STANDING TALL

Standing tall
By Alberto Paz
Copyright (c) 1997, Planet Tango. All Rights Reserved

Last year, Mingo Pugliese was supposed to teach at Stanford with wife Esther. For a variety of reasons, he never traveled to the USA. In his place he sent teenage son Pablo. Those browsing the Stanford Tango Week homepage this year could still see Mingo’s name as part of the faculty of the yearly event. However, we found out earlier in the year, when son Pablo and wife Esther along with daughter Marisa toured the USA that Mingo Pugliese was not coming to the US at least in the foreseeable future. Working with these three members of the Pugliese family gave us an insight into the personality and character of the man who is remains an enigma for tango dancers in America. What we heard and saw from Esther and Pablo convinced us to travel to Buenos Aires to meet, to know, to study and to experience Mingo Pugliese, the man, the teacher, the father, the husband, in person.

The introduction

We met Mingo for the first time on April 5, 1997, at the corner of Corrientes and Medrano, the night we arrived in Buenos Aires. Tall, fit, standing straight, we formally shook hands, then he led us past a crowd waiting to get into Club Almagro. That night, the tango community was paying homage to the reopening of radio program FM Tango. For the next couple of hours, we witnessed a parade of celebrities and civilians who stopped by our table to greet and shake the hand of this man who now had become a gracious host to us. Over the next 30 days we were made part of the Pugliese family entourage and we had the rare opportunity to know very well the man behind the name Mingo Pugliese.

I was born in the neighborhood of Villa Devoto near the corner of Marcos Sastre y Emilio Lamarca, he speaks softly after he had just run to the corner store to buy a couple of batteries for our moribund tape recorder, my father was an immigrant who arrived alone, without a family, in Buenos Aires in 1905.

He did not get to see the high crime area where his father lived. Today, the Arroyo Maldonado runs under Juan B. Justo Avenue, but way back then it divided the city in two. The tramways reached the creek by Gaona and Nazca Avenues and people had to cross suspended bridges to get to the other side of Juan B. Justo into Villa del Parque and Villa Devoto.

When my father arrived to Buenos Aires, my mother was being born in Italy, he says, seventeen years later they got married, not before they had a hard time explaining to the authorities that although their respective parents were from Cozenza, Italy and had identical first and last names, they were not related brother and sister!

Gregorio and Maria Pugliese had three sons. Mingo is the youngest. The father was a consummate vals criollo dancer. This was a similar dance to the Viennese waltz but danced a lot closer turning right and left. He danced with his partner with their knees tied together in order to be able to move in very small spaces, he smiles and winks adding, that’s what I call real dancing on a tile.

In those days tango dancing was very popular. The older brothers loved to dance tango although they were nothing out of the ordinary. His father also danced it but he did it in a very simple way before he got married. Wrongly so, society always looked at the dance as something bad, he indicates. The dance of tango had a checkered past originated at the bordellos. Thus, it was not looked at very well among the decent families. The daughters of these families always needed to maintain a highly visible behavior that was not tainted at all by the Tango. Then, in the home of decent families, tango was a forbidden word. The only dances practiced by this sector of society were mazurkas, chotis, Viennese waltzes and whatever else was fashionable at the time, he concludes clarifying that he heard these stories from others who heard them from others.

Mingo Pugliese got attracted to the arts at a very early age. He recalls that from the group that he went to school with, he is the only one that turned out to be a bohemian. The rest are pianist Gerardo Baldini, a famous musician, Alberto Cosentino who might be a bishop by now and other successful businessmen. Of the group, I’m the only one always broke, he smiles, and recalling my own recanting of my experience in Buenos Aires he adds with a laugh, like you said, who can take away what I’ve already danced!

He never graduated from Fine Arts School because of political reasons. He was thrown out of school because his ideas clashed with the Peronist regime. It was around 1953-54. I had dissenting political views. Then, if you asked the wrong questions you could get in trouble. I asked a professor to explain some political positions and they kicked me out. Later, after Peron was overthrown they wanted me to come back but I decided not to, he concludes.

In a city like Buenos Aires, where in every corner cafe, porteños solve the problems of the world, form a new soccer national team every hour and have an opinion on everything and everybody, depending on who you talk, Mingo is respected, admired, questioned, envied, and above all controversial. Like everybody in the tango scene, he’s got very strong opinions about everything and everybody. What makes him controversial, is that he tends to tell people what he thinks about their dancing or their performances straight in their face, rather than going behind their back like many others do. Of course, dealing with reality, even if it is somebody else’s version of it, is not very pleasant and many opt for shying away from the authoritarian image that Mingo typically projects. Somehow, we seemed to get along very well and every time I offered to stop the tape recorder he said, let it run. You can write everything I say.

He first heard tangos as a child at home. One of his older brothers went out dancing every night to the academies. Now, there is a great confusion about what the academies were all about, he says. You had the type of academies where women worked and men purchased tokens to dance. For example, in the Tuvilla Taxi Girl, which later became the Maipu Pigall, you could buy 10 coupons for 1 peso and you could have 10 dances or buy a bottle of beer. Now, there were those who were very good dancers, then when the women were not too busy, they would give them back the coupons so the guys could drink a bottle of beer. Besides dancing for a living, the women enjoyed dancing with those who were very good at it. Those were one type of academies, he concludes.

He then explains that there were also the other academies where men practiced with each other and where men could really learn how to dance well. This is something that I want to make real clear, he emphasizes, men never danced with each other, because to dance is to go to a milonga. Men practiced in the streets, on the corners. I have photos of longshoremen practicing during breaks on the shores of the River Plate by the harbor. The reason why men had to practice with each other is because women were not allowed to attend these practices, then he reiterates, you had the women who were marriage material and the others, he smiles and winks, the women from “decent” homes and the others.

The mere fact of going alone to a milonga, was enough to lump women right away to the other category. Mingo explains that “decent” women went to the dances escorted by their mothers, fathers, older brothers, or older married sisters. Then, they did not have the chance to go to the practices. Most women learned to dance with their brothers or with some trusted friends of the family who had been given the seal of approval to enter their homes by their parents. Of course, many women learned how to dance at the milongas, he adds, a woman would dance with a good dancer and he would teach her gradually.

Mingo is very clear to emphasized that it was the men who really made a cult out of the dance and worked very hard to perfect their skills. Why, he rhetorically asks, because dancing was just about the only way that men had to conquer a woman’s heart, dancing very well. There was a time in the first half of the twentieth century when approaching a woman on the street or pulling up a chair and joining a woman at a table in a restaurant or coffee house was out of the question.Those things did not happen , Mingo says, then he elaborates, then, one of the ways to get close to a woman was the dance. There are many marriages that got started with romances on the dance floor. The dance was the only convenient place for men and women to meet, and the tandas were created for that purpose, to allow them a long enough time to begin to know each other. Here he points out that the time porteños wait after the music starts before actually begin dancing has been the motive of one of the many tango tales circulating around. Tango is surrounded of lies, he states, inventions of the younger generations or stories from the surviving old-timers who invent because most of the folks from their generation are dead and can’t call them a liar. Dead people can’t talk. That is a very nasty habit of ours. I don’t know if it is the same abroad, but we are masters at that. When Troilo died he had an infinite number of friends. Same with Goyeneche and everybody was a friend of Gardel. Take Petroleo for example, he gets very serious now, after he died, suddenly everybody studied with him, right? Yet, in interviews he gave to magazine La Maga and newspaper Clarin, he clearly states that I was his only disciple.”

The man

The Pugliese family has earned the respect of the American tango community because of their dedication to the teaching of a method forf learning to dance the tango. A method that stresses good posture, careful foot placement and extensive body communication. A method based on the movements and positions of left and right turns, commonly known as eight count giros.

Mingo Pugliese defines those eight body positions as the key to the continuity of the dance and the elemental core of movements that lead to the all elusive art of improvisation. The origin of the method and the elements that make up its structure are attributed to a group of renovators led by Carlos Estevez, most commonly known as Petroleo. As it is the case with Pepito Avellaneda and Antonio Todaro, these three names are often dropped by people who claim to have studied with them, claims that can hardly be corroborated because they are all dead. Mingo touched on this subject that he calls the tango lies. Mingo assures me that Petroleo never taught anything to anybody. He may have shown a step here and there or he may have corrected the way a step was being executed, that is fine, he says, but he did not teach anybody, he concludes.

Besides he did not have the character and patience to teach, Mingo continues. He was a person so intelligent, that in a certain way he assumed that what was easy for him, had to be easy for anybody. He could not measure his own dimension and his capability to assimilate and know a lot of material. A person like that can’t serve a student very well. Well, it was not that he was useless as a teacher, he clarifies, on the contrary he was very useful, but he did not have the patience to be of any help to a person that makes mistakes. He needed to find somebody who had the consistency to be patient.

That is why when Petroleo wanted to incorporate more changes to the tango in the ’80s, he called upon his disciple to try the new movements together. It appears that Petroleo, whose nickname derives from the dark color of the wine he liked to sip, wanted to transform the way to dance tango with totally different movements that had nothing to do with the movements of the giro, enrosques, and boleos. Now there were my feet and his brain, Mingo explains. At that time he had new ideas, he kept generating ideas but his legs did not respond. Very sad, isn’t it? Later when he gave up I did not want to continue either, he confesses while his eyes betray a hint of the admiration and respect he still feels for the old master. I know some of those movements we did together, he recalls. Yes, I still remember the things he told me but I did not want…, he pauses trying to find the right words. Perhaps, he says, I did not want to get into an area that seemed too difficult. Perhaps it sounds like the easy way out but I opted for leaving it for the younger generation, he mixes sincerity with pride as there is an obvious reference to his son Pablo. I prefer that the youngsters do it, he says as he moves onto another subject.

Previously he had mentioned another of the common tango lies being spread for mass consumption. It has to do with the way the Argentine man stands in front of the woman in between the tangos of a tanda and seems to be waiting for the music to play a few bars before starting to dance. Many people say, there he is waiting to start dancing on the beat. Mingo explains that the wait in between songs allows the man a chance to talk to the woman because he does not have many other opportunities to do so after the tanda ends. He offers a plausible explanation. Traditionally, when the tanda ended, if the young lady did not go back right away to her place in the salon, she would be chastised by her mother, father or whoever was chaperoning her. For that reason men and women took advantage of the initial bars of each song to get to know each other. That is why the tango is the only music, and the Argentines the only ones, that when the music begins they let a few bars go by before they start dancing. This is a habit from the time when the dancing couple talked in between songs. So, those who now say that the delay in starting to dance is to enter on the beat are lying.

At the time Mingo started dancing there was already a transformation in progress of the way the tango was being danced. Two distinctive styles mixed up in the dance halls. There were some who danced in the old way and those who already were being part of the transformation. A musical and a dance transformation, Mingo clarifies. For him, tango is dance. The tango dance always existed, he says while explaining why he is against those who talk about tango and tango dance as two different things. There are no multiple definitions of the tango. For a simple reason, he continues, if the tango was always danced, it is a dance. People dance tango, sing tango and play tango. That’s all. I know that there is a generation of people that say a whole bunch of things with what I don’t agree at all. I can never agree with them because the tango was born as a dance. It all started with dancers. There were no singers. Some people sung obscene lyrics that eventually disappeared but fundamentally the tango was for dancing. Then, if it was danced, what was it? A dance or what? Why, I ask, they call tango dance to the tango they do for export? What does that have to do with anything? What is the other tango that people dance in the salons then? I’ll never understand. If both types of tango are danced, then why the different definition?

Mingo Pugliese confirms that the tango music had a series of transformations that move right along with the transformation of the dance. Very early, the tango had a 2 by 4 time signature. A copy of the habanera and the fandango. But there is something very important that he points out. Many people talk about the tango as a folkloric expression of Buenos Aires. The tango is not a folkloric dance. The tango is a populist dance. It is a hybrid that in its beginning took things from different musical rhythms. Therefore it does not have its total roots in the city. If it does not have roots, Mingo concludes, it is not folkloric music. Unless we pay attention to Gabriel Garcia Marquez who is proposing that the spelling rules be changed, because then they’ll change the meaning of the word folklore. So, I always say that the Tango is a modish music, not folkloric music. It is a hybrid derived from other musical expressions, some say from the habanera, the candombe, the fandango, the milonga. In another words there is a lot of controversy. But the musical notation of the Tango in the early stages was the same as any of those aforementioned, two by four. The Tango lacked any musical arrangements. All the musicians played basically “a la parrilla” throwing literally their sounds altogether without musical scores, mostly playing by ear. There were some wonderful orchestras.

The tango dancer

Mingo Pugliese calls himself a tango dancer and he has been doing it for 50 years. He claims to be the sole disciple of Carlos Estevez , a.k.a Petroleo, a fact that has been confirmed by Petroleo himself in interviews published in La Maga magazine and newspaper Clarin. Like many old timers of his generation, he is reticent to share his knowledge and his experiences possibly because he can’t measure his own dimension and visualize his place in history. We realize how important it is this exclusive interview that he agreed to do for us over a two day periodat his home in Parque Patricios in April 1997.

The following is account of Mingo’s recollecting about the way the music and the dance came to a historic encounter in their individual evolutions. According to Mingo, the Argentine tango, is founded in what he calls the ABCD of tango: Arolas, Bardi, Cobian and the one that rounds up the alphabet, De Caro.

Around the years 1922 or 1923, the musical notation of the tango changed. The change was already unfolding when Arolas began to compose the first arrangements “octavados”, in other words playing a succession of 1/8 notes in every beat. But De Caro gave the arrangements a more concrete form and began to write musical arrangements for each instrument changing the time signature to a 4×4 beat.

The basic rhythm consists of four 1/4 notes or eight 1/8 notes. What happened then? Some musicians, like Roberto Firpo, stayed with the rhythm of 2×4 . Many others began to adopt the De Caro style. However, the dancers continued dancing with the established style dictated by the 2×4 rhythm. The visual appearance of the dance did not match the sound of the music being played.

I know several people today that still dance with the 2×4 rhythm but if you see them dance a Tango with the 4×4 rhythm you figure out right away that they are not dancing within the music.

It’s not known how the primitive tango was danced, but it was done in a different way. More than anything, everybody danced with the same figures and movements that they would pass from one another. The figures had names, like el paseo, el molinete, la quebrada, el corte, la medialuna, el arroje, all figures that have passed into history and are mostly forgotten.

All those figures and steps that people invented, la rueca, el alfajor, la bicicleta (which is not like the bicycle figure used today), la corrida del bolsero, they were all names related to activities of everyday life. For example, la rueca is a textile tool used to spin wool that has a pedal that goes up and down. In the step called la rueca, the woman places her foot on the man’s instep and the man lifts his foot up and down, just like operating a pedal.

La corrida del bolsero was copied from the people that unloaded bags from the ships, carried them over their shoulders and loaded them into a carriage.

Many movements copied from real life were becoming figures of the 2×4 tango. Later, in 1938-39, Jose Orralde, El Vasco, practicing with one of the Recalde brothers, stood up straight and when he tried to bring his partner forward to begin dancing, he realized that there was no room for the man doing the woman’s part to advance, so he stepped back. They realized there and then that a new option was being presented to them. Typically, at the salida the back step did not exist. The man playing the woman’ role opened his right leg to the side and entered with his left leg forward, very similar to what some people called the American salida. Then at the cross there was a slight bend, not quite a quebrada. The walking was relatively slow, sharply marking the rhythm of the music because the 2×4 beat was much easier to follow.

All that did not look right with the music that had already gone through a dramatic transformation by Julio De Caro and those who followed his style. The transformation was so evident that De Caro dedicated a wonderful Tango to the old guard of musicians, and named it precisely A la Guardia Vieja, one of his better compositions. It was a homage to all those who had played without musical notations, a la parrilla, which literally means the act of throwing things onto the grill. The music stands were commonly known as “parrillas”, every instrument played from the same piano score.

In 1940, a group of neighborhood dancers known as bailarines de barrio, led by Carlos Estevez, a.k.a.Petroleo and Salvador Sciana, El Negro Lavandina, used to hang out at the corner of Jonte and Segurola Avenues at a cafe named Febo next to a movie house in a tiny neighborhood that most people associate with Villa Devoto but it is called Montecastro (a historical site where troops left to fight the Desert’s Campaign against the indians).

These dancers belonged to a new generation that was replacing the old bailarines orilleros. You, see, always there has been and there are only two types of tango: salon and orillero. Salon was the tango that was allowed to be danced at the salons. Orillero was the tango danced on the fringes. Originally the fringes were the territory of the scoundrels and rogues, el malandrinaje. Later the fringes became the neighborhood clubs. In another words in the center of the city you had the salons and in the barrios you had the clubs. The tango salon was danced walking in a very simple way, plain, unadorned. The tango orillero was danced with steps. This is the way it has always been.

Except in 1930 when another of my teachers, El Gallego Mendez began to dance the Tango with a canyengue style, which has nothing to do with the so called canyengue that is taught today.

Actually, those who claim to dance canyengue, dance very slow and with a gentle sway of the body marking the time with their feet. The real tango canyengue was very fast to the point that when Mendez began to dance it, people said that he had poisoned the tango. Many still remember, one of them is Carlos Albornoz, possibly the oldest living dancer. The other one is Jose Maria Bañas, a.k.a. El Pibe Palermo. However, what Palermo dances on the stage of the show Una Noche de Tango is not canyengue, it’s a tango with “medio corte”, a sort of tango-milonga. The tango canyengue is twice as fast. Of course it has more weight the one who says that dances canyengue and lived in the era of the canyengue than the one who did not know it. Because in the early ‘40s people did not dance canyengue anymore. The canyengue dancers you could count with the fingers of your hand. The only one that today comes close to the real canyengue, albeit that his legs can’t hack it anymore, is Jose Maria Baña, El Pibe Palermo. He’s the son of a dancer nicknamed El lecherito, the little milk man. They also called El lecherito to Casimiro Ain. Here there is something that has to do with history. I saw Mendez dance the tango canyengue and today it seems funny to hear people talk about tango con corte, de medio corte, canyengue. I lived through that time at an early age because I was lucky that being so young, they accepted me in their circles. I also saw people like Misto and Carila dance the tango orillero and the tango salon. I entered in the dance circles by the hand of a person that was loved and respected, El Negro Lavandina, whose real name was Salvador Sciana, the name that I use to identify my tango academy. He is one of the many forgotten people of tango. There were many important people that transformed the tango. The only one that people remember is Petroleo. Everybody talks about Petroleo. He was the inspiring figure of that movement. But there were many who contributed to that movement of transformation.

I started in 1948, eight years after that transformation had begun. This transformation and the movements that were being incorporated in the tango continued until 1953-54. Among all those people, there were a few that were not totally defined with the new movements and mixed the new with the old. That is why what I teach and the way I dance has many principles that were utilized in the old style of dancing. The way to place the feet without raising the heels, for example. When I started dancing, if somebody raised his heels so you could see the bottom of his shoes, we would tell him to go and put on the horseshoes.

There was this great dancer who taught Todaro a lot, named Arturo Intile, a.k.a. Arturito. He was stiff but he had a tremendous speed in his legs doing those combinations so characteristic of Todaro. But he danced always showing the heels of his shoes. So when somebody would say that Arturito danced very well, el Vasco Orralde would disagree saying that if he painted Arturito’s heels with a chalk, all you could see were the white marks. Inclusive in the boleo. We never did the boleo raising the heels. We did it hiding the foot so the heels always pointed to the floor. Many of my friends would say, you can’t put the feet so your heels show because you never know what you may have stepped on.

All of these things have been disappearing. As a result there have been many who dance because all of us who were there at the time did not continue dancing, otherwise they could never dance. I tell it to you this way, very clear.

In spite of the fact that I may or not may like the way they dance, there are three persons that I respect very much and that I don’t allow anybody to talk bad about them. One of them is Juan Carlos Copes, the other one is Eduardo Arquimbau and the third is Virulazo. I will never allow anybody to talk bad about them. I reiterate, whether I like or don’t like the way they dance, that is personal, these are three persons that the whole world must respect, because they were the only ones that when nobody cared about the tango anymore, they continued fighting for the tango, working for the tango, sometimes dancing for free, for little money, or for a meal. That kind of people we have to respect because everybody else, including me, around 1958-59, deserted the tango and tango began to disappear.

Actually, many invent things like the military proscribed or prohibited the tango. That is a lie. What happened is that because of the continuous stage of siege and martial law that the country was in, there was a prohibition for people to meet or gather in groups. To give a party or to celebrate a wedding you had to have a permit so eventually people stop dancing everything, tango, rock and roll, boogie-boogie, tarantella, etc. But, never, never, ever any military government issued a decree to prohibit the tango.

THE MUSIC MAN OF VILLA URQUIZA

The music man of Villa Urquiza
By Alberto Paz and Valorie Hart
Copyright (c) 1997, Planet Tango. All Rights Reserved

Visitors coming to Buenos Aires to experience the Argentine tango first hand quickly notice the codes and rituals of the milongas. One of the most impressive sights that captures the imagination of foreigners tangueros is the crowd that converges on the dance floor as soon as the music starts. What seems like an invisible spell that draws dancers to the floor is actually the work of the music man of BuenosAires. On April 24, 1997 we interviewed Felix Picherna at the Club Sunderland’s dining room.

Couples, mostly in their senior citizen years move with an attitude of having been there before. They take a place on the dance floor, they proceed to embrace, and they begin to move through paths that seem very familiar to them. Younger dancers, out of respect for the elder, wait until the first flow takes over the floor before entering themselves to jockey for a place. As the music progresses, the multitude of shoulders and heads seem to move ever so orderly, yet showing a disconcerting unpredictability as to where they will move next. When the music ends, everybody stops at the last beat. Soon another song plays but nobody moves, except to discreetly glance at the people around them or to engage in private small talk with each other. Suddenly as on cue the human mass begins to move around, forming circular human layers that cover the entire dance floor in the shape of the rings of an onion.

Those who pay attention see this ritual repeated three or four times until a total different musical melody seems to sweep the dancers off the floor. An invisible curtain has ended the tango act in four songs. If you happen to be at Club Sunderland on a Saturday night, you will hear a voice through the loudspeakers thanking the dancers, “Gracias señores bailarines!“

It is sixty year old Felix Picherna, the dean of deejays in Buenos Aires. For the last ten years he has enjoyed the bonanza the Argentine tango has brought to Buenos Aires, becoming a very well respected and popular “musicalizador.” We have been followed him for a couple of weeks before we asked him for an interview. “Meet me for lunch at Sunderland,” the voice on the phone says. “I eat there every day,” he adds, “I get there by 1 pm.“

The aperitif

Crossing Buenos Aires in an automobile during lunch time can last a lunch time… It’s 2 pm when we finally arrive at picturesque Club Sunderland in Villa Urquiza. The lunch crowd in the dining room looks like the whole neighborhood is there to eat. Red sweater, eagle eyes, Picherna spots us from a pay phone in one corner of the ample room and points to a table. We take our seats and a series of exchanges take place between our host and the waiter. A few minutes later the table is styled with red wine bottles, sparkling mineral water, and fresh bread. The air fills with the scent of T-bone steaks, and heaps of crisp and colorful salad contribute to the mouth watering experience. Topping it off “papas fritas,” the Argentine version of french fries.

Felix Picherna wanted to be a telegraph operator. He was 14 and soon found out that his chosen vocation did not have much of a future. He then turned to electronics. Later he worked on the first black and white TV sets just beginning to become popular in Argentina. Those who may laugh at the notion of tango being a way of life would be baffled to hear Picherna say that his life is a tango.

At age 8 he used to sing Remembranzas. By age 14 he could hum all 900 tangos from Gardel’s repertoire. He remembers the “conventillos,” tenements that lined up what is today Avenida 9 de julio where he grew up. In the years 1942-43, one could be nurtured by the tango because life was a tango. He sold newspapers and magazines along Calle Corrientes earning enough to buy a “cafe con leche,” the hot milk with a shot of coffee breakfast for poor kids. “Every 100 meters there was a tango place,” he says. “I realize now that I saw the Miguel Calo orchestra, the Roberto Firpo quartet. I heard Fiorentino sing with the Jose Basso orchestra.” He witnessed the first presentation in public as a soloist of recently deceased tango crooner Alberto Moran at Cafe Nacional. Without realizing it, he may have sold newspapers to Juan D’Arienzo and Anibal Troilo.

He earned first salary at age 11 working as an extra in a play at Teatro Colon. One day, as he juggled a ball outside the theater, the manager sent him out to buy cigarettes for a generous tipper. Later he found out that the generous tipper was none other than tenor Beniamino Gigli.

His tango learning began at age 15 at Club Pinocho practicing with other men. In those days women were not allowed to socialize and practice with the men. He learned to dance tango, milonga, vals and jazz. With another kid, they began to recognize the sounds of different orchestras and to memorize the titles. He claims to be able to recognize 3,500 tangos in his head.

Gardel marked an entire period to the youngsters of his time. Gardel was a mystery. His life, the way he was, the way he dressed and the way he sang. It is hard to explain. Life in the conventillos was a reflection of the tangos that Gardel sang. The minas, percantas, pungas (women, prostitutes, pickpockets) were ever present in his life. That’s why he never took the easy way out of vices and temptations, except perhaps for the cigarettes that were very appealing to the young kids hia age.

At age 23 he was asked to DJ at Club Viento Norte in Villa Urquiza. He had already experienced some sensational deejaying at Club Sabores in Villa del Parque. He never saw the face of that DJ but the music he danced to at Villa Sabores can’t be matched, except that modern technology affords a better sound quality. Later on, he started dating, got married and raised a family. He reminisces the pleasure of visiting Miami after his family had raked in a lot of money during the ’sweet money’ period. Upon his return from Miami, he soon encountered difficulties at home and ended separating from his wife. He faced a new way of life, and for a variety of reasons he decided to dedicate his work to playing music for dancing.

He resorted to the knowledge and talent from his younger years and began to try his fortune as a deejay. Soon if a hundred people were where Picherna played music one night, then 150 would show up the next Saturday.

Through the tango he restructured his life both financially and sentimentally. To this day, he can’t get started in the morning if he does not listen to tangos. “It’s the kind of addiction you get from ‘falopa’,” he smiles using the jargon word for recreational drugs. His experience has become very important these days because there are a lot of youngsters who are dancing tango. He begins to notice that gradually young and older generations people alike stop him after the milonga to praise his music selection. Through the years he draws from his experience and now at age 60 he tries harder than ever to be the best deejay there is.

One of his dreams is acquiring the latest high tech sound equipment and to try to get the 3,500 tangos he carries in his head on CDs. The country’s economy hinders his wishes. About 20% of the downtown clubs have acceptable sound systems. Many times Picherna, who doesn’t own a car, rides the bus with a briefcase full of cassettes and his own cassette player which he uses to enhance the delivery of the music. He makes a point to single out Club Almagro and DJ Horacio Godoy who works with very modern equipment.

For a man riding the wave of popularity, rather than listening to himself talk, Picherna is curious about the state of the tango abroad. He wants to know whether in the USA there is a revisionism of tango, the way it is happening in Buenos Aires, where 18-25 years old are coming out to join the very old. He remind us that a couple of generations were lost to the tango. He wants to know if the dancers in North America are mostly Latinos with an Anglo minority. He gets taken aback when we say that Hispanics like the sentimental aspect of the tango song and are more interested in what food will be served rather than who’s the deejay at the milongas.

He is even more perplexed to hear that the great majority of Americans who are into tango, are for the most part dancers. He clarifies that there is no racial undertone intended and says, “The Anglo dancers tend to take things more seriously but although they approach the tango with passion, they still use the Latin feeling as a point of reference.”

He’s also intrigued by the Europeans that come to Buenos Aires. “They are very serious. They know the date of the first recording of Mala junta, the first one that Pugliese recorded. I hear Mala junta, I dance to it, but heck, what do I know about the date it was recorded by Pugliese,” he concludes.

It comes as no surprise to him that some foreigners get bored quickly with the younger music groups that travel abroad. Obviously it is a thrill to hear a young man playing the bandoneon, or to hear the old sound of the flute, but the novelty stops soon when the promotional hype attempts to define some of these groups as “heirs” of the legendary musicians of the 30’s, 40’s and 50’s. Most of the European and American dancers have done all their training and have walked their miles to the sounds of the best recordings of Troilo, Tanturi, Di Sarli, Pugliese, and many other giants of the music.

“Indeed,” he nods, “I’ve heard veteran dancers say, let’s take an orchestra, D’Agostino with Vargas for example, that everybody likes. Perhaps the rhythm was not very danceable but it fulfilled the desires of the dancers. If D’Agostino and Vargas were alive today in 1997. If they had the same musicians, the same instruments, they couldn’t record Tres esquinas the way they did it 50 years ago. Because there is something missing, I’m not sure if foreigners can understand this. The tramway no longer runs, the Lugones street where Sunderland is located at, was a dirt road in those days, the musicians had things with which to get motivated. What motivates them today? A car racing at 200 km/h? It’s good that all that existed. It was quite an era. It’s like Beethoven’s Fifth, it happened once and forever. What happened in the 30’s, 40’s and 50’s with the tango, was a once in a lifetime happening, and it will never happen again. We are lucky because everything got recorded and today we can enjoy it all. The 1941 Troilo orchestra for example. The Americans have not been able to recreate an orchestra like Benny Goodman’s. There has been only one Louis Armstrong. Where did they get their motivation from? That is my humble opinion.“

The entree

More and more foreign visitors in Buenos Aires had begun to recognize his voice, his words of appreciation after a tanda, but above all, they are appreciating the creativity of a man who is in charge of getting hundreds and hundreds of very demanding dancers onto the dance floor night after night. His musical delivery is not predictable, his selections are not played in an expected order and somehow he is like an artist creating on the canvas of the dance floor. Showing a genuine sense of modesty, he acknowledges the compliment. Saving the considerable distances, he suggests, it’s like when Gardel sang or Maradona improvised a play. I improvise with the music on the spot based on what my fantasy of life expresses at a particular moment.

He claims to remember up to 3,500 titles in his head, a gift he feels very fortunate to have because, for example, he will remember from our conversation that I like Tanturi with Ortega del Cerro (who was Tanturi’s first singer) and the next time I’m in Buenos Aires he’ll play Tanturi with Ortega del Cerro for me.

This is the spark he carries over from his childhood when being very active and mentally alert allowed him to earn a living by gaining the sympathy of the people. I wish I would have used that talent for financial gain, he admits, but God gave me something better instead. He refers to his health. In ten years of activity he has never missed a day of work, working almost every day of the week. I thank God for a hearty health, he repeats very seriously. Of course at age 60, his eyesight and his stamina are not as good as they were many years back, but he continues to provide the basic element for the enjoyment of the dancing crowd: the music.

He has been thanking the dancers at the end of every tanda ever since a very hot summer night, seven or eight years ago when the unbearable heat boosted the attendance at an outdoor milonga at Club Estudiantes del Norte, in the neighborhood known as Saavedra, not too far from Villa Urquiza. That night he played music for his largest crowd ever, 508 persons. During the course of the evening he noticed the presence of a very young, good looking and already extraordinary dancer. He then made the following announcement: Tonight, we’re honored to have the presence of a great tango dancer at Club Estudiantes del Norte. Making his triumphal appearance here is the Blue Prince, Miguel Angel Zotto. Thank you very much señores milongueros! A lady approached him and reminded him that the gentlemen dancers had partners and that she was one of them. He then rephrased the salutation that has become his trademark to this day: Thank you very much dancing couples!

He jokes about sometimes attempting to greet French and German visitors in their language but his vocabulary is very limited. He reaffirms here his admiration for Carlos Gardel, who sang tango Los Indios from Francisco Canaro in Guarani, the indigenous language of Paraguay. The versatility of Gardel’s talent was also shown in the vals Perfumes de Oriente, sung in the Arabic tongue, Hija de Japonesita in Japanese, and of course many regional songs from the Argentine folklore. For Felix Picherna, the image of Gardel is frozen at a time when the 30 year old singer was singing all the tangos we hear today, accompanied by just two guitar players. Ventanita de arrabal for example is one of the greatest legacies of the Gardel who later became commercially popular around the world.

The lunch spread at Sunderland

This conversation is taking place while we partake of a very traditional ritual among Argentines. We’re having a leisurely lunch at Club Sunderland, and the sizzling steaks brought by the waiter momentarily become the subject of our conversation. Argentines are very proud of the freshness, tenderness and flavor of their meat, and Picherna is curious about the dietary habits of Californians. He thinks that what makes the USA a great country is the use of two words: United States. Unity creates strength, says a very popular refrain. Jose Hernandez immortalized the thought in his classic book Martin Fierro: may the brothers be united because that is the fundamental law, since lacking unity will lead them to be devoured by outsiders. A toast for unity and for the great future of Argentina closes the short digression.

Carlos Di Sarli is his favorite orchestra. Felix Picherna repeats what he has said on television and often at Confiteria Ideal. Pugliese was a carbon copy of Julio De Caro. What happened is that the pupil transcended the teacher with a different set of technical elements not available in the ‘20s. Troilo is akin to Julio De Caro. D’Arienzo before 1935 was one of a bunch of neighborhood orchestras. When a young kid named Rodolfo Biagi joined D’Arienzo at the piano, there was a dramatic change in the sound of the orchestra that brought a new life into the tango dance. Another orchestra dubbed the All Stars owed its success to the existence of a 23 year old bohemian known as the Chopin of tango , pianist Osmar Maderna. Without him Miguel Calo would not have reached the popularity he has enjoyed.

What happened with Di Sarli? Perhaps this is a very personal opinion but Picherna considers that Di Sarli did not need to imitate anybody. He created his own school. His personality is still the subject of controversy today. Di Sarli was a perfectionist that could not admit any mistakes. His style was unique although it is important to remember that Di Sarli was a pianist of the original 1920’s orchestra of Osvaldo Fresedo that traveled to the United States. So there is a certain resemblance between Osvaldo Fresedo with Di Sarli on piano and the Carlos Di Sarli that became a success after 1940 with his own orchestra.

The dessert

The subject pops in and out many times as we jump from subject to subject in the same delightful way as we attack the juicy steaks and crisp papa fritas generously washed down with a 1994 Cabernet Savignon (from the province of Mendoza, of course). Valorie wants to know what Felix’s taste is for contemporary music. Picherna hesitates and attempts to draw an analogy with soccer, the other Argentine passion. After seeing Pele and Maradona what else can anyone expect? A bionic man?

The answer is obvious: there is not much today in terms of orchestras that match or rival the giants of yesterday. “There has been a plateau for imagination and creativity, everything has basically been done in this world,” he says, although he admits that the reach for space and the exploration of other galaxies opens a whole new dimension in knowledge and imagination. That is why he considers that the young should not be told that everything is already done, because they merit encouragement.

And what about Astor Piazzolla?
He quickly volunteers that he is a fanatic of Piazzolla. But for a milonga he is worthless. “Piazzolla was a revolutionary of the tango as an art form,” he asserts. With his work, there is nothing left to be done in this century. He cautions that this kind of conversation is meant for mature individuals and not for young people who may get depressed very easily with this line of reasoning. “Take Pedro Maffia for example. His merit is that he invented a way to play the bandoneon when nobody else did it that way. People who learn today are doing so over existing foundations. Imitation prevails. After 20 years of Gardel’s death, Horacio Deval surfaced as his perfect imitator. If you listened to Deval’s El dia que me quieras from a block away, you would say that is Gardel. Yet, Deval did not create anything, but just imitated.”

Considering that the uncanny creativity of the tango players stopped a while back, then what is the future of tango music? It may sound depressing but in many ways it’s the same as waiting for another Gardel to be born, he responds philosophically. Nowadays many like to dance with recordings of second rate orchestras, namely Lucio Demare, Ricardo Malerva, Enrique Rodriguez, who in their time couldn’t compete with the Puglieses, the Troilos and the Di Sarlis. Faced with this competition, Enrique Rodriguez ended up playing pasodobles and fox trots. Yet, there is a tango, Llorar por una mujer (To cry for a woman), that vocalist Armando Moreno sung with the orchestra of Enrique Rodriguez. It touches the ladies very deeply in a very special way. Moreno had a very melodious voice and Picherna has to play it three or four times at least at Confiteria Ideal, a sort of modern day Lonely Hearts Club for locals and tourists.

For many of us, a tango is a tango is a tango and an orchestra is an orchestra, and so on. For those who lived the decades of the 40s and 50s, like Picherna, the memory of the great tango wars of the 1920s is still very fresh. There is a dark cloud that surrounds the controversy among the traditionalists who followed Canaro and the innovators who admired De Caro. Francisco Canaro was not like Julio De Caro who had a defined musical line and was recognized as a musician. Canaro was a merchant of tango known for his visits to the long line of bars along the port of Buenos Aires, where the Polish, Slavics and German immigrants gathered to feel sorry for themselves. Most of these immigrants, refugees from the European wars, could write a tango like Sentimiento gaucho after a couple of drinks and sell it to Canaro for a bottle of cheap wine.

“Francisco Canaro did not follow a particular musical line,” says Picherna, “he used his increasing wealth to take advantage of the artistic talent in which many destitute immigrants could cry a lost love or a painful separation. This is not to take away the merits of the Canaro orchestra with young Di Cico on bandoneon and Mariano Mores on piano.”

Felix Picherna has been itching to tell us more about his idol Carlos Di Sarli and finally we manage to focus the conversation on the Lord of Tango. “Carlos Di Sarli was a creator of a very personal style. He had a great personality with a very controversial character. He was authoritarian, a sort of a Hitler-like leader with no tolerance for failure.” One night, about 7 years ago at Club Sunderland, somebody approached Picherna and asked him to play some Di Sarli recordings because Di Sarli’s son was present that night. Like most DJs worth their tanda, Picherna controlled his exasperation for being asked to do the obvious, prepared a tanda of classics, El cabure, A la gran muñeca, Organito de la tarde and Nobleza de arrabal, and went to greet Di Sarli’s son, whom he noticed was not a dancer. He was a mature individual with glasses, Picherna recalls.
- How do you like your father’s recordings?
-The recordings of my father are formidable.
- What do you think about your father?
- Don’t talk to me about my father, he was an s.o.b. Talk to me about Di Sarli, the director and about his orchestra.

Di Sarli disbanded his orchestra from 1948 to 1951 for reasons that nobody really knows. In 1951 he reassembled an orchestra. Picherna was only fourteen but he remembers that night vividly. The master of ceremonies was legendary radio announcer Antonio Carrizo. He introduced Di Sarli’s first theme, Carlos Di Sarli’s first interpretation on Radio El Mundo will be Salvador Felipeti’s Los 33 orientales, and teenager Felix got goose bumps. Di Sarli gave it all he had. The successful run on Radio El Mundo lasted 3 years. One day his musicians influenced by the activism of the Peronist labor unions went on strike. It’s not clear whether the strike was triggered by low wages or by the very difficult personality of Carlos Di Sarli as an employer. It happened then that five violinists from the Teatro Colon approached Di Sarli offering their services and suggesting that the director contract four bandoneon players. From this period, Di Sarli recorded 30-40 Tangos from his initial period including the classic Bahia Blanca using the five best violinists from the Teatro Colon, which was a real feat.

We wanted to know Picherna’s preferences in dancers. He draws another soccer analogy. Pele and Maradona were the greatest of the great. Yet, players today can probably run circles around the monsters of yesterday. Enough said. For a man with very traditional viewpoints, he surprises us with very progressive positions.

He is one of the first DJs who started using a tanda to highlight a parade of aces, Ronda de Ases, he calls it. He’s proud to say that hotshot DJ Horacio Godoy has adopted and improved on the idea, mixing different orchestras with similar styles in a given tanda. But he knows that there are places where his progressive thinking is not accepted. He would do anything to be 25 again. On this particular Friday night, April 24, 1997, in the upstairs lounge of Club Sunderland, an elite group of tango dancers will gather as they do with a religious fervor every week. Among them, names familiar to the world like Jose Vasquez Lampazo and Gerardo Portalea (when El negro stands up to the tune of Los 33 orientales, every single dancer of the newer generation folds). In spite of being close in age with these great dancers, Picherna finds it difficult to modify certain traditions which are followed religiously by these dancers. Like, for example, keeping the “purity” of a tanda, that is a demand that all tangos be of the same interpreter and style. Sometimes Picherna likes to mix Di Sarli with Florindo Sassone (very similar styles), but this particular group of dancers will not accept that. When it comes to milongas, there are certain liberties that he will indulge in, mixing milongas by D’Arienzo and Canaro. But the traditionalist old timers won’t admit “mistakes”, all four tangos of a tanda must be by the same orchestra and with the same style.

Valorie Hart and Felix Picherna at Sunderland

In his concept of a Ronda de Ases tanda, he can mix Pugliese with Pedro Laurenz because they are very close in style and arrangements. The younger set in Palermo accepts Picherna’s indiscretions: Amurado by Pugliese, Por que razon by D’Arienzo with Carlos Polito on piano and De puro guapo by Laurenz. He is grateful that the younger dancers will even dance to the Tubatango, while he knows that Portalea would shoot him and throw him out the window if he would dare to do that, upstairs at Sunderland.

The three hour almuerzo comes to an end and we leave with a full stomach and a happy heart. Our souls are richer with the experience of having walked around the memory of a man who chooses to play the music that makes people want to dance. He won’t play Adios Nonino at a milonga but he will play La bordona by Pugliese right after a Ronda de Ases with Calo, De Angelis and Tanturi. By sheer coincidence the sound of Pugliese’s rendition of Zum comes through the noisy comedor. He proclaims with enthusiasm. “What an occasion to have another toast!”