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Articles and Interviews
Building A Library III: The Essential Compact Tango
(from Mike Lavocah)
In this issue: mission impossible. I pare down a collection of several hundred CDs to just six. How do we do this? It’s easy: we rehabilitate one of the most abused adjectives of the last decade: essential. Quite simply, we ask ourselves, can we call this a collection of tango music if it doesn’t have this within it? This brought me to eight artists, but then on top of this I decided only to recommend a disc today if there is one that is clearly better than all the others. So even a lot of my own favourites got eliminated but, come, see what’s left:
Juan D’Arienzo
Todo D’Arienzo de FM Tango para usted Vol. 1 (Instrumental)
BMG ECD 50609
D’Arienzo has to be first because, were it not for him, it’s certain that you and I would not be aficionados of tango today. Gardel had made tango socially acceptable but it had become a musician’s pursuit, an intellectual endeavour. With his irresistible compás, Juan D’Arienzo quite literally propelled five million people to their feet, bringing about a revolution in the social and cultural fabric of his country. It’s an astonishing achievement.
D’Arienzo’s early sides from the late 1930s have tremendous drive and foundation but it’s his material from the 1940s and early 1950s, where we hear him beginning to experiment with concepts that would later become familiar as the show tango sound, which is most exciting and familiar. This disc – one of the few FM Tango discs still available - captures D’Arienzo at his most exciting and danceable, avoiding the excesses of his later output.
Amazingly, it is still the only one with his seminal 1951 recording of La Cumparsita. Also included are a number of early recordings such as El Flete, Felicia and Pampa, as well as later masterpieces such as Loca and Mas Grande Que Nunca. Each and every one of the twenty tracks is a masterpiece. If you are going to Argentina, look out for this disc in disguise on the new “RCA Club” label – it’s the same disc with a different cover.
Pugliese
Ausencia
EMI 8 35886 2
If D’Arienzo excites us, then it is Pugliese who moves us, who makes us tremble with emotion. Pugliese took the musical invention of De Caro and clothed it in humanity. The recordings he gave us so generously stand today as testament to a great human being and one of the greatest musical geniuses of the twentieth century.
There are a lot of Pugliese discs available, but look closely and most have drawbacks: the transfers are poor, or there’s no balance between the instrumentals and the sung tangos, or between the early and late periods, or you don’t get La Yumba. Ausencia, a commemorative album issued by EMI upon his death in 1995, suffers from none of these defects. It is the only one to give a good representation of his entire œuvre. Chanel’s Rondando Tu Esquina, Morán’s Pasionál, Maciel’s Cascabelito – all his great singers are here. The great late instrumentals, too: Nochero Soy, Emancipación, La Mariposa. And finally, his defining work, La Yumba. Other discs claim to have it, but this is the only one with the 1946 recording.
There is a lot of great Pugliese which is not on this disc, but there is nothing on this disc which is not great Pugliese. Pura emoción.
Carlos Di Sarli
Todo Di Sarli de FM Tango para usted – Vol. 1 (Instrumental)
BMG 74321 16108 2
With this disc FM Tango collected all the great late instrumentals of Di Sarli’s late period, tangos which we adore for their spaciousness, for the sweeping sensuality of their strings, for the compás stretched further than others had thought possible. This collection on FM Tango has never been matched. The transfers are so pristine, he sounds as though he’s right there in the room. Unmissable.
Troilo
Obra Completa en RCA Vol. 1
BMG 74321 49726 2
Bit of a last minute entry, this! I mean, an album of Troilo’s was always assured a place in our library, and it was bound to be one with his early sides with Fiorentino, for here is the singer fully taking his place within the orchestra for the first time, here is Troilo’s brilliant sound. But I bet you all thought it was going to be El Bandoneon Volume 1, didn’t you? Well, so did I. But then I bought the complete works on RCA which are in chronological order. Disc 1 has everything that the El Bandoneon disc has but the transfers are cleaner, and we get more tracks too, amongst them the milonga Mano Brava. In general it is well nigh impossible to pick out particular tracks, as every one of these cuts is a classic – this is musical history – but my own favourites would be Tabernero, Cachirulo and the gut-wrenching Te Aconsejo Que Me Olvides (I Advise You To Forget Me). The BMG disc is also a far better platform for extending your collection in future, should you wish to do so. There is the small matter of the price – yes, it’s more expensive. But well worth it. If you can’t get hold of it or can’t stretch to it, the El Bandoneon disc will be fine: but don’t be without Troilo.
Carlos Gardel
The King Of Tango
EMI Hemisphere 7243 8 23505 2
For this disc, EMI shipped the 78s over to England where they were remastered at Abbey Road. The results are outstanding and the selections unimpeachable. Here is a voice the like of which we will never hear again singing his greatest interpretations. Just El Dia Que Me Quieras and Mi Buenos Aires Querido alone would make the disc worthwhile, but every one of the twenty tracks here is a pleasure – no, more than that: this is true greatness on a shiny little plastic disc. Extraordinary.
Bianco & Bachicha
Original Tangos
EPM 995302
What’s this doing here? Eduardo Bianco & Juan Deambroggio “Bachicha” played out their professional lives in Europe and both are unknown in Argentina. There is a strong case for regarding their tango as inauthentic: no Argentinian band ever played like this.
So what is different about this music, what are its special characteristics? Just listen: it is stripped back, laid bare, denuded, like a lone tree in a winter graveyard. The compás grinds on inexorably like a funeral march. For the dancer there is no possibility whatever to make figures. It is the incarnation of melancholy. Call it melodrama if you like, for me it transcends that: this is tango that has the courage to be miserable, without cloaking it in a beautiful arrangement. It is tango that looks death in the face.
In fact, this is music that could only ever have been made outside Argentina which, despite all that talk about their emotional nature, is a country that remains firmly in denial over the reality of death.
Bianco & Bachicha’s professional collaboration took place, where else, in Paris in the years 1926 – 1928. Neither would ever make music of this intensity again. The masters are of excellent quality for the period and the transfers are exceptionally clean. The disc is also a bargain at low price.
D’Agostino / Vargas
BMG Tango Argentino 74321 41291 2
The tango of Los Dos Angeles, Angel D’Agostino and singer Angel Vargas, whilst little played in Europe, is enduringly popular in Argentina. Here is a tango that manages to be both simple and elegant at the same time. Musically rich, subtle, passionate, but never ostentatious or pompous, this is marvellous tango. The lyrical voice of Angel Vargas, nicknamed El Ruiseñor (the nightingale) found his perfect foil in the understated arrangements of D’Agostino: theirs was the one of the greatest binomials of the 1940s. The qualities of this music mean that one never tires of it and whilst it’s most definitely a dance music it’s also perfect for listening to at home or in the car.
This disc, volume one of a super four volume set on Tango Argentino, makes a very good replacement for volume one of the two FM Tango discs, now sadly deleted.
Well, this concludes our three part series on building a library. I’m sure I’ve omitted a great deal, but I hope there has not been too much that was misleading or inaccurate. Inevitably this final list has been a personal choice. The tango historian might perhaps have included more of the singers, and I’m sure that Bianco & Bachicha will not be on any Argentinian’s list. Many dancers will also be asking about the omission of the great dance romantic orchestras of the middle 1940s such as Caló, Demare and De Angelis. And that’s not to mention Tanturi, who is only omitted because I couldn’t find a single disc that was really the one to have. For my own part, though, I’m quite happy, after the work of the past three articles, to see what remains: a list of seven discs which really run the whole gamut of musical and emotional expression within that great art form known as tango.
It was quite a surprise to me to see which labels made it on to my own essentials list. Despite the undoubted qualities of the European El Bandoneón label they don’t get a single mention in my top seven. Five of these discs are Argentinian, one is French, and one is English. There’s a moral in their somewhere…
I leave you with the lyric for Bianco & Bachicha’s Angustia (Anguish). Never has a tango been so honest, and so unremittingly bleak. Hear, and weep.
