AZABACHE ("Jet") Candombe-milonga, 1942 Music by Enrique Francini & Héctor Stamponi Lyrics by Homero Expósito
Recorded by Orquesta Típica Miguel Caló with vocal by Raúl Berón, 29 September 1942. Discos Odeon 8368 A. English-language version and subtitles by Michael Krugman for TangoDecoder.com.
¡Candombe! ¡Candombe negro! ¡Nostalgia de Buenos Aires por las calles de San Telmo viene moviendo la calle!
¡Retumba con sangre y tumba tarumba de tumba y sangre!... Grito esclavo del recuerdo de la vieja Buenos Aires... ¡Oh... oh... oh!... ¡Oh... oh... oh!...
¡Ay, molenita, tus ojos son como luz de azabache!... Tu cala palece un sueño ¡un sueño de chocolate!...
¡Ay, tus cadelas que tiemblan que tiemblan como los palches!... ¡Ay, molenita, quisiela... quisiela podel besalte!... ¡Oh... oh... oh!... ¡Oh... oh... oh!...
¡Candombe! ¡Candombe negro! ¡Dolor que calienta el aire! ¡Por las calles del olvido se entretuvieron tus ayes!...
¡Retumba con sangre y tumba tarumba de tumba y sangre!... Y se pierde en los recuerdos de la vieja Buenos Aires... ¡Oh... oh... oh!... ¡Oh... oh... oh!...
¡Candombe! ¡Candombe negro! Nostalgia de gente pobre... Por las calles de San Telmo ya se ha perdido el candombe... ¡Oh... oh... oh!... ¡Oh... oh... oh!...
Candombe, black candombe!* Nostalgia of Buenos Aires along the streets of San Telmo the street seems to be moving!*
Resounding with blood and drumming* a commotion of drumming and blood!... Slave cry from the memory of old Buenos Aires... ¡Oh... oh... oh!... ¡Oh... oh... oh!...
Ay, brown-skinned gal, your eyes* are like flashes of jet...* Your face is a dream a chocolate-colored dream.
Ay, your hips that sway that sway like the drums!... Ay, brown girl, how I’d love... How I’d love to kiss you... ¡Oh... oh... oh!... ¡Oh... oh... oh!...
Candombe, candombe negro! Pain that heats up the air! Along the forgetful streets your cries are raised up!...
Resounding with blood and drumming a commotion of drumming and blood!... And they are lost in the memories of the old Buenos Aires... ¡Oh... oh... oh!... ¡Oh... oh... oh!...
Candombe, candombe negro! Memories of the poor folk.... along the streets of San Telmo the candombe has already been lost...* ¡Oh... oh... oh!... ¡Oh... oh... oh!...
NOTES AND COMMENTARY:
* candombe: Candombe is an Uruguayan music and dance that comes from African slaves. It is considered an important aspect of the culture of Uruguay and was recognized by UNESCO as a World Cultural Heritage of humanity. To a lesser extent, Candombe is practiced in Argentina, Paraguay and Brazil. In Argentina, it can be found in Buenos Aires, Santa Fe, Paraná, and Corrientes. In Paraguay is continued this tradition in Kamba Kua (Camba Cua) in Fernando de la Mora near to Asuncion. Also in Brazil, it still retains its religious character and can be found in Minas Gerais State. (Wikipedia)
* the street seems to be moving: The image is of a street teeming with drummers and dancers during the candombe ritual.
* drumming: the tumba was one of the characteristic drums used in candombe. Its sound is felt physically as well as heard. Today, the name refers to the lowest pitch drum of the conga family.
* brown-skinned gal: morenita. In this and the following stanza the sheet music transposes the letters L and R in imitation of the speech of an Afro-argentine candombero, and it is sung that way in the Caló/Berón version.
* jet:Azabache. Jet is a type of lignite, a precursor to coal, and is considered to be a minor gemstone. The adjective "jet-black", meaning as dark a black as possible, derives from this material. (Wikipedia)
* The original candombe ritual of Montevideo's Costa del Sur originated in 1808 and ceased in 1827-29. The candombe of Buenos Aires had its apogee under the rule of Buenos Aires governor Juan Manuel Rosas (1829-52). With loss of Rosas' patronage and the first of a series of yellow fever epidemics that struck particularly hard in the principally African barrio of San Telmo, the candombe street parades ceased and the candombe moved to clandestine dance halls called academias (academies). There, the African candombe was danced coterminously with European and native partner dances like the mazurka, polka, zamba, and milonga. In that choreographic melting pot, the tango developed and thrived.
"As a composer Juan Carlos Cobián is, alongside Enrique Delfino, the creator of the so-called tango-romanza; in 1917 the latter composed "Sans Souci", and Cobián wrote "Salomé", with which they paved the road for avant-garde tango. Cobián was an evolutionist to such an extent that the publishers did not accept his early tangos because they regarded them as «wrongly composed». The truth is that they were far beyond the popular music of the time."--Todotango.com
Cobián's Salomé has never been recorded, to my knowledge. Perhaps someone more musical than I am—a modern orquesta típica, perhaps—will procure the partitura one day, and let us hear the composition in some form. Any takers? The best I can do is to offer my English-language version of Enrique Cadícamo's lyrics to the song. I hope you enjoy them!
NEWS FLASH! In response to our request above, Julian Rowland has recorded a lovely version of Salomé for the piano. Hear it now.
Por llamarte Salomé quizá yo te encontré distinta a otras mujeres... Por llamarte Salomé quizá toleraré lo altiva y mala que eres... Qué me importa si al sufrir tu risa angelical dulcísima me hiere... Tienes mujer un encanto fatal y el perfume de una flor sensual.
Cuando llegué hasta ti temblando de emoción por tu belleza... Ardientemente te imploraba, indiferente me escuchabas... Abrí por fin tu corazón, mujer, y entonces pude ver la bruma de tu esplín... En cada beso yo sentí el sabor de tu fatal influencia de amor...
Frente a tu imagen, Salomé, la bayadera surgirá y entonces yo te cantaré el tema de mi viejo mal... Tu danza erótica sabrá pulsar el ritmo loco de mi palpitar... ¡Piedad!... ¡Piedad... mi Salomé! Si es que el fin ha de ser el bautista San Juan.
By calling you Salomé perhaps I’ll find you different from other women... By calling you Salomé perhaps I’ll be able to tolerate your haughty, evil ways. What the use if upon bearing your angelic laughter, very sweetly you wound me... You have, woman, a fatal charm and the perfume of a sensual flower.
When I came before you shaking with emotion at your beauty... Ardently I implored you, indifferently you listened... I opened at last your heart, woman, and then I could see the mists of your melancolia... in each kiss I tasted your fatal amorous influence.
Gazing your picture Salomé the dancing girl appears and then I must sing to you the song of my old malady... Your erotic dance knows how whip me into a crazy, throbbing rhythm... Pity!... Pity... my Salomé! For the end must be John the Baptist.
Excerpt from El tango by Horacio Salas (Editorial Planeta, Buenos Aires 1986). Translation by Michael Krugman.
Once the tango had returned from Paris, and was on the way to being definitively accepted as a product that could be consumed by the decent people, it became necessary to create a new ambit in which to enjoy the dance without the necessity to resort to the clandestinity of places where one had to rub elbows—and even clash with—the common people. The aristocracy had tired of contending with prostitutes of the working class. The "kept woman" began to proliferate as an indispensable adornment for the upper class, as a way of demonstrating its standard of living. The times that were approaching foretold social blending, and there was a need to determine norms of conduct in order to avoid confusion. The roughhouse of the slums that had served as diversion for capricious young men could turn out to be dangerous later in life, when intimacy with power set them apart. The small-town character of life was tending to disappear and it now became essential to establish limits and settings in which the ruling class—and they alone—could act in exclusivity.
Until this moment it had not been necessary to mark such differences because this exclusivity had been demarcated in other fields: the high ministry positions, the liberal professions, the directors of the press, the leadership of the armed forces, the directors of the leading industries that began to appear. There were also closed societies, the Rural, the Chamber of Commerce, the Progress and the Jockey Club. But just then in 1912, almost as a proof, elections took place under the Saenz Peña law of universal (male) suffrage, with the result that the first radical entered the Chamber of Deputies. Until then, the presence of one socialist or another—like Alfredo Palacios, elected in 1904—was in the eyes of the regime more a picturesque anecdote than a political problem. Moreover their presence in the Chamber served as a demonstration of the flexibility and permissiveness of the system. But radicalism was another thing, and the dominant class took notice of it instantly. This man, Hipolito Yrigoyen, who was derisively nicknamed El Peludo, ["The Armadillo," for his introverted character and aversion to being seen in public—MK] was a driver of the masses, an authentically popular leader. The system that had ruled since 1853 was dying....
So, at the end of the Belle Epoque in the outside world, and while Argentina's conservative regime was in its death throes, the cabaret was born as a mark of class; hence they were created in the image and likeness of those that existed in Paris: it could not be otherwise.
For Matamoro, "the cabaret is the ceremonial and public version of the old bordello. The bordello dance floor has become a luxurious, vaulted salon decorated according to European tastes. The foreign proprietors are dressed in tuxedos and now speak French. Pernod and red wine are the present-day champagne. The china or the lora (prostitute—MK) has been Frenchified. The backroom for coitus has been replaced by the garçonnier (apartment provided for a kept woman—MK). The come-one-come-all anteroom has been transformed into the private salon of upper class."
The first cabaret, located in the present-day plaza Grand Bourg, was a vast garden surrounded by pavilions in the shape of bandstands, gazebos and hedgerows. One could eat in the open air, since it only functioned in the summer. On the bandstands there were private areas. At the back there rose a small house in the European style with wide, floor-to-ceiling windows. One night a pair of singers appeared composed of a little fat guy and an Uruguayan named Jose Razzano and Carlos Gardel. Harmonizing with great gusto, they debuted folk songs that were, as legend has it, El pangaré, La pastora, y El moro. On hearing those old acoustic recordings today, despite the noise, one is certain that with this talent, they could not fail—and they did not.
In 1913 the proprietors of Armenonville decided to choose a new house orchestra by a vote of its regular customers. They brought in no less than Juan Maglio, el Tano Genaro, and various other groups, trios and cuartets. But the unanticipated winner was Genaro's pianist, playing solo: Roberto Firpo, a boy born in the Buenos Aires province of Las Flores in 1884. The outcome left several players so discontented that one of Genaro's own guitarists, by way of congratulation, slashed the winner's face with a knife, sending him to a nearby hospital.
That vote, which in the moment had been intended simply as an entertainment for the clientele, acquired historic importance due to its unexpected outcome. It signaled the recognition of the piano as the leading instrument in the orchestras, opened the era of the cabaret, and marked the point of departure for the orquesta típica....
Excerpt from El tango by Horacio Salas (Editorial Planeta, Buenos Aires 1986). Translation by Michael Krugman.
Once the tango had returned from Paris, and was on the way to being definitively accepted as a product that could be consumed by the decent people, it became necessary to create a new ambit in which to enjoy the dance without the necessity to resort to the clandestinity of places where one had to rub elbows—and even clash with—the common people. The aristocracy had tired of contending with prostitutes of the working class. The "kept woman" began to proliferate as an indispensable adornment for the upper class, as a way of demonstrating its standard of living. The times that were approaching foretold social blending, and there was a need to determine norms of conduct in order to avoid confusion. The roughhouse of the slums that had served as diversion for capricious young men could turn out to be dangerous later in life, when intimacy with power set them apart. The small-town character of life was tending to disappear and it now became essential to establish limits and settings in which the ruling class—and they alone—could act in exclusivity.
Until this moment it had not been necessary to mark such differences because this exclusivity had been demarcated in other fields: the high ministry positions, the liberal professions, the directors of the press, the leadership of the armed forces, the directors of the leading industries that began to appear. There were also closed societies, the Rural, the Chamber of Commerce, the Progress and the Jockey Club. But just then in 1912, almost as a proof, elections took place under the Saenz Peña law of universal (male) suffrage, with the result that the first radical entered the Chamber of Deputies. Until then, the presence of one socialist or another—like Alfredo Palacios, elected in 1904—was in the eyes of the regime more a picturesque anecdote than a political problem. Moreover their presence in the Chamber served as a demonstration of the flexibility and permissiveness of the system. But radicalism was another thing, and the dominant class took notice of it instantly. This man, Hipolito Yrigoyen, who was derisively nicknamed El Peludo, ["The Armadillo," for his introverted character and aversion to being seen in public—MK] was a driver of the masses, an authentically popular leader. The system that had ruled since 1853 was dying....
So, at the end of the Belle Epoque in the outside world, and while Argentina's conservative regime was in its death throes, the cabaret was born as a mark of class; hence they were created in the image and likeness of those that existed in Paris: it could not be otherwise.
For Matamoro, "the cabaret is the ceremonial and public version of the old bordello. The bordello dance floor has become a luxurious, vaulted salon decorated according to European tastes. The foreign proprietors are dressed in tuxedos and now speak French. Pernod and red wine are the present-day champagne. The china or the lora (prostitute—MK) has been Frenchified. The backroom for coitus has been replaced by the garçonnier (apartment provided for a kept woman—MK). The come-one-come-all anteroom has been transformed into the private salon of upper class."
The first cabaret, located in the present-day plaza Grand Bourg, was a vast garden surrounded by pavilions in the shape of bandstands, gazebos and hedgerows. One could eat in the open air, since it only functioned in the summer. On the bandstands there were private areas. At the back there rose a small house in the European style with wide, floor-to-ceiling windows. One night a pair of singers appeared composed of a little fat guy and an Uruguayan named Jose Razzano and Carlos Gardel. Harmonizing with great gusto, they debuted folk songs that were, as legend has it, El pangaré, La pastora, y El moro. On hearing those old acoustic recordings today, despite the noise, one is certain that with this talent, they could not fail—and they did not.
In 1913 the proprietors of Armenonville decided to choose a new house orchestra by a vote of its regular customers. They brought in no less than Juan Maglio, el Tano Genaro, and various other groups, trios and cuartets. But the unanticipated winner was Genaro's pianist, playing solo: Roberto Firpo, a boy born in the Buenos Aires province of Las Flores in 1884. The outcome left several players so discontented that one of Genaro's own guitarists, by way of congratulation, slashed the winner's face with a knife, sending him to a nearby hospital.
That vote, which in the moment had been intended simply as an entertainment for the clientele, acquired historic importance due to its unexpected outcome. It signaled the recognition of the piano as the leading instrument in the orchestras, opened the era of the cabaret, and marked the point of departure for the orquesta típica....
We first published our English-language version of the tango Ninguna ("No one") quite a while ago, along with a subtitled video of Ricardo Malerba's recording of the song. But today is the anniversary of Angel Vargas's birth (b. 22 October 1914), so we reworked our subtitles to fit the delightful version he recorded with the D'Agostino orchestra in 1942. We also borrowed two unusual photos of the Two Angels from Lucas TangoDJ and his tangoarchive.com. (Thank you, Lucas!) Our subtitled video of Ninguna plus face-to-face lyrics in Spanish and English, are below.
As always, we hope that our English-language versions will enhance your enjoyment of the song as you listen and as you dance...
[Photo caption: "Angel D'Agostino is registering one of the most resounding successes of radio's musical panorama. With his orchestra, the newest and worthiest revelation of Radio El Mundo, and his singer Angel Vargas, he is having at this moment one of his happiest seasons."]
[Related: Our subtitled video of Ricardo Malerba's version of Ninguna, with vocal by Orlando Medina.]
NINGUNA ("No one") Tango, 1942 Music by Raúl Fernández Siro Words by Homero Manzi
English-language version by Michael Krugman for TangoDecoder.com.
Esta puerta se abrió para tu paso. Este piano tembló con tu canción. Esta mesa, este espejo y estos cuadros guardan ecos del eco de tu voz. Es tan triste vivir entre recuerdos... Cansa tanto escuchar ese rumor de la lluvia sutil que llora el tiempo sobre aquello que quiso el corazón.
No habrá ninguna igual, no habrá ninguna, ninguna con tu piel ni con tu voz. Tu piel, magnolia que mojó la luna. Tu voz, murmullo que entibió el amor. No habrá ninguna igual, todas murieron en el momento que dijiste adiós.
Cuando quiero alejarme del pasado, es inútil... me dice el corazón. Ese piano, esa mesa y esos cuadros guardan ecos del eco de tu voz. En un álbum azul están los versos que tu ausencia cubrió de soledad. Es la triste ceniza del recuerdo nada más que ceniza, nada más...
This door opened to let you pass. This piano trembled with your song. This table, this mirror, these paintings hold echoes of the echo of your voice. It’s so sad to live among these memories... It’s so tiring to hear this murmur of light rain that weeps unceasingly over that which the heart desired.
No one like you, no one will there ever be, no one with your skin, your voice. Your skin, magnolia drenched in moonlight. Your voice, whisper warmed by love. No one like you will there be; they all died the moment you said goodbye.
Even if I want to distance myself from the past, it’s useless... my heart tells me. This piano, this table and these paintings hold echoes of the echo of your voice. In a blue album are the verses that your absence filled with loneliness. They are the sad remains of the memory, nothing more than ash, nothing more....
En lo de Laura (At Laura's Place) Milonga Music: Antonio Polito Lyrics: Enrique Cadícamo
"The tango is the simplest thing, it's pulse, it's strength, it's an inner emotion that you throw on the keys and bring out an effect. It is not boasting, that is another thing."—Enrique Cadícamo
Poet, novelist, and composer Enrique Cadícamo (July 15, 1900-December 3, 1999) was was one of tango's greatest and most prolific lyricists. In addition to his own compositions (see below for a list of Tango Decoder version of Cadícamo's lyrics) he wrote lyrics for many of the genre's finest songwriters including Augustín Bardi, Augustín Magaldi, Juan Carlos Cobian, Julio De Caro, Osvaldo Pugliese, Aníbal Troilo, Angel D'Agostino, Luis Visca, Charlo, and many others. Twenty-three of his songs were recorded by Carlos Gardel, beginning with Pompas de jabón in 1925 and ending with Gardel's final recording in Argentina, Madame Ivonne, in 1933. His works were recorded by the típicas of Di Sarli, D'Arienzo, Troilo, D'Agostino, Pugliese, and many more.
Cadícamo's lyric for En lo de Laura ("At Laura's place") is a poetic evocation of an early tango dance hall hosted by "la Morocha" Laura Montserrat in the last years of the nineteenth century and the first years of the twentieth at Paraguay 2512. (It was still open in 1915; no one is quite sure when it finally closed its doors.) Laura's was luxurious, had a wealthy clientele—which included many jockeys and other figures of the horse-racing community—and often featured the legendary pianist "El Negro" Rosendo Medizábal (1868-1913), composer of El entrerriano, believed to be the oldest tango in the modern repertoire.
Milonga de aquel entonces que trae un pasado envuelto... De aquel 911 ya no te queda ni un vuelto... Milonga que en lo de Laura bailé con la parda Flora... Milonga provocadora que me dio cartel de taura... Ah... milonga 'e lo de Laura...
[Milonga de mil recuerdos milonga del tiempo viejo. Qué triste cuando me acuerdo si todo ha quedado lejos... Milonga vieja y sentida ¿quién sabe qué se ha hecho de todo? En la pista de la vida ya estamos doblando el codo. Ah... milonga 'e lo de Laura...]
Amigos de antes, cuando chiquilín, fui bailarín compadrito... Saco negro, trensillao, y bien afrancesao el pantalón a cuadritos... ¡Que baile solo el Morocho! -me solía gritar la barra 'e los Balmaceda... Viejos tangos que empezó a cantar la Pepita Avellaneda... ¡Eso ya no vuelve más!
Milonga from way back when that brings back a shrouded past... From that year 1911 not even an old coin is left anymore... Milonga that I danced at Lo de Laura with brown-skinned Flora... Troublemaker milonga that gave me a reputation for bravery...* Ah... milonga of Lo de Laura...
[Milonga of a thousand memories, milonga of the old times. How sad it is to recall a memory so distant... Old, heartfelt milonga Who knows what’s become all that? On the track of life we’re now rounding the final turn.* Ah... milonga of Lo de Laura.]
Old friends, when just a tot, I was already a compadrito dancer...* black jacket, military braid, and very frenchified checkered pants...* “Let the Brunette dance a solo!”, the gang from Balmaceda’s always used to insist...* Old tangos first sung by the great Pepita Avellaneda...* That'll never return again!
* Troublemaker milonga...reputation for bravery: Legend has it that fights were not uncommon at Lo de Laura, and they could involve women as well as men. The tango Tiempos Viejos includes the following lines:
Where are the real women, faithful girls, all heart, who used to mix it up at Laura’s dances, each one defending her man?
* track of life...rounding the final turn: doblando el codo. Literally, bending the elbow. The expression is used in horse racing when a horse rounds the final turn and heads for the finish. It also means, "to grow old," especially when one's age is greater than the number of years left in life. The word pista has a double meaning. It is a race track, but it may also be a dance floor.
* compadrito dancer: Bailarín compadrito. The compadrito was "an early-20th-century imitation of the historically prior guapo.... distinguished by gratuitous provocation, false pride, and the claim to great deeds which were not his own." (Blas Raúl Gallo, cited in El Tango by Horacio Salas, Editorial Planeta Argentina, 1986) The use of the term here is not derogatory, however. Despite his socially undesirable qualities, the compadrito maintained a unique style of gesture, physical movement, and dress, and is believed to have made a signal contribution to the development of tango dance. The bailarín compadritowas memorialized in an eponymous song bearing the same name by Manuel Bucino, composed in 1929 and recorded by Gardel in the same year, and later recorded by Troilo, D'Arienzo, D'Agostino, and De Angelis.
* black jacket...checkered pants: The passage describes elements of the typical costume of the compadrito.
* Pepita Avellaneda: Psuedonym of Josefa Carlattio (Montevideo?, 1874 - Buenos Aires, 21 de julio de 1951), singer and dancer whose career developed mostly in Argentina. She was one of the very first women to sing tangos and the first woman singer to adopt the style of dressing in men's clothes later favored by Azucena Maizani and others. Her artistic apogee ended in 1910, and she passed her later years as the operator of the ladies coat-check at the Chanteceler cabaret.
Dear Reader: Our face-to-face text and subtitled-video versions of Muñeca brava have appeared before on Tango Decoder, but never on the same page. We're remedying that now....
Here's another well-known tango from Luis Visca and Enrique Cadícamo (authors of Compadrón, featured in an earlier post). Carlos Gardel recorded it in 1929 with the original Lunfardo-rich lyrics intact. A bowdlerized, de-Lunfardized version was recorded by Alberto Castillo with Ricardo Tanturi's orchestra (1942), and subsequent versions seem to follow the Castillo pattern. An exception is Lalo Martel's 1959 version with De Angelis, which is fairly faithful to the original. Tango Decoder's English-language version of Muñeca Brava is below, followed by our notes.
Che madam que parlás en francés y tirás ventolín a dos manos, que escabiás copetín bien frapé y tenés gigoló bién bacán... Sos un biscuit de pestañas muy arqueadas... Muñeca brava bien cotizada. Sos del Trianón... del Trianón de Villa Crespo... Milonguerita, juguete de ocasión...
Tenés un camba* que te hacen gustos y veinte abriles que son diqueros, y muy repleto tu monedero pa´ patinarlo de Norte a Sud... Te baten todos Muñeca Brava porque a los giles mareás sin grupo, pa´ mi sos siempre la que no supo guardar un cacho de amor y juventud.
Campaneá la ilusión que se va y embrocá tu silueta de rango, y si el llanto te viene a buscar escurrí tu dolor y reí... Meta champán que la vida se te escapa, Muñeca Brava, flor de pecado... Cuando llegués al final de tu carrera, tus primaveras verás languidecer
Hey* madame who parlez-vous français* And spends money hand over fist,* Who drinks her cocktails well iced* And keeps a gigolo in high style.... You’re a sweet biscuit, Eyelashes well curled.... Muñeca Brava, femme fatale, High-priced. You’re from the Trianon... The Club Trianon in the Villa Crespo,* Foxy milonguera Dangerous toy....
You’ve got a loverboy to pleasure you And twenty good years to brag about.* Your purse is full enough To gamble it away North and South. They all call you Muñeca Brava, Because you get the chumps* all dizzy, and that’s no lie, To me you’ll always be the gal who didn’t know How to preserve even a speck* of love and youth.
See the dream that eluded you, And take a good look at your imposing silhouette. And if the tears ever manage to catch up with you Give pain the slip, and laugh it off.... Swill* champagne as life slips away, Muñeca Brava, flower of sin, When you reach the end of your career Then you’ll see your primroses wilt.
*Muñeca Brava: Muñeca (Lunf.) denotes an attractive young woman (literally “doll”). Brava (Lunf.) denotes a sexually provocative woman. Hence Muñeca Brava is more or less equivalent to the French/English femme fatale.
*Che: Interjection used to get someone's attention. "Che, pibe, traeme un café."
*madame who parlez-vous français: The original is madam que parlás en francés. Parlás is from the French verb parler, to speak, but with the Spanish inflection -ás. The narrator/singer is imitating the sound of French. French women were highly prized as prostitutes, mistresses, singers, etc., and many who were not French assumed Frenchified identities.
*spends money hand over fist: tirás ventolín a dos manos, literally, “you throw money (ventolín, Lunf.) with both hands.”
*drinks her cocktails well iced: escabiás copetín bien frapé. Escabiás, from escabiar (Lunf.), verb of Italian origin, means to drink alcoholic beverages, usually with the intention to get drunk. Frapé from the French, frappé, iced.
*Trianon...Trianon in Villa Crespo: A double-entendre referring to the Trianon palace at Versaille and, in thinly veiled form, the Petit Trianon, a notorious brothel located on Pichincha Street, a red-light district in Rosario.
*twenty good years to brag about: veinte abriles que son diqueros. Abriles (Lunf.) are years (literally, Aprils) and a diquero (Lunf.) is a show-off, one who brags.
*chumps: giles are chumps or marks (Lunf.)
*sin grupo: grupo (Lunf.) is a deception or a lie.
Corrientes y Esmeralda (The corner of Corrientes and Esmeralda) Tango 1933 Music: Francisco Pracánico Lyrics: Celedonio Flores
Recorded 17 October 1944 by the típica Osvaldo Pugliese with vocal by Roberto Chanel. English-language text version and subtitled video by Michael Krugman. All Rights Reserved.
[Photo: Teatro Odeon, 1910]
Our bilingual, subtitled video of Corrientes y Esmeralda is below, followed face-to-face text in Spanish and English with explanatory notes. There are still a few poetic ambiguities, but every decent song has some of those! Still, let's call this version a work in progress....
As always, I hope this version will enhance your enjoyment of the song as you listen and as you dance...
Amainaron guapos junto a tus ochavas Cuando un elegante lo calzó de cross Y te dieron lustre las patotas bravas Allá por el año... novecientos dos...
Esquina porteña, vos hiciste escuela En una mélange de caña, gin fitz Pase inglés y monte, bacará y quiniela, Curdelas de caña y locas de pris.
El “Odeón” se manda la Real Academia Rebotando tangos el Royal Pigall Y se juega el resto la doliente anemia Que espera el tranvía para su arrabal.
De Esmeralda al norte, p’al lao de Retiro Montparnasse se viene al caer la oración Es una francesita que con un suspiro Nos vende el engrupe de su corazón.
Le glosa en poemas Carlos de la Púa Y Pascual Contursi fue tu amigo fiel En tu esquina criolla, cualquier cacatúa Sueña con la pinta de Carlos Gardel.
Tough guys retreated to your corners* when a rich kid landed a cross* and the brash youth-gangs* glorified you back then, in the year nineteen-two.
Port-city street corner, you got your education from a mix of sugar-cane booze,* gin fizz, craps and monte, baccarat and lottery pools,* grappa-guzzling louts and coke-sniffing hookers.*
The Odeón makes like the Royal Academy,* bouncing tangos, the Royal Pigall * and the anemic, mournful gambler bets all he has left, then waits for a streetcar to the arrabal.*
From Esmeralda to the north, all the way to Retiro, it's like Montparnasse* when evening comes;* It's a French girl who with a sigh betrays the pretense of her affection.
You are noted in poems of Carlos de la Púa* and Pascual Contursi was your faithful friend.* On your creole corner, every nobody* dreams of the image Carlos Gardel.
* Tough guys: guapos. The guapo was a respected figure of the arrabal, a kind of local dandy, knife fighter, enforcer, and election fixer known for his strict code of moral behavior. Though we have translated it here as the more general expression "tough guy," the guapo played a much more specific role in the arrabal. A neighborhood might have any number of tough guys, but it could only have one guapo.
* corners: ochavas. The ubiquitous eight-sided, angled street corners of Buenos Aires.
* Rich kid... cross: A reference to the Argentine engineer and aviator Jorge Newbery, also a champion boxer, swordsman, and kung-fu fighter who lived a few blocks from the fabled street corner, on the Calle Florida. With his advanced pugilistic skills, he was not averse to mixing it up with opponents of all social strata. (Sources: Rodolfo Adelio Raffino, El Jorge Newbery de Salliqueló, p. 13; Also, "El 'cajetilla' que calzaba de cross o los guapos porteños," La Nación, 26 September 2010.)
* Brash youth-gangs: patotas bravas. Patotas were loosely knit gangs of upper-class youth, often violent, usually with a right-wing political orientation. They acted as provocateurs and troublemakers, sometimes in opposition to gatherings of the popular, democratic Union Civil Radical, sometimes out of naked, unprovoked, youthful aggression.
*Sugar-cane booze...gin fizz: The word caña may denote a variety of cheap alcoholic beverages including beer, grappa, and especially a cheap liquor distilled from sugar-cane, generally consumed among the working class. Gin fizz was a more sophisticated concoction favored by urban sophisticates.
* craps and monte, baccarat and lottery pools: craps (dice) and baccarat were high-class games usually played in a casino; monte and lottery pools were of the people.
* coke-sniffing hookers: locas de pris. Loca (literally, a crazy woman) is a euphemism for a loose woman or prostitute. De pris, from the French meaning “having a stuffy nose,” is a slang expression for a person who sniffs cocaine.
* “Odeón”... Royal Academy: The Odeón theater (previously Eden, then Variedades), built 1891 on the corner of Corrientes and Esmeralda, was part of a complex that included also the Hotel Roi and the Royal Keller restaurant, the latter a well-known literary haunt. Famous performers on the Odeón’s stage included Leopoldo Lugones, Jean Juarés, Anatole France, Eleonora Duse, and other luminaries of Argentine and world theater. Among those luminaries was the Spanish classical actress María Guerrero (1867-1928) who with her husband, Fernando Díaz de Mendoza, the Marquess of San Mamés, had resettled in Buenos Aires in 1897. So pleased was the actress with her reception in her adopted country that she and her husband devoted a considerable part of their personal fortune to the construction of the Teatro Nacional Cervantes, built in the Spanish Baroque style, and named after Spain’s emblematic novelist and dramatist. Among the benefactors of the project were the King of Spain, Alfonso XIII. The theater opened in 1921 and is still active at its original site on the Avenida Córdoba. The Real Academia Española (Spanish Royal Academy) was and is the official organization responsible for preserving and regulating the Spanish language. While the "Odeón" theatre is not known to have enjoyed any direct participation by the Academy, the presence on its stage of a highly-regarded Spanish classical actress, coupled with the favor shown her by a reigning Spanish monarch, may have engendered this fanciful association between the theater and the Royal Academy itself. The use of the verb mandarse is ambiguous. It is probably a variation of the popular expression mandarse la parte, meaning "to feign, pretend, or imitate." Hence, the "Odeón" imitates or pretends to be The Royal Academy.
* bouncing tangos, the Royal Pigall: Royal Pigall was a famous café located at Corrientes 825, where Roberto Firpo, Francisco Canaro, Eduardo Arolas and other tango greats performed. It was directly across the street from the Teatro Odeon at a time when the street was considerably narrower than it is today. History tells us that early tangos were including in the musical repertoire of the incipient national theatre of Argentina, and were a frequent musical accompaniment to the sainete, a one-act comedy whose national character stood in contradistinction to the predominant classical Spanish repertoire. (See José Gobello, Breve Crítica Historia del Tango, p. 25, Corregidor, 1999). The phrase is syntactically ambiguous. The irony is that the lowbrow Royal Pigall is bouncing (or ricocheting, or rebounding) tangos off the highbrow Odeón theatre (which makes like the Royal Academy). Or it may be the other way round.
* streetcar to the arrabal. The arrabales were the poor quarters at the city limits, inhabited primarily by immigrants living in group housing with poor sanitation. The image is of a malnourished resident of the arrabal who has stayed out late gambling, lost everything, and who now waits for a streetcar that will take him home.
* like Montparnasse when evening comes: Montparnasse se viene al caer la oración. Literally, "Montparnasse comes with the falling of the evening prayer." Montparnasse is the classic bohemian crossroads of Paris centered at the intersection of the Boulevard Montparnasse and the Rue de Rennes, home of artists and intellectuals, dandyism, prostitution, and all the other trappings of bohemianism.
* Carlos de la Púa: Argentine poet, journalist and cineaste, b. Carlos Raúl Muñoz y Pérez (1898-1950), best known for his collection of Lunfardo poems La Crencha Engrasada ("The Greased Part").
* Pascual Contursi: Argentine poet, lyricist, and playwright (1888-1932) best known as the lyricist of Mi Noche Triste, an early tango-canción (1913) whose baleful lyrics set tango on a new emotional trajectory and prompted Jorge Luis Borges to deride the post-Contursi tango as "the effeminate whinging of jilted pimps."
* nobody: cacatúa, literally a cockatiel (a small, parrot-like bird native to Australia). The word is used to denote an inferior, mediocre, or merely ordinary person. There is an implied comparison between the harsh squawking of a cockatiel and the sweet sound of the voice of Carlos Gardel, "El Zorzal" (thrush).
Corrientes y Esmeralda (The corner of Corrientes and Esmeralda) Tango 1933 Music: Francisco Pracánico Lyrics: Celedonio Flores
Recorded 17 October 1944 by the típica Osvaldo Pugliese with vocal by Roberto Chanel. English-language text version and subtitled video by Michael Krugman. All Rights Reserved.
[Photo: Tango Time Machine Archives]
Our bilingual, subtitled video of Corrientes y Esmeralda is below, followed face-to-face text in Spanish and English with explanatory notes. There are still a few poetic ambiguities, but every decent song has some of those! Still, let's call this version a work in progress....
As always, I hope this version will enhance your enjoyment of the song as you listen and as you dance...
Amainaron guapos junto a tus ochavas Cuando un elegante lo calzó de cross Y te dieron lustre las patotas bravas Allá por el año... novecientos dos...
Esquina porteña, vos hiciste escuela En una mélange de caña, gin fitz Pase inglés y monte, bacará y quiniela, Curdelas de caña y locas de pris.
El “Odeón” se manda la Real Academia Rebotando tangos el Royal Pigall Y se juega el resto la doliente anemia Que espera el tranvía para su arrabal.
De Esmeralda al norte, p’al lao de Retiro Montparnasse se viene al caer la oración Es una francesita que con un suspiro Nos vende el engrupe de su corazón.
Le glosa en poemas Carlos de la Púa Y Pascual Contursi fue tu amigo fiel En tu esquina criolla, cualquier cacatúa Sueña con la pinta de Carlos Gardel.
Tough guys retreated to your corners* when a rich kid landed a cross* and the brash youth-gangs* glorified you back then, in the year nineteen-two.
Port-city street corner, you got your education from a mix of sugar-cane booze,* gin fizz, craps and monte, baccarat and lottery pools,* grappa-guzzling louts and coke-sniffing hookers.*
The Odeón makes like the Royal Academy,* bouncing tangos, the Royal Pigall * and the anemic, mournful gambler bets all he has left, then waits for a streetcar to the arrabal.*
From Esmeralda to the north, all the way to Retiro, it's like Montparnasse* when evening comes;* It's a French girl who with a sigh betrays the pretense of her affection.
You are noted in poems of Carlos de la Púa* and Pascual Contursi was your faithful friend.* On your creole corner, every nobody* dreams of the image Carlos Gardel.
* Tough guys: guapos. The guapo was a respected figure of the arrabal, a kind of local dandy, knife fighter, enforcer, and election fixer known for his strict code of moral behavior. Though we have translated it here as the more general expression "tough guy," the guapo played a much more specific role in the arrabal. A neighborhood might have any number of tough guys, but it could only have one guapo.
* corners: ochavas. The ubiquitous eight-sided, angled street corners of Buenos Aires.
* Rich kid... cross: A reference to the Argentine engineer and aviator Jorge Newbery, also a champion boxer, swordsman, and kung-fu fighter who lived a few blocks from the fabled street corner, on the Calle Florida. With his advanced pugilistic skills, he was not averse to mixing it up with opponents of all social strata. (Sources: Rodolfo Adelio Raffino, El Jorge Newbery de Salliqueló, p. 13; Also, "El 'cajetilla' que calzaba de cross o los guapos porteños," La Nación, 26 September 2010.)
* Brash youth-gangs: patotas bravas. Patotas were loosely knit gangs of upper-class youth, often violent, usually with a right-wing political orientation. They acted as provocateurs and troublemakers, sometimes in opposition to gatherings of the popular, democratic Union Civil Radical, sometimes out of naked, unprovoked, youthful aggression.
*Sugar-cane booze...gin fizz: The word caña may denote a variety of cheap alcoholic beverages including beer, grappa, and especially a cheap liquor distilled from sugar-cane, generally consumed by the working class. Gin fizz was a more sophisticated concoction favored by urban sophisticates.
* craps and monte, baccarat and lottery pools: craps (dice) and baccarat were high-class games usually played in a casino; monte and lottery pools were of the people.
* coke-sniffing hookers: locas de pris. Loca (literally, a crazy woman) is a euphemism for a loose woman or prostitute. De pris, from the French meaning “having a stuffy nose,” is a slang expression for a person who sniffs cocaine.
* “Odeón”... Royal Academy: The Odeón theater (previously Eden, then Variedades), built 1891 on the corner of Corrientes and Esmeralda, was part of a complex that included also the Hotel Roi and the Royal Keller restaurant, the latter a well-known literary haunt. Famous performers on the Odeón’s stage included Leopoldo Lugones, Jean Juarés, Anatole France, Eleonora Duse, and other luminaries of Argentine and world theater. Among those luminaries was the Spanish classical actress María Guerrero (1867-1928) who with her husband, Fernando Díaz de Mendoza, the Marquess of San Mamés, had resettled in Buenos Aires in 1897. So pleased was the actress with her reception in her adopted country that she and her husband devoted a considerable part of their personal fortune to the construction of the Teatro Nacional Cervantes, built in the Spanish Baroque style, and named after Spain’s emblematic novelist and dramatist. Among the benefactors of the project were the King of Spain, Alfonso XIII. The theater opened in 1921 and is still active at its original site on the Avenida Córdoba. The Real Academia Española (Spanish Royal Academy) was and is the official organization responsible for preserving and regulating the Spanish language. While the "Odeón" theatre is not known to have enjoyed any direct participation by the Academy, the presence on its stage of a highly-regarded Spanish classical actress, coupled with the favor shown her by a reigning Spanish monarch, may have engendered this fanciful association between the theater and the Royal Academy itself. The use of the verb mandarse is ambiguous. It is probably a variation of the popular expression mandarse la parte, meaning "to feign, pretend, or imitate." Hence, the "Odeón" imitates or pretends to be The Royal Academy.
* bouncing tangos, the Royal Pigall: Royal Pigall was a famous café located at Corrientes 825, where Roberto Firpo, Francisco Canaro, Eduardo Arolas and other tango greats performed. It was directly across the street from the Teatro Odeon at a time when the street was considerably narrower than it is today. History tells us that early tangos were including in the musical repertoire of the incipient national theatre of Argentina, and were a frequent musical accompaniment to the sainete, a one-act comedy whose national character stood in contradistinction to the predominant classical Spanish repertoire. (See José Gobello, Breve Crítica Historia del Tango, p. 25, Corregidor, 1999). The phrase is syntactically ambiguous. The irony is that the lowbrow Royal Pigall is bouncing (or ricocheting, or rebounding) tangos off the highbrow Odeón theatre (which makes like the Royal Academy). Or it may be the other way round.
* streetcar to the arrabal. The arrabales were the poor quarters at the city limits, inhabited primarily by immigrants living in group housing with poor sanitation. The image is of a malnourished resident of the arrabal who has stayed out late gambling, lost everything, and who now waits for a streetcar that will take him home.
* like Montparnasse when evening comes: Montparnasse se viene al caer la oración. Literally, "Montparnasse comes with the falling of the evening prayer." Montparnasse is the classic bohemian crossroads of Paris centered at the intersection of the Boulevard Montparnasse and the Rue de Rennes, home of artists and intellectuals, dandyism, prostitution, and all the other trappings of bohemianism.
* Carlos de la Púa: Argentine poet, journalist and cineaste, b. Carlos Raúl Muñoz y Pérez (1898-1950), best known for his collection of Lunfardo poems La Crencha Engrasada ("The Greased Part").
* Pascual Contursi: Argentine poet, lyricist, and playwright (1888-1932) best known as the lyricist of Mi Noche Triste, an early tango-canción (1913) whose baleful lyrics set tango on a new emotional trajectory and prompted Jorge Luis Borges to deride the post-Contursi tango as "the effeminate whinging of jilted pimps."
* nobody: cacatúa, literally a cockatiel (a small, parrot-like bird native to Australia). The word is used to denote an inferior, mediocre, or merely ordinary person. There is an implied comparison between the harsh squawking of a cockatiel and the sweet sound of the voice of Carlos Gardel, "El Zorzal" (thrush).
Subtitled video and English-language version with explanatory notes by Michael Krugman. All Rights Reserved.
{Photo: In costume for Carnaval, Buenos Aires 1940.]
¡Cuántos viven disfrazados sin saber que así quedaron! ¡Cuántos se oyen sin reír! Este mundo es escenario de un gran cine continuado que nos hace consumir. Cuánto, al fin, se macanea, ya que nunca es todo cierto, y es un juego el acertar: “La señora está indispuesta” o “ha salido hace un momento”; y el esposo se hace el muerto si es que vienen a cobrar.
Y siempre es carnaval. Van cayendo serpentinas, unas gruesas y otras finas que nos hacen tambalear. Y cuando en tu disfraz la careta queda ausente en tu cara de inocente, todo el año es carnaval.
¡Y viva el carnaval! Vos ves siempre lucecitas. Sos la eterna mascarita que gozás con engañar. Y cuando en tu disfraz la careta queda ausente en tu cara de inocente, todo el año es carnaval.
¡Qué tuviste una fortuna! ¡Qué de oro fue tu cuna! Que esto cuesta: ¡Qué se yo! Las mujeres y los hombres por tu amor tocan la luna y otras cosas más por vos… ¡Y si hablás de tu familia!… tu pretérito imperfecto lo pasaste como un rey. Yo quisiera que me digas, y dejando un poco de esto, si la cuenta vos has hecho ¿cuántos pesos me debés?
How many are living in costume,* without realizing they stayed that way! How many are never heard to laugh!* This world is the stage of a grand all-night movie that makes us want to spend and spend.* How much, in the end, one lies, since it’s never completely true, and one can never be certain: “Madame is indisposed” or “She left a moment ago”; and the husband plays dead if they come to collect a bill.
And it’s always carnival. Streamers keep falling, some thick, some thin, making us stagger. And though you're in your costume, the mask comes off, revealing your innocent expression: it's carnival all year round.
Long live carnival! You're always seeing fairy-lights.* You’re the eternal masquerader who takes pleasure in deceit. And though you're in your costume, the mask comes off, revealing your innocent expression: it’s carnival all year round.
What a fortune you had! Born in a golden cradle! * What did this cost: What do I know? Women and men touch the moon and a few other things for your love… And when you talk about your family…! your "past imperfect"* you spent it like a king! I’d like you to tell me, and subtracting a little bit, if you’ve tallied the bill: how many pesos do you owe me?*
* in costume: The annual celebration of Carnaval falls during the two weeks between the Feast of the Epiphany and the first day of Lent. For many years it was a time of wild festivity in Buenos Aires, including parades, dances, and parties. Today the holiday is marked via the closing of stores and public institutions on certain days, but it is no longer celebrated publicly. Costumes, often including masks, were an important feature of Carnaval. The lyric of Siempre es Carnaval sardonically asserts that many people fail to take their costumes off at the end of Carnaval, then forget that they are "living in a costume" (or disguise). Hence Carnaval-like frivolity, obliviousness, and the associated tendency to spend beyond one's means, persist all year long. "It's always Carnaval."
* never heard to laugh: Carnaval costumes were meant to be amusing, to make others laugh. When, without realizing it, people are in costume all year round, it ceases to be amusing, and no one laughs.
*spend and spend: The verb here is consumir, which could also be translated as "to consume." Hollywood movies were popular and widely distributed in Argentina, bringing the vision and the values a more affluent society with access to an endless stream of consumer goods.
* the fairy-lights: Probably a reference to the elaborate displays of lamparillas (small light bulbs) that were strung across the avenues of the parade route during Carnaval. (Photo, right: Carnaval 1940).
* born in a golden cradle: The Spanish expression nacido en una cuna de oro ("born in a golden cradle") is equivalent to the English "born with a silver spoon in his/her mouth."
* "past imperfect": Inthe Spanish dialect spoken by most Argentines, the idiomatic second-person form of address (voseo) omits the past imperfect tense employed in peninsular Spanish; the past perfect is used instead. Hence the speaker who uses the imperfect is perceived as excessively formal or snobbish. The narrator refers to his wealthy companion's childhood as "your past imperfect," thereby reinforcing the image of its privileged or pretentious character. In the following line, he himself uses the past perfect idiomatically: lo pasaste como un rey, "you spent it (i.e., your childhood) like a king."
Subtitled video and English-language version with explanatory notes by Michael Krugman. All Rights Reserved.
{Photo: In costume for Carnaval, Buenos Aires 1940.]
¡Cuántos viven disfrazados sin saber que así quedaron! ¡Cuántos se oyen sin reír! Este mundo es escenario de un gran cine continuado que nos hace consumir. Cuánto, al fin, se macanea, ya que nunca es todo cierto, y es un juego el acertar: “La señora está indispuesta” o “ha salido hace un momento”; y el esposo se hace el muerto si es que vienen a cobrar.
Y siempre es carnaval. Van cayendo serpentinas, unas gruesas y otras finas que nos hacen tambalear. Y cuando en tu disfraz la careta queda ausente en tu cara de inocente, todo el año es carnaval.
¡Y viva el carnaval! Vos ves siempre lucecitas. Sos la eterna mascarita que gozás con engañar. Y cuando en tu disfraz la careta queda ausente en tu cara de inocente, todo el año es carnaval.
¡Qué tuviste una fortuna! ¡Qué de oro fue tu cuna! Que esto cuesta: ¡Qué se yo! Las mujeres y los hombres por tu amor tocan la luna y otras cosas más por vos… ¡Y si hablás de tu familia!… tu pretérito imperfecto lo pasaste como un rey. Yo quisiera que me digas, y dejando un poco de esto, si la cuenta vos has hecho ¿cuántos pesos me debés?
How many are living in costume,* without realizing they stayed that way! How many are never heard to laugh!* This world is the stage of a grand all-night movie that makes us want to spend and spend.* How much, in the end, one lies, since it’s never completely true, and one can never be certain: “Madame is indisposed” or “She left a moment ago”; and the husband plays dead if they come to collect a bill.
And it’s always carnival. Streamers keep falling, some thick, some thin, making us stagger. And though you're in your costume, the mask comes off your clueless expression: it's carnival all year round.
Long live carnival! You're always seeing fairy-lights.* You’re the eternal masquerader who takes pleasure in deceit. And though you're in your costume, the mask comes off your clueless expression: it’s carnival all year round.
What a fortune you had! Born in a golden cradle! * What did this cost: What do I know? Women and men touch the moon and a few other things for your love… And when you talk about your family…! your "past imperfect"* you spent it like a king! I’d like you to tell me, and subtracting a little bit, if you’ve tallied the bill: how many pesos do you owe me?*
* in costume: The annual celebration of Carnaval falls during the two weeks between the Feast of the Epiphany and the first day of Lent. For many years it was a time of wild festivity in Buenos Aires, including parades, dances, and parties. Today the holiday is marked via the closing of stores and public institutions on certain days, but it is no longer celebrated publicly. Costumes, often including masks, were an important feature of Carnaval. The lyric of Siempre es Carnaval sardonically asserts that many people fail to take their costumes off at the end of Carnaval, then forget that they are "living in a costume" (or disguise). Hence Carnaval-like frivolity, obliviousness, and the associated tendency to spend beyond one's means, persist all year long. "It's always Carnaval."
* never heard to laugh: Carnaval costumes were meant to be amusing, to make others laugh. When, without realizing it, people are in costume all year round, it ceases to be amusing, and no one laughs.
*spend and spend: The verb here is consumir, which could also be translated as "to consume." Hollywood movies were popular and widely distributed in Argentina, bringing the vision and the values a more affluent society with access to an endless stream of consumer goods.
* the fairy-lights: Probably a reference to the elaborate displays of lamparillas (small light bulbs) that were strung across the avenues of the parade route during Carnaval. (Photo, right: Carnaval 1940).
* born in a golden cradle: The Spanish expression nacido en una cuna de oro ("born in a golden cradle") is equivalent to the English "born with a silver spoon in his/her mouth."
* "past imperfect": Inthe Spanish dialect spoken by most Argentines, the idiomatic second-person form of address (voseo) omits the past imperfect tense employed in peninsular Spanish; the past perfect is used instead. Hence the speaker who uses the imperfect is perceived as excessively formal or snobbish. The narrator refers to his wealthy companion's childhood as "your past imperfect," thereby reinforcing the image of its privileged or pretentious character. In the following line, he himself uses the past perfect idiomatically: lo pasaste como un rey, "you spent it (i.e., your childhood) like a king."
Corrientes y Esmeralda (Corrientes and Esmeralda) Tango 1933 Music: Francisco Pracánico Lyrics: Celedonio Flores
English-language version by Michael Krugman. All Rights Reserved.
[Illus: Odeon Theatre, Buenos Aires]
Michael Lavocah gives a brilliant prose summary and analysis of this song in his new book, Tango Masters: Osvaldo Pugliese. I highly recommend it! I did the English-language version that appears below a while back, but never got around to publishing it. I'll make a subtitled version of it soon. For the time being, here are some un-subtitled videos of the songs:
Amainaron guapos junto a tus ochavas Cuando un elegante lo calzó de cross Y te dieron lustre las patotas bravas Allá por el año... novecientos dos...
Esquina porteña, vos hiciste escuela En una mélange de caña, gin fitz Pase inglés y monte, bacará y quiniela, Curdelas de caña y locas de pris.
El “Odeón” se manda la Real Academia Rebotando tangos el Royal Pigall Y se juega el resto la doliente anemia Que espera el tranvía para su arrabal.
De Esmeralda al norte, p’al lao de Retiro Montparnasse se viene al caer la oración Es una francesita que con un suspiro Nos vende el engrupe de su corazón.
Le glosa en poemas Carlos de la Púa Y Pascual Contursi fue tu amigo fiel En tu esquina criolla, cualquier cacatúa Sueña con la pinta de Carlos Gardel.
The local punks retreated to your corners* when a rich kid landed a cross* and the brash youth-gangs* glorified you back then, in the year nineteen-two.
Port-city street corner, you got your education from a mix of sugar-cane booze,* gin fizz, craps and monte, baccarat and lottery pools, grappa-guzzling louts and coke-sniffing hookers.*
The Odeón makes like the Royal Academy,* bouncing tangos, the Royal Pigall * and the anemic, mournful gambler bets all he has left, then waits for a streetcar to the arrabal.*
From Esmeralda to the north, all the way to Retiro, it's like Montparnasse* when evening comes;* It's a French girl who with a single sigh betrays the pretense of her affection.
You are noted in poems of Carlos de la Púa* and Pascual Contursi was your faithful friend.* On your creole corner, every nobody* dreams of the image Carlos Gardel.
* Local punks: Guapos. The term guapo is used loosely here, to denote a local tough or hoodlum, colloquially a punk, whereas the true guapo of an earlier epoch was something very different.
* corners: ochavas. The ubiquitous eight-sided, angled street corners of Buenos Aires.
* Rich kid... cross: A fanciful reference to the Argentine engineer and aviator Jorge Newbery, also a champion boxer, swordsman, and kung-fu fighter who lived a few blocks from the fabled street corner, on the Calle Florida. With his advanced pugilistic skills, he was not averse to mixing it up with opponents of all social strata. (Sources: Rodolfo Adelio Raffino, El Jorge Newbery de Salliqueló, p. 13; Also, "El 'cajetilla' que calzaba de cross o los guapos porteños," La Nación, 26 September 2010.)
* Brash youth-gangs: patotas bravas. Patotas were loosely knit gangs of upper-class youth, often violent, usually with a right-wing political orientation. They acted as provocateurs and troublemakers, sometimes in opposition to gatherings of the popular, democratic Union Civil Radical, sometimes out of naked, unprovoked, youthful aggression.
*Sugar-cane booze...gin fizz: The word caña may denote a variety of cheap alcoholic beverages including beer, grappa, and especially a cheap liquor distilled from sugar-cane, generally consumed by the working class. Gin fizz was a more sophisticated concoction favored by urban sophisticates.
* coke-sniffing hookers: locas de pris. Loca (literally, a crazy woman) is a euphemism for a loose woman or prostitute. De pris, from the French meaning “having a stuffy nose,” is a slang expression for a person who sniffs cocaine.
* “Odeón”... Royal Academy: The Odeón theater (previously Eden, then Variedades), built 1891 on the corner of Corrientes and Esmeralda, was part of a complex that included also the Hotel Roi and the Royal Keller restaurant, the latter a well-known literary haunt. Famous performers on the Odeón’s stage included Leopoldo Lugones, Jean Juarés, Anatole France, Eleonora Duse, and other luminaries of Argentine and world theater. Among those luminaries was the Spanish classical actress María Guerrero (1867-1928) who with her husband, Fernando Díaz de Mendoza, the Marquess of San Mamés, had resettled in Buenos Aires in 1897. So pleased was the actress with her reception in her adopted country that she and her husband devoted a considerable part of their personal fortune to the construction of the Teatro Nacional Cervantes, built in the Spanish Baroque style, and named after Spain’s emblematic novelist and dramatist. Among the benefactors of the project were the King of Spain, Alfonso XIII. The theater opened in 1921 and is still active at its original site on the Avenida Córdoba. The Real Academia Española (Spanish Royal Academy) was and is the official organization responsible for preserving and regulating the Spanish language. While the "Odeón" theatre is not known to have enjoyed any direct participation by the Academy, the presence on its stage of a highly-regarded Spanish classical actress, coupled with the favor shown her by a reigning Spanish monarch, may have engendered this fanciful association between the theater and the Royal Academy itself. The use of the verb mandarse is ambiguous. It is probably a variation of the popular expression mandarse la parte, meaning "to feign, pretend, or imitate." Hence, the "Odeón" imitates or pretends to be The Royal Academy.
* Bouncing....Royal Pigall: Royal Pigall was a famous café located at Corrientes 825, where Roberto Firpo, Francisco Canaro, Eduardo Arolas and other tango greats performed. History tells us that early tangos were including in the musical repertoire of the incipient national theatre of Argentina, and were a frequent musical accompaniment to the sainete, a one-act theatrical genre whose national character stood in contradistinction to the predominant classical Spanish repertoire. (See José Gobello, Breve Crítica Historia del Tango, p. 25, Corregidor, 1999). The phrase itself is syntactically ambiguous. The irony seems to be that the lowbrow Royal Pigall is bouncing (or skipping, or ricocheting) tangos off the highbrow Odeón theatre (which makes like the Royal Academy).
* streetcar to the arrabal. The arrabales were the poor quarters at the city limits, inhabited primarily by immigrants living in group housing with poor sanitation. The image is of a malnourished resident of the arrabal who has stayed out late gambling, lost everything, and who now waits for a streetcar that will take him home.
* when evening comes: al caer la oración. Literally, "at the falling of the evening prayer."
* Montparnasse: The classic bohemian crossroads of Paris centered at the intersection of the Boulevard Montparnasse and the Rue de Rennes, home of artists and intellectuals, dandyism, prostitution, and all the other trappings of bohemianism.
* Carlos de la Púa: Argentine poet, journalist and cineaste, b. Carlos Raúl Muñoz y Pérez (1898-1950), best known for his collection of Lunfardo poems La Crencha Engrasada ("The Greased Part").
* Pascual Contursi: Argentine poet, lyricist, and playwright (1888-1932) best known as the lyricist of Mi Noche Triste, an early tango-canción (1913) whose baleful lyrics set tango on a new emotional trajectory and prompted Jorge Luis Borges to deride the post-Contursi tango as "the effeminate whinging of jilted pimps."
* nobody: cacatúa, literally a cockatiel (a small, parrot-like bird native to Australia). The word is used to denote an inferior, mediocre, or merely ordinary person. There is an implied comparison between the harsh squawking of a cockatiel and the sweet sound of the voice of Carlos Gardel, "El Zorzal" (thrush).
English-language version with explanatory notes by Michael Krugman. All Rights Reserved.
{Photo: In costume for Carnaval, Buenos Aires 1940.]
¡Cuántos viven disfrazados sin saber que así quedaron! ¡Cuántos se oyen sin reír! Este mundo es escenario de un gran cine continuado que nos hace consumir. Cuánto, al fin, se macanea, ya que nunca es todo cierto, y es un juego el acertar: “La señora está indispuesta” o “ha salido hace un momento”; y el esposo se hace el muerto si es que vienen a cobrar.
Y siempre es carnaval. Van cayendo serpentinas, unas gruesas y otras finas que nos hacen tambalear. Y cuando en tu disfraz la careta queda ausente en tu cara de inocente, todo el año es carnaval.
¡Y viva el carnaval! Vos ves siempre lucecitas. Sos la eterna mascarita que gozás con engañar. Y cuando en tu disfraz la careta queda ausente en tu cara de inocente, todo el año es carnaval.
¡Qué tuviste una fortuna! ¡Qué de oro fue tu cuna! Que esto cuesta: ¡Qué se yo! Las mujeres y los hombres por tu amor tocan la luna y otras cosas más por vos… ¡Y si hablás de tu familia!… tu pretérito imperfecto lo pasaste como un rey. Yo quisiera que me digas, y dejando un poco de esto, si la cuenta vos has hecho ¿cuántos pesos me debés?
How many are living in costume,* without realizing they stayed that way! How many are never heard to laugh!* This world is the stage of a grand all-night movie that makes us want to spend and spend.* How much, in the end, one lies, since it’s never completely true, and one can never be certain: “Madame is indisposed” or “She left a moment ago”; and the husband plays dead if they come to collect a bill.
And it’s always carnival. Streamers keep falling, some thick, some thin, making us stagger. And though you're in your costume, the mask comes off your clueless expression: it's carnival all year round.
Long live carnival! You're always seeing fairy-lights.* You’re the eternal masquerader who takes pleasure in deceit. And though you're in your costume, the mask comes off your clueless expression: it’s carnival all year round.
What a fortune you had! Born in a golden cradle! * What did this cost: What do I know? Women and men touch the moon and a few other things for your love… And when you talk about your family…! your "past imperfect"* you spent it like a king! I’d like you to tell me, and subtracting a little bit, if you’ve tallied the bill: how many pesos do you owe me?*
* in costume: The annual celebration of Carnaval falls during the two weeks between the Feast of the Epiphany and the first day of Lent. For many years it was a time of wild festivity in Buenos Aires, including parades, dances, and parties. Today the holiday is marked via the closing of stores and public institutions on certain days, but it is no longer celebrated publicly. Costumes, often including masks, were an important feature of Carnaval. The lyric of Siempre es Carnaval sardonically asserts that many people fail to take their costumes off at the end of Carnaval, then forget that they are "living in a costume" (or disguise). Hence Carnaval-like frivolity, obliviousness, and the associated tendency to spend beyond one's means, persist all year long. "It's always Carnaval."
* never heard to laugh: Carnaval costumes were meant to be amusing, to make others laugh. When, without realizing it, people are in costume all year round, it ceases to be amusing, and no one laughs.
*spend and spend: The verb here is consumir, which could also be translated as "to consume." Hollywood movies were popular and widely distributed in Argentina, bringing the vision and the values a more affluent society with access to an endless stream of consumer goods.
* the fairy-lights: Probably a reference to the elaborate displays of lamparillas (small light bulbs) that were strung across the avenues of the parade route during Carnaval. (Photo, right: Carnaval 1940).
* born in a golden cradle: The Spanish expression nacido en una cuna de oro ("born in a golden cradle") is equivalent to the English "born with a silver spoon in his/her mouth."
* "past imperfect": Inthe Spanish dialect spoken by most Argentines, the idiomatic second-person form of address (voseo) omits the past imperfect tense employed in peninsular Spanish; the past perfect is used instead. Hence the speaker who uses the imperfect is perceived as excessively formal or snobbish. The narrator refers to his wealthy companion's childhood as "your past imperfect," thereby reinforcing the image of its privileged or pretentious character. In the following line, he himself uses the past perfect idiomatically: lo pasaste como un rey, "you spent it (i.e., your childhood) like a king."
