Andrés Calamaro is a musician from Argentina. I love his music. It’s just impossible not to smile when you listen to some of his crazy songs. It’s impossible to remain angry and not to burst out laughing. You have to admire a man that has songs about football (soccer) and football players in his repertoire of songs. Crazy dude. Crazy.

Most of his songs are full of slang and phrases that I don’t get (me not being an Argentinian), but it doesn’t stop me from enjoying them. I also love some of the covers his done of classic songs from other artists (among them ‘El cantante’ y ‘El día que me quieras’). He is also a man that loves being a musician. You can tell from his songs, his long career (sometimes fighting against the bad press) and from the photos and comments he writes on his blog.

I got to know him from his past collaborations with Enrique Bunbury. The first song I heard was “All U Need Is Pop” and “Nos Volveremos A Ver”, both songs which features backing vocals by Mr. Bunbury. Then I heard him in the Loquillo, Jaime Urrutia, Enrique Bunbury collaboration, “¿Dónde Estás?” But it didn’t stop there. His music is just too great to only have one track. Needless to say, I was hooked on the man, so I went in search of some of his CDs. Naturally, I went to his official homepage, which much to my surprise, is actually pretty good. My experience is that most official websites of rock bands and artists are lacking. They are basically one big promotion of their new material and there’s no connection between the artist and the fans. Andrés Calamaro’s site is different. Sure it has links to his discography and online store, but the content that stands out is his online blog. He is miles away and still he connects with fans through his writing; he shares is thoughts on concerts, touring, current events, he even puts funny pictures of himself in hotel rooms. I wish other artists would connect this way with fans.

That said, the first complete CD I experienced by Mr. Calamaro was La Lengua Popular. I remember listening to samples of the CD through the radio feature on his site. I loved it. So I got it. La Lengua Popular is one of those CDs that you play from start to finish and then hit the replay button to start it again. It’s the kind of CD that you blast on your car stereo and sing along, not caring who watches you rock out. It is just that great. I’ve had it on rotation on my MP3 player ever since I got it and I still have some songs in the mix.

Favorite Tracks

• Los chicos
• La mitad del amor
• 5 minutos más (minibar)
• Carnaval de Brasil
• Comedor piquetero
• Sexy y barrigón

Other Works of Andrés Calamaro

Since that day I’ve also picked up some other works by Calamaro, among them Obras Incompletas. What a collection of crazy, funny and beautiful songs. Two in particular are my favorite and I would like to share them here with you.

“Cuatro jinetes”

This song makes me happy the minute it plays. It sticks in my head and I burst out singing it at random moments throughout the day. I love how it starts slow and then bursts into music and melody. Love it. Love it. Love it. Below is the lyrics to the song (in Spanish) and a Youtube clip so you can hear it.

Con el invierno se terminaron
los renglones de mi cuaderno
y la tinta ya ni pinta
tendría nostalgia de tinta china.

Y escuchar tu risa loca
me parece suficiente inspiración
los zapatos ya no caminan
y ya terminó la próxima canción.

Los 4 jinetes del apoca-monta
no pueden frenar la risa tonta,
es un ataque que terminó en empate
dale balas de plata y que se mate
y escuchar tu reloj… ¡qué risa!
es ir a misa de 6 de la mañana.

Si al final la derrota gana,
me voy al Planeta Corderoy.
Me voy a la esquina a ver si llueve
tomé la alternativa en canal 9.
o se está moviendo el piso,
o es el planeta que se mueve

Si alguien se atreve a venir
o me canso de tanto reír
o tengo el cerebro frito
o repito la misma canción.

Al final todo sigue igual,
al final todo cambia un poco
o tengo el cerebro frito
o tengo el corazón roto

‘Bachicha’

This song makes me laugh EVERYTIME! It’s so…crazy, ridiculous, you name it. Here are the lyrics and a YouTube video:

Brian bachicha, fiel a sí mismo
En situación de desenfreno brasilero,
Está en la cama, acariciando
El mando a distancia de la grundig
E impresos en tres colores, guaraníes
Los carteles anuncian a bachicha,
El superviena, fetén sucesor de brian wilson.

Apa ta pata, the awama quever
Le toca súper clip fernando trueba,
Y en alcatraz los calcetines de la media
No perdonan ni siquiera
El más mínimo derrape en la carretera.

Cuando todos los caminos
Llevan a la cárcel de las monedas
Hay que ser muy ambicioso
Porque no flota una balsa de madera.
Esta es una industria cualquiera
Pero perdón si se cargó al talego pom-pom,

Brian bachicha, superviviente,
Del cabildo de french y beruti
Ni se imagina, pero presiente,
Que se acabó la realidad dabuti.

Habrá que darle gracias al dios inoportuno,
Por si acaso hiciera falta licuadora
Los de a pie, necesitamos al gran patoruzú
Un cacique popular, porque lo demás
Es solamente entretenimiento.
Impresos a tres colores guaraníes
Los carteles anuncian a bachicha.

No escucho una palabra verdadera
Desde el día de la primavera de 1972
En los juegos olímpicos de munich,
Y el gran bachicha mi combatiente
Volvió a la realidad de cara al sol,
Que ilumina el histórico convento
Y perdón si se cargo
Al entrañable talego pom-pom del gran bachicha

Pum, po pum, poropo pum, po pum
Al entrañable talego pom pom, el gran bachicha.

Enjoy!

Nunca me ha gustado el tango. Lo sé. Seguro soy la única en esta parte del hemisferio a la que no le deleita escuchar a Gardel. Pero cuando me invitaron a ver El día que me quieras, acepté más por la compañía, que por un real interés. No sabía que era de Cabrujas sino hasta un par de días más tarde. Ahí si me entusiasmé. No ha habido línea escrita por nuestro ilustre José Ignacio que fuera solo tinta sobre papel.

El escenario completamente encantador, era fácil identificar allí a esa Caracas de los 30, dónde las novedades no eran tantas y donde la ingenuidad todavía era parte del venezolano común de la época. Los dialógos, maravillosos. No había frase que no quisiera que se me grabara en la memoria para no olvidarla jamás.

El montaje del Grupo Actoral 80 fue sencillamente impecable. Las actuaciones fueron todas maravillosas. María Cristina Lozada, Martha Estrada, Iván Tamayo, Eulalia Siso, Héctor Manrique, Basilio Álvarez y Juan Carlos Ogando lograron llegar al corazón, a la reflexíon, al sentimiento, al costumbrismo y a la risa de una manera tan inteligente y tan bien interpretada, que la volvería a ver una y mil veces, sin pestañear. ¿Mis favoritos? no puedo decir quienes, porque todos los que vi sobre esas tablas fueron actuaciones sencillamente inolvidables.No hubo personaje que sobrara, ni actor que lo hiciera medianamente bien o incluso regular. Todos actuaron de manera franca, natural, sencilla, veraz, irrepetible. Cada historia que contaba cada uno de ellos fue creíble, auténtica. Que actorazos tenemos en este país. Venezuela es un país de grandes, enormes, gigantescos talentos. Bendito sea Dios.

Nacho me agregó al MSN. Y en pocas charlas, me invitó un café.
Eligió el Bar Británico. Un sábado. Me obligaba a ir a Capital justo un día que no debía ir. No me quejé mucho. Lo suficiente, nomás. Pero como el día estaba muy lindo y no era necesario que use mi mecanismo de defensa cuando me siento invadida, o que ultrajan mi intimidad, me relajé y sonreí. Dejé que el sol me golpee en la cara y que nuestros temas de conversación salgan solos.

Para hacerle notar que era diferente, llevé mi equipo matero en una mochila, para cruzar al Paque Lezama y tirarnos en el pasto.
Pero Nacho, otra vez, me sorprendió.
Cuando terminamos el café y qué nos había parecido “20000 Leguas de Viaje Submarino”, me invitó al museo “Prohibido no Tocar”.
Y fue ahí, en la Sala “No sigas la corriente”, donde me besó por primera vez. Sin preguntarme. Sin preámbulos.
Y esa fue la primera vez que boicoteé nuestros momentos.
No sé si fue miedo. Pero le corrí la cara.
-”Me parece que es algo muy mío, muy personal. Mínimo consúltame, ¿qué sabes si no me estás ofendiendo?”.
-”Disculpame. Yo, cuando tengo ganas de besar, beso. Después pido disculpas”.

Como siempre en mi, perturbada. Como siempre en él, desfachatado.

Y lo dejé que me agarrara la mano mientras caminábamos. Así sentía que me lavaba de todos mis pecados.

No sabía como eras el día el que te vi pero, de alguna manera, me enamoré de ti…

Esto es lo que yo siento. Me quedé viviendo algo que murió hace tiempo, con esperanzas colgadas como la ropa en verano, con broches flojos y más o menos, arrugada, desprolija.
Y son feas las reglas del juego cuando no queres perder. Perder más de lo que ya perdiste. Y además de mi dignidad, perdí el deseo por ser feliz, porque cuando las cosas no salen como esperabas, no podes más que sucumbir a la tristeza y al desgano.
Será evolución, serán fuerzas cósmicas pero yo encontré mi liet motiv para salir de esta situación penosa que me tiene a mal traer.
Voy a hacer que Nacho me vuelva a querer, demostrarle que, esta vez, maduré y me di cuenta de que lo adoro.
Y ese, el día que me quiera, voy a volver a reirme de sus chistes inocentes y no buscar un “te amo” en sus “¿cómo andas?”.

Nacho me llamó anteayer para que lo ayude a comprar un regalo. Por supuesto, no pude negarme.

El regalo resultó ser para su jefa. Me limité a poner mala cara y lucirme en mi tarea de elegirle una linda remera a la ramera.

Le pregunté por qué, teniendo tantas amigas, justo me llamó a mi para tal tarea.

-”Es que, de vez en cuando, te extraño. Y también sé que la pasas mal, y a la vez, no podes negarte. Yo sé que no está bien, peor no puedo evitarlo”.

-”"Nacho, ¿qué fue lo nuestro?”.

-”Podría haber sido todo. Si no hubieses sido tan turra conmigo, si te hubiese importado algo, si no hubieras sido tan cortante e hiriente. Para mi, en algún momento fue amor. De esos que no quiero volver a vivir, porque me doliste mucho. Y para vos, ¿qué fue?”.

-”Un juego mal jugado”.

Así de malo. Así de tonta. Estoy pagando mis deudas con él, las que más cuestan. Las del corazón.

A Nacho (que todavía no sabía que se llamaba así, pero ya conocía sus ojos, y qué cara ponía cuando sonreía, que me pareció algo torpe), lo seguí cruzando todos los días en el colectivo y en el subte.
¿Viste cuando sabes que pasa algo pero nadie quiere decirlo?. Bueno, entre Nacho y yo ya pasaba algo, pero ninguno de los dos se animaba a acercarse al otro y hablarle.
Era martes, llovía a cántaros y hacía un frío espantoso. Detesto el frío, detesto la lluvia, y cuando van de la mano, siento que se complotan contra mi.
Ese era un día de boicot.
Mi paraguas se zafó de su mango y casi mata a una señora. Y Nacho vio todo eso.
La señora no paraba de gritar y yo, mientras me mojaba bajo el agua que no paraba de caer copiosamente, me ponía cada vez más nerviosa: porque la señora no me respondía si estaba bien, porque el chico del colectivo estaba viendo mi papelón y porque estaba empapándome.
Creo que fue una situación muy tensa para estar solamente observando, así que Nacho se acercó, me cubrió con su paraguas y tranquilizó a la señora, que no tenía el más mínimo rasguño; y después de dejar de protestar, me dijo que tenga más cuidado y se fue, como si nada.
Y ahí quedé yo, con un tipo que me gustaba nada más de verlo, protegiéndome de la lluvia, y con mi paraguas roto.
-”¿Te tomas el mismo que subte que yo, no?. Dale, vamos, no te vas a seguir mojando al pedo”
Eso fue lo primero que me dijo, y entramos al subte.

Empezar a querer a alguien cuando ya te dejó de querer es harto doloroso.
Esa persona no va a volver sobre sus pasos y, al notar que estás loca por él, volver a confiar en vos y quererte de nuevo como si nada. Porque iría contra su naturaleza de persona, contra la evolución sentimental. Es más difícil que quien te quiso y dejó de quererte, vuelva porque vos ahora, tarde, lo queres.
Y eso fue lo que me pasó a mi con Nacho.
Yo lo desprestigié desde el punto cero de nuestra relación. Jamás lo tomé en serio. Ni a él ni a todo su cariñó. Y pagué caro.
Porque cuando alguien deja de quererte, debe de hacer alguna especie de sortilegio inquebrantable, una promesa a sí mismo: nunca más volverá con quien no lo amó a tiempo.
Y eso fue lo que hizo Nacho conmigo.
Quizás se juró nunca más darme ni un cachito de cariño. Quizás juró vengarse de todo el mal que le inflingí.
Y, debo hacer honor a la verdad. Un poco me lo merezco.

La primera vez que lo vi lo tengo patentísimo, como si fuese ayer. Guardo ese recuerdo para mi como si fuera un tesoro.
No hubieron fuegos artificiales, ni fue a la luz de la luna, ni un cuarteto de violines tocando alguna canción romántica, ni hubo nada que haga de eso momento una escena de dos personas que se flechan a primera vista.
Yo estaba histérica ese día. Y justo fui a toparme con Nacho en un colectivo.
Había sólo un asiento libre, y no pude haber tenido más tino: en el asiento contiguo dormía un chico con un libro abierto en el regazo y con auriculares puestos. De repente, la histeria se me pasó, y quedé calma , como si hubiese visto una buena película o me hubiese recibido un abrazo. Y eso fue lo primero que sentí.  Aunque cuente que al conocerlo, no se me movió un pelo. Por ahí es el sinsabor que me dejó nuestra historia y mi orgullo lo que me hacen contarlo de ese modo. Y a veces sucede que recuerdo las cosas como quiero. Como quisiera que se hubiesen dado.
No sé qué fue lo primero que me llamó la atención, pero mientras dormía, no pude sacarle la vista de encima. Quería saber qué era lo que leía, qué música sonaba en su reproductor, de qué color eran sus ojos y qué cara ponía cuando sonreía.
Así que me lo imaginé. Como hago cada vez que no tengo la certeza de algo. Invento la realidad que me gustaría que sea.
Unas cuadras antes de mi parada, se despertó. Cerró el libro, que no pude ver cuál era, y apagó su música. No sonrío, ni pude ver sus ojos.
Bajamos en la misma parada, y tomamos el mismo subte.
Así que lo dejé que se ubique primero. Para poder sentarme frente a él…

El cantautor español Pedro Guerra ha decidido temporalmente dejar de lado su faceta de autor y el próximo 22 de septiembre lanza “Alma mía”, un disco en el que interpreta temas emblemáticos latinoamericanos y españoles, informó su discográfica. Tangos, boleros, rancheras y coplas. Guerra, de 43 años, hace suyas en este trabajo canciones emblemáticas de Argentina, Cuba, México y España. ”Es mi primer disco de versiones y mi primer álbum sólo con guitarra”, explicó el artista español en un comunicado. “Alguna de estas canciones fueron las primeras músicas que escuché en mi vida, porque mi padre las cantaba en casa y lo hacía bien. Los Chalchaleros, Agustín Lara, Gardel… Tengo su recuerdo con la guitarra, cantando”, señaló.

“Alma mía” es el primero de los dos volúmenes de un proyecto de versiones. El segundo, “Contigo en la distancia”, se publicará en marzo.” En el fondo, detrás de este disco hay una reivindicación del género de la canción por encima de estilos y épocas. Quiero dar importancia a los autores por encima de los intérpretes”, indicó Guerra.

Entre los temas de este nuevo trabajo se encuentran “El día que me quieras”, de Carlos Gardel y Alfredo Le Pera; “Fallaste corazón”, de Cuco Sánchez; “Ella”, de José Alfredo Jiménez; “Esta tarde vi llover”, de Armando Manzanero; y “Chiquilín de Bachí”, de Astor Piazzola.

Fuente: DPA

Fue tan raro. Tu papá me iba a buscar a un lugar que no sé qué era. Sentí que era una terminal. Me subí al auto, y de repente apareciste en el asiento del acompañante. Y a mi se me frenó el corazón.
Pasamos por un sitio donde habían cocodrilos y perros. Y vos llorabas porque decías que los cocodrilos se iban a comer a los perros. Y yo te sequé las lágrimas y te dije que no te preocuparas, que los cocodrilos no comen perros.
Pero vos llorabas, igual. No escuchabas lo que te decía. No te importaba.
Llegamos a una casa que, supuse, era tuya. Y había un nene que corría a abrazarte, y vos lo alzaste. Me lo presentaste diciendo que se llamaba Pedro. Pero que no era tu hijo, aunque él te llamaba “papá”.
Fuimos a la cocina y preparaste té. Lo tomamos y te pedí tu nuevo teléfono, y me lo negaste. No quisiste hablar de vos. Querías solamente que yo te contara de mi. De mis cosas, porque de las tuyas no ibas a hablar. Me largué a llorar y te despediste de mí y tu papá me llevó de nuevo a ese lugar que no sé qué era, pero que yo sentía que era una terminal.
Lo único que puedo sacar en limpio es eso. Nunca supe qué era. Siempre supe lo que sentí.

Cuando Nacho me dejó de dar bola, yo me ataqué. No entendía cómo me empezaba a gustar un tipo  justo cuando él había dejado de buscarme. Llegué a pensar que era una mazoquista, que me gustaba sufrir. Que mi sueño inconsciente era ser la protagonista de una tragedia shakesperiana.

No sabemos exactamente qué dolencia me aqueja, pero de lo que estamos seguros (yo, mi otro yo y las pobres almas que oyen mis lamentos) es que a mi, Nacho me encanta. Y que quiero que me quiera, como lo quiero yo. Y que no voy a claudicar en mi tarea.
Debería contar cómo se sucedieron los hechos entre él y yo. Pero eso, es otro capítulo. Le tengo que dar el protagonismo que amerita.

Nacho. Así se llama. Así bautizaron al amor de mi vida. Qué fuerte, ¿no?, eso del “amor de mi vida”. ¿Cómo estoy tan segura?, ¿ya conocí todo?, ¿puedo decretarlo tan fehacientemente?. ¿Debo seguir poniéndome al hombro estas ilusiones que no sé si van a concretarse?.

Dios quiera que lo sea, hace rato que vengo laburando que él me vea, que el me elija. Porque de eso se trata esto: de que él me elija a mi.

Yo daría lo que no tengo (que no vale nada, al fin y al cabo) para que él repare en mi. Pero no hay caso.

Pensé que me moría. Se me heló el espinazo. Lo vi con otra. No sé quién es, no sé qué hace, no sé ni cómo se llama. Pero está con él. Y él no está conmigo. Otra vez.

Tuve que contener mis lágrimas, las que vengo reteniendo hace rato para no perder este ápice de orgullo que todavía me queda. Y justo suena un tema de los Beatles que no me ayuda.

Él es el hombre de mi vida, él que yo elegí. Pero, ¿y si él no me elige nunca?. ¿Y si elige no elegirme nunca?.

Por ahora, me la voy a seguir jugando. Que la elija a ella momentáneamente. Que las elija a todas y no a mi. Ya llegará mi hora. Y yo voy a estar preparada. Que lo estoy desde que lo conocí.

Nos conocimos hace rato. Nos conocimos hace mucho tiempo. Yo no sé exactamente qué sentí cuando lo vi. Creo que no se me movió un pelo. Estoy segura. Supongo que a él si, por algo me buscó. Pero no lo voy a poner en tela de juicio; no estamos aquí para juzgarlo. Por ahora.

Lo cierto, y de lo que no caben dudas, es que nos conocimos, me buscó y me encontró. Yo cedí porque estaba sola, aburrida y no tenía otra cosa mejor que hacer. Y ese fue mi error.

Creer que era una ocupación momentánea, y no poner el esmero que la situación ameritaba. Esos fueron mis primeros equívocos.

Pero, bien, debo admitir que no fue solamente mi culpa la que acabó con nosotros. La verdad es que él no me tomó en serio, y yo no me comporté. Yo no estuve a la altura de las circunstancias. Más bien estuve al metro cincuenta, como si tuviera doce años.

Y así la pagué también, cuando quise darme cuenta, él me retiró el buen trato y su cariño. Y yo me quedé sola, aburrida y sin nada mejor que hacer que llorarlo. Llorar para no complicar más las cosas, para no encararlo y preguntarle por qué. Por qué a mi, por qué de ese modo, por qué no me quería.

Y desde ese mismo momento, me enamoré, y él…El pasó a ser el hombre de mi vida. Justo en el mismo instante en que ya no quería saber nada de mi.

Esto es simple: yo ya elegí al hombre de mi vida. Pasa que él todavía no me eligió a mi.

Agosto de 2009

número do tombo: d21133

“o rouxinol dos pampas Carlos Gardel”

media: Long Play 33 rotações (odeon mofb 66)

doação: Lenira Ribeiro Lima

lado a:

el dia que me quieras
confesion
esta noche me emborracho
volvio una noche
yo no se que me han hecho tus ojos

lado b

madreselva
che papusa oi
aquellas farras
sueño querido
noche de reyes
yira, yira

transcrição da capa do Long Play da Odeon:

“No dia 24 de junho de 1935, milhares de corações nas cinco partes do mundo cobriram-se de luto e choraram. Nesse dia, o avião em que viajavam Carlos Gardel e seus companheiros artísticos abateu-se em terras da Colômbia, envolto em chamas. E assim desapareceu, tragicamente, o rouxinol dos pampas – aquele a quem o tango se convertera na mais pura expressão lírica da alma portenha e adquiriria a categoria de canção de ressonância universal.

Desde esse dia fatídico, muitos lustros são passados, mas Gardel, triunfador da morte e do olvido, [esquecimento] continua vivo nos discos, na tela, nas fotografias de sorriso aberto que reproduzem jornais e revistas.

Por isso, a etiqueta [selo] que tomou a si, quando iniciava Gardel a sua carreira, a função de propulsionar e difundir a sua arte, cumpre agora com orgulho a de preservar a sua imortalidade, num LP que é emocionada homenagem ao seu talento e em que resplandece vivificada, a sua qualidade de intérprete supremo da canção popular argentina.

Poucos artistas tiveram a carreira tão nitidamente marcada por etapas que assinaram, passo a passo, a sua ascenção.

por volta de 1910, é El Morocho, que canta uma noite num comitê político de San Telmo de Valvanera e logo na noite seguinte, ergue a voz no armazém junto ao Mercado de Abasto. No primeiro, provoca murmúrios de admiração entre gente de nome. No bairro de Abasto, as mocinhas sonhadoras abrem as janelas para sorver as notas das suas serenatas.

Um ano depois, um encontro com outro cantor não menos comentado, “El Oriental”, produz, em 1913, a dupla Gardel-Razzano.

Em 1917, escreve a página inicial do que haveria de ser copiosa história, ao gravar seu primeiro disco para esta etiqueta [selo].

Correm os anos de triunfos, repetem-se excursões pelo interior da argentina e pelas repúblicas vizinhas, até que m 1923, a repercussão de sua fama o leva a realizar sua primeira viagem à europa, em companhia de Rivera de Rosas. Apresenta-se ao público espanhol, no teatro apolo de madrid, com a sua criação de “mano a mano” e deixa atrás de si um rastro de verdadeira simpatia.

Em agosto de 1925, canta numa estância buenairense para ilustre visitante: Eduardo, príncipe de gales. e tal modo entusiasma o real hóspede, que este não tarda em acompanhá-lo em “la cumparsita” tangendo um “ukelele”.

Dois meses mais tarde, volta gardel a madri, cidade que visitaria de novo em 1927, quando também se exibiria em barcelona.

Atrai-o paris com os seus fulgores e ali se apresenta, a 2 de outubro de 1928, no dancing flórida.

Em paris, ponto de constante retorno, aonde voltaria em 1930, e, mais uma vez, em 1932, gardel leva a sua imagem e a sua voz à tela, como protagonista das suas primeiras películas (filmes) importantes.

No começo de 1935, inicia com seus guitarristas, em San Juan de Puerto Rico, uma excursão pela américa do sul, que teria como ponto final a sua querida buenos aires.

Percorre o continente e 14 de junho de 1935 é dia de sol e de festa em bogotá porque nesse dia chega à capital da antiga nova granada o rei do tango, como o anunciam os enormes cartazes pelas paredes e como o repete o povo que o acompanha, numa consagradora apoteose, do aeródromo à cidade.

De 14 a 23 de junho, canta para os extasiados bogotanos, longe de suspeitar que repassava as últimas contas do rosário de suas noites.

Decorreram mais de vinte anos desde a tragédia que roubou carlos gardel ao mundo e à arte. mas perpetuada nos sulcos do disco fonográfico, a sua voz imortal, sempre expressiva, sempre atual, se apresenta com o mesmo esplendor de quando gardel emitiu suas estrofes amorosas e súplices (suplicas), exaltadas e desdenhosas, palpitantes de entusiasmo e marcadas pelo desânimo – estrofes que traduzem toda a vibração da alma portenha. a técnica eletromecânica, admiravelmente conjugada com a arte e sempre a caminho de maiores perfeições, manterá eterna e milagrosamente jovem a voz de carlos gardel e em plena vida o triunfo do arquetipo da canção “criola”, para que o fervor do povo possa sempre saudar e aclamar, vivo e presente o seu ídolo de todos os tempos, o intérprete supremo do tango argentino, o rouxinol dos pampas.

iem fabrica odeon s.a. – cgc 33249640/4 indústria brasileira -
embalagem patenteada m.u. 4149

Astor Piazzolla

“It was fashionable at the time to after playing a concert to have a question and answer session with the audience. In those days, the early 1960s, the musicians did not look at their watches so much. They were looser. After we played, the coordinator of the event introduced me, I talked about what I thought about tango at the time, and I then asked for questions. In truth, I was unlucky right from the start because I gave the microphone to this guy who looked like a weasel and kept staring at me. The guy stood up and put it to me without blinking: Maestro, now that the concert is over, can you play a tango? It was not the last time it happened. Maestro, can you play a tango followed me like a curse.” – Astor Piazzolla

A few months after a stroke rendered Astor Piazzolla unable to recover from a slow and irreversible transition to his death, which finally occurred on July 4, 1992, the sixty-nine year old controversial musical genius told Argentine sportswriter Natalio Gorin a retrospective tale of his life. They met for three consecutive days, early in 1990, in the resort city of Punta del Este in Uruguay. Just before Gorin turned on his tape recorder, he produced an old letter with a very personal line, in Piazzolla’s own handwriting that read, “Never believe what I tell journalists.” This reminder was a way of making Piazzolla cognizant of a commitment to tell the true story. Piazzolla, who had a tendency, in the style of Jorge Luis Borges, to say certain things for the fun of it, to provoke, accepted the rules.

Amadeus Press of Portland, Oregon, has published Gorin’s book, translated, annotated, and expanded by Fernando Gonzalez, a regular contributor to The Washington Post, Down Beat magazine, and National Public Radio, under the title, Astor Piazzolla, A Memoir. Piazzolla’s untimely stroke before meeting Gorin again to review the material, suddenly left Gorin alone with the work, moved by this blow of fate and with a huge sense of responsibility.

Author Natalio Gorin with Astor Piazzolla in Buenos Aires 1989

The first version of Astor Piazzolla: A Manera de Memorias (By way of memories) arrived in bookstores in March 1991. People who read it, let Gorin know their opinions in many different ways. After Piazzolla’s death, the book went through a revision, to complete the portrayal of his life, and because it was possible for the author to enrich the memoir with testimonies that are key to the story.

Bringing forth personal memories, experiences, and ideas explored over hundreds of hours of conversations with Piazzolla’s friends, his acquaintances, his enemies, and most of his musicians, Gorin also added a poignant chapter of his own to say good-bye to his idol. Of such treasures, he held back nothing. It’s devastating.

There can be no doubt about the genius of Astor Piazzolla, the Mozart and Gershwin player of the bandoneon, insatiable composer, trail blazing arranger and demanding orchestra conductor. His work is well known and available all over the world. He continues to be a cult figure for classical and jazz lovers worldwide.

Piazzolla “knew” that his music would be heard in the year 2020, as well as in the year 3000. He knew that his music was different. He believed that he was going to bequeath to history, like Carlos Gardel. He knew that he would endure, because like Gardel, he didn’t consider himself a mediocrity. He made sure to tell Gorin all this, so we wouldn’t forget, “I am a tango man, but my music makes people think, people who love tango and people who love good music. All ballet companies in the world are dancing my works. The jazz people love and enjoy what I do. Chamber groups that play classical repertoire are asking me to write for them.”

In Europe his music has always been respected; not so in Argentina. He was criticized for decades, and he defended himself, he fought, he argued, but, as he tells Gorin, “I had fun. Without realizing it, they (his detractors) helped create Astor Piazzolla’s reputation.”

Astor Piazzolla, A Memoir is the definitive version. It is a great document. It is a must read for everybody who is not afraid to be confronted with the realities of human life and the struggles for survival and recognition.
The book has fourteen chapters plus a postscript, Gorin’s own essay, and a revealing collection of commentaries by Horacio Ferrer (president of the Academia Nacional del Tango, and lyricist for some of Piazzolla’s most successful ballads), (jazz musician) Gary Burton, Atilio Talin (Piazzolla’s friend, manager and agent for twenty years), and Leopoldo Federico (one of the most forgotten geniuses of the bandoneon, who played along with Piazzolla, and today heads one of the government sponsored tango music schools). A chronological listing of Piazzolla’s musicians and singers precede the most comprehensive discography of recordings by Astor Piazzolla to date.

In this book, the words of Astor Piazzolla, the man, talk to and touch people in many different ways, depending on which side of the love/hate/who cares equation the reader happens to be. Many questions about his music being tango or not, or whether he “killed” the tango or sired a “new” tango, will be answered while, perhaps, an entire new set of controversies will begin, as Piazzolla relates his unique life story and analyzes the factors that contributed to forge his personality, his view of the world, and his destiny.

Natalio Gorin made his fame as a well known and respected sports journalist. He “discovered” Piazzolla on a television show in the early 1960s and heard him live for the first time in 1962 at a dive, in downtown Buenos Aires, with a room capacity of about forty people. By then Piazzolla had “renounced” tango; shelved the bandoneon; gone to Paris on a grant to study classical music; been told by Nadia Boulanger to stick to “his” native music; resumed writing music like mad; heard the Gerry Mulligan Octet, and decided to imitate him, but featuring the best tango musicians he could find in Buenos Aires; founded the Octeto Buenos Aires; gone back to New York; written his most famous piece, Adios Nonino; and returned to Buenos Aires to form his most famous group, the Quinteto.

The 1960’s were traumatic for the inhabitants of Buenos Aires with the aftermath of the dismantling of the Peronist political machine and the subsequent series of military coups and short lived flirtatious attempts to establish democratic governments unraveled. The invasion of rock and roll, and the Beatles served as a catalyst for the changes in the way many began to see the world. Gorin, part of a generation bent on rescuing native intellectualism, saw Piazzolla’s music as a natural evolution towards some elusive respectability for the proletarian, disorderly and morally offensive origins of the tango. Gorin became part of a small group of about one hundred fans who devotedly followed Piazzolla’s career and his presentations in small cafe concerts in Buenos Aires.

In 1971, while vacationing in Europe with his wife, Gorin read about Piazzolla living in Paris. He showed up at Piazzolla’s quarters, rang the bell, identified himself as a compatriot big fan of him, and was invited in. Thus began a friendship that continued until Piazzolla’s death, with an eight year interruption between 1978 and 1986. After a concert in 1978, Piazzolla became angry when he perceived Gorin’s slight of Laura Piazzolla, his third wife. Gorin later admitted that he was wrong, but it was an ugly reaction that banished him from Piazzolla’s life. Piazzolla brought a lot of suffering to many who became a target of his uncontrolled temperament.

That is why, Argentinians, who have often times “offered their lives” for Peron, Evita and Maradona, have never voiced such a generous sacrifice for Piazzolla. Some have gone as far as to “give” their lives for the music of Piazzolla, which is a very different thing. Perhaps the most graphic and bold quote is one by Aldo Pagani at the beginning of Gorin’s own The Penultimate Goodbye chapter, “Who is Piazzolla? Onstage he is God, offstage he’s a son of a bitch.” Pagani is the man who had so much to do with the crowning of Astor Piazzolla’s music, first in Europe and later throughout the world.

The readers would do well in keeping Piazzolla’s memoirs in perspective by often reminding themselves that the eloquent account of his life is a retrospective view from the mind of a sixty-nine years old man who had gone to hell and back in pursuit of a purpose for an uncontrollable creative musical genius.

Life for Astor Pantaleon Piazzolla begun uneventfully on March 11, 1921, like many other lives of sons of Italian immigrant parents in Mar del Plata, a beach resort city four hundred kilometers south of Buenos Aires. His parents were Asunta Manetti, and Vicente Piazzolla, both born in Mar del Plata also, from Italian parents with blood lines traced to both Puglia in lower Italy, and Tuscany, today, the most chic region in Italy.

Right away life turned a trump card on Astor in the form of a defect caused by infantile paralysis (polio) during his mother’s pregnancy, and he underwent four operations on his right leg before he turned four years old.
The formative years are the period of time early in life when most of the moral, social, and family values are etched into a children’s conscience, forming the foundation that will support for the rest of their lives, the actions they take, the choices they make, and the destiny they get. This is fundamental to understanding how traumatic it must have been for Astor, a short, lame child forced to wear special shoes to conceal the different length of his legs, to be uprooted when he was barely four years old, and transplanted to New York City.

In the 1920’s, violence spawned by neighborhood clashes between gangster gangs that came from ethnic backgrounds as diverse as Italians, Jews and Irish, was a way of life for many residents of New York City.
It is safe to assume that Astor Piazzolla grew up as a red blooded American kid on the streets of Manhattan. In spite of his father’s efforts to keep him out of trouble, to instill a desire for a musical vocation, and to provide him with a religious education, Astor fought to overcome his perceived handicaps, and he set out to excel, to become one youth crusader against the world.

He ran the streets and fought the Jews as a member of a strong gang of sons of Italians. He ran away from home against the wishes of his father. He ignored the doctors advice against playing sports, and jumped into baseball games and ran like everyone else. He won several 100- and 200- meter events in swimming meets. With a right leg two centimeters shorter, he took on tap dancing lessons and even danced in public. He had pals such as Jack La Motta, who later would become middleweight world champion, and Joseph Campanella, who in time became a famous baseball player, but most of the rest of the gang ended up in jail.

Don Vicente, affectionately known as Nonino, played an important role in providing some elements that would be key to Piazzolla’s future. Astor had gone to the extreme of shoplifting a Honner chromatic harmonic as a teenager, after asking his father for one since he was eight. Instead, his father bought him a bandoneon, that stayed untouched in a closet for several years. But it was his mother, who wanted to have him attend religious schools, and unknowingly brought music for the first time to Piazzolla’s life. Listening to Brahms and Mozart symphonies, Astor would be tested and was able to recognize the composer of a passage before anyone else.

Music had found him, but he had not discovered it yet, because in an effort to stand out, he was the class buffoon, laughing and making others laugh. This would prove to be a lethal personality trait that later in life would gain him enemies more than his experiments with the tango status quo.

At age nine, there was a short-lived return to Mar del Plata, where he took his first bandoneon lessons from a friend of his father, Homero Pauloni and experienced once again the anguish of those who don’t belong and are made aware of that. He spoke English and he wore the clothes that his mother had bought him in New York. Those who saw him as a foreign child muttering pidgin Spanish made fun of him. His New York chutzpa, and his left jab punches put an end to the laughing in short time, but this again, was an omen of things to come. Piazzolla the fighter would land and take punches for most of his early manhood years in Buenos Aires. The Depression was hitting hard, so shortly afterward his father decided to return to New York.

Graduation day 1934 for Astor, with dad Vicente and mom Asunta Manetti

In the chapter, Self Portrait, Piazzolla indicates that he discovered music when he was eleven, when he heard a piano playing what later he found out to be Bach. The piano player, turned out to be Hungarian born Bela Wilda, a disciple of Rachmaninoff. Bela became his teacher but before that, Piazzolla had gotten his first notion about the bandoneon with an Argentine musician living in New York, before taking lessons during his short first return to Argentina. But it was Bela who made Piazzolla get his bandoneon out of the closet, and taught him how to play Bach on that instrument which was a double rarity in New York.

Although the Latin American community in the city was not too large, young Astor found himself the center of attraction as a child prodigy, which boosted his confidence and fueled his incipient arrogance. Soon, he played on the bandoneon anything from classics, Spanish music, Mexican songs and Argentine folk songs. When Gardel visited New York, his father sent Astor to Gardel’s hotel with a present as a token of respect from an old tanguero admirer. The Argentine crooner and matinee idol became fond of the streetwise Argentine kid with a command of the English language, and appointed him to be his guide around the city. When Gardel found out that Astor played the bandoneon, he got him a cameo appearance in his film El dia que me quieras, not before making fun of him because he played like a “gallego” and putting him under the supervision of Teri Tucci, who was conducting the orchestra.

Much has been said about the sequence of events that led to the tragic death of Gardel one year later, and the stroke of fate that kept Astor Piazzolla from joining Gardel on his tour and facing the same destiny. The truth is, that Piazzolla’s parents did not want the child (he was only thirteen) to leave home and the family at such a young age. It is doubtful that Piazzolla then, had any idea of what that experience meant or what influence may have exerted on him. He was too busy committing all kind of acts of aggression to hide his insecurities, and his fears of the unknown behind an image of toughness and transgression.

Although there is no credible evidence that he had any idea who Carlos Gardel was, or what his brief encounter with the Argentine singer in New York meant in the realm of his future career as a musician, there is no doubt that Piazzolla’s relationship with the tango started in New York, “having to listen to my chagrin, to those records that my dad had.”

When the Piazzollas of New York finally decided to move back to Argentina, Astor was a sixteen-year old, streetwise, red blooded New Yorker, a teenager with an penchant for pranks and an irreverent attitude for the new world he was facing. Although his nationality has never been questioned, as it is the case with Gardel, one could safely state that the Piazzolla that the world recognizes as one of the greatest musical genius of the twentieth century, was born in Argentina at the age of seventeen.

Mature as Piazzolla seemed to have been in musical terms, he lacked from a personal point of view the formative years that the musicians he encountered in his initial foray into the world of the tango, already had.
In the late 1930’s, the focal point of the tango night scene was the cabaret, a cosmetic front for the clandestine sex-for-money forays of the rich and powerful.

The period covering 1938-1950 in Piazzolla’s own account of his life shows a man who was bitter and vindictive at times, brutal in his evaluation of other musicians, full of ironies, contradictions, mordancy, self-inflicted denial, and irreverent arrogance.

Although there is plenty of evidence that tango was not what turned Astor Piazzolla on, a fact that he acknowledges at a later age, his own recollection indicates that as a virtuoso of the bandoneon, the world of tango seemed to be the only way to go, after he first came across Elvino Vardaro and Miguel Calo in Mar del Plata.

A new world was unfolding in front of his eyes, and he wanted to shock and impress everyone with his ability to play Mozart and a little Gershwin on an instrument which he was hearing being played in a totally different way by tango musicians.

He moved to Buenos Aires in 1938. Sharing a room in a run down boarding house, Astor soon found out that the city that was not an easy place to be for someone who, having grown up in one of the worst neighborhoods of New York City, had been pampered and protected by caring parents. From the onset, he rejected and despised the environment where bad orchestras played (tango) music he didn’t like, and the men and women who behaved in immoral ways. He showed his contempt by doing many wicked things and having fun at doing that.

Such sophomoric behavior is described in his own account about the time when he loosened the screws on Francisco Lauro’s bandoneon and telling him, before going onstage, that a customer had requested Loca, a tango in E minor in which he had to open out the instrument. “He (Lauro) started playing, and in the middle of the tune the screws went flying and the bandoneon came unhinged.” Piazzolla lasted three months with his first employer. He left because he could not stand that setting, and Lauro couldn’t stand him. Something similar would happen later with (Anibal) Troilo: “three times he wanted to fire me because of things I had done in the cabaret.”

Piazzolla spent five “beautiful” years in Troilo’s orchestra, from 1939 to 1944. It was another tango baptismal premonition that his tormented personality failed to recognize, like meeting Carlos Gardel in New York or discovering the Elvino Vardaro Sextet in Mar del Plata. Troilo was ten years his senior, and at twenty-eight he had earned his stripes growing up as a bandoneon child prodigy much as Piazzolla had, but he had matured under the tutelage of De Caro, Maffia and Vardaro, among many others musicians of the 1930’s generation. Piazzolla paid lip service many times throughout his life to Maffia, Troilo, and even Pugliese, but he never really understood how to respect them.

Playing with Troilo he made good money (approximately $240 a month. D’Arienzo, by comparison was paying the most, $300, but Piazzolla would have never joined that orchestra. He already had his personality and well-defined musical taste). That allowed him to get married to plastic art student Dede Wolf, rent an apartment, and continue his “serious” musical studies on the side. About these times, he recalls, “Between the anger that the cabaret world produced in me and the problems I had with certain musicians, my enthusiasm began to wane… Playing with Troilo did not seem to me the ultimate goal.”

It was during these times that Piazzolla had started studying with Alberto Ginastera and he would do his homework in dressing rooms, rehearsing with Hugo Baralis, Kicho and David Diaz, and sometimes when a piano was available, with Orlando Goñi. Troilo was not happy with the situation because “if I took my ideas to the orchestra it might undermine his style.” Gradually Piazzolla began to make arrangements for the orchestra, trying everything he was learning with Ginastera. Troilo became the censor of all his arrangements. Piazzolla would write down two hundred notes and Troilo would erase half of them. To make him mad, Piazzolla sometimes would use complicated chords.

Life in the orchestra was getting harder and harder and the practical jokes got out of hand. Piazzolla would find his bandoneon filled with garbage, his homework messed up. He would retaliate in kind. Cabarets were real whorehouses and what upset Piazzolla the most, was being dumped on. So, in 1944, being only twenty-three and fed up with Troilo’s crossing out his arrangements and the cabaret life, he quit the orchestra. The tango world was shocked. People said it was a betrayal. Troilo got very mad. In truth, Piazzolla just wanted to play his own music.

In retrospective, Piazzolla, listening to his early recordings, recognizes that there was an intention to change, but at the time it was not clear what he actually wanted. He found his true seam in 1951 when he wrote Para lucirse (To show off). But before that, he went to hell and back. Having left Troilo, he directed the orchestra of Francisco Fiorentino, who coincidentally, also had left Anibal Troilo. The attacks continued, the lack of understanding was greater, not just from the public who rejected Piazzolla’s audacity in tinkering with the tango, but also from Piazzolla himself, who couldn’t see that the rejection to his alien ideas tainted with foreign music concepts, was partially because jazz, for example, was a four letter word for the tango musicians at the time.

In 1946 he formed his first orchestra. It was a very modern orchestra for its time, but it had little commercial appeal. He introduced counterpoints, fugues, and new harmonic forms into the music. He had a small following of people who prefered to have a cup of coffee and listen. Because he wasn’t getting any offers from the radio, like every other orchestra director, he realized that things weren’t working out. In 1949 he put the bandoneon away, dissolved the orchestra, and quit the tango forever.

Although the memoirs are not exactly related in a chronological form, it is possible to rescue some insights in trying to explain the unexplainable about Astor Piazzolla and his tormented love affair with the tango. He acknowledges for example, that the people of Buenos Aires loved “that music” played by the older generation by the likes of Julio and Francisco De Caro, Juan Carlos Cobian, Pedro Maffia and Pedro Laurenz. He underscores Buenos Aires because “the tango scent exists right up to the city limits, perhaps a little beyond, but that’s where it ends. (Folklore pianist) Ariel Ramirez can play an irreproachable version of Comme Il Faut. (Folk singer) Mercedes Sosa can sing Los mareados very well. But they always said that although tango and folk music are two very authentic Argentine expressions, they cannot be played at the same time. You have to pick one or the other. The man from Buenos Aires is different from the one from (provinces) Salta, Tucuman, or Mendoza. I don’t say better or worse. I say different.” Perhaps as different as a man from New York?

A second reincarnation of Astor Piazzolla began in 1953. Since the demise of his first and only tango orchestra, he had kept busy writing several scores for films. With the premiere of his Buenos Aires Symphony in Buenos Aires, he won a cash award and a scholarship to study in France. He settled in Montmartre with his wife Dede and with little money, in a beautiful and unforgettable bohemian life. Tired and frustrated of his recent experiences with Troilo, the cabaret and his own orchestra, Piazzolla thought that his future was in classical music as a pianist and composer. At first he hid his past from teacher Nadia Boulanger, but as she failed to find any spirit in the works he had brought along, Piazzolla fessed up about his work with Troilo, his own orchestra, and the bandoneon hidden in a closet. Listening to Piazzolla play on the piano some of his vanguard tango compositions, Nadia Boulanger might have changed the history of the tango by declaring, “Here is the true Piazzolla – do not ever leave him.” That seemed to have been a great revelation in Piazzolla’s musical life.

In 1955 Piazzolla heard the Gerry Mulligan Octet in Paris, and as it had happened almost twenty years earlier with Vardaro in Mar del Plata, he felt an urge to imitate Mulligan’s concept, but featuring the best tango musicians in Buenos Aires.

A military coup had just ended Peron’s regime, broken the constitutional order and in the name of freedom had sent many innocent lives before the firing squad. The influence of the Golden Years was still omnipresent on the radio and in the movies. The Octeto Buenos Aires, the most revolutionary group in tango history made its appearance into that landscape. They were, Piazzolla and Leopoldo Federico (bandoneon), Atilio Stampone (piano), Enrique Mario Francini and Hugo Baralis (violin), Jose Bragato (cello), Juan Vasallo (bass), Horacio Malvicino (guitar). A star studded alignment which broke with conventional forms with such a shocking boldness that provoked reactions in perhaps the most disgraceful moment in the history of tango.

In The Penultimate Goodbye chapter, author Natalio Gorin describes it with a chilling impact, “(The Octeto) featured new rhytmic and sound effects, string counterpoint, a violin that sounded like a drum, the cello and the bass as low drums, formidable soloists, and an aggressive electric guitar improvising in most of the pieces… Some arrangements suggested disrespect… The hundred fans of the Octeto howled with pleasure wherever the group played… The Octeto Buenos Aires lasted only a year and a half… The rejection was to be expected, partially because of natural tendencies against anything new and because of traditional tango’s deep roots in the community.”

The real fraud was committed by the radio personalities who wouldn’t play the Octeto’s records, and by those who controlled the business of tango. In order to record, Piazzolla, who was already paying the musicians out of his own pocket, had to sign away all royalties. This is an area which Piazzolla acknowledges to Gorin, “The truth after many years, is that there was a dummy, me, who took the money out of my own pocket to pay most of the musicians while someone else made the profits. We are still in litigation… I made similar mistakes regarding (publishing) rights later on, I was duped many times, and in other instances I was naive.”

Impulsive and daring, in his mid-thirties, Piazzolla let his music be defined by a narrow minded generation of self-appointed protectors of the genre. His formative years in New York City perhaps played a role in his failure to grasp the deep rooted major social changes that were taking place in front of his own eyes. Rather than staying and fighting, he, who at the time of the recording of his memoirs “owned up to his own atrocities,” opted for yet another flight of fancy.

Like Nonino Piazzolla had done some thirty years earlier, Astor returned to New York City in 1958. He was practically broke, although the recordings of the Octeto were filling the pockets of the producers who had allowed him to record in exchange for giving away the royalties. He had the ambition of working as a film music composer in Hollywood because of a contact he had made in Buenos Aires. The deal fell through.
He even considered applying for a job as a translator in a bank, but the opportunity to back up a singer allowed him to put together The Jazz Tango Quintet. For those who drool at Piazzolla’s tinkering with musical genres (and even have the audacity of describing their grotesque parodies to that music as tango dancing), read what Astor had to say about that, “It was a monstrosity featuring bandoneon, electric guitar, vibraphone, piano, and bass. It had a certain success, but I still consider it a sin… In the music there was a kernel of Piazzolla, but there were certain things that went against my principles. I did it to eat.”

“With that in mind,” he continues, “I agreed to do a show with Juan Carlos Copes, Maria Nieves and a ballet directed by Ana Itelman. What they did have was class, but I was not very happy with the music.”
It was during a performance with Copes in Puerto Rico in 1959 that Astor received the devastating news of his father’s death.

Pressed by Gorin, Piazzolla names Adios Nonino as his number one composition piece. He has challenged himself to write a better one but he couldn’t. The composition has universal recognition because of a melody which plays off a very strong rhythmic foundation; then it changes key and ends with glorious and sad resolution.
Piazzolla recounts that he wrote Adios Nonino in less than an hour secluded in a room of his New York apartment. “On the trip from the airport to the house on 92nd Street, the image of Nonino appeared to me on every wall in New York. In that piece I left all the memories I had of my dad.”

If Adios Nonino was his best composition according to Piazzolla, the last thing that the Quinteto Buenos Aires recorded, La camorra, was the best recording in Piazzolla’s history.
In spite of his condemnation of the Jazz Tango Quintet, Piazzolla returned to Buenos Aires and in 1960 he formed his quintessential Quinteto. Not being able to find a suitable vibraphone player, he added a violin, and an extraordinary period of bohemia ensued. Playing at small dives in front of a few dozen coffee drinking fans, Piazzolla (bandoneon, Osvaldo Manzi (piano), Antonio Agri (violin), Kicho Diaz (bass) and Oscar Lopez Ruiz (electric guitar), sometimes got paid, sometimes they didn’t.

From a whorehouse in the Northern province of Tucuman to Philharmonic Hall in New York, the celebrated Quinteto received ovations and rejections, playing everywhere, out of conviction, and without too many choices.
Anger and happiness filled Piazzolla’s days in the decade of the 1960’s, but a major chapter in the music of Buenos Aires was being recorded in a body of work that many to this day have not realized its existence, refuse to recognize its existence, or prefer to continue using Piazzolla’s later incursions into classical music as a pretext for not understanding what is tango and what is not.

Whether Astor Piazzolla was a New Yorker who felt at home in Argentina, or an Argentinian who felt at home in New York, the fact is that intellectually he towered like King Kong over the Empire State of the Buenos Aires tango establishment. Pugliese acknowledged that Piazzolla forced all of them to study. Jorge Luis Borges at first considered Piazzolla’s cultural sophistication worthy of a partnership which would soon short circuit when Borges would claim that Piazzolla did not understand tango, and Piazzolla responded that Borges was deaf.

The final reincarnation of Astor Piazzolla seems to begin with the Concierto en el Philharmonic Hall de New York in 1965. Not willing to take anymore slights from critics everywhere, Piazzolla gradually stopped playing music written by others.

In the same year, he recorded El Tango: Jorge Luis Borges – Astor Piazzolla, for the label Polydor. With poems by Borges and original music by Piazzolla, this is considered the best record in the history of popular song in Argentina. Polydor also released La historia del tango: La guardia vieja, and La historia del tango: Epoca romantica, in 1967. Listening to these recordings today still requires some tango maturity, which at the time of its release did not exist in a troubled and confused Buenos Aires.

The sociopolitical reasons for the state of mind of Argentina in the 1960’s are beyond the scope of this review, but the partnership of Astor Piazzolla with poet Horacio Ferrer offers a poignant testimony in Maria de Buenos Aires, 1968 and Balada para un loco, 1969.

Throughout the 1970’s and 1980’s, Piazzolla begun to get critical acclaim around the world, and an overdue recognition in Argentina as new generations heard him for the first time.

Astor Piazzolla, A Memoir by Natalio Gorin is a post mortem beacon that shines a warm light of fairness over Astor Piazzola’s definitive truth. The only one that counts: his own. Natalio Gorin personifies the best attributes of a friend. He tells the story from his heart and from his mind providing a historical perspective of a great artist from a human point of view.

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Hoy no quise ir a clases de las 11 porque tenia sueño (7am COI… no da el cuerpo para más, menos para prender y apagar ordenador) y busque la mejor forma de invertir mis dos horas de clases. Pensé dormir; pero fui a ver a Daniela, ella tiene mucha razón al decir que la abandono por una computadora, y así es porqué estuve navegando por la web, en esta combi llamada Internet donde entra cualquiera y hay sitio para todos “Al fondo entran cuatro, acomódense”. Revise lo blog de mis amigos, me entere del jale de Aldo, que  Moto sigue sin actualizar su página como hace dos meses y Gallito con sus post que me cuestan entender pero me divierten.

Después me puse a buscar en google nose que cosa pero termine leyendo el blog de Monique Pardo, vi los ultimitos ampay de Magaly, que sólo había leído en las portadas de Popular. Después de encuentro cercano del tercer tipo me dio un poco de curiosidad que había más aya del blog de la Dra Monique y me puse a buscar otros blogs de los personajes de la farándula, solo encontré el de Mario Poggi. El tiempo se me acabo; pero seguiré buscando a ver que encuentro, si alguien encuentra algo me pasa la voz.

Hace unos años tuve una amiga de aventuras y locuras, de las cuales no hablaré aquí. Traigo a la memoria la amistad de Betty por una canción que escuché el sábado pasado: El día que me quieras, de Carlos Gardel.

Betty y yo siempre estábamos juntas los fines de semana. Nos íbamos a andar en el carro, a volar en parapente, a recorrer centros comerciales, a comer y comer hasta reventar. Siempre nos quedábamos en su casa finca en La Estrella. Allá nos emborrachábamos, seguíamos comiendo, pasábamos horas en el baño turco y luego nos tostábamos al sol.

De esa casa recuerdo mucho la rocola, cómplice eterna de nuestras malentonadas canciones en plena borrachera. Hubo una noche en que escuchamos una y otra vez, como veinte veces y gracias a mí: El día que me quieras. Esa era la canción que sonaba al digitar el 4 y la E.

Siempre me han gustado los tangos, mucho más desde que leí Aire de tango de Manuel Mejía Vallejo. Esa canción de Gardel me gusta muchísimo. Me recuerda el primer programa de radio que hice en la Emisora Universidad de Antioquia y que fue, precisamente, sobre tangos. Aunque abrimos el programa con Lejos de ti siempre tuve en mi cabeza durante la emisión El día que me quieras. Amores y desamores de ese entonces siempre estuvieron acompañados de esa canción.

La letra me eleva, me hace soñar. Por momentos, aunque describen situaciones diferentes, me recuerda el poema Nocturno iii de José Asunción Silva, uno de mis preferidos y por lo cual se hace aún más especial.

En la canción de Gardel, la música y la letra se mezclan en perfecta armonía. Cada vez que la oigo me envuelvo en cada nota hasta sentir que desaparezco, que me voy del mundo real a mi mundo fantástico.

A pesar de los años, no olvido la combinación 4E y creo que nunca lo haré por todos los recuerdos que revive de aquella época. Cada vez que escucho la canción aprovecho y le cuento la historia al que esté al lado. Como lo hice el sábado pasado en La Boa, cantina constrictor, donde se escuchan muy bien los tangos.

Desde ese día vengo con Carlos Gardel pegado y, sin duda, estará en mi cabeza por varios días.

Aquí está el enlace para ver y escuchar al Zorzal Criollo cantando El día que me quieras.

Puerto Rico tende la mano a Buenos Aires in questo nuovo disco uscito a settembre per mano del buon Jerry Rivera (per la EMI Televisa Music de Puerto Rico), e devo dire che, in un panorama mondiale in cui anche gli ultimi baluardi della musica caribeña sembrano ormai decisamente orientati solo al salsaton, una produzione come questa in cui si rivisitano gli exitos del mitico tanguero in chiave salsa, bachata, chacha, bolero e danson, è veramente una bella sorpresa. Sembra avere avuto anche un’ottima risposta di vendite. E’ un’operazione veramente lodevole, in cui un eccellente cantante racconta un pezzo di storia del latino-america attraversando tutti i generi musicali del Caribe.

Eccovi una bellissima versione di El Día Que Me Quieras, su ritmo di danson.

01 Caminito
02 Cuesta Abajo
03 Por Una Cabeza
04 Melodía De Arrabal
05 El Día Que Me Quieras
06 Yita Yira
07 Volver
08 Rubias De New York
09 A Media Luz
10 La Comparsita

Nel 2008 uscirà una produzione USA-Spagna sulla vita del più grande cantante di Tango della storia. Si intitolerà Dare To Love Me (in spagnolo El Dia Que Me Quieras) e racconterà la storia d’amore tra Gardel e La Ritana nella Buenos Aires degli anni 20. La cosa un po’ particolare è che ad interpretare Gardel sarà Raoul Bova, che io sono sicuro saprà fare un ottimo lavoro se lo spessore della sceneggiatura glielo permetterà; l’amata invece sarà l’ex teenager Lindsay Lohan, la quale fino ad ora non ha brillato per profondità né artistica né personale, ma si sa, si cresce; tra gli altri interpreti del film ci saranno Jordi Mollà (che io ricordo bene in Blow al fianco di Johnny Depp) e la splendida Paz Vega (davvero splendida in Spanglish). Un altro buon pezzo d’Italia in questo film sarà la fotografia del premio Oscar Vittorio Storaro. Trovo ovvio che la sceneggiatura ruoterà sulla storia d’amore controversa tra Gardel e la maîtresse de La Boca ; spero però che dal film possa emergere anche tutto il lato artistico-storico di questa figura mitica e di tutto quel periodo d’oro della bella Argentina: di sicuro le musiche curate da Luis Enríquez Bacalov paiono essere un’ottima garanzia di qualità artistica così come anche la presenza di uno storico del teatro tra gli scrittori. Speriamo bene J

Por una cabeza, de un noble potrillo
que justo en la raya afloja al llegar,
y que al regresar parece decir:
No olvidés, hermano, vos sabés, no hay que jugar.
Por una cabeza, metejón de un día
de aquella coqueta y burlona mujer,
que al jurar sonriendo el amor que está mintiendo,
quema en una hoguera todo mi querer.

Por una cabeza, todas las locuras.
Su boca que besa, borra la tristeza,calma la amargura.
Por una cabeza, si ella me olvida
qué importa perderme mil veces la vida,para qué vivir.

Cuántos desengaños, por una cabeza.
Yo jugué mil veces, no vuelvo a insistir.
Pero si un mirar me hiere al pasar,
sus labios de fuego otra vez quiero besar.
Basta de carreras, se acabó la timba.
¡Un final reñido ya no vuelvo a ver!
Pero si algún pingo llega a ser fija el domingo,
yo me juego entero. ¡Qué le voy a hacer..!