Viewing entries tagged
Homero Manzi
Homero Manzi brought to tango lyrics a certain genius for scene painting and portraiture, giving a realness of place and a sense of tender nostalgia to his songs. Among his greatest creations is this number, “Barrio de tango,” which evokes the old neighborhood of Pompeya…
The Argentine journalist and author Julio Nudler wrote glowingly of the poetic quality with which Homero Manzi enlarged the tango world. In one summary of the lyricist’s career, he singled out this tango “Fuimos”…
The countrified milonga “Campo afuera” belongs to that small hit-squad of songs that expresses a sense of vengeance after leave-taking—the bad breakup songs, as I like to imagine them…
Homero Manzi’s special touch turned the conventional themes of tango lyrics into a certain new magic. His gift was, in a sense, for rewriting, or recasting earlier tangos into new images, and in this haunted tango he draws on “Griseta” as well as “Los mareados” and a hundred other booze-laden songs as his sources.
Homero Manzi brought to tango lyrics a certain genius for scene painting and portraiture, giving a realness of place and a sense of tender nostalgia to his songs. Among his greatest creations is this number, “Barrio de tango,” which evokes the old neighborhood of Pompeya…
Penned in 1911 by the budding pianist and composer Rosita Melo (who was just fourteen), “Desde el alma” was a hit just at the dawn of there being such a thing. It circulated in the days before modern copyright had been established, and won its composer attention as she advanced through her studies and early performing career.
“Malena” is the mythical portrait of a tango singer, swirling with legends and teeming with shadows. Were these evocative lines from the great Homero Manzi meant to immortalize a real woman who bared her soul in the spotlight on stage? Or do they weave a new myth out of the tango’s haunting ghosts?
This 1942 hit from Lucio Demare and Homero Manzi (the duo behind “Malena”) evokes the ports of Buenos Aires, and Dock Sud in particular, where the Riachuelo flows down banks that in former days were lined with the city’s slaughterhouses.
