By the early 1930s, gas lighting in the streets was already becoming a thing of the past. Electric power was rolling in to replace it, with its much brighter and safer illumination… and very often with a taller and less romantic design. The old streetlights, the gaslamps of yesterday, stood in their old places like retired sentinels, fixtures of a disappearing past, symbols of nostalgia.
Homero Expósito’s lyrics for “Farol,” written with his beautiful impressionism, address one of these streetlights as a central image. Portraying an old poor neighborhood (arrabal) of the outskirts, the song seems to take place in a settled quiet, like something lost in time; in the chorus, the speaker emerges into the gaslight, and anchors the atmosphere of dingy transience in a single personality.
The recording linked here—Pugliese’s orchestra with Roberto Chanel up front—is perhaps the one most familiar to dancers, and for good reason: with its somber, almost spare treatment, it conveys the mood of the lyrics perfectly. It was not uncommon for singers to change some wording to customize the lyrics, and that is the case here, with Chanel altering a line in the chorus, as noted below. (Incidentally, Chanel’s recordings do reflect this practice more often than most; perhaps the Pugliese orchestra, where every player was an arranger, extended its artistic vision to the words as well as the notes.) The outskirts poet mentioned in the second verse, Evaristo Carriego (1883-1912), had a powerful impact on early tangos.
Streetlamp
(Tr. Jake Spatz)
YouTube: Roberto Chanel (orq. Osvaldo Pugliese)
A neighborhood with houses
Where the tin goes reflecting their sorrows…
A neighborhood of people,
Where the legends get recounted into tangos…
And somewhere far off, a clock that tolls
The stroke of two in the morning…
A neighborhood of workers,
A corner of memories and a streetlamp…
Streetlamp,
The things that pass before us…
Streetlamp,
It ain’t the same way it was…
The shadow
Now retreats before your glimmer,
And it leaves me all the sadder
With my alleyway the dimmer…
Your hue,
With the tango in its duster, [*]
Losing brightness, losing luster,
Made a cross out of you…
Out there the skies are all buzzing
With the dreams of a million workers…
Out there the winds are a-murmur
With Carriego’s most common-man verses…
And when out there, afar off, tolls
The stroke of two in the morning,
The neighborhood while dreaming
Seems repeating to the lantern on the post…
Farol (1943)
Music: Virgilio Expósito
Lyrics: Homero Expósito
Un arrabal con casas
que reflejan su dolor de lata…
Un arrabal humano
con leyendas que se cantan como tangos…
Y allá un reloj que lejos da
las dos de la mañana…
Un arrabal obrero,
una esquina de recuerdos y un farol…
Farol,
las cosas que ahora se ven…
Farol,
ya no es lo mismo que ayer…
La sombra,
hoy se escapa a tu mirada,
y me deja más tristona
la mitad de mi cortada.
Tu luz,
con el tango en el bolsillo
fue perdiendo luz y brillo
y es una cruz…
Allí conversa el cielo
con los sueños de un millón de obreros…
Allí murmura el viento
los poemas populares de Carriego,
y cuando allá a lo lejos dan
las dos de la mañana,
el arrabal parece
que se duerme repitiéndole al farol…
[*] Lit., with the tango in its pocket. Roberto Chanel sings instead: “con olor a cigarillo” (with a cigarette’s aroma).