This giant 1942 hit from the Ricardo Tanturi orchestra put charismatic singer Alberto Castillo front and center—and sometimes down in the audience, as his bellicose delivery of the opening lines would sometimes start a quarrel with members of the audience.
Lyricist Homero Expósito (1918-1987) composed lyrics with a more impressionistic style, borrowing techniques from Symbolist poetry but with more sentiment and nostalgia than occult mystique.
Written by José María Contursi, “Garras” (Claws) is the harrowing portrait of a forgotten lover, which makes an unusual shift of scenery as it changes from a cold night in the city to the haunting ambience of a folktale.
E. S. Discépolo created this touching title song for the 1935 film El Alma Del Bandoneón from director Mario Soffici. The film also features Discépolo’s epoch-making protest tango “Cambalache.”
Lyricist Héctor Marcó was the frequent songwriting partner of Carlos Di Sarli, and wrote a long list of songs made famous by the maestro’s orchestra. Teaming up with bandoneonist Graciano Gómez, he produced this sentimental 1945 number “Tu íntimo secreto”—a follow-up to the same duo’s giant 1943 hit “Esta noche de luna.”
The highly cinematic lyrics of the 1944 tango “Llueve otra vez” dramatize the interior space of romantic regret, while using the weather poetically for atmosphere, metaphor, and musical texture. The song’s author Juan José Guichandut wrote only a few lyrics but a number of tango melodies.
“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?
The tango “Gricel” is a snapshot of a love affair which was to take over the life and career of José María Contursi, whose passion for the young Susana Gricel Viganó gave voice to many other tangos that share the imagery and longing of this one…
Unlike most tangos, “Madreselva” brings a woman’s experience into the limelight. Debuted on stage in 1931, it became the title song of the 1938 film Madreselva starring the great Libertad Lamarque, and directed by lyricist Luis Cesár Amadori.
This memorable tango is one of several composed by the great pianist and bandleader Carlos Di Sarli, who recorded it no fewer than three times in the 1950s (twice with Mario Pomar and once again with Jorge Durán). The song had previously been a hit under the baton of Francisco Canaro…
The anthemic protest song “Cambalache” by Enrique Santos Discépolo (1901-1951) is one of the few tangos that transcends the genre entirely, and it has been adapted by punk bands as well as crossover hip-hop artists. Written in 1934 amid Argentina’s “Decade of Infamy” during the Great Depression, the song gave voice to the disaffected…
“Quiero verte una vez más,” the 1939 hit tango with lyrics by José María Contursi and music by Mario Canaro, the youngest of the Canaro brothers. This dance-floor favorite foregrounds the intense longing of lost love, and features a double-length chorus—something very common in jazz standards but not often encountered in tango.
Composed by songwriter duo Juan Carlos Cobián and Enrique Cadicamo, who would later produce “Los mareados” without even conferring with each other, “Nostalgias” has become a big hit with singers and dancers alike. Its memorable lyrics carry the tune perfectly…
This 1942 hit from Lucio Demare and Homero Manzi (the duo behind “Malena”) evokes the ports of Buenos Aires, and Dock Sud in particular, where the Riachuelo flows down banks that in former days were lined with the city’s slaughterhouses.
The famous tango “Los mareados” is the result of a string of creative rewritings. Originally composed as an instrumental tune called “Clarita” by Juan Carlos Cobián in the early 1920s, the song was adapted for the stage under the new title “Los dopados,” and decades later would be adapted again by lyricist Enrique Cadícamo…
“Caminito” is one of the tango’s all-time classics, and dates from the earlier period of the genre’s songbook.
The backtracking, repeating lyrics of this 1942 hit make use of those staccato rhythmic figures that have characterized tango melodies from the earliest days through the Golden Age of the ’40s and beyond.
Called by some fans a distillation of the tango’s theme of lost love, this text by Enrique Cadícamo captures the experience of longing and the burning of inward regret—reminding us that the tango is not just a melancholy outpouring of emotion, but a song tradition that centers on conscience.
As the title number of the 1935 film, “El día que me quieras” became an instant classic and added yet another immortal hit to the repertoire of Carlos Gardel. With its recitative opening and interlude, the song hearkens to the tango’s most conspicuous inspiration: the arias of Italian opera.
