“Malena” is the mythical portrait of a tango singer, swirling with legends and teeming with shadows. Were these evocative lines from the great Homero Manzi meant to immortalize a real woman who bared her soul in the spotlight on stage? Or do they weave a new myth out of the tango’s haunting ghosts?
Among the many stories that have been suggested regarding the real-life inspiration behind “Malena,” there are a few worth recounting. One legend has it that Manzi wrote the song as a tribute to Nelly Omar, the famous tango singer; she claimed as much herself, but many have pointed out that the two only had an affair some time after the song had already been written and recorded. Another story holds that Manzi heard a Chilean singer, under the stage name Malena de Toledo, during a trip to Brazil, and wrote the song for her; but this seems at odds with the lyric’s preoccupation with rootsy Buenos Aires imagery. Other tales ask us to believe that Manzi raised this mythical figure in homage to an unknown chorus girl, or an amalgam of women, or even his wife’s dressmaker.
But perhaps this profusion of possibilities only proves how appealing the song is, and how eagerly we are seduced by its charismatic singer. Perhaps Manzi wrote the lyrics to “Malena” as an imaginative portrait of the tango itself, its canción embodied in the striking figure of a woman who sings out her hurts through its words. The lyrics dig up many of the tango’s early tropes—the barro or mud of the alleys, the city girl shedding a tear over her champagne for the world she left behind, the various literary birds (larks and doves) that flit in her voice and hands—and invert the usual image of a woman in tango, by showing her looming above these details. She is art come to life, conquering circumstance.
In any case, whether she was originally a real woman or a poem from the start, the image of this tango singer has stood since 1941 as a triumph of the genre. Haunted by a shadowy past, brooding over her breakups and her memories of the slums, “Malena” casts a dark and thrilling shadow forward over the songbook.
Malena
(Tr. Jake Spatz)
YouTube: Adriana Varela
Malena sings the tango like no one else does,
In every line she pours out a heart her own.
With grasses of the outskirts her voice is scented,
Malena knows the woes of the bandoneón.
Perhaps back in her childhood, her skylark singing
Took on the alley’s darkened and dusky tone,
Or maybe it was that romance she never speaks of
Except within the sadness of drink alone.
Malena sings the tango with voice beshadowed,
Malena knows the woes of the bandoneón.
Through your song
Runs the chill of a final encounter.
Through your song
Stings the bitterest salt of remembering.
I don’t know
If your voice rises out of a heartbreak,
All I know
Is at the quake of your tangos, Malena,
I feel that you’re better,
Much better than me.
Your eyes look out from darkness like things forgotten,
Your lips contract in tightness with grudges grown,
Your hands are like two small doves that shake in coldness,
Your veins run with the blood of the bandoneón.
Your tangos are all creatures that run abandoned
Across the alleys’ mud lanes they’ve always known,
When all the doors and houses are locked and shuttered
And phantoms in the songs raise a howling moan.
Malena sings the tango with voice all broken,
Malena knows the woes of the bandoneón.
Malena (1941)
Music: Lucio Demare
Lyrics: Homero Manzi
Malena canta el tango como ninguna
y en cada verso pone su corazón.
A yuyo del suburbio su voz perfuma,
Malena tiene pena de bandoneón.
Tal vez allá en la infancia su voz de alondra
tomó ese tono oscuro de callejón,
o acaso aquel romance que sólo nombra
cuando se pone triste con el alcohol.
Malena canta el tango con voz de sombra,
Malena tiene pena de bandoneón.
Tu canción
tiene el frío del último encuentro.
Tu canción
se hace amarga en la sal del recuerdo.
Yo no sé
si tu voz es la flor de una pena,
sólo sé
que al rumor de tus tangos, Malena,
te siento más buena,
más buena que yo.
Tus ojos son oscuros como el olvido,
tus labios apretados como el rencor,
tus manos dos palomas que sienten frío,
tus venas tienen sangre de bandoneón.
Tus tangos son criaturas abandonadas
que cruzan sobre el barro del callejón,
cuando todas las puertas están cerradas
y ladran los fantasmas de la canción.
Malena canta el tango con voz quebrada,
Malena tiene pena de bandoneón.