Gardel, D'Arienzo & Troilo: At the Crossroads of Tango's Golden Age (Parts 1 & 2)
[From "Milongueando en los cuarenta" in <El tango>, Horacio Salas, Planeta, Buenos Aires 2009 (1st ed., 1986), pp. 149-52. Translation, Copyright © 2014 Tango Decoder]
Chronology tends to be just as false as statistics: neither of the two reflects reality in an absolute manner. In both cases one must know how to read, interpret, and draw conclusions. And with respect to generational movements, whatever may be their character, it is impossible to fix them to any date that is anything other than approximate. Thus tango's generation of "los cuarenta" (the 1940s) had its beginning five years earlier, in 1935, with the concurrence of two factors: the death of Carlos Gardel and the debut of Juan D’Arienzo’s new orchestra at the cabaret Chantecler.
The singer's fatal accident served as a clarion call for a musical culture that found itself at a standstill in its development, living off innovations that had been made a decade earlier. If the inertia continued, there would have been the risk of burying along with Carlos Gardel that same tango that he himself had originated.
[Photo: Carlos Gardel in full gaucho regalia. Note spurs.]
As usually occurs in these cases, the option of change offers two possibilities: go back to the foundations, and rebuild on the base of what had already proved itself valid in the past, or look to the future, in order to be able to take a leap forward. Both approaches imply risks: in one case, the return to the past can lose touch with the changes that have happened in reality with the passage of time; and in the other the advance can fail if the transformation extends beyond what the society can accept in that instant. In either case, the fundamental thing is the instinct of the one who puts the transformation into practice.
In tango, Juan D’Arienzo, a Buenos Aires violinist from the barrio of Balvanera, preferred to look back, to regain tango’s former conquests, rejuvenating them; Aníbal Troilo, on the other hand, chose to look forward. Both of them, each one from his own vantage point, was right.”
D’Arienzo, who until mid-1935 would have been considered a not-very successful bandleader, decided to add to his group the pianist Rodolfo Biagi, who took the place that had previously been occupied by Angel D’Agostino and Luis Visca and who had played with the anachronistic group led by Juan Maglio “Pacho,” which clung stubbornly to the rhythmic and melodic models of the Guardia Vieja. From the keyboard, Biagi imposed a characteristic style: choppy (picado), faster than the rest of the orchestras, unvarying (monótono) and musically simple, though very danceable, so that those who barely knew the rudiments of dance might join in, driven by the contagious rhythm. The revival of the rhythm from the time of the great trios [i.e., 1899-1915, with trios led by Maglio, Vicente Greco, and Juan Carlos Bazán--MK] led the orchestra to adopt the by then almost completely abandoned “dos por cuatro” (2/4 time signature). The tango regained its original happy mood. It was a style poorly suited to listening, but which had tremendous resonance for dancers. The instruments played in unison and the only beat that stood out was the leading piano, nothing more. The first violin soloed with countermelodies characterized by strict variation on the orchestral theme, with little display of imagination.
[Photo: "Not-very-successful bandleader" Juan D'Arienzo featured alongside tango idols Osvaldo Fresedo and Francisco Canaro in a radio broadcast for Carnaval 1940.]
Unlike Troilo, who respected the value of the words, D’Arienzo not only neglected the importance of the vocal parts, but very often allowed his singers Alberto Echagüe, Héctor Mauré, Armando Laborde, and Mario Bustos, though they were of great refinement, to be wasted singing mediocre, tasteless lyrics of questionable humor, like El Hipo, El tarta, Sepoñoporipitapa, Giuseppe el crooner, Che existentialista, among others. The orchestra’s admiring audience celebrated these as part of the show, along with the bombastic gestures of the director himself, his conspiratorial smiles, and his exclamations in the middle of the performance.
Other bandleaders of the 40s aimed for evolution—Aníbal Troilo, Osvaldo Pugliese, Horacio Salgán, Miguel Caló, Osmar Maderna, Raúl Kaplún, Alfredo Gobbi (Jr.), Ricado Tanturi, José Basso, Francisco Rotundo and, coming at the end of the period, the Francini-Pontier group, as well as, obviously, Astor Piazzola and others, to which we may add the veteran orchestras of Osvaldo Fresedo and Angel D’Agostino, who knew how to adapt their orchestras to the new times. The swinging (hamacado), invariable (monótono) rhythm left them free them to give their performances more velocity, although always less than that imposed by D’Arienzo, and a much steadier beat that lifted the dancers out of their seats and impelled them onto the dance floor. These orchestras gave a leading role to the arranger, and made a custom of featuring virtuoso soloists with strong conservatory training. The orchestra had to be a compact mass, a group of musicians playing as a unit, without preventing their individual skill and virtuosity from standing out. For example, the piano of Osmar Maderna, at first in Miguel Caló’s orchestra and then on his own group, or the violin of Enrique Maria Francini, when he directed his group in partnership with bandoneonista Armando Pontier, or the bandoneonista and conductor Astor Piazzola who formed his own group in 1946.
From then on, it often happened that the musicians of tango also joined symphonic orchestras, if their training permitted it. The tango had once been a thing for intuitive musicians whose training was limited in most cases to the rudimentary knowledge acquired in the humble school of the barrio. Now it moved into a landscape in which advances could only come with formal study and solid technique.
Another aspect of this decade worth mentioning is the proliferation of good poets who were attracted to tango or who fleshed out a body of work that had been begun earlier. The best songs of Homero Manzi, Cátulo Castillo, Homero Expósito and José María Contursi, along with several of Enrique Cadícamo, belong to the field of influence of the generation of the 40s.
(Coming in Part 3: Aníbal Troilo...)
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