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....
[To be continued....]
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