THE MASTERS OF THE OLD GUARD

PLAYLIST

1. EL CHOCLO, Sexteto Tango
2. EL PORTEÑITO, Los Tubatango
3. EL ESQUINAZO, Los muchachos de antes/Sexteto Mayor
4. EL ENTRERRIANO, Osvaldo Pugliese
5. DON JUAN, Anibal Troilo
6. RODRIGUEZ PEÑA, Donato Raciatti

SYNOPSIS

More than one hundred years have passed since the suburbs of Buenos Aires rocked the cradle of the music that would become synonymous of a nostalgic and sentimental Argentina. With her back bathed by the river with the color of a lion and her chest breathing the untamed air of the Pampas, Buenos Aires , the Silver Queen gave birth to an illegitimate son to whom at first she rejected to maintain her social standing.

Fruit of a forbidden love, of the passion of the man of the outskirts with a city that didn’t belong to him, the tango was rocked in its cradle by malevos and cotorras, men of doubtful morality and women of the underworld.

But that son grew up, matured, and not only forgave its mother city but loved her, idolized her and honored her making her famous around the world, commanding respect and admiration from old and young, rich and poor.

Who educated and nursed that rejected hybrid offspring? Who taught him about life’s chances and misfortunes and the grief and discontent that accompanies pain?

They were the men who saw in the tango their own origins. That in spite of its insolent lyrics and verses and its questionable and blurred origin, went about molding its personality. The men who taught it about eighth and sixty-fourth notes. The men who gave it the 2×4 rhythm that resounded in cabarets and ballrooms of the beginning of the 20th century in Buenos Aires and eventually in the whole world.

They were the priests, the apostles, the masters of the Old Guard.

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SYMPHONY OF THE SUBURB

PLAYLIST

1. BUENOS AIRES COLINA CHATA
2. SINFONIA DE ARRABAL, Francisco Canaro with Ernesto Fama
3. TIEMPOS VIEJOS
4. NINO BIEN, Francisco Canaro with Tita Merello
5. EL CACHAFAZ, Carlos Di Sarli
6. TINTA ROJA, Anibal Troilo with Francisco Fiorentino

SYNOPSIS

The name Argentina derives from a Latin translation of the Spanish word silver, used by Spanish poets from the Renaissance on. What attracted the Spaniards to the new world in the Southern hemisphere was the lure of the precious metal or of an empire that competed with the Aztecs or the Incas. They found neither because the name of the region had been wrongly chosen. Its only workable, exploitable resource was the active indigenous, native population.

Shortly after the second foundation of Buenos Aires, the population had become a society different from the ones from the interior. The founders gathered a few dozens of docile native indigenous and a small amount of slaves bought from Portuguese merchants, to organize livestock farming and the export of furs. Since cattle activities required less work, they were quickly preferred over agriculture. Nevertheless the hopes for prosperity ended in frustration and many inhabitants of Buenos Aires lived in extreme hardship and poverty like poor devils. Without a shirt on their backs. Their toes showing through their shoes. Living in straw and adobe cabins. Using cattle fur to cover their bodies.

Three centuries later, the honorable descendants of the founders continued looking for a solution to populate the virgin land that like a rebellious maid dared to be conquered with manliness audacity as well as loyalty and respect. Useless by heritage to work the land by themselves, the Patricians and oligarchs continued dreaming about presenting to their British masters an Argentina worthy of becoming a gem of the English crown. Once again they resorted to immigration thinking that the millenarian cultures of Europe rooted in old towns would transfer to a land populated, as they described, by barbarians and savages.

Those who arrived were as “barbarians” as those that were already there. That is how the ruling elite called those who came with a desire to adopt the new motherland. Who wanted a right to work, free education and the opportunity to build a prosperous future for their children and the children of their children.

The literature and symphonies that the Europeans were supposed to infuse in the new Argentina at the end of the 19th century ended up being a humble example of artistic expression that was born out of the necessity of the men of Buenos Aires to express their uprooting, their solitude, and their pain by the rejection they experienced. To express their nostalgia for a mother country that belonged to them. To be accepted as one accepts the prodigal son.

The symphony that was born out of the hybrid population of Criollos, Tanos, Gallegos, Judios, and the mixture of native and foreign rhythms is the symphony that today generates respect and admiration for the Argentinean brand around the world. The symphony of the suburb.

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THE ITALIANS

PLAYLIST

1. CANZONETA, Jorge Falcon
2. ESTRELLA, Sexteto Tango with Raul Funes
3. LA PAYANCA, Los muchachos de antes
4. EL ENTRERRIANO, Anibal Troilo
5. RACING CLUB, Alfredo Gobbi
6. LA MOROCHA, Blanca Mooney

SYNOPSIS

This is how celebrated poet Carlos de la Pua observed the drama of the immigration at the beginning of the twentieth century,
They came from Italy, they were just twenty years old, carrying their entire fortune in their luggage.
And without respite, between disappointments, they grew old without any advantage.
Their lips never open with reproach. Always consequent, always toiling, they spent the days, they spent the nights, the old man at the forge, the old woman washing.
They had children The sons were malicious. Their daughters, conceited.
The boys are drunk, spurts, assassins. And the women are streetwalkers and dwellers of the night. And poor old parents kept working. They never showed weakness for the daily chores.
But sometimes, when she’s alone, hand washing the laundry, the tears burn her eyes.

It’s not easy to explain to which extent the Creoles Italianated themselves or the Italians went native. In 1895 49% of the population were of Italian origin. That number diminished to 40% by1914.

The Italian contribution to the tango is of first magnitude. To execute tangos, to contribute to its
development, and to invent it, was a way to make a living. But they also demonstrated a desire to assimilate into the country, its customs, its rites. However, in spite of the desire to integrate as soon as possible to the new reality, their nostalgia was very strong.

And often in the nights of the tenements, and in spite of being ridiculed by the compadritos on the patio, the tano returned to his mandolin, to his accordion and intoned songs of the old one country to which he could only go back in his dreams.

The old guard of the tango was heavily influenced by Italians and sons of Italians.
Enrique Santos Discepolo was the son of a Neapolitan. Vicente Greco, Ernesto Ponzio, Augusto Berto, Roberto Firpo, Juan Maglio Pacho, Samuel Castriota, Francisco Lomuto, Francisco Canaro, Sebastian Piana and the brothers Francisco and Julio De Caro were all children of Italians.

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UNCERTAIN ORIGINS

PLAYLIST

1. ESTAMPA DEL 900, Romeo Gavioli
2. MALA JUNTA, Osvaldo Pugliese
3. MILONGA DEL 900, Emilio Ramil
4. ZAPATITOS DE RASO, Oscar Larroca
5. EL ESQUINAZO, Juan Cambareri
6. ALMA EN PENA, Anselmo Aieta
7. COMO ABRAZAO A UN RENCOR, Horacio Salgan with Angel Diaz

SYNOPSIS

The origins of the tango music and dance are uncertain. There are no documents or witnesses to help reconstruct its true birth. However there is enough historical material that allows us to imagine how must have been the city of Buenos Aires sixty years after the Declaration of Independence.

A fierce fight between the provinces and the port city had spilled Argentine blood on the battlefields. In 1873, the National Army, fresh from exterminating the insurgency in the provinces, introduced the Remington rifle to its arsenal, and used it efficiently to exterminate the indian population that had been limiting the expansion of the Buenos Aires landowners.

In spite of great opposition, Buenos Aires was declared the capital city of Argentina. Economically dependent from Great Britain for its exports of agriculatural products, politically ruled by an elite culturally dominated by France, and with the majority of its labor force resulting from immigration, the Buenos Aires society set the frame were the tango was going to be inserted.

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HOMENAJE A HOMERO MANZI

	1907 – CENTENARY OF HIS BIRTH – 2007

PLAYLIST – All lyrics written by Homero Manzi

1. A HOMERO, Anibal Troilo with Roberto Goyeneche
2. MANO BLANCA, Alberto Castillo
3. BARRIO DE TANGO, Anibal Troilo with Roberto Goyeneche
4. TAL VEZ SERA TU VOZ, Anibal Troilo with Alberto Marino
5. FUIMOS, Anibal Troilo with Alberto Marino
6. DESPUES, Anibal Troilo with Alberto Marino
7. MILONGA TRISTE, Julio Sosa
8. ROPA BLANCA, Anibal Troilo with Alberto Marino
9. NINGUNA, Anibal Troilo with Roberto Rufino
10. FRUTA AMARGA, Anibal Troilo with Alberto Marino
11. SUR, Anibal Troilo with Edmundo Rivero
12. EL ULTIMO ORGANITO, Anibal Troilo with Edmundo Rivero

SYNOPSIS

In the beginning the tango was music, happy music that people danced to. The environmental surroundings of the outskirts of the city began adding refrains that later became words. Words that mixed the language of the thieves and crooks, the lunfardo, with the romantic experiences of the pimps and their prostitutes.

Homero Manzi deserves the honor of being the first to convert the words of the tangos in poetry. Poetry describing nostalgic neighborhood postcards, like the low rise houses with ivy clinging to the bare walls and people seeing through he eyes of a child from the windows of the mythical religious boarding school in the neighborhood of Pompeya. In other words, his infancy’s lost paradise in a remote city where the days were definitely better. A watercolor of nights and suburban moons.

Manzi invented simple metaphors , strictly visual, using a common artifice of the epoch, the enumeration or description of elements as an integral part of painting a scenery.

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A REFLECTION OF THE COUNTRY

This is the first broadcast of the series EL TANGO CUENTA SU HISTORIA, half hour segments dedicated to highlight the history of the tango through its music. You don’t need to understand Spanish to enjoy it, but those who are fluent in the language of the tango will find the program entertaining and educational.

PLAYLIST

1. EL CHOCLO, Sexteto Mayor with Alba Solis
2. LA CANCION DE BUENOS AIRES, Osvaldo Pugliese with Abel Cordoba
3. PATOTERO SENTIMENTAL, Carlos Di Sarli with Mario Pomar
4. MALEVAJE, Carlos Gardel
5. JUAN PORTEñO, Edmundo Rivero
6. FUEYE, Anibal Troilo
7. CAMBALACHE, Julio Sosa

SYNOPSIS

For over a century, the tango has been the reflection of the country who gave it its origin. The music of tango was the result of a mixture of Creole and imported rhythms. The interracial blending of Italian, Spaniards, Jews and Creoles generated a type of Argentine man whose musical mirror is the tango. That new Argentino inherited two major attributes from the millions of immigrants that arrived to Buenos Aires in less than one hundred years: resentment and sadness. Thus, Discepolo’s description of the tango as a sad thought that people dance.

To deny the citizenship of the tango is to deny to existence of Buenos Aires. Being a hybrid product of the outskirts of the fledging city, Buenos Aires itself was the product of massive foreign population since the 16th century.

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