Songs can come from just about anywhere when they’re in high demand, and “Como dos extraños” offers an interesting case in point. Bandleader and bandoneon virtuoso Pedro Laurenz handed the tune to lyricist José María Contursi, who was already becoming known as a proponent of the new romantic style of tangos that came to define the 1940s—but Contursi didn’t draw on his own experience for this number. His inspiration was the sad experience of a cabaret waiter at the famed club Marabú.
The story goes back to a night in 1938 at Marabú, where Troilo’s band was the house orchestra, and Contursi, soon to coauthor a number of hits for them, was a regular at the tables. A server was sharing his ordeal with the lyricist: he had fallen in love with a pretty girl who worked there, and the two began seeing each other. Both, it turned out, were from Córdoba. One night there barged in another from their hometown, a tough guy who walked up and grabbed her by the hair, and reaching into his coat, brandished—a marriage license. The server kept his cool and didn’t spill a drop from his tray, but inside he was devastated. At his friends’ encouragement, he told Contursi, he later went home to Córdoba to find the girl, only to find her working as a shopkeeper, a frumpy a distant of her previous self.
Some have been impressed that Contursi made a memorable tango out of such street-level material, but that is no surprise at all: tango lyrics had always belonged to this world. The true marvel is how Contursi handled this premise, and showed his genius for songwriting. Stripping away every external detail that would have fit nicely in a song—the cabaret, the abusive brute, the hand-waving page of the law—he foregrounds solely the lover’s predicament, and his stunning moment of disillusion. What the server related to him was the plot of a real-life “Milonguita”; what Contursi penned was the new romantic tango of the ’40s.
Like a Couple of Strangers
(Tr. Jake Spatz)
YouTube: Juan Carlos Casas (orq. Pedro Laurenz)
Romántica Milonguera (filmed at club Marabú)
I took alarm at life alone
And felt a sudden fear of dying far from you…
I all but burst in tears to know
The world would see it through,
And chuckle at my life of woe!
And then my heart implored me go
And seek you out another time to win your care…
My little heart was pleading so,
And I sought you everywhere,
Believing you would save my soul…
And standing before you I see
It just seems we’re a couple of strangers…
A lesson at last clear to me:
How the years pass, and everything changes!
It’s shocking finding out how our faith
And all our hopes disappear…
Forgive me a tear, after all…
My old memories have done me wrong!
It paled the light, it dimmed the sun
To hear you talking on with such a cooling tone…
Our love was really special once,
And now it hurts to own
That all is over, all is done.
How wrong it was to rendezvous,
So I could carry off my lonely heart destroyed!
A thousand ghosts were there with you
To chuckle over me,
The hours of that time that flew…
Como dos extraños (1940)
Music: Pedro Laurenz
Lyrics: José María Contursi
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Me acobardó la soledad
y el miedo enorme de morir lejos de ti…
¡Qué ganas tuve de llorar
sintiendo junto a mí
la burla de la realidad!
Y el corazón me suplicó
que te buscara y que le diera tu querer…
Me lo pedía el corazón
y entonces te busqué
creyéndote mi salvación…
Y ahora que estoy frente a ti
parecemos, ya ves, dos extraños…
Lección que por fin aprendí:
¡cómo cambian las cosas los años!
Angustia de saber muertas ya
la ilusión y la fe…
Perdón si me ves lagrimear…
¡Los recuerdos me han hecho mal!
Palideció la luz del sol
al escucharte fríamente conversar…
Fue tan distinto nuestro amor
y duele comprobar
que todo, todo terminó.
¡Qué gran error volverte a ver
para llevarme destrozado el corazón!
Son mil fantasmas, al volver
burlándose de mí,
las horas de ese muerto ayer…