Viewing entries in
1940s
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…
Fans of the song “Sin palabras” have long speculated about the personal story behind the lyrics, ascribing to E. S. Discépolo all sorts of fears that his companion Tania was having an affair. Perhaps because the song works so well, or perhaps because the tango in general deals with such raw emotions, we see similar speculations arise with many numbers that were, in fact, written to order for the screen.
One of the few tangos to present race as a theme is this gem of a song by Horacio Sanguinetti, whose lyrics portrayed the black experience in Buenos Aires alongside his other preferred themes, the sea…
Just as the lyrics for “Charlemos” bring the telephone into the world of song, “Si tú quisieras” revolves around the metaphor of photographs. Luis Rubistein, who penned the words for both tangos…
While the tango “Canta, pajarito” is not among the best works of lyricist Oscar Rubens, it has won a lot of fans on the dance floor, being popular with dancers as well as DJs…
Songs can come from just about anywhere when they’re in high demand, and “Como dos extraños” offers an interesting case in point…
The tangos of Homero Expósito strike a special balance in the songbook, achieving the highest measure of poetic quality while remaining firmly grounded in the genre.
If you know this song well on the dance floor, Carlos Bahr’s lyrics might come as a surprise: for such a tragic sounding strain, they are pretty positive!
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 tango lyrics of Horacio Sanguinetti have a particular combination of qualities, which distill all the features and conventions of the romantic tango into the poetic capsule of song…
The first lady of tango Libertad Lamarque sings this tangazo in the 1943 film El fin de la noche (The End of the Night, dir. Alberto de Zavalía). The movie is an anti-Nazi film, set in occupied Paris…
Some tangos achieve fame by their influence on the genre, and some win their stature by their power to move us on the dance floor. Among the latter, we can securely count this gripping 1944 number “Tú, el cielo y tú,” by longtime Di Sarli collaborator Héctor Marcó.
Since her starring role in the 1930 film Madreselva, Libertad Lamarque had been the first lady of tango on stage and screen, her roles casting her image as the anti-elitist heroine, the darling of the people. When Juan Perón came to power in 1946…
Among the songs I remember learning early and hearing often on the dance floor, this 1943 tango “Adiós, te vas” fills up the background of the milongas alongside so many others, and yet it stands out purely by its excellence.
The great lyricist Enrique Cadícamo seemingly had every style at his fingertips, and by the 1940s his songbook was already becoming a resource for more material.
One of the most stirring visions of the Buenos Aires landscape to emerge during the tango’s Golden Age appears in Homero Expósito’s 1942 song “Tristezas de la calle Corrientes.” The lyrics show him at the height of his poetic powers, as he depicts the city’s most vibrant thoroughfare—calle Corrientes, which for years had been one of the tango world’s iconic streets.
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.
José María Contursi hit his full stride in the early 1940s, and a tango like “En esta tarde gris” shows how he had become the Petrarch of the tango songbook, establishing romantic anguish as the theme of the decade.
Songs of the sea and the shipping trade figure prominently in the tango songbook, being such a defining feature of the port city of Buenos Aires. And among the many maritime tangos we find “Tristeza marina,” whose music and words come together to form a true gem of the song, one of the finest in the genre.
That transitory hour when the night recedes before the first gray light of the morning, known well to those among us who are no strangers to insomnia, is called la madrugada in Spanish, and it features in many tangos as the setting of vague emotions—haunting regret, helpless loss, or a general aimlessness.
