Latin America and the Tango

8/6/2019 Latin America and the Tango

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Argentine Graphic Arts and the Rise of the TangoPatrick FrankUniversity of Kansas

M ost histories of the Argentine tango inevitably mention two importantfigures from the music 's early years: Juan de Dios Filiberto (1885-1964)and Enrique Santos Discepolo (1901-1951). Filiberto is still regardedfondly in La Boca, the portside neighborhood where he grew up. During the1930s and 40s, he had one of the most popular orchestras in the eity of BuenosAires, and he also composed Caminito, one of the most beloved tangos. EnriqueSantos Discepolo (or Discepolin as he is called to distinguish him from his alsofamous older brother Armando) wrote some of the most important tango poetry.Generally regarded as "the philosopher of the tango ," in the words of one chroni-cler, Discepolin was "the greatest tango lyrieist that has ever lived" (Lara !39).'Both performers left important marks on the tango, Filiberto with his music andDiscepolin with his verse. Moreover, they collaborated on the 1929 tango, Malevaje(The Gang).An exploration of their origins reveals that both were intellectually nourished inthe same soeialist-anarchist cradle. Bolh were regular attendees, from about 1918until the middle of the next decade, at the studio of Guillermo Faeio Hebequer,painter and graphic artist who duhhed his eohort Los Artistas del Pueblo (Frank55). These artists depicted workers and the poor in a realistic style in hundreds ofpaintings and prints, and generally showed their work in union halls, socialist librar-ies, and outdoor workers' fairs. Rejecting hoth academic art and modem trends,the artists made works that pinpointed social problem s and urged workers to unite.One of the group reealled their commitment to activist art: "We raised our barri-

eades for self-defense, and for attack against the nullity of Art for Art's Sake andthe formalisms of the day" (Vigo 3). This group met almost daily lo diseuss artissues, ereate, and socialize. In the words of printmaker and mem ber Jose Arato:At Facio's house on Rioja Street, that's where we would meet: lAbraham]Vigo, [Agustin] Riganelli, IBenito] Quinquela, [Adolfo] Bellocq, [Juan deDios] Fiilberto . . . We would rest at the end of a hard day and unwind forafew hours. Filiberto wrote tangos; sometimes we would all go outside togive serenades, with a harmonium, along Rioja and Brasil streets . . . Thepeople would gather, applaud, and enjoy themselves (Barreda 6).


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he looked up to Facio who was twelve years his senior. His recollections are moreexplicit about the group 's impact on him:It was the authentic bohemia of Murgerwithout all that literature^thatwe lived and sutTered in Buenos Aires. And what a bohemia! . . . It was awonderful lime of youthful dreams and unweaned hopes recently bom.We argued, because we didn't have anything else to do. and because it wasa beautiful way to spend time, when time was all we had to spend. Wetalked about everything, beginning with Baudelaire and maybe ending witha discussion of the best way to cook the Steak a la Portuguese which wewould never get to e a t . . . 1 myself perhaps picked up there a melody or averse for songs which took form much later (E. S. Discepolo 55-6).

Thus, Filiberto and D iscepolin attested to the group's importance in their earlyformation, and as we look in more detail at the mutual interactions between them,we will find many instances of inspiration and philosophical connection . On theother hand Ju s t as tango music enriched the lives of the group , the artist m emberssometimes times depicted the world of the tango in their works. Examining theseearly tango creators against this artistic environment will yield new informationabout one of the original moments of Latin A merican social realist art; it will alsoshow the leftist political roots of the composer and the lyricist; finally , it will showin clear relief some ways in which musicians and visual artists diverged in theirattitudes toward popular culture in general and the tango in particular.A m ostly self-taught musician, Filiberto came to the tango through a circuitousroute. Active in anarch ist labor unions, he helped organize a strike of his fellowstevedores in 1907. He was a close friend of Santiago Stagnaro, an artist whoseactivity in the anarchist Boilermakers' Union led to a brief forced exile inMontevideo.- Filiberto formed, in 1908, the musical group Orfeon del Futuro,which gave outdoor spontaneous serenades that featured anarchist songs. (Helater recalled that at many of these outdoor concerts, one of his confederateswould enter the homes of the listeners and steal food for the musicians.) Thegroup's repertoire avoided tangos, because the urgency of the leftist causes thatunited them kept them from playing music that they apparently regarded as frivo-lous. "I was opposed to tango in those days . . . [1 asked myself) Me? W rite atango? It seemed im possible" (Filiberto 48). In 1909, he met painter BenitoQuinquela Martin, beginning a lifelong friendship. As his career shifted away fromday labor towards musical performance, the pressure of public opinion led him tocompose his first tango in 1915, and the Breyer publishing house began to issue hiswork as sheet music. On one 1916 visit to the printing shop to demonstrate a song,he met the young lithographer Adolfo B elloeq, who would also soon join the Facio


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remnatits of artists rejected by the National Salon. Facio's studio was a naturalgathering place; he had come from a middle-class background, and regularly helddown a jo b so that he could pay the rent. The artists invited the poor, the home-less, and the insane into the studio and paid them a few cents to model. All of thesurviving memoirs of the group's members include mention of such models, andalso of endless philosophical debates that sometimes grew rauco us. Facio laterrecalled the vision that united them:Our sense of the artist's dutylet's call it thatto the moment, of ourfeeling of the necessity to show the world a little of all the misery and painthat were so widespread and that we faithfully collected, sometimes to ourgreat sadness, because we would have preferred to sing over crying: all ofthis strongly united us. We represented, in the middle of the slick and bonbourgeois environment around us, an isolated and revolutionary group . . .living in the middle ofthe ghetto, in intimate contact with suffering people,making their U-ials and protests our very own (Facio 36).

Each artist ofthe group developed h is own repertoire of subjects and styles.Adolfo Bellocq made realist prints that both exposed social problem s and exploredvarious printmaking media. Arato's prints depict tenderly and sympathetically theinhabitants of poor neighborhoods. Vigo frequently featured workers taking directaction to improve their lot through meetings, speeches, and uprisings.Facio m ade etchings and lithographs in the hope of encouraging resistance andrevolt among the working classes. His works often expressed profound disap-pointment about the present coupled with almost messianic hope for a future work-ers' state. The clearest expression of his philosophy came in his print series TuHistoria, Co mpanero (Your Story, Com rade), a series of twe lve captioned litho-graphs that tell a story that ranges from cynicism about working-class life to fer-vent hope for the future. The early prints bitterly lament the fate of workers:

What is life? A wo rker's life? Pain and sweat. Pain and sickness . . . Oneday and another from the day you are bom until you die. Because as soonas you come into the world, tragedy is your fate, and your parents greetyour arrival like a punishment, with tears. A child is not a child. It is onemore mouth to feed (Facio 1932).Later works in the series show repression of a strike, followed by armedresista nce . Th e opp ressio n of the first generation o f w orke rs giv es wa y to therevolt ofa later one:

And like a tide, the sons ofthe sons march toward the conquest ofthe


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Filiberto brought to this group a commitment to anarchism, a working-elassbackground, and a certain delight in bohemian pranks. His incorporation into thestudio appears to have gone smoothly. When he married in 1918, the group stageda mock religious ceremony in the studio for him and his new wife. Vigo served as"priest" and w ore a huge red false nose. Arato was the "aeolyte " dressed in amonk's costume topped with a harlequin's bonnet. Facio and Riganelli were "god-parents" in the costume of funeral drivers, and Quinquela was "witnes s," dressedin a brightly colored Roman toga and battle helmet. Vigo used a long-handledpaintbrush to "ble ss" the new couple (Filiberto 56).Filiberto also used his skill with the harmonium to enliven the group's publicpresence. Sculptor Agustin Riganelli recalled some of tlie group's lighter moments

in the streets: "We initiated a new type of serenade. In these outings F ilibertowent along, carrying his harmonium and playing his famous tangos. The policewould stop us, but in the end we convinced them that this was very beautifulm u s i e . . . " (Riganelli n.p.). Facio said that at times the group took cover from thepolice by chanting political slogans for the recently elected UCR party of HipcilitoYrigoyen: "On many occasions the noise became quite loud and drew the attentionof policemen; when they complained to us we would begin to shout 'Lon g Live theRadical Party! Long Live Dr. Yrigoyen!' and the police disappeared as if by m agic"(Facio 29). Filiberto continued to compose, formed a band, and rode the wave ofincreasing interest in the tango to become a celebrity. Such was his fame that hewas mentioned in a 1920 musical, in which two of the characters indulge in anargument of the relative merits of classical m usic and the tango. When one men-tions Beethoven and Chopin, the other gives a riposte that puts Filiberto at thehead of a list of that mom ent's favored tango performers:

That gaggle of foreigners that you just named is a iittie scary, becau se theyhave long hair and difficult names. But Filiberto, Firpo, Canaro, andG al im be rti ... these are the kings of the dance floor, the princes of rhythm,the harons of m u si c !. .. W hat do you want with your skeletons? (Casadevall113).

Yet Filiberto's doubts about the tango persisted for some years. Traces of hisyouthful leftism are not discernib le in his tunes. It is difficult to say in any casehow one could infuse tango m usic with anarchist fervor. Lyrics could do the job,hut he never regarded himself as a poet. His best-known composition, Caminito(Little Alley), was inspired by longing for the old neighborhood of La Boca wherehe grew up. The lyric, by Gabino Coria, traffics in the comm on tango them e ofgentle nostalgia:


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This tatigo became so popular that civic authorities in La Boca later sprucedup a diagonal alley in the center of the neighborhood and named it Caminito.Even as he performed them to ever-increasing acclaim, Filiberto said, his tangos"gave me material benefits at tbe price of moral satisfaction" (F iliberto 51).

Figure 1: Sheet m usic cover by Adolfo Belloeq.The works that the artists produced on the tango point in contradictory direc-tions. Some participate in the spread and domestication of the tango, while othersdepict the dance as the heady and sensous pastim e of undesirables. The first printson the tango by a mem ber of Los A rtistas del Pueblo were used on the sheet m usiccovers that Adolfo Belloeq (1899-1976) made for the Breyer publishing house

(Fig. I). In the hum orous sheet called El A natomista (The Anatomist), a singerwearing a laboratory apron accompanies himself by seeming lo stmm a rib cage. A


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with other kinds of dance music. The event was repeated annually until the policein 1918 forbade further installments, because the medical studen ts at those dances"engaged in rivalries in their urge to carry out the most grotesque and shockingpran ks," according to Francisco Canaro, who also played there. He wrote:There were cases in which they cut the hands off cadavers in the morgue,dressed the bodies in sheets like ghosts, and after attaching the stitT frozenhands to sticks, passed them in front of the women's faces, with the resultsthat one could imagine . . . And they played other tricks of that sort, exhib-iting other human organs which they took from hospital research laborato-ries (Canaro 71).

The musicians who played at these events joined to some extent in their spirit.Canaro composed a tango for one year's event called Matasano (Killer of theHealthy). This was a macabre inversion of the word Matasiete, a slang term forhero (literally, killer of seven). Vicente Greco, who later took over from Canaro 'sband the musical duties for the event, composed f/v^natom/s/t; in 1916. Bellocq,who was still working in the print shop before joining Los Artistas del Pueblo thefollowing year, got in the spirit as well. His lithograph cover shows a well-dressedhospital orderly making foul use of medieal materia l. A skeleton on the left isapparently too revolted to join the fun.If Vicente Greeo (1888-1924) played along with the pranks of the medicalstudents, he was also a very important figure in the "rise" of the tango out of thearrabales (the poor districts then in the suburbs) and toward the center of town.Indeed, his career tracks rather closely the transfonnation of the tango from for-bidden rite to popular craze. He began his musical career as a teenager, p layingguitar in whorehouses in the barrio San C ristobal, south of downtown (Assun^ao282). By 1906 he was playing in clubs in the still-raucous neighborhood of LaBoca with a quintet consisting of two bandoneons, two violins, and a flute. In1910 he took this group to the Cafe El Estribo, in a downtown location sevenblocks from the Congress building. By that year the tango was already well on theway to public acceptance. Most musical shows by then included tango numbers inwhich an appropriately picturesque pickpocket strutted with a well-muscled balle-rina (Casadevall 153). Lyrics were eventually added at these show s, and fromthere the tango spread easily to cafes, sound recordings, and later to radio. In 1913there was a three-day tango festival at the Palace Theater on Corrientes Street inthe heart of the theater district; a son-in-law of one of Argentina's former presi-dents was master of ceremonies (Collier 61). Greco's group, riding the wave of

public acceptance, made some of the first recordings of tango music in either late1911 or early 1912. By this time he began calling his group La Orquesta T ipica


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Figure 2: Illustration by A doljb Bellocq for thenovel Historia de Arrabal.

in the upper-class district of Palerm o. So when the physicians hired him for their1916 dance, they were employing one ofthe leading orchestras ofthe day, and onethat pioneered instrumental arrangements that later became the norm.The production of sheet music in the years surrounding World War 1 played animportant role in the domestication o fth e tango, since a piano arrangement suit-ably denatured the suggestive aspects ofthe dance by changing the instrumetita-tion. The tango thus entered, "with firm gait and overpowering rhythm into theresistant bastions ofthe middle class, into its very homes . . . The tango finallypenetrated those precincts by m eans of sheet m usic" (Assun^ao 214). Along withsheet music came tango teachers. A magazine writer in 1921 noted ironically thatmany tango dancers who perfected tbeir steps in the sultry clubs ofthe arrabalwere now making career changes as the tango penetrated the upper social circles


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one, today dispenses ins tru ct ion. .. Families that before would never have greetedhim on the street now wait for him to display his moves in their living rooms"(Gerchunoff67).In order to successfully navigate the social joumey, and land safely on themusic stand of a middle-class piano, a successful tango sheet needed to have acatchy illustration, something that Bellocq provided on many occasions. Bellocqmade other prints that depicted tango m usic, but these showed none of the tango'sevolving role in popular taste. Rather they were rooted in its days as an arrabaldance or an accompaniment to prostitution. When M anuel Galvez wrote his natu-ralist novel Historia de Arrabal about crime and low life in the poor districts ofBuenos Aires, he recruited Belloeq to illustrate it with seventy zine relief plates.Galvez is generally regarded as the ancestor of the Boedo School of socially com-

mitted writers, a group that had close ties to Los Artistas del Pueblo. The novelcontained a tango scene, and Bellocq's illustration (Fig. 2) depicted a courtyardbeneath a treilis with a lamp at the right and double doors in the background wall.The couples dance close together, their bodies curved, and their backs arched asthey describe sinuous steps. Two bearded and iong-haired musicians providemusical accompaniment on bandoneon and guitar.Although the novel was set in contemporary times, the seene depicted herecould have taken place as many as twenty years earlier, when the tango w as still inits infancy and very much a forbidden pastime. The costumes and instruments ofthe musicians suggest as much. Neighborhood dances in less savory districts werealleged to include suggestive tango dancing^a prelude to sexual prom iscuity. ASpanish v isitor to Buenos Aires in 1915 succinctly summarized the attitude under-lying the tango 's proscription among the middle and upper classes: "The tango ," hewrote, "is a very aneient dan ce. The only difference is that what was onee dancedlying down is now danced standing up" (Gil de Oto 20). The novel's description ofevents that Bellocq illustrated also encapsulates upper-class suspicions of the dance:

This was sensuous music of the ghetto, of the unwashed, a mix of inso-lence and crudity, ofstiflhess and voluptuousness, of the worldly sadnessand coarse pleasure of the whorehouse; music that spoke in the argot ofthe jail, and made one think of scenes of low life . . . And to its heady andtwisted airs, to its wafting sound which intoxicated like strong wine andmade the senses hazy, everyone on the patio danced. The couples m ovedwith heavy slowness. They stooped, they stood, tliey twisted from side toside, they stepped stitTly upright, and at the end they paused to lean for-ward and then back in grotesque silhouettes, every man glued to his partner(Galvez 65).The tango w as probably still danced this way in some areas of the city when


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ized by sensuous abandon in an atmosphere of sexual danger. It was common inmany outdoor dances to prohibit the more sensual tango moves on pain of expul-sion. One sueh decorous event was photographed as early as 1908 {Fig. 3). Herewe see couples dancing much more m odestly, smiles on some of their faces, chil-dren lurking underfoot. Organizers of dances such as this commonly forbade twotypes of tango steps in particular; the corte (cut), a suggestive pause accompaniedby a tug at the partner, and the quebrada (break), a quick step between the partn er'slegs. This photograph shows not the heady and decadent atmosphere suggested inthe novel, but rather an upbeat neighborhood get-together. In those more re-stricted environments, the tango evolved from a visual demonstration of sexualprowess to a tnie social dance.

Figure 3: Outdoor dance, ca. 1908.Another way in which the tango spread in poor neighborhoods, and from thereto more aflluent districts, was by means of the organito or hand organ. Usuallyrented by new immigrants or handicapped persons who could hold no other job,the organito was stocked with cy linders that contained a selection of "milongas,polkas, mazurkas, habaneras, and tangos, the latter increasing in popularity untilthey came to dominate over the other types" (Assun^ao 225). Organito playersstrolled through neighborhoods, generally accompanied by singing children, col-


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As he passes slowly, a poor old manFills the town with music:A concert like broken glassesFrom his organito at sunset.Turning over the crank.The limping man rambles behind.With his hard wooden legMarking the time of a tango.

Organitos first appeared in Buenos Ait^s in the 1870s, well before the tangodid, but soon the tango took its place in the repertoire of the mechatiical instru-ments. By the time this tango was composed, organitos were probably beginning adecline ushered in by the advent of the radio.

Figure 4: Jose Arato woodcul included in shortstory collection b y Leonidas Barletta


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and "El Organillero" was published in a eolleetion for which Arato made severalsocial realist woodcut illustrations. According to the story, a peglegged veteran ,wounded in the Chaco War, came to Buenos Aires to visit a cousin. He bought anorganito, signing a contract for monthly payments that he was supposed to earn ashe played. He had difficulty making the paym ents tintil he convinced a young boynamed Jaime to drop out of school and accompany him on his outings, singingalong with the instrument and begging after each song. A rato's illustration capturesthe shabby nobility o fthe poor performers: The player dominates the compositionat the viewer's eye level, his hand cranking the ofi-eenter instrument. He isflanked by singing children who stand before a conventillo (tenement house) in apoor neighborhood whose other low-lying buildings are suggested in the upper left.The vertical lines ofa sunset behind the protago nist's head lend a nostalgic glow.

The leader ofthe Los Artistas del Pueblo studio, Guillermo Facio Hebequer(1889-1935), also made tango dancing the subject of at least one lithograph(Fig. 5). Here we see not outdoor neighborhood leisure but an altogether moredecadent interior scene. The couple at the right dances sinuously, the curves oftheir bodies suggesting slow, writhing m otion. One dancer (presumably a male)clutches the buttocks oft he other. The luminous glow of this region contrastsstrongly with the deep shadows nearer the edges ofthe composition. In the centerforeground, another figure in similarly clingy clothing displays backside anatomy.The guitarist at the left edge has a distorted countenance; at the right lower com er,a patron leans drunkenly at a table. The lack ofa horizon line, the curving bodiesin the work, and its sepulchral, uneven lighting suggest the deepest sorts of deca-dence associated with the tango.The work is not dated, but it most likely was created around 1928, after theartist gave up etching and devoted himself to lithography. This work is part ofaseries that he made called La Mala Vida (The Wretched Life) which dealt withcriminals and vagabonds. Connec ting the tango with that life signals at least aprofound ambivalence about the music he heard and even participated in as theartists serenaded the neighborhood. Clearly, Facio was suspicious ofthe tango as aphenomenon of popular culture that (he feared) enervated workers and distractedthem from the more important struggles for economic equality. At one point, hetold Diseepolin, paraphrasing Marx, "The tango is the opiate ofthe masses" (Pujol179). In this he echoed the concerns of many Socialist Party leaders: "In thesecond half of that decade, they were disconcerted by the rise of new popularmanifestations such as movies, the musical theater, vaudeville, the circus, andother spectacles under the rubric of 'div ers ion s"' (Barrancos 102). The rise ofpopular culture seemed to work against the Socialists' and anarchists' efforts to"better" the workers by exposing them to higher culture and by keeping theirminds fixed on the economic strugg le. The Argentine Socialist Party was very


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Figure 5: Lithograph by Guillermo Facio Hebequer.in those years seemed to neutralize its efforts. Facio was their frequent collabora-tor, lecturing at Socialist clubs and exhibiting his works in their libraries, but bothfought a losing battle against a rising tide that included the tango. The domestica-tion of this dance, and its transformation into one of the "div ers ions" that theSocialists feared, was a counterproductive trend that Facio opposed. Hence, hepictured the tango in a retrospective fashion, relocating it to the world of "low life"that gave it birth, and emphasizing its association with sexual passion, brothels, anddrunkenness.The legacy of Los Artistas del Pueblo as they confronted the tango is thusdeeply contradictory. Even as they enjoyed hearing, playing, and singing the tangoin their studio and in the streets, and even as Belloeq contributed to its populariza-tion through his earlier work in the sheet music shop, when the artists depicted thetango in their works, they did so in a way that left no doubt about its earlierassociation with passion and prostitution. While they may have enjoyed the mu-


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it a personal stamp of strong social comment that was unique for that period. TheFacio studio nurtured him for ten important years ending when the poet was in hismiddle twenties, and deeply influenced his view of life: "The philosophy that playsout in my tangos," he wrote, "I learned in the streets, in life, in those bohemianyears of my youth" (E. S. Discepolo 15). In his lyrics, the art of social protestbursts into song.Bom to a musical family hut orphaned at age nine, he lived with upper-classrelatives until 1915, when he moved with his much older brother Armando to ahouse near Faeio's studio. As he worked in acting job s obtained through h isbro ther's connections, he accompanied the artists on their musical rambles, and ontheir expeditions to the city 's worst neighborhoods in search of models. Diseepolinwrote some early plays (unpublished) that depicted the more colorful aspects ofthe bohem ian life he knew in the Facio studio. After he moved away from theimmediate circle in 1925, his creations began to show the influence ofthe sharpsocial critique and unsparing look at life that was also a feature of Los Artistas delPueb lo. He collaborated with his brother Armando on the 1925 sbort play ElOrganito, which dealt with a poor family's trials. Under the dominance of atyrannical father, they live by begging and by playing an old and dilapidated handorgan that gives the play its name. At one point, the father delivers a cynical rantabout why he thinks people give money:

They give a handout, ostentatiously pulling a coin out of their pocket, butnot in order to help meif so, I would fall over dead - but in order to feelgood about themselves, to wash away the sins they 've committed, in hopesthat Christ will see and take note in his book! And I don't thank them, be-cause if charity really existed . . . there would not be any beggars in theworld (A. Discepolo 73).This short play also foreshadowed Discepolin's later tango lyrics in their bitterdenunciation of a cynical world.His first tango, Biscochito (The Little Biscuit) served as a number in a 1924musical ahout a girl from the arrabal who reforms herself and marries out ofpoverty. But soon a far more sarcastic social vision asserted itself in Discepo lin'swriting. In the 1926 tango ^_Que Vachache? (What will you do?), the poet heapsscorn on an unnamed heartless person who has enjoyed m onetary success. Thepoetry is quite slangy and difficult to translate:

What you've got to do is horde up your cash.Sell oiT your soul, divide your heart for a raffle.Throw out what little decency you have lef\.For money, money, money, and evermore money.


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The musical soon failed, but Discepolin's song became widely known thefollowing year, when Carlos Gardel recorded it, and it began to be played on theradio. The song is a bitter denunciation of materialism during a time when theArgen tine economy was the most prosperous in Latin A merica. It shares with theprints of Los Artistas del Pueblo a strong distrust of business culture and a strongdenunciation o f social ills. At that time, only socialists and anarchists held suchcontrary opinions on the state of the Argentine economy. Juan Jose Arevalo, thefuturepresidentofG uatemala, pa ida visit in 1927 to Socialist Party leader AlfredoPalacios and noted in his mem oirs Palac ios' scornful dismissal of Argentina's al-ieged prosperity and democracy:

President Alvear nostalgic for his Paris; laissez-faire economic policiesand an ethic of "get rich however you can;" a Parliament that closes itseyes before unnecessary and suspicious weapons purchases; a press com-placent in the face of fiscal irregularities . . . politically defenseless work-ers, a bloated bureaucracy, inertia, malaise (Arevalo 52).Discepolin's tango shares in this spirit of cold-eyed disenchantm ent. He collabo-rated with Fil ibertoo no ne work that was premiered in a tango festival in 1928, butthe collaboration seemed to serve only to highlight the distance that had grownbetween the two in the intervening years. Malevaje (The Gang) is a satiricalrumination on the supposed ly softening effect of love on the formerly steely heartof a street thug , who addresses his beloved in disbelief:

Tell me, for God's sake, what have you done?To leave me so changedThat I no longer even know myself.The old gang, baffled.Now stares uncomprehendingAs i have lost the tough airThat fomierly I exuded.

In the chorus the protagonist explains that he was seduced by the sensuoustango steps of the woman he addresses, so that he instantly lost all his courage andmanhood. He sarcastically laments that all that is left for him now is to start goingto church on Sundays. These ironic verses are out of keeping with the moretender lyrics that Filiberto generally sought for his tunes, as the example ofCaminifoshow s. Filiberto had been mellowed by success, and was ready to join the ortho-dox popular culture of the tango as it trafficked in nostalgia and o ther tenderfeelings. Discepolin had no regular need of a melody w riter as he generally com-posed his own tunes for his lyrics. Malevaje would be their only collaboration.


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flame, ten years after the embers cooled, emerging from a bar on the arm ofanother. She now looks old and bedraggled, and the narrator expresses shock alwhat she has becom e: "a plucked chicken / showing off to the gang / her blotchytlesh." The sight occasions ironic reflections on the ravages of time:Time takes bitter revenge on you.Forcing you to see laid wasteWhat once you loved.The encounter has sickened me so muchThat if I keep it in mindI'll end up poisoning myself.Tonight I'm getting drunk.Drinking till I stumbleIn order to stop my thoughts.

As was the case with iQue Vachache? Gardel recorded Esta Noche MeEmborracho within a few months of its appearance, and it soon became a hit in thecapita l. (Many tangos by Discepolin were also issued as sheet music, but by thenthe hand-made illustration made by artists gave way to manufacture by photom e-chanical means.)What does not com e across in these translations is the bitter and resigned toneof the originals, which Discepolin larded with slang expressions from lunfardo, theargot of the lower classes. The level of discourse is that of an embittered personwho has endured a sizable portion of suffering, letting his hair down in a tone ofcomplaint and lament that was adventurous for its time . In fact, the governmentbanned both Esta Noche Me Em borracho and /,Que Vachache? from the radio inearly 1929, along with a third Discepolin lyric, Chorra (Thieving Woman). Theban was part of a wider effort to circumscribe public expression in lunfardo (Collier145). The Yrigoyen government gave the Naval Ministry charge of public com-munica tions, and its leaders were fervent in their struggle for decorousness. InApril 1929, after control of radio shifted to the Interior Ministry, an ordinancedemanded that stations "offer to the radio listener programs of a high cultural andartistic level," which apparently D iscepolin's tangos did not meet (Pujol 140).Undiscouraged, he continued to write bitter tunes that targeted an ever widersocial space with their cynical reproach. The lyrics of Tira Yira, written later thatyear, condemn "The world's indifference / Its deafness and silence / Which youwill soon f e e l. . / Even when life breaks you / And pain gives you its bite / D on 'tever expect any help / Not a hand, not a favor." He later recalled the feelings thatcaused him to compose it:

This tango was bom in the street. It was inspired by the streets of Buenos


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74 Studies in Latin American Popular Culture

lions of indifferent people, where one may shout with pain and no one willhear (E. S. Discepolo 29).The culmination of Discepolin's tangos of social denunciation came five years laterwith Cambalache (Junkshop ), one of the best-known of all tangos.

That the world was and is a total mess. I already know it.In the year 1506, and in 2000 as well . . .Today it makes no differenceTo be faithtijl or to be a traitor;Ignorant, wise, thieving.Generous, living by your witsAll are equal, none is better:Be a donkey or a great professor. . .The twentieth century, what a junkshop:Problematic and feverish.He who doesn't cry goes hungry.And he who doesn't steal is as good as dead.

This tango shares with F acio's prints the spirit of bitter social pro test, but withthe important difference that Discepolin lacks the fmal optimism. His focus on thesolitary individual confronting an indifferent and often hostile world left no placefor the type of collective, morale-building action that Facio encouraged in Tu Historiaand other print series. Although they were studio mates for some ten years duringwhich Facio exercised gentle leadership, Discepolin evolved away toward a morehard-eyed realism. He described the transformation: "I am not ashamed to havepassed through all the stages: at fifteen, 1 was writing very bad love verses. Attwenty [when he was part of the studio ], I felt that all men were my brothers. Atthirty, hmm , they were barely my cou sins" (E. S. Discepolo 16). This realismcontributed to his ability to make use of the tango for his own artistic ends, ratherthan hold it at bay as a threat. He was thus able to reconcile the tango with socialcommentary more deeply than any other composer.

Perhaps the most fitting conclusion to this story com es with the death of Facioin 1935, the year of Cambalache. Alvaro Yunque, one of Argentina's great social-ist poets, wrote of Facio, "To eulogize him it is enough to sayjust this: He was arebel" (Yunque n.p.). Obituaries for the printmaker poured forth in leftist publica-tions of every stripe, and he was lauded as a true peop le's artist. He was alsoreconciled, after a fashion, with the "Opiate of the Masses": at a concert given inhis honor at Buenos Aires City Hall, the orchestra was that of Filiberto, and theprogram consisted of tangos.


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Patrick Frank 75

2. In the years between 1880 and 1930, Argentina had a heavy immigration of work-ing-class persons from Italy and Spain, so that for most of those years, about half ofthe population of Buenos Aires was foreign-bom. A great many of these workerswere socialists, anarchists, or com munists. See Jose Moya, Cousins and Strang-ers: Spanish Immigrants in Buenos Aires. 1850-1930 (Berkeley: University ofCalifornia Press, 1998); also Ronaldo Munck el al., Argentina: From Anarchismto Peronism (London; Zed Books, 1987).

W orks CitedArevalo, Juan Jose. La Argentina que Yo Fivi 1927-1944. Mexico City: Editorial Costa-Amic, 1975.

, Fernando. El Tango y Sus Circunstancias. Buenos Aires: El Ateneo, 1984.Barrancos, Dora. Educacion, C ultura y Trahajadores. Buenos Aires: Centro Edison,1991.Barreda, E rnesto M ario. "Los Siete Amigo s: Apuntes de la Vida Artistica;" La Nacion, 1January 1928, pp. 5-6.Canaro, Francisco. Mis Memorias: Mis Bodas de Oro Con el Tango. Buenos Aires:Con-egidor, 1999.Casadevall, Domingo. Buenos Aires: Arrabal, Sainete, Tango. Buenos Aires: Fabril,

1968. Quoting from Bugtio and Gomez, Cuando la Suerte Se Inclina.Collier, Simon . Tango! The Song. The Dance, The Story. New York: Tham es & Hudson,1995.Discepolo, Arm ando. Muheca. El Organito. Stefano. Buenos Aires: Ediciones del Carrode Tespis, 1966.Discepolo, Enrique Santos. Escritos Ineditos de Enrique Santos D iscepolo, ed. NorbertoGalasso. Buenos Aires: Pensamiento Nacional, 1986.Facio Hebequer, Guillermo. Memorias., Undated Typescript.

"Tu Historia, Compafiero," 1932. Twelve Lithographs with letterpress. Col-lection Eduardo Sivori Museum, Buenos Aires.Filiberto, Juan de Dios. "Los Recuerdos de Filiberto;" in Lesly Dinah (ed.) Juan deDios Filiberto: La Cancion Portena. Buenos Aires: Artes Grificas Ocean,1963.Frank, Patrick. "Los Artistas del Pueblo and the Rise of Latin American Social Real-ism;" TJiird Text 53 (Winter 2000-01): 55-68.Galvez, Manuel. Historia de Arrabal. Buenos Aires: Agencia General, 1922.Gerchunoff, Alberto. "El Nuevo Rey;" Atldntida 18 (August 1921).Gil dc Oto, Manuel. La Argentina Que Yo He Visto. Barcelona: privately printed, 1915.


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Pujol, Sergio. Discepolo: Una Biografla Argentina. Buenos Aires: Emece, 1996.Riganelli, Agustin. "En El Atelier Suburbano;" Critica, 25 May 1935, n.p.Vigo, Abraham. 1993. Abraha m Vigo: Retrospectiva a den Anos de su N acimiento.Buenos Aires: Museo Eduardo Sivori, p. 3.Yunque, Alvaro. "Facio Hebequer y Ei Arte Proletario;" Claridad. May 1935, n.p.


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Documents

Latin America and the Tango