repertoire. In the same year, 1903, José Luis Roncallo premiered “El Choclo” at the restaurant “El Americano”, labeling it as “danza criolla”, since the category of the place did not admit including tangos in the playlist. After the truth was known, the audience demanded it to be played every night. It was not publish until 1905. At Christmas day in 1905, Villoldo is woke up at 7 am by Enrique Saborido who was up all night writing a song and needed a lyric for it. He knew that Villoldo was fast, that he could improvise verses as a payador. The night before, at Christmas Eve, Saborido was mocked by his friends for paying too much attention to the Uruguayan singer Lola Candales. They challenged him to write a song for her. He took the challenge and promised to have the song ready to be sung by Lola next day. At 10 am they presented to Lola “La Morocha”, which she premiered that night. This tango was of great success, not only in Buenos Aires, Montevideo, Argentina and Uruguay, but copies of the music sheet were taken to many port cities around the world by the school-ship Fragata Sarmiento. Villoldo finds humor in daily life events. In 1906 the Police Chief of Buenos Aires ordered a fine of 50 pesos to those who say “piropos” (compliments) to a woman in the street, and Villoldo composes  “Cuidao con los 50!”. He tries to get extra advertisement for his song, so he goes to the street and start to “piropear” to every woman he sees, expecting to be denounced and fined, making of his song a way of protest, but all he got was a sweet “viejo enamorado” reply from one lady. Around those years, “El esquinazo”, another of his compositions, is prohibited to be played at “Lo de Hansen” because the crowd beat their glasses on their tables accompanying the song, breaking them, making it too expensive for the business. In 1907 he was sent by the department store Gath y Chaves, the most successful of Buenos Aires at the time, to make some of the first tangos and Argentine music recordings to Paris with Alfredo Eusebio and Flora Gobbi (the parents of the great  orchestra conductor Alfredo Gobbi). The recordings of Villoldo songs, already successful, potentialize their success. Edison invented the phonograph in 1877. The sound quality on the phonograph was bad and each recording lasted for one only play. Edison's phonograph was followed by Alexander Graham Bell’s graphophone. It could be played many times, however, each cylinder had to be recorded separately making the mass reproduction of the same music impossible with the graphophone. On November 8 1887, Emile Berliner, a German immigrant working in Washington D.C., patented a successful system of sound recording. Berliner was the first inventor to stop recording on cylinders and start recording on flat disks. The first records were made of glass, later zinc, and eventually plastic. A spiral groove with sound information was etched into the flat record. The record was rotated on the gramophone. The "arm" of the gramophone held a needle that read the grooves in the record by vibration and transmitting the information to the gramophone speaker. Berliner's disks (records) were the first sound recordings that could be mass-produced by creating master recordings from which molds were made. These inventions where taking place at the time that tango was becoming more and more popular, and are of vital importance to the history of tango. Being in Paris, Villoldo subscribed to the Authors and Composers Association of France, following which then created in Buenos Aires in 1908 “La Sociedad del Pequeño Derecho”, precursor of “SADAIC”, created by, among others, Francisco Canaro, Osvaldo Fresedo, Augusto Berto, Agustín Bardi, Enrique Santos Discépolo and Francisco García Jiménez. This institution and its precedent, “Círculo Argentino de Autores Compositores de Música”, and “Asociación de Autores y Compositores de Música”, play an important role in the history of tango and its existence, since thank to them, the authors, composers and musicians of tango were able to make a living. Back in Buenos Aires, in 1908, we could find Villoldo playing in La Boca, at the “Café Concert” of Suarez and Necochea streets, the center of tango of the moment, where, in different places, Canaro, Greco, Firpo and others were playing. Villoldo performed a solo act, playing guitar, harmonica (attached to his body in the manner of Bob Dylan), singing, storytelling, and standup comedy and dancing. From that year is his milonga “Matufias, o el Arte de Vivir”, which is seeing as precursor of Discépolo’s “Cambalache”. Villoldo was also journalist and wrote plays. In 1913 he writes the lyrics for “El 13”. This will be his last great hit. Tango changes and “La Guardia Vieja” is giving place to “La Guardia Nueva” and the tangos that Carlos Gardel recorded with Contursi’s lyrics. In 1917 the duet Gardel-Razzano made their first recording with a Villoldo’s song; “Cantar eterno”. It was the magic of tango linking the two eras. [1] Was a person whom driving a team of horses pulled a vehicle that was stuck in the mud or in need of help in a hill climbing. [2] Quarrelers who use knives to fight. [3] José Gobello “Historia del Tango”, “La Guardia Vieja”, Editorial Corregidor 1977, page 364. Read also: History of Tango - Part 1 History of Tango - Part 2 History of Tango - Part 4 Bibliography: “Crónica general del tango”, José Gobello, Editorial Fraterna, 1980. “El tango”, Horacio Salas, Editorial Aguilar, 1996. “Historia del tango – La Guardia Vieja”, Rubén Pesce, Oscar del Priore, Silvestre Byron, Editorial Corregidor 1977. “El tango, el gaucho y Buenos Aires”, Carlos Troncaro, Editorial Argenta, 2009. http://www.todotango.com/english/

History of Tango - Part 2: The origins of Tango

May 4, 2015

How tango came to be is unknown. What we have is information about the history leading up to the rise of Argentina as a state. From these facts, all we can do is speculate about how tango came to be. In 1805 and again in 1807, England tried to invade Buenos Aires, but was repealed successfully by the population, not by the Spanish army, which abandon the city. This paved the way for ideas of independence, which eventually led to the end of the Colonial system and, after a war against Spain and a civil war, the Argentine Republic unified during the decade of 1860. Most of the references related to tango point to this time to signify its origins. The first Argentinean Presidents promoted the immigration of the European workforce, defeated the indigenous people who had still claimed part of the Argentine territory, favored an economic model of production and export of agricultural goods, in accordance with British led ideas of international division of work, and invested in the technology and infrastructure that made possible such model. A modern port was constructed in the area of the Puerto Madero, and a railroad network that transported the whole production of the entire country to this port. Buenos Aires greatly benefitted from these changes and grew exponentially. Between 1871 and 1915, Argentina received 5 million immigrants, mostly Europeans. Almost all of them stayed in Buenos Aires. Buenos Aires, known at that time as “La Gran Aldea” (“The Great Village”), also received other immigrants from the countryside who had been displaced. The gauchos’ natural environment was the Pampas, which became private property of the new landowners. Also, the “chinas”, who were indigenous women whose men were killed in battle, defending their territory. All these new arrivals to Buenos Aires had few resources and were very poor. They could only afford housing in the poorest neighborhoods, where the Afro-Argentineans, descendants of the African slaves, had been populating since 1813's abolition of slavery. They were the locals. If any newcomer wanted to know something about Buenos Aires, they had to ask the Afro-Argentineans, who, before this massive immigration, constituted one-third of the population. Between 1820 and 1850, before the Argentine Constitution was written and immigration was promoted, Argentina was under the administration of Juan Manuel de Rosas. During this time, the Afro-Argentineans enjoyed a period of greater participation and freedom of expression. Rosas was a landowner in the province of Buenos Aires with a very good resume. When he was only thirteen, he fought heroically against the English invasions. Later on, he proved to be a very efficient administrator of cattle ranches and a successful businessman. Rosas created, financed and trained his own militia of gauchos, which would go on to be integrated into the state as an official regiment. They soon earned a reputation of being highly disciplined, and Rosas was able to establish order at the border with the indigenous populations. In 1819, Rosas put this militia at the service of the Governor of the province in order to quell an uprising against him. This is how Rosas became known as “El Restaurador de las Leyes” (”The Restorer of Law’). He became the Governor of the province of Buenos Aires, and during 1835 and 1852 was the main leader of the Argentinean Confederation. This period of Argentina's history is referred to as the “Era of Rosas.” He obtained the necessary support for his administration from the poorer sectors of the population of the City of Buenos Aires (integrated for a majority of Afro-Argentineans), and the gauchos of the countryside close to the City (many of whom were also Afro-Argentinean.) During his tenure, Rosas attended the “candombes” (celebrations) of the Afro-Argentineans as an honored guest. Also, it was during this period that the carnivals began in Buenos Aires. "Abuelita Dominga era muy vieja y vivía en el barrio de los candombes. Del carnaval de Rosas no se olvidaba al cantar esta copla roja de amores: Rosa morena, de la estrella federal, yo se que tu alma está llena de un pasión que es mortal. Rosa morena, todos la vieron pasar, en su garganta morena sangraba un rojo collar. Abuelita Dominga siempre lloraba al recordar la historia de amor y sangre. Y me dio esta guitarra para que un día, la cante como nunca la cantó nadie. Rosa morena, muerta en los cercos en flor la vio una noche serena todo el Barrio del Tambor. Rosa perdida aún dice el viejo cantar que le quitaron la vida porque quiso traicionar." “Rosa Morena (Abuelita Dominga)”, Héctor Blomberg and Enrique Maciel. “Están de fiesta en la calle Larga los mazorqueros de Monserrat. Y entre las luces de las antorchas, bailan los negros de La Piedad. Se casa Pancho, rey del candombe, con la mulata más federal, que en los cuarteles de la Recova, soñó el mulato sentimental. Baila, mulata linda, bajo la luna llena, que al chi, qui, chi del chinesco, canta el negro del tambor. Baila, mulata linda, de la divisa roja, que están mirando los ojos de nuestro Restaurador. Ya esta servida la mazamorra y el chocolate tradicional y el favorito plato de locro, que ha preparado un buen federal. Y al son alegre de tamboriles los novios van a la Concepción y al paso brinda, la mulateada, por la más Santa Federación.” “La mulateada”, Julio Eduardo Del Puerto and Carlos Pesce. Juan Manuel de Rosas’ regime affected all aspects of life in Buenos Aires and the culture. After his fall in 1852, local actors who were popular under his regime were dismissed, and the theaters of the City received foreign companies in their place. The Spanish theater companies from Andalusia were the most popular at that time, with the “sainete” being the main genre offered by these companies. This genre was comprised of shorter pieces, including elements of humor, songs and dance. Soon, the music and dance of tango could be seen on these stages. Also, after Rosas was exiled, the candombes were prohibited in open spaces, so the Afro-Argentineans had to continue them inside. This change of venue forced them to dance closer to each other, shaping the choreographic elements of their dance which eventually fit the embrace of tango. During this period, the word “tango” referred to any dance performed by the Afro-Argentineans. All the necessary elements for tango to appear were there: the Great City of Buenos Aires, the Afro-Argentine culture, the criollo and the gaucho, the native “chinas”, the massive immigration, the reconciliation with the Spanish heritage after the end of the War of Independence, and the open door to the rest of the world through the port. In our modern society, dancing is viewed as a specialized activity, such as a profession or a hobby. For the people of the 1800s, dance was integrated into everyday life. A person was not special because they danced, but they stood out if they did not or could not dance. The Renaissance was the beginning of dance as a modern social activity. Before the Renaissance, dance was a purely ritual activity, with the aim of maintaining a connection between the human realm and the Cosmos, which involved mythological and religious connotations and rationales. Then with the development of the modern city and its lifestyle, and the consequent secularization of all aspects of life, dance assumed a role of facilitating social interaction. In the origins of social dances, we observe no physical contact between partners; then they take each other hands, developing the “minuet” during the 1600s; which led to dancing in each others arms, with the “waltz” in the 1700s. The direction of the evolution of social partner dancing becomes evident: a closing of the distance between the partners that culminates in the embrace of tango. There are two explanations for why the embrace happened in tango, which are not contradictory. The first is the eclectic origins of the dance, which combined techniques of opposite tendencies, like the continuous movement in acceptance of the inertia, characteristic of waltz, and the “figures”, detention of the movement opposing the inertia, characteristic of the dances with separate partners or solo dancers, performed, among others, in the Afro-Argentinean and Andalusian dances. The greater communication made possible in the embrace produced a social partner dance that could have both, the partners united in each others arms, and the figures from the stops of the solo dancers. The other explanation is emotional: the consolation that the embrace gave to all these humans left alone by displacement, economic exile, destruction of their families, cultures and lifestyles. Other characteristics of the new dance were that it was totally improvised, favoring the skill and creativity of the dancers, their spontaneity, in contrast with the repetition of choreographed formulas that the other dances demanded; and the innovation that the woman walks backwards, which contradicted all previous approaches to partner dancing. These elements are rooted in the body language of the criollos, men and women, who were trained in the art of short knife fencing. Due to a cultural demand and the historical realities of the time, it was considered necessary to know how to fight, just as today it is considered necessary to read and write. In a historical situation of rapid transformation of the government and institutions, there was no reliable protection provided to the people, their families or their property. Before the British, who were commissioned by the Argentinean government to construct the railroad network, brought futbol (“football” in England, “soccer” in the United States) to Argentina (effectively making it the most popular sport), the criollos of Buenos Aires practiced “visteo.” Visteo is a variation of fencing using a wooden stick burned in one end, or the index finger painted with grease or ashes, with the purpose of marking the white shirt of the opponent. This is something which was inherited from the gauchos. The popularity of this practice prepared the Porteños of the 1800s with the necessary skills to create the dance of tango. The characteristic elements of the dance of tango were referred as “cortes y quebradas” (cuts and breaks). This dance technique soon became the characteristic dance of the poorest inhabitants of Buenos Aires, Montevideo, Rosario, and the villages located south of Buenos Aires in an area known as “Barracas al sur”, Avellaneda and Sarandí. These women and men received respectively the names of “chinas” and “compadritos.” The massive immigration in Buenos Aires was intended to populate the countryside, but a failure in the implementation of the necessary policies, corruption and the “Panic of 1873” (the great financial crisis that triggered a worldwide economic depression), conspired to detain almost the entire human wave in “The Great Village.” The City was not prepared to receive this amount of people, and housing quickly became one of the most urgent problems to solve. The Andalusian style houses of the Southern side of Buenos Aires, San Telmo and La Boca, were soon creatively transformed into rooms to rent. This type of construction, typical of the Colonial time, constituted a string of rooms aligned one after the other, with doors that opened to a patio or corridor connecting them. Their owners simply made each room a separate apartment to rent. The huge demand for rooms made them expensive, so sometimes more than one family would rent one room and further divide it to make it affordable. This created a very crowded living unit, which was called “conventillo.” In 1871, Buenos Aires suffered a yellow fever epidemic that killed 8% of its population, most of them living in these houses. The situation was so dire (with more than 13,000 people dying in 4 months) that it was necessary to open a new cemetery in the area of La Chacarita. A great proportion of immigrants were male because they did not want to risk their families in the adventures of a “new world.” This created the conditions for the rise of prostitution as a very profitable business. After the 1871 yellow fever epidemic, the authorities of Buenos Aires became more concerned with public health. Among many public health measures, prostitution was regulated. The unintended outcome of this was the differentiation between foreign women and the locals. Foreign women, who did not understand the language and the culture, were lured into being sex slaves by an international network of human traffickers, and had to accept these regulations, fees and taxation. The locals, Afro-Argentineans and native “chinas,” together with the Spanish and Italians, went into hiding. This also satisfied the demand of two different sectors of the market, in accordance with their purchase power, making the “loras” (“parrots”, due to the language barrier) the better off, and the “chinas” (Quechua word for “woman”) the less favored. The legal business, called “casas de tolerancia” (“houses of tolerance”) were located downtown, in the area of Corrientes Street, San Nicolas, Palermo, San Cristobal and Barracas. The clandestine ones were called “cuartos de chinas.” "Milonga del tiempo guapo, milongón de rompe y raja, la bulla del empedrado va marcando tu canción; soy porteño del 80 y al compás de tu canyengue desfilan por mi memoria los recuerdos en montón. Te conocí en los fortines que cuidaban la frontera reclamando los amores de una china cuartelera. Animando las retretas del Parque de Artillería y en la barriada bravía de las Barracas del Sur. Milonga del tiempo guapo, milongón de los milicos, de “kepises” requintados y bombachas de carmín; con tu música sencilla fuiste ley de los porteños, grito de los cuarteadores y alma del piringundín. Te conocí en los corrales de los viejos Mataderos, hecha jerga en los quillangos del recao de un forastero. tu canto fue la corneta del cochero del tranvía y el Palermo de avería tu escuela sentimental." "Del tiempo guapo", Vicente Fiorentino and Marcelo De La Ferrere. The demand was always greater than the supply, meaning customers had to wait. The owners of these houses soon realized that they needed to offer something to these customers while they waited, to keep them from leaving and to entertain them. They began to hire musicians as a form of entertainment. The most popular music at the time was polka, habanera, milonga and a new kind of rhythm called… tango. Sometimes the men who were waiting would dance, which led the owners to the realization that perhaps the dance in itself could generate business. The first “academias” began to open during the 1870s. These were places where men could go and dance with a superb female dancer, improve their skills, and try some new moves, all for a fixed price per song. These women shared the customer’s pay with the owner of the hall. The better dancers were more in demand and would dance nonstop for several hours, song after song, man after man. They did not need to be pretty or possess any other quality outside of being great dancers. The academias were located mainly in the area of Constitución and San Cristobal, and were also very popular in the City of Rosario. The owners and managers of the academias were mostly Afro-Argentineans. Outside the circuit of academias, in 1857, the Spanish musician Santiago Ramos provided a distinctive Andalusian contribution, which in turn recognized Afro-Cuban and African roots. He composed one of the first tango flavored songs known as "Tomá mate, che", a proto-tango with “Rioplatense" lyrics and Andalusian style musical arrangements. It was part of the “sainete” “The Gaucho of Buenos Aires,” which premiered at the Teatro de la Victoria. Also from that time came the proto-tango "Bartolo tenia una flauta” or simply "Bartolo", derived from a classical XV century Andalusian melody, and the Montevidean “candombe tangueado" "El chicoba”. The first Andalusian tango to reach mass popularity was composed in Argentina in 1874. The title is "El queco" (slang for ‘brothel’, of Quechua origin), from the Andalusian pianist Heloise de Silva, which makes open reference to the “cuartos de chinas.” Also, a candombe called "tango" with the title "El merenguengué" became very successful at carnivals organized by the Afro-Argentinean population in Buenos Aires in February 1876. In 1877, the restaurant “Lo de Hansen”, located in Palermo, was the first in a series of restaurants, cabarets and pubs where the youth of high society would socialize and dance tango. The year of 1880 is when some authors mark the transition between the gestation of the tango and “La Guardia Vieja” (“Old Guard”.) There are some others who prefer to wait for the further evolution of the genre and the appearance of the first scores. In this decade, the tango and milonga are confused with one another, and both began to impose their dominance over habanera. During this time is when tangos began to multiply, “Señora casera" (Anonymous, 1880), “Andate a la Recoleta” (Anonymous, 1880), “Tango # 1” (José Machado, 1883), “Dame la lata” (Juan Pérez, 1883), “Qué polvo con tanto viento” (Pedro M. Quijano, 1890.) In 1884, the Afro-Argentinean Casimiro Alcorta composed the oldest famous tango, "Concha sucia”, with openly pornographic lyrics referencing life in the brothels. Three decades later, Francisco Canaro changed the lyrics and the title to “Cara sucia” (“Dirty Face”), definitely making it the inaugural tango. Casimiro also composed “La yapa" tango which was later recorded as “Entrada prohibida”, then signed by the Teisseire brothers as the composers. Casimiro Alcorta was also a celebrated tango dancer, together with his companion "La Paulina", of Italian origin. Around the same time, another Afro-Argentinean, the “payador" Gabino Ezeiza, introduced the “contrapunto milongueado”, linking the milonga to candombe. He told another payador, Nemesio Trejo, that “contrapunto milongueado” is ‘pueblera’ (‘of the city’) and a daughter of African Candombe, and while hitting his fingers against the edge of the table began to hum "tunga ... tatunga ... tunga ..." to demonstrate with an onomatopoeia the link between the milonga rhythm with the Candombe (In an interview to Nemesio Trejo, made by Jaime Olombrada, published in the newspaper "La Opinion" of Avellaneda -Province of Buenos Aires, Argentina- on April 15, 1916). At this time, the most common tango ensemble was guitar, violin and flute. In the following years the guitar and the flute disappeared, and the piano and then the bandoneón were integrated, which shaped the “Orquesta Típica.” In those years the “organito,” a portable player, had a major role in the initial spread of the tango. It was made of tubes or flutes and a keyboard which is operated by the cylinder, enabling the passage of air to produce the different notes. Air is generated by bellows which are activated simultaneously with the cylinder by rotating a handle. The “organito,” like the organ and the bandoneón, is a wind instrument. It is important to differentiate the “organito” from the “organillo,” which is more common in Spain and produced its sound from strings. The sound of the “organito” prepared the ears of the Porteños for a natural transition to the bandoneón in tango, when it finally arrived in 1880. It is around these “organitos,” where men were seen dancing tango in the street, practicing “cortes y quebradas.” “Las ruedas embarradas del último organito vendrán desde la tarde buscando el arrabal, con un caballo flaco y un rengo y un monito y un coro de muchachas vestidas de percal. Con pasos apagados elegirá la esquina donde se mezclan luces de luna y almacén para que bailen valses detrás de la hornacina la pálida marquesa y el pálido marqués. El último organito irá de puerta en puerta hasta encontrar la casa de la vecina muerta, de la vecina aquella que se cansó de amar; y allí molerá tangos para que llore el ciego, el ciego inconsolable del verso de Carriego, que fuma, fuma y fuma sentado en el umbral. Tendrá una caja blanca el último organito y el asma del otoño sacudirá su son, y adornarán sus tablas cabezas de angelitos y el eco de su piano será como un adiós. Saludarán su ausencia las novias encerradas abriendo las persianas detrás de su canción, y el último organito se perderá en la nada y el alma del suburbio se quedará sin voz.” “El último organito”, Homero and Acho Manzi. Read also History of Tango - Part 1 History of Tango – Part 3 Bibliography: “Antología del tango rioplatense”, Jorge Novati, Irma Ruiz, Néstor Ceñal e Inés Cuello. Instituto Nacional de Musicología “Carlos Vega”, 1980. “Crónica general del tango”, José Gobello, Editorial Fraterna, 1980. “El tango”, Horacio Salas, Editorial Aguilar, 1996. “Historia del tango - Sus orígenes”, Rubén Pesce, Oscar del Priore, Editorial Corregidor 1977. “El tango, el gaucho y Buenos Aires”, Carlos Troncaro, Editorial Argenta, 2009. http://www.todotango.com/english/ SaveSave SaveSave