Category Archives: Tango orchestras

Back on the radar

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Greetings from Buenos Aires!

Springtime in the city could not be more beautiful than it is right now.

Jacarandas in the Palermo Bosques

The city is blooming, blossoming, growing and greening up everywhere.

a favorite corner of our barrio

los Jardines Botánicos

People are outside en masse.  On the weekend bikini-clad girls catch rays on the “beach” grass at Parque Las Heras, which means the boys aren’t exactly in hiding, either.  Our neighborhood Latin lover in the cute French mansion across the street struck this pose one warm day: (click to enlarge!)

have a nice day!

Do I have a view or what?

Meanwhile, the tango scene shifts from chilly to hot!!  and whether or not your favorite milonga has a substantial AC system becomes a major comfort factor.  Milongas with plenty of cool air:  Sin Rumbo, Sueño Porteño, la Catedral, La Milonguita, Porteño y Bailarín, El Beso, La Viruta, Niño Bien.

What a wild ride we’ve been on lately!  We dropped off the radar due to an unforeseen medical crisis.  My tango partner is much better now, and healing up from surgery.  In fact he’s watching his favorite tv show as I sit here and blog: the soccer channel.  The weather lately has been humid and warm, in the low 80s, with frequent warm tropical thunderstorms.  What delightful weather!   How spontaneously it transforms this great city!

our street blossoms!

The nice weather is perfect for vintage vehicle viewing:

This clean baby blue Fiat is tinler than my Mini Cooper! My ex-mini, that is.  Don’t you hate it when your car makes it to almost 150,000 miles and then gives up the ghost?  Yes, it happened to me. So sad. But, what the heck, who needs a car here in this public transportation paradise?

Red Isetta

Anyhow, when I get back to the states I think I’ll look for an Isetta! If it breaks down I can probably hitch my horse up to that front bumper. And if the obsolete post-industrial technology of a 1-cylinder gas motor really pisses you off (you tree-hugger you!) how about a multi-tasking red trike?

dolly parking?

Oops!  wait a sec….  I almost forgot to upload this one-of-a-kind Isetta RV:

can we be camp hosts at Legoland?

Your house mouse could drive this!  Didn’t Stewart Little leave Central Park in one of these, on his first excursion?  His first brave blast-off into the unknown?

We have seen some great music lately, though we have not been dancing as much. A temporary setback, friends, not to worry!  Sometimes you just wake up one day and find yourself on a strange bunny trail. Or you were already on the journey without realizing it. Turning back is not an option, so you keep going, and if you find yourself at “the garden of forking paths” (great story by Argentine author Jorge Luis Borges), it’s a good sign, because you begin to see new options peeking through doors A, B & C, opening to adventures you’ve never even dreamed of!  All of a sudden you’re looking at the world through a remarkably different lens.  The universe has gifted you a re-positioning of your cosmic road map!

Here’s the happy guy, after the doctor told him he could leave the hospital the next morning:

I'm outta here!

Ben wanted go dancing his first night out of the hospital.  How can you say no to a guy who just got out of lock-down?  We danced a little… and enjoyed just being together with no medical staff in sight.  Here he is in the doctor’s office, helping buy another Ferrari:

he loves Italian food, cars & women

The other night we saw Los Primos Gabino with Fado/Tango singer Karina Beorlegui at Catedral. Their music is an inspired mix of tango nuevo and fado. I don’t mean a melding of the genres; some of the songs were fado (no one danced to those, except for a beautiful demo), and some were tangos (people danced). We liked them very much. And Catedral? I love that milonga, not for its dance floor, which is hazardous, but for its essential wabi-sabi nature (I see the sabi, but where’s the wabi? says Ben). Very funky to say the least, but also glorious in that transcendent industrial-artsy-chic sort of way. I’ll try to get in there early one day and take some photos while there’s some natural light. The massive inflated red plastic beating heart the size of a volkswagen hanging from the rafters could be the photo of a lifetime. Looks like someone borrowed my old vacuum cleaner hose to make the arteries running in and out. I’m not kidding!

Another cool spot about town is La Esquina Aníbal Troilo. It’s a café-restaurant full of art and memorabilia of the famous bandoneon player. Troilo kind of turned into a toad when he grew up — an Argentine Diego Rivera, full of genius but not a looker!  — yet he recorded some of the best music of Tango’s golden age.  The café is downtown, on the corner of Paraná and Paraguay.  There’s a bust of Troilo across the street. Don’t go there for the food, but the coffee’s good and the decor is priceless.

who is that guy?

Troilo with bandoneon

lotsa stuff on the walls

a few familiar faces?

tortas y empanadas, vino y queso

my favorite - Troilo with his dog!

Esquina Aníbal Troilo is a block from Corrientes, and only a couple of blocks from Zival’s on Callao and Corrientes: the holy shrine of Tango CDs!

On Halloween my dear friend Roxy arrived from California.  We sure had some catching up to do!

hanging out in the apartment

We explored tango shoe shops, focusing on those with working AC units:  NeoTango, Darcos, Flabella.  A week later another friend from California dropped in:  la divina tanguera  Lynne from Santa Cruz.

So little time, so many shoes....

And Roxy, aka 365 Days of Tango, a seriously addicted milonguera from Los Altos (hey!  that’s where I’m from!), at Darcos:

I think I'll take all of them!

How hot are these?  NeoTango has a definite edge!

bendito glam!

Our first night on the town with my homegirl, we went to Café Vinilo to see Orquesta Victoria, one of our favorite young up-and-coming tango orchestras.

Orquesta Victoria at La Milonga del Bonzo

The singer is Augustín Fuertes, of the Fuertes-Varnerín duo.  Besides being a really good tango singer, he has a streak of stand-up comic that’s too funny!

unveiling their new CD

They just got back from their 3rd European tour.  Here is the other half of the duo, Ariel Varnerín.  He has his own style, great voice, not as flashy.  The two of them could be Don Quijote and Sancho Panza!  I love their fast-paced duos with guitars and voices in harmony.

Ariel Varnerín

After La Milonga del Bonzo we took Roxy to Canning.

I can't believe I'm finally here!

to the nines!

Roxy and I had an adventure the day we went to check out Pulpo’s apartment.  You’ve probably heard of him or taken a class — Norberto Esbrez, el Pulpo (the octopus: known for his slinky leg wraps and other sinuous tango moves).  We picked up Pulpo’s good friend Marcela. She’s an awesome tango dancer, teacher, judge of tango competitions, and the keeper of the keys to the apartment.  Since Pulpo is usually away teaching tango, his apartment is empty most of the time, and he offered it to Roxy.  Well, we sure had a hard time getting inside. The door had three different keyholes, and we couldn’t get the various keys to work.  After about twenty minutes we were praying and singing and finally… poof! like magic! … it opened.

Marcela surveying the broken lock

We went in and surveyed the mess, the apparent emptiness and piles of unwanted stuff left behind by someone who had broken in.  The vibes were wierd, disconnected, discordant.  We opened up windows and the doors to the balcony to let some fresh air in but the breeze didn’t seem to help… the street was noisy, the air was full of exhaust fumes and dust from Puyehue, the volcano in Chile that’s been spewing ash all the way to the Atlantic. Luckily Pulpo’s box of tango shoes was still there:

and you thought girls were shoe-crazy?

it looks better in the photo

We decided the place was not going to be ready for the girls to move into any time soon.  We thought we could just leave and lock the door and be done with it, at least for the time being.  Wrong!  We couldn’t even get the door shut!  It was really heavy and the top hinge pin was broken off. The door was hanging away from the frame and dragging on the floor. We tried to push it up and back into place but it was too heavy.  I began to think we had morphed into a scary movie!  We couldn’t get out of there!

where's the crowbar?

Roxy thought she could lever the door up with a plastic squeegee. You go, girl!  At this point we were all desperately hungry, and desperate to get out of there!  Not to mention laughing hysterically like zombies on auto-pilot.  Just look at them!  Twinkling like a pair of house elves!

we tango and work on doors!

Roxy and I finally got away but Marcela had to stick around until the locksmith showed up.  A few days later Lynne and Roxy found a sweet apartment a few blocks away from us.

lounging streetside at VoulezBar

We had a some really fun all girls’ days…

jacked up on coffee

and girls’ nights out!

Roxy finds her Romeo

So sad they had to go home so soon!  So lucky I can stay here in this beautiful city of a thousand nights!

Ciao from Buenos Aires!

Liliana remembers her great-uncle Osvaldo Pugliese

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My friend Liliano Populizio told me a lot about mate over, can you guess?  Mate cocidos, in a café downtown.  I met Liliana in Italian class at the Dante Alighieri Association.  Turns out her great-uncle was Osvaldo Pugliese.  How amazing is that?  Life just does funny things, you know?  Like putting someone in your path, because you were meant to know each other, meant to be friends.

Osvaldo Pugliese was Liliana’s grandmother’s brother, on her dad’s side.  Pugliese and his wife Maria Concepción Florio (“Choli”) lived in Villa Crespo, a working class neighborhood not far from Barrio Norte. There’s a milonga in that barrio called Fulgor de Villa Crespo, and inside there is a little shrine to Pugliese with a photo and flowers.  We’ve danced there many times.

milonga Fulgor de Villa Crespo: "where Pugliese walked"

Pugliese was born on December 2, 1905.   His father Adolfo taught him violin at an early age, and he later studied at the Odeón Conservatory in Villa Crespo.  It was there he fell in love with the piano, and went on to make his debut into the world of tango at 15.  For those of you who don’t yet know one Tango orchestra from another, Pugliese was a celebrated pianist, composer and orchestra director.  Before forming his own orchestra in 1936, he played with other musicians including Alfredo Gobbi and Aníbal Troilo, and several other orchestras, including Angel D’Agostino, Roberto Firpo, Pedro Laurenz and Miguel Caló.  His first orchestra, organized in 1936 (with 3 bandoneons, 1 contrabajo, 2 violins and piano), debuted at La Nacional on Corrientes, where they were very well received.  So well, in fact, they headed off for a blazing tour of the country.  Apparently tango critics in the hinterland were not ready for Pugliese’s new sound, because the tour was such a disaster they had to pawn some instruments to get back home.  The next incarnation debuted in 1939, made their first recording in 1943 and continued, with occasional changes in musicians, for 55 years.

a young Osvaldo Pugliese

Some of Pugliese best-known tangos are Recuerdo, La Beba (named after his daughter Beba), Negracha, Malandraca, La Yumba.  He composed 150+ songs, and recorded more than 600 others.  His was one of the most highly-regarded Tango orchestras of the Golden Age of Tango.

In my research for this blog I found a website with some absolutely enlightened commentary on Pugliese’s music.  Keith Elshaw <ToTango.net> says it far better than my own rambling late-night scribblings:  “Pugliese influenced a change in the sound and feel of tango in each of five decades beginning with his first hit, Recuerdo (1921)…  His La Yumba in 1943 was like a revelation from on-high…  In the hard-core of Tango, Pugliese inhabits the axis.  He’s the hard stuff.  A 12-year-old single malt as opposed to a blend.  If his is an acquired taste, that alone indicates how deep into Tango people are.  A night without Pugliese for me is like trying to dance when the sound system is just a little too low and you can’t get into it.  You just wish they’d turn it up.  As it gets later in the night, I absolutely crave his music.”   Wherever you go to dance Tango… New York, London, Buenos Aires, Paris, Rome, Barcelona, Tokyo, Berlin… you will dance to Pugliese!  He was a Tango king!

Pugliese with Alberto Morán, Roberto Chanel (guitar)

Pugliese’s pro-labor, pro-communist views got him into trouble with the prevailing political powers of the era.  He was persecuted, censured and jailed for 6 years during the Perón era.  Liliano says that her great-aunt Choli took meals to her jailed husband every day, and also fed others who were incarcerated in the same area.  Apparently a lot of left-leaning artists, musicians, writers, professors and artists were thrown in jail by Perón, and they spent their days together… in a kind of involuntary never-ending political consciousness-raising workshop.  That would be a life-changing experience, to be sure.  Pugliese’s orchestra, famously, kept playing during his absence.  Hence the iconic picture of the rose on the piano, waiting for Pugliese’s return.

Liliana told me that her family is very musical, but that she is the exception!  Her aunt Beba also plays piano, like her dad.  Another musican in the family was Roberto Florio, a well-known Tango singer.  Liliana remembers her great-uncle very well.  He was always fooling around on the piano at home, but he found time to play with her, too.  Liliana has fond memories of her great-uncle.  They played a silly game where he would pull off one of her shoes and toss it, and she would run to fetch it.  Family get-togethers were never without musical accompaniment.

Pugliese received numerous distinctions, awards and medals during his long career.  He passed away in July, 1995.  His wife Maria Concepción passed away in 1971.   If you visit Buenos Aires you can see a bust of Liliana’s great-uncle, along with a caricature tango orchestra, in Villa Crespo.

Plazoleta Pugliese

Switching gears…. to Sin Rumbo.

We had a great time last night at Sin Rumbo.  What a fabulous milonga!  A classy place, elegant, the guys in jackets and ties, an authentic milonga porteña.  Black and white floor.  Perhaps the most authentic milonga, La Catedral del Tango!  The atmosphere at Sin Rumbo is so dense,  so rich in tango culture.  The walls are covered with original art, all of it about tango and especially about Sin Rumbo and the people who’ve danced there.  And those walls!  They’ve been watching people tango for 80+ years.

Sin Rumbo is the oldest Tango salon in Buenos Aires, and hosted by one of BA’s most famous milongueros, Julio Dupláa.  He was one of the judges of the Tango World Finals.  And guess who else was there last night?  Alberto Podestá, world-famous tango singer.  Naturally  I forgot to bring my camera (kind of getting over being the tourist, now that I live here), but we’ll be back.

We got there about 11 pm; it was crowded so they sat us at a table with a couple who told us they have been dancing tango since they met (58 years ago!) & married (4 years later!)  They were really friendly and happy to talk to us.  And such good dancers!  No kidding, after all those years… they got a good thing goin’!  So nice to get the local perspective.  Sin Rumbo, despite being world-famous, is just a neighborhood milonga, full of people who know each other well, and still like each other.  The dancers navigated the floor so nicely, no bulldozers or deadhead dancers.  This kind of tango magic we call being connected to our partner, and connected to the music, and connected to everyone else on the dance floor.  Love that feeling of connection. Connection-addiction!  Endorphin-producing connection-addiction!  Like Romeo said to Juliet: Give me my sin again!

Takes two to tango...

Listen up  readers!

please please please write a few lines about how you got addicted to tango.  don’t worry I won’t put your name in!  People are already sending their stories to me, you’re going to love reading this stuff!  Maybe this could be turned into… a book?  a movie?  a comic strip?  I mean, I’m having so much fun doing this, shouldn’t I be getting paid?  In my dreams!   send your words to: <runninghawk.willow@gmail.com>  thanx thanx thanx thanx thanx & etc!  

Ciao from Buenos Aires!

La Puta Qué?

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Did you ever read The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne?  We skipped over to Uruguay for the day and saw a tagged paint mare: you can see PUTA in capital letters on her neck.  I think you all know what that means!  We didn’t notice any apparent misbehaving tendencies at first glance but then horses can really fool you!

la muy puta yegua

Along came a casual tropical cowboy who proceeded to mount up and move the group of foragers a few yards down the road.  It was a pretty day and I was happy to see some horses just hanging out along a back road.  We were cruising on a junky old moto that we rented for $18 for the day, electrical issues, bald tires, no speedometer, no deposit, no problem!

local cowboy

The day trip across the river is known as the expat shuffle: you take a ferry across the river, go thru customs in Uruguay (what a joke that is!) and, depending on your inclinations, stroll the quaint colonial era pueblo, shop till you drop, do the waterfront pub crawl, climb to the top of the faro (lighthouse), head for the beach, or (most popular option) get on a bus to Montevideo.

After the hour trip across the Río de la Plata, we disembarked and walked into town.  We passed an ultramodernist new tourist center, not quite finished yet.  We set off the alarm when we walked up and onto the deck…  howdy folks!  the gringos are here!

tourist trap

Colonia is a pretty tourist town.  Some folks joke about it being a “dead” town and I see their point but, heck, Uruguay needs all the help ($$) it can get!   The only thing they have going for them are some cool beaches and hot soccer players.  There’s a sweet harbor on the river, a lighthouse (we made it all the way to the top!) shops, cafés, restaurants, boutique hotels, tour guides.  We skipped the tour.  I’m the official tour guide, naturally.  Who else would have noticed the horses?

Lucky us, it was a beautiful balmy day at the lighthouse.  We climbed it.

el faro

We circled it.

the bullring

Ben was happy as a clam to be riding a scooter, he didn’t care where we went!  (He says it’s not quite like his F4, though.)  Here he is at the top of the lighthouse, with helmet:

At the beach…

did we miss the tsunami warning?

strolling around town…

checking out the microcar

We saw picturesque old adobes that reminded me of San Juan Bautista, back home in California.

we take VISA!!

bisected house

Café El Santo

pretty stone facade with jasmine

Okay, is it bothering you that this post is turning into Better Homes & Gardens?  Sunset South?  Well, too bad, cause I just love old historic buildings!  especially when they’re kept up nicely…  here’s some more:

Posada Plaza Mayor

Adobe colorado

old Mission

No lack of cool old cars to cruise those cobblestone Colonia streets:

what make is it? somebody help me out!

10 oct. Flash:  a Studebaker by all accounts!  Thanks to April in New Mexico, Jack in San Luis Obispo, and Arlene in Santa Barbara!  You guys rock!

awesome truck from the... 40s?

And a café-bar by the old stone lighthouse.  How cool is that?  The hungry thirsty hordes had not yet gathered when I took this picture:  Or they got stuck listening to the droning nazi tour guide.

ye old lighthouse watering hole

When I finally stepped off the back of the moto my knees were weak, my feet were numb, and it felt like my hipbones needed resetting.  Kinda like getting thrown off a rank horse and trying to get back on your feet so you can go catch the sonofabitch!   We walked a few steps past that amazing stone tower onto the wharf, past the yacht club office, and onto the terrace of the Yacht Club restaurant.  What a view!

Are we having fun yet?

Oops, forgot to put a view in.  Here we go.

the view from the top

We ate seafood pasta, salad, a bottle of wine, dessert… the works!  A sweet getaway. Towards the end of the afternoon the herd instinct kicked in, we answered a few mournful cow calls, and allowed ourselves to be herded back to the mother ship.  The ferry, that is, the S.S. Colonia Express.  As we closed in on the big beautiful city, I took a picture of this old slow-sinking rustbucket still moored in La Boca harbor.

the wabi-sabi mother ship

Being away from town for a day was no big deal, but I can well imagine the desperation one might feel being gone too long from the glorious night-life of this throbbing music lover’s paradise.  Seriously, we find music everywhere we go!  Friday evening we walked into a local restaurant, and found ourselves listening to a young woman singing arias from Carmen and La Bohéme, with live piano and violin accompaniment.  Opera never fails to bring tears to my eyes!  Live music is a total body experience, you feel it with all your senses, not just your ears.  Every molecule you own vibrates with sound, sinking deeply into body and spirit.  Positively transcendent!

Yesterday, having coffee after our tango class at a café we frequent by Plaza San Martín, we opened our eyes and saw that they have Friday night Jazz, and live Tango on Saturdays. The cultural richness of Buenos Aires is really inspiring.  So many young musicians, you see them walking around with instrument cases, getting on the subte or collectivo. We saw these guys on the subway today on our way home from a solidarity festival at Parque Avellaneda.

subte músicos

Ben’s spanish teacher plays percussion and trombone in a band we saw today at the park, Orkesta Popular San Bomba.  Way to go!  They have a great singer and a great Latin sound, but their sound system was a complete disaster.  We will check them out again when they get their act together!

Orkesta San Bomba at Parque Avellaneda

Somehow the future isn’t quite as scary anymore, seeing the next generation so present and engaged in the creation of a world culture that knows no borders, and whose currency is music!   Speaking of young musicians, we’ve been to some great live music at various places…  this is CAFF (Club Atlético Fernández Fierro), a former auto repair shop.  It has the funkiest club entrance ever, like out of a Batman movie:

Yes, that’s me in my spring Batgirl outfit.  Here are a couple of shots from the show at CAFF:

Dema y su Orquesta Petitera

at CAFF

Dema is hysterically funny and was wildly applauded.  He’s kind of a cross between Tom Waits and Giancarlo Giannini in Swept Away (a film by Lina Wertmüller).  Jaded but innocent, desperate yet full of macho bravura.   Check him out on uTube!

One of our favorites: Orquesta Victoria at Café Vinilo:

Orquesta Típica La Victoria

Orchestra La Victoria has a piano, clarinet, cello, contrabajo, 2 bandoneons, 3 violins, and two singers (Fuertes and Varnerín) who do amazing tango duets, just like the singers of  the old days!  (Listen to Pregonera, Pastora, Remolino… sung by the duo of Carlos Dante and Julio Martel, Orquesta Alfredo de Angelis.)  This youthful tango orquesta plays mostly classic tango but also some nuevo, in the genre of Piazzolla.  They are way cool and we love them!

Well, friends, despite lots of late night dancing, serious lack of sleep, tango classes, yoga class, Italian class, running in the park, and walking, walking, walking all over town… not to mention spending hours writing and posting my blog…  I seem to be thriving!  must be Ben’s good cooking!  Oh, and my favorite gelato flavors of the month? … dolcatta, tramontana, and dulce de leche granizado… and zabayón!  and the delightful spring weather!

Please don’t forget to send your Tango Addiction stories to me at <runninghawk.willow@gmail.com>.  I now have my very own web address: <willowtango.me>.   Click the “follow” button!   Ciao from Buenos Aires!

Willow at El Santo