The Golden Age of the tango entered a late phase in the 1950s. The six-year period of censorship was now behind it, and the hot new recording technology of magnetic tape was driving the major orchestras and singers to revisit their hits of the previous decades, often at faster speeds to match the medium’s crackling new high-energy sound. During this period of recovery and re-recording, the tango songbook develops in two directions. Some songwriters begin branching off into new material, drawing on the next-door arts of jazz, the circus, and the comedy stage for inspiration, as one sees in the Piazzolla-Ferrer collaborations of the 1960s. Others distill and concentrate the elements of the genre which had been explored since the 1920s, leading to a new intensity as the tango doubles down on its legacy. One sees this approach result in the dramatic, almost extreme sound of Pugliese’s orchestra from about 1948 onwards.
“Hasta siempre, amor” is a song of this latter type. Like earlier tangos, it creates a dramatic moment and a story out of a single speaker’s utterance; and like a compression of its predecessors, it heightens the conflicted emotion at its center until the edges burn away. It is a breakup song, a backward glance on failed romance. Yet unlike other bitter farewells, such as “Humillación” of the previous decade, this one expresses at least as much regret and continued longing as it does resentment. The song overstates itself, projecting its grief, and betraying that its emotions are still mixed and perhaps forever unresolved. Federico Silva tattoos this into the song’s repeating title phrase, jamming “bye forever” and “my love” together into a collision that becomes more conflicted every time it recurs. The rest of the language in this obsessively repeating phrase conveys a powerful ambiguity: their breakup, he says, dolerá… will hurt… leaving it open which one of them he means.
Never after, my love
(Tr. Jake Spatz)
YouTube: Orq. Romantica Milonguera
Never after, my love!
Soon you’ll find a new shoulder,
And the breakup will smoulder
The same as now.
Never after, my love!
You will not find another
With a heart for your bother
The same as mine.
And when you’re looking… for my hand
Through the crowds… where you stray,
Then alone… you’ll understand
My love of you… you turned away!
Never after, my love!
Soon you’ll find a new shoulder,
And the breakup will smoulder
The same… the same as now!
Never after, my love!
Thinking back now it floors me
Like a new thorn that gores me
And bleeds me dry.
Never after, my love!
When you’re lying there dreaming
Of my warmth as you’re freezing,
I won’t be there.
And if you see me… don’t you shout,
When I’m with someone… moving on…
Since it’s useless… holding out
If all the hope’s… already gone!
Never after, my love!
Soon you’ll find a new shoulder,
And the breakup will smoulder
The same… the same as now!
Hasta siempre, amor (1953)
Music: Donato Racciatti
Lyrics: Federico Silva
Hasta siempre, amor.
Pasarás de otro brazo
y dolerá el fracaso…
igual que hoy.
Hasta siempre, amor.
Corazón como el mío
—que compartió tu hastío—
no encontrarás.
Y entre la gente buscarás
la mano amiga que te dí…
y sólo así comprenderás
que por quererte te perdí!
Hasta siempre, amor.
Pasarás de otro brazo
y dolerá el fracaso
igual, igual que hoy…!
Hasta siempre, amor.
Hoy me sangra el recuerdo
como una espina nueva
del corazón.
Hasta siempre, amor.
Cuando sueñes conmigo
en las noches de frío
ya no estaré.
Y no me llames, si me ves
a mi también con otro amor…
porque es inútil esperar
si la esperanza ya murió!
Hasta siempre, amor.
pasarás de otro brazo
y dolerá el fracaso
igual, igual que hoy…!