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…
This waltz is among the most beloved ones to emerge from that unrepeatable decade of the ’40s, and it marks a special moment in the careers of its creators…
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…
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.
Enrique Cadícamo’s 1930 tango “Anclao en París” was a hit for Carlos Gardel (one of whose regular guitarists, Guillermo Barbieri, supplied the music). The song delves into the Bohemian themes of the early tangos…
This second set of lyrics for “El choclo” was penned in 1930 by singer Juan Carlos Marambio Catán. He wrote them at the request of Irene Villoldo, the sister of the tune’s composer Ángel Villoldo…
The original lyrics of “El choclo” are one of the more amusing curiosities in the history of the tango. We only know about this set of words because Ángel Villoldo, who wrote the tune around 1903, recorded himself singing them while in Paris in the year 1912…
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.
Taking its place in the tradition between “Milonguita” and “Griseta,” two formative tangos of the 1920s, Cadícamo’s “Madame Ivonne” adds another name to the memorable list of tragic young women portrayed in the tango songbook.
Dreaming is a recurring theme in many tango waltzes of the 1940s (such as “Soñar y nada más”), and this song from 1942 is more the rule than the exception. Penned by Oscar Rubens…
Playwright José González Castillo wrote his 1923 tango “Sobre el pucho” for a contest sponsored by the “Tango” cigarette company, the first competition of its kind to require tangos with lyrics.
Manuel Romero wrote a one-act titled El bailarín del cabaret in 1922 for a comic actor named César Ratti, who was the head of the Apolo theater in Buenos Aires. The ephemeral show did prove to hold one major attraction, but it was destined to showcase a different talent: the gifted fair-haired singer Ignacio Corsini, who performed the tango “Patotero sentimental” onstage as part of the action.
Songs like “Milonga querida” can be as much a portrait of the world as a story of two lovers chafing against circumstance, and it was perhaps for this quality that Lito Bayardo’s lyrics are enjoyed today.
The stirring tango “Soledad” features in the 1934 film El Tango en Broadway (directed by Louis J. Gasnier), a movie shot in New York, starring Carlos Gardel and scripted by lyricist Alfredo Le Pera.
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.
The Golden Age of the tango entered a late phase in the 1950s. The six-year period of censorship was now behind it, and the hot new recording technology of magnetic tape was driving the major orchestras and singers to revisit their hits of the previous decades…
Carlos Lenzi’s now famous lyrics for the 1925 tango “A media luz” rode a catchy tune to a hit status, and its staying power has proven the song a classic through the decades.
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.