Luis Angel Munoz Zuniga
Western Daily Special
Carlos Gardel and tango were valuable references for the writers of the Latin American Boom: Julio Cortázar, Jorge Luis Borges and Ernesto Sábato. Even for Colombian writers such as Manuel Mejía Vallejo (Aire de tango) and Fernando Cruz Kronfly (La caravana de Gardel).
And there was no shortage of notable essayists who investigated its social context: Carlos Zubillaga (Carlos Gardel), Daniel Vidart (El tango y su mundo), Andrés Carretero (Tango witness social), Juan José Sebreli (Buenos Aires: daily life and alienation), Andrés Vergara (History of the suburb).
The record labels, when launching the acetates, did not neglect the design of the covers where they invited specialists, such as Hernán Restrepo Duque, to review the albums with academic notes.
There is no bar, cafeteria or tavern, which does not enliven the place with portraits of Gardel and photographs of typical orchestras. Those places seem like temples of worship to Gardel, where the bohemians hear that those who serve them announce it with erudition and they very attentively listen to those lunfarda lyrics.
The tango had its historical origins in the social context of the conventillo, where first they dance it and then listen to the narrative songs about the malevaje.
Juan José Sebreli critically described the Morocho del Abasto: “Gardel transformed the tango into an international romance and changed forever his close-fitting compadre clothes and the scarf around his neck for the starched bib, the tailcoat and the plush top hat. His luxurious clothes, his new air of a good boy and his friendship with the European nobles, far from separating him from the marginals from whom he had come, brought him even closer”.
Medellin, the mecca
The controversies about the nationality and the name of the universal singer are still not clarified: some assert that his name was Charles Gardés and that he was born in 1890 in Toulouse, France; others that he was Argentine and, not lacking, those who claimed that Carlos Gardel had been born in Uruguay.
What is certain and indisputable is that Carlos Gardel died in Medellín, Colombia, on June 24, 1935, after the plane he was traveling in crashed.
If La Guajira is the epicenter of vallenato, Ibagué of Colombian music and Santiago de Cali of salsa, Medellín will always be the mecca of tango.
Although his mortal remains, after spending six months in Colombia, were repatriated to the pantheon of artists in the La Chacarita cemetery in Buenos Aires, Argentina, the fans of the “Morocho del Abasto”, the “Mago”, the “Juglar Río de la Plata” They will continue to pray to him in the holy field of San Pedro in Medellín.
The sounds of the accordions that, together with the cajas and the guacharacas, accompany the high-pitched voices of the minstrels singing their Caribbean stories will not be extinguished and, in Medellín, the bandoneón, an ascending family instrument, will sound between the piano and the violins, accompanying the voices of the complaints of the suburb.
tenement dance
The tango was a rhythm that was the son of the milonga and the candombe, which in its origins was only danced in the tenements of the River Plate on both banks or tenement houses. Later, lyrics were added until it became the social song, of popular protest and testimonial par excellence that was born in the suburbs. The first tangos that Carlos Gardel sang were only accompanied by José Razzano’s guitar. The term arrabal –explains Andrés Vergara Aguirre- has been associated with the disorderly growth of the city.
In the case of tango, the suburb initially replaces the expression “shore”, with which the people of Buenos Aires alluded to those places that were at the ends of the city, on the border with the plain”. The lyrics of the tangos are composed with the lunfardo language. Typical product of a flood culture, -explains Alfonso Lessa- lunfardo was born and grew up next to the two capitals of the River Plate, Buenos Aires and Montevideo.
Used by “handsome” and “malevos” at the end of the 19th century. For that reason the tango was censored and prohibited. At first it was danced between male couples, because society women were outlawed. The French Academy approved and adopted it.
literary visions
“Now some friends have left me a victrola and some Gardel records. Immediately it is understood that Gardel must be listened to on the victrola, with all the unimaginable distortion and loss; his voice comes out of her as the town knew it that could not hear it in person, as it came out of hallways and rooms in the year twenty-four or twenty-five. Gardel-Razzano, then: The Cordobesa, The Toad and the Weasel, From My Land. And also his voice alone, his, high and full of breaks, with the metallic guitars crackling in the background of the speakers, green and pink: My sad night, The glass of oblivion, El taita del arrabal ”(Julio Cortázar 1953 ). “The payadores and milongueros before him had hummed almost in a low voice, with an intonation that oscillated between the sung and the spoken; Carlos Gardel was perhaps the first to abandon that reluctance and sing with all his voice, he was also the first to deliberately undertake the pathetic. With the man dead, the enduring voice continues to sing and move. That Gardel! Every day he sings better. (Jorge Luis Borges 1976). “The protagonists of tangos seem like those creatures of Dostoevsky who have just made a painful descent into hell.” (Ernesto Sabato 2001).