Although the today’s Tango is an aware and fully evoluted music, quite fit for our sad and tricky times, in the tango guitar still persist the Milonga of the Payadores and the primitive chords of those compadres often described by Jorge Luis Borges in the act of tempering their guitars in the starlit alleys of Palermo Viejo at the beginning of the century. Along its history of more than one hundred years, the viola, as they affectionally call the guitar in Buenos Aires slang, could never disregard the heresy of new nor give up the bourdon to the ceremonious poetry of the gauchos. In no other place, the argentine tango and folklore, that have always been just neighbours and sometimes belligerent elsewhere, get mixed up as they do in the handcrafted univers of guitarists; in no other instrument the big city’s sound, the scent of “yuyos y alfa alfa” and the throbs of the “black butterflies that flit on dirt”, live together so happily.

Coming from the Middle Age, the guitar arrives in Argentina with the Spanish colonizers and soon identifies itself with the countryman’s spiritual nature. Baguala, Zamba, Estilo, Cifra, Vidala, Huella, Milonga are some of the musics that go with its chant. Atahualpa Yupanqui reports that the man of the Pampa “is used to long lazo and full gallop: he rules over the space, so whenever he takes the guitar for a Milonga he doesn’t play for two minutes, since he has time and a plain in front of him”. The Baguala is a prayer, the Zamba a love dance, the Estilo a solitude, the Vidala and the Milonga forms of his meditation.
Experts indicate the Milonga as the guitar’s doorway into the Tango: this confluence or, in the Borges’ words, this intrusion of the Pampa into the city, should have happended at the orilla, that’s to say at the Buenos Aires suburbs, by XIX midcentury. Actually, the Milonga is less the result of the urbanisation costs than the outcome of a semplification process by the piano players who were mostly unready to reproduce the guitar’s busy rhythms that went with the many dances of the Tango gestation. This is not the first time that the Academy lessens the popular creativity.
Concerning this point, we need to make a technical digression: the Andalusian Tango, which is generally considered as one of the Tango Criollo’s - later Tango Argentino’s - elements, proceeds from the Tango Flamenco, which was an adaptation for guitar of the cuban guajira that was imported to Spain by the Cadiz sailors when this town dominated the trade with West Indes. The guajira’s rhythm consists in the steady sequence of two measures, one in 6/8 and one in 3/4, which was never accepted by the Rio de la Plata guitarists. Of the Andalusian Tango - which the Spanish Zarzuelas touring companies were full of - they gave a rather personal version, entirely in 6/8 at first, then in 2/4 by accenting the two triplets. It is intersting to note that the superimposing of the 6/8 and 3/4 strong accents gives rise to the so called rhythm of Habanera, the famous colonial binary, which is present in the whole South America popular music and is identical to the urbanized Milonga. Albeniz writes his Andalusian Tango in the Habanera rhythm; in 1880 Francisco Heargraves, the argentine opera composer, writes his four Milongas for Piano in the Habanera rhythm as well; and in 1900 Heargraves transcribes the old tango “Bartolo” in the formerly cuban, now creole, rhythm.
On the contrary, the guitarists, who are still devoted to the imprecisions of their instruments and maybe influenced by the chaotic creations of the Cachafaz’s grandparents, keep on bringing out an endless range of rhythmic figures. Perhaps we owe the obstinacy of these remote “violeros” the Tango’s richness and rhythmic plasticity and the fact that it hasn’t been traced back to a sort of stylized folklore by the unfailing and cultured discoverers of popular music.
The Milonga, in its slow form, suitable for thinking while singing, is adopted by the Payadores, who don’t sympathize with the Tango even when they don’t oppose it openly, as we understand from a letter by Gabino Ezeiza to his colleague José Bettinotti. The Payadores are improvising poets who play the guitar. They sing in no hurry either of heroic achievements and patriotic subjects, or they challenge “in counterpoint”, after a never-ending show of mandarin manners, over some audience suggestions. Therefore the noble Payadores cannot deal with vulgar pieces such as “Pejerrey con papas” or “La canaria de Canelones”. But the guitar, the humble and helpful guitar, can. So, between the nineteenth and twentieth century, the first instrumental bands with rhythmic guitars take place. Apolinario Aldana, Eusebio Aspiazù, Justo Tomàs Morales, Feliciano Herrera, Pancho Romero are, as well as gentlemen proudly lacking a biography, the first heroes of “an actuality that doesn’t worry, where bravery is happiness and the stabs are a feast”. The guitar feels good also with the newcomer, the bandoneòn, as shown by Luciano Rios in his excellent recordings with the Pedro Maffia Trio, and later by Vicente Spina with Ciriaco Ortiz.
After 1912, the greater possibilities of leading an orchestra, give the piano the major role in the typical sextet of the Guardia Nueva. Many guitarists change instrument: Prudencio Aragòn, the brilliant composer of “El talar”, Domingo Santa Cruz, author of “Uniòn Civica”, Leopoldo Thompson, the bass player who invented the “canyengue” style. The guitar gets even in the twenty golden years of Tango Canciòn, between 1915 and 1935, with singers whose everlasting fame should be rude to have doubts about. Numberless are the guitarists worth a mention: Enrique Maciel, Rosendo Pesoa, José Maria Aguilar, Rafael Iriarte, Manuel Parada, Horacio Pettorossi, Mario Pardo. In 1933, Pardo goes so far as to conduct a band of one hundred guitars at the Teatro Colòn: this is the first time that this instrument enters the largest theater in South America. The Tango Canciòn guitarists know their job, but their gift for accompaniment made of melodic glosses, sudden rhythmic blazes and meditative bourdons, reaffirms the Payadores tradition: even Gabino Ezeiza, if he wasn’t dead in 1916, would have changed his mind. Borges wouldn’t, since he ratifies in 1927 the death of Tango, which has become “weepy and soulful”. Tango, on the other hand, bears the “gropes master’s” denigration very well, thanks to the huge popularity given by radio and records. In 1965, as a mark of reconciliation, Borges dedicates his most porteño work to the guitar: “Para la seis cuerdas”, a book of Milongas with the masterly music by Astor Piazzolla.
Between 1935 and 1955, the great bands era, the guitar stays among singers, or at home, in a sort of chamber Tango, with the bandoneòn: they get on well together for elective affinity. In 1952, during a broadcasted duet with Anibal Troilo, there is the historical seal of the greatest Tango guitarist of all times: Roberto Grela. He’s about forty, a career with singers of “short fortunes”, he plays by ear and even with a plectrum, but with Troilo he turns out to be a father of modern Tango. His bandoneòn-like brilliant phrasing in staccato/legato, his characteristic “punteo” in triple strings, his originality in textures and harmonics, change once and for all the Tango guitar. The symbiosis between Grela and “Pichuco”, their unique interplay, is at the top of the Buenos Aires music. Their Tango is a burning substance minted in beautiful and formally perfect extempore archetypes that influence every musician until our time.
In the Grela’s wake, it’s Bartolomé Palermo to lead again the guitar into its originary river bed, and to invent for the nth time the tradition. Strange mixture of learned and popular musician (in 1957 Ariel Ramirez chooses him for the “Misa criolla” first recording, but he’s also well known for his duet with Alfredo Gobbi, one of the greatest Tango violins), Palermo sets up a peculiar procedure for composing based on non-writing: his combo’s members emulate the phrases he suggests and play them by heart after very demanding rehearsals: you need to be very honest to live outside the law. With the crisis, which occurs at the same time of the 1956 golpe, but also with the invasion of the anglo-american new rhythms and the consequent breaking of the orchestras into small bands, the guitar finds a leading role again. In 1955, Astor Piazzolla puts the electric guitar in his legendary Octet. So do Eduardo Rovira, Osvaldo Manzi and Horacio Salgàn soon after him.
Other ways are explored: Ubaldo De Lio, Horacio Malvicino, Rodolfo Alchourròn are the first guitarists of the so called Tango-Jazz, but they quickly aknowledge that the two swings are incompatible. The jazz “drive”, which is slightly ahead of time, and the metaphysical “arrastre”, which is always behind time, don’t get along well together. Now the Tango is a too much structured language to come to terms with the improvisation harmonic worries.
Thirty years after the Mario Pardo’s pioneer attempts, Agustìn Carlevaro and Cacho Tirao carry through the “cappella” arrangements for guitar, creating some musical jewels equal to the Maximo Mori’s bandoneòn pieces. This is a goldsmith’s art for connoisseurs in which all the instrument’s technical and expressive possibilities converge in “ultimate” works of style. Cacho Tirao is also the first performer who plays the finest Tango guitar concert ever, the Piazzolla’s “Doble concierto Hommage à Liège”: “double” because the guitar is here supported by its loyal friend, the bandoneòn.
There is also room for the angry young men’s contents: Juan Cedròn and César Stroscio, once again guitar and bandoneòn, put music to either the Juan Gelman’s and Paco Urondo’s new poetry and to the Raùl Gonzalez-Tuñon’s nostalgic lyrics. From the less unpredictable place and moment, the Tango, the Milonga, the Estilo, only apparentely abandoned by the young musicians, show up again with uncommon eloquence: the opposite bastions of innovators and traditionalists have never been so close. Anyway, neither of them can take advantage of this good circumstance: the dictatorship’s fierce black hole (1976-1983) repress the best minds of any generation in their blood. It’s rather the most conservative Folklore, with its gaucho’s equestrian figure, his spurs, bombacha and chiripà, that are backed by the establishment in the name of the usual and mistaken nationalist values.
The Tango regains the top position when Democracy resumes its place: as Christian Dior used to say of Haute Couture, it’s the Tango that rescues the guitarists from Nature. Without forgetting the masters who are still in activity, such as Cacho Tirao, Ubaldo De Lio, Bartolomé Palermo (whose excellent arrangements of Alfredo Gobbi’s music have just been issued), among the present guitarists we’d like to mention Anibal Arias, Ciro Perez, Juanco Dominguez, Luis Rizzo, Leonardo Sanchez and the marvellous Claudio Pino Enriquez, who we are particularly fond of. We bet that it’s from the “featherless nest” of his guitar that the Tango of the future will come out at last, as a free crossroads of all free roads.

The starlit alley philharmonics
“Don’t worry: we’ll make her bite her pillow”. This is how the Baranquilla Serenaders answered to the young lover Gabriel Garcia Marquez who had hired them for a serenade. As in the rest of Latin America, in Buenos Aires too the love rallies are still in use. Bands such as the Romatica y Barata, the Cheap Romance Orchestra (whose exploits have been narrated by Jean Fajean), Las Muñecas, but also each singer with his good quadrilla of guitars, are able to offer to sore lovers the most euphoric unisons and flattest arrangements that romantic prices can buy. Serenades often run into popular balls, with friends and neighbours. As Ernesto Sabato used to say, blessed the poets who still could write of “trenzas, almacenes y serenatas de barrio”.

Marco Castellani
originally published in "Amadeus" - september 2005