Subtitled Video #51: QUÉ BIEN TE QUEDA: How well it suits you! (Pugliese/Chanel, 1943)

Qué bien te queda* (Cómo has cambiado)
Tango 1943
Música: Vicente Salerno
Letra: Juan Mazaroni

As recorded by the Orquesta Típica of Osvaldo Pugliese with vocal by Roberto Chanel on 21 October 1943. English-language version, subtitles, and notes by Michael Krugman.

See also: Qué bien te queda as recorded by Ricardo Tanturi with Enrique Campos.

 

Hermano, te ha vencido el modernismo, tu figura de ayer también cambió, sólo queda en tus compases melodiosos el pasado corazón a corazón. Ya te alejaste del suburbio que te viera bajo la luz palpitante de un farol, que perfilaba tu figura caprichosa bailando a los acordes, de un organito al son. Qué bien te queda, cómo has cambiado, y en este marco de distinción, vas enredando los corazones entre lamentos de un bandoneón. Los rascacielos llenos de asombro vistiendo smoking, te ven llegar. Qué bien te queda, tango argentino, canción del alma, canto inmortal...

Brother, modernism has conquered you, you're cutting a different figure nowadays,* all that’s left in your melodious rhythm is the past, heart to heart. Now you've moved away from the slum* where you'd be seen under the flickering light of a streetlamp that profiled your fanciful form, dancing in time to the chords of an organito.* How well it suits you, how you’ve changed, and in this elegant setting, you’re going around entangling hearts in the laments of a bandoneón. The astonished skyscrapers see you arrive, dressed in a tux. How well it suits you, Argentine tango, song of the soul, song immortal.

NOTES:

* How well it suits you: The title employs an idiomatic expression, quedarse bien, meaning "to suit."

* cutting a different figure nowadays: Literally, "your figure of the past also changed."

* slum: suburbio. The Spanish word suburbio indicates "a nucleus of population located in the outlying areas of a city, usually depressed." In the Buenos Aires of the early 20th century, a suburbio was just that. (RAE) The English word "suburb," does not mean the same thing, since suburbs are often relatively wealthy residential areas. The word "slum" denotes "a squalid and overcrowded urban street or district inhabited by very poor people." That may be the closest equivalent.

* organito: A portable barrel-organ that played an important role in the early diffusion of tango. Near the turn of the 20th century, the organito introduced the early tango of the suburbio to the streets of the city center. (As Michael Lavocah points out in Tango Masters: Osvaldo Pugliese, the whistled phrase on the recording is from the song Organito de la tarde.) See also: "The organito," Cotorrita de la suerte and El cocherito.