traditional rural music and dressed in the gaucho costumes of the Argentine pampa , to the suave streetwise figure in suit and homburg, mirrored the metamorphosis of tango itself. And with that change came a new cast of characters.
DRAMATIS PERSONAE
âMi noche tristeâ is more than the first tango-song; it is also in many ways the sourcebook for thousands of tangos that follow. The inhabitants of the tango world were prostitutes, pimps and tricksters, and the immigrants who shared their limited space in the newly populated barrios like La Boca and Nueva Pompeya, the crowded arrabales of the city outskirts and the conventillos wedged among the old mansions in the city centre. The scenario of the tango drama was the street, the cafés, the dance halls ( academias and cafés), and the brothels. The props were streetlamps, trams, bottles of champagne or cheap liquor, and bar stools aplenty.
The scenario and its protagonists will reappear countless times, amid the nostalgic evocations and endless expressions of regret and yearning that echo through the tango. And it will establish too the ambiguous and contradictory relationships around which the words and the music dance. This is a poetry born of a masculinity fearful of its loss, in a world where men outnumber women, yet where sexual desire and the search for love give women the power to inflict pain, albeit they too are without social or collective power.
The singer on this sad night is a man abandoned looking back to a time of happiness now lost. His weakness and confusion are the consequences of the actions of a woman who has left him, a milonguera who has probably been tempted, as so many are in the world of tango, by rich men who have money but few illusions, and who are willing to pay for her company (the bacán ). Yet the picture is more complex still. In this world of immigrants and prostitutes sharing the small pool of light from the streetlamp, surrounded by shadows, all are powerless.
El conventillo luce su traje de etiqueta;
las paicas van llegando, dispuestas a mostrar
que hay pilchas domingueras, que hay porte y hay silueta ,
a los garabos reos deseosos de tanguear .
La orquesta mistonguera musita un tango fulo ,
los reos se desgranan buscando, entre el montón ,
la princesita rosa de ensortijado rulo
que espera a su Romeo como una bendición .
El dueño de la casa
atiende a las visitas
los pibes del convento
gritan en derredor
jugando a la rayuela ,
al salto, a las bolitas ,
mientras un gringo curda
maldice al Redentor .
El fuelle melodioso termina un tango papa .
Una pebeta hermosa saca del corazón
un ramo de violetas, que pone en la solapa
del garabito guapo, dueño de su ilusión .
Termina la milonga. Las minas retrecheras
salen con sus bacanes, henchidas de emoción ,
llevando de esperanzas un cielo en sus ojeras
y un mundo de cariño dentro del corazón .
The slum is in its Sunday best / the girls arrive all ready to show off / Their best clothes, their figure and their style / and the lads all ready to dance a tango / The dance band plays a simple tango / the lads rush to find among the crowd / the pink princess with curls in her hair / waiting to be blessed by her Romeo .
The owner of the house / attends to his visitors / the kids from the slum / Rush about shouting / playing hopscotch / jumping, rolling marbles / While a drunken foreigner / berates the Redeemer .
The tuneful bandoneon ends a fine tango / a lovely girl pulls fromher breast / a bunch of violets which she pins to the lapel / of the handsome boy who is the object of her dreams / The dance ends, the girls / leave with their rich boys, swelling with emotion / their eyes full of hope / and their hearts full of love .
(âOro muertoâ, Dead gold â Juan Raggi, 1926)
The innocence of the street party is as brief as the tango itself. The girls leaving joyfully with their rich boyfriends (their bacanes ) may well be leaving
DRAMATIS PERSONAE
âMi noche tristeâ is more than the first tango-song; it is also in many ways the sourcebook for thousands of tangos that follow. The inhabitants of the tango world were prostitutes, pimps and tricksters, and the immigrants who shared their limited space in the newly populated barrios like La Boca and Nueva Pompeya, the crowded arrabales of the city outskirts and the conventillos wedged among the old mansions in the city centre. The scenario of the tango drama was the street, the cafés, the dance halls ( academias and cafés), and the brothels. The props were streetlamps, trams, bottles of champagne or cheap liquor, and bar stools aplenty.
The scenario and its protagonists will reappear countless times, amid the nostalgic evocations and endless expressions of regret and yearning that echo through the tango. And it will establish too the ambiguous and contradictory relationships around which the words and the music dance. This is a poetry born of a masculinity fearful of its loss, in a world where men outnumber women, yet where sexual desire and the search for love give women the power to inflict pain, albeit they too are without social or collective power.
The singer on this sad night is a man abandoned looking back to a time of happiness now lost. His weakness and confusion are the consequences of the actions of a woman who has left him, a milonguera who has probably been tempted, as so many are in the world of tango, by rich men who have money but few illusions, and who are willing to pay for her company (the bacán ). Yet the picture is more complex still. In this world of immigrants and prostitutes sharing the small pool of light from the streetlamp, surrounded by shadows, all are powerless.
El conventillo luce su traje de etiqueta;
las paicas van llegando, dispuestas a mostrar
que hay pilchas domingueras, que hay porte y hay silueta ,
a los garabos reos deseosos de tanguear .
La orquesta mistonguera musita un tango fulo ,
los reos se desgranan buscando, entre el montón ,
la princesita rosa de ensortijado rulo
que espera a su Romeo como una bendición .
El dueño de la casa
atiende a las visitas
los pibes del convento
gritan en derredor
jugando a la rayuela ,
al salto, a las bolitas ,
mientras un gringo curda
maldice al Redentor .
El fuelle melodioso termina un tango papa .
Una pebeta hermosa saca del corazón
un ramo de violetas, que pone en la solapa
del garabito guapo, dueño de su ilusión .
Termina la milonga. Las minas retrecheras
salen con sus bacanes, henchidas de emoción ,
llevando de esperanzas un cielo en sus ojeras
y un mundo de cariño dentro del corazón .
The slum is in its Sunday best / the girls arrive all ready to show off / Their best clothes, their figure and their style / and the lads all ready to dance a tango / The dance band plays a simple tango / the lads rush to find among the crowd / the pink princess with curls in her hair / waiting to be blessed by her Romeo .
The owner of the house / attends to his visitors / the kids from the slum / Rush about shouting / playing hopscotch / jumping, rolling marbles / While a drunken foreigner / berates the Redeemer .
The tuneful bandoneon ends a fine tango / a lovely girl pulls fromher breast / a bunch of violets which she pins to the lapel / of the handsome boy who is the object of her dreams / The dance ends, the girls / leave with their rich boys, swelling with emotion / their eyes full of hope / and their hearts full of love .
(âOro muertoâ, Dead gold â Juan Raggi, 1926)
The innocence of the street party is as brief as the tango itself. The girls leaving joyfully with their rich boyfriends (their bacanes ) may well be leaving
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