From Musica y poesía del tango, pp. 33-35, by Antonio Pau (Editorial Trotta, Madrid, 2001). Copyright © 2001 by Antonio Pau Pedrón. English version by Michael Krugman, Copyright © 2013. The painting is "El último organito" by Juan Carlos Lemmo via artelista.com.]
The organito [a portable, mechanical barrel organ--MK] is the missing link between the bordello tango of the arrabal--the outlying slums of Buenos Aires--and the refined tango of the café. The organito is the great emancipator of tango, that which lifted it out of its miserable childhood, dressed it in fancy clothes, and found it a decent home. The organito projected its mechanical tangos into the windows of the middle class neighborhoods, thus transforming the forbidden melodies into something domestic and familiar.
El Último Organito -Anibal Troilo (1949)
The organito of Buenos Aires and Montevideo is the twin brother of the organillo madrileño. But the more sedentary organillo is born and dies in place, while the organito of the Río de la Plata is restless: it leaves the suburbs and makes its way to the center of the city. The organillo goes nowhere, while the organito expands and conquers.
1900 is the keydate for this modest but efficient diffuser of tango. The cardboard cylinders that house the melodies become plentiful,and new tunes are composed for it—some as beautiful as El Choclo. When it has completed its mission, the organito dies. Tango has been accepted; the orchestra takes the place of the organillero. Homero Manzi left this beautiful lyric in memory of The Last Organito:
The mud-caked wheels of the last organito
Will appear out of the evening, seeking the arrabal:
An emaciated horse, a lame fellow, a monkey,
Trailing a chorus of girls dressed in percale.
With muted steps, he’ll choose the corner
Where the moonlight mixes with the light of the shopfronts
So that the pale marquis and the pale marquess can dance
Their mechanical waltzes in the vaulted niche....
Before it dies, the organito seeks assistance from fortune. This final stage of its destiny is very poetic and tanguero. The humble musicians of the organito, seeing their repertoire passing into more capable hands, station trained parrots on the lid of the instrument. For the price of a coin, the bird dips his beak in a bag and pulls out a slip of paper with a fortune written on it. There are only twenty or thirty fortunes available to the hapless patron. Tango has lost its leading role, and is reduced to musical accompaniment for these doubtful predictions.
These scenarios combining fate, misfortune, and music were not lost on the lyricists of tango. One of them was recounted in Cotorrita de la suerte (Lucky parrot), written by José de Grandis:
How the obrerita—little working girl—coughs at night,
Coughs and suffers the cruel premonition
That the candle of her life is dimming,
That her tender heart will never be free of this torment!
This frisky, high-spirited obrerita,
Who once brought such happiness to her little home,
Now endures long hours of agony
Knowing there’s no salvation from her malady.
A man passes, crying,
“Lucky parrot!
Predicts life or death.
Want to try your luck?”
The obrerita resists, doubting and fearing
the rose-colored paper
The parrot is picking out.
On reading it, her face brightens,
and trembling at the promised good fortune
she joyfully reads: A sweetheart, long life.
And she stifles the sob in her throat.
From then on her days slip by,
Anxiously awaiting her dearly beloved,
And on the afternoon of her sad death
She asks her mother: “Didn’t he come?”
A man passes, crying,
“Lucky parrot!”
The organito, its shabby operator, the couples who danced to its sickly-sweet tones and, moreover, the memory of them, the nostalgia for them, has survived into the twentieth century to become the subject of numerous tangos: Organito (Juan Carlos Gravis), Música de organito (Manuel Buzón and Osvaldo and Carlos Moreno), Organito del suburbio (Antonio Bonavena), Organito arrabalero (Ernesto Baffa y José Libertella), along with Organito de la tarde, with music by Catúlo Castillo and lyrics by his father, José González Castillo, which was recorded by Carlos Gardel in 1925.
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