MISSING CARLITOS   Leave a comment

Every year on this date, June 24th, I’m haunted by the image of the freak airplane crash that took the lives of Carlos Gardel and Alfredo Lepera in 1935.



So they brought Alfredo Lepera, a Brazilian born writer and poet then living in Buenos Aires. His mission was to write new lyrics in a more palatable Castillian language that would be universally understood and appreciated in all of South America and Spanish speaking Europe.





When his remains arrived in Buenos Aires almost a year later, the city came to a grinding halt. He laid in wake for a day at the Luna Park arena, located where Corrientes Avenue begins to grow up into the heart of the city. Dignitaries, musicians, singers, artists, and plain people all shed tears of sorrow and mourning before his casket began its final journey along Corrientes Avenue to the cemetery of Chacarita where he was laid to rest. The slow pace of the funeral march was accentuated by a shower of flowers and tears being cast from every balcony and every door along the way.

Carlos Gardel began singing at a very young age. Raised in poverty and with limited means of survival, he managed to get singing gigs at weddings, birthdays and other family receptions. His repertoire was mostly made out of Creole compositions, a genre that included folk songs and rural milongas typically accompanied by one or more guitars. Gradually he began to hang out at some seedy cantinas surrounding the old Mercado de Abasto, a sort of central wholesale market. Visitors today may have noticed a subway station under Corrientes Avenue named after Gardel. A super modern mega shopping center stands above on the grounds of the old Mercado de Abasto. It was in one of those cantinas that he faced Uruguayan folk singer Jose Razzano in what was supposed to be a duel for supremacy and ended up becoming a sensational duo that started performing at theaters, clubs, and cabarets around the country and in neighboring Uruguay.

The story goes that sometime in 1917 Gardel was approached in Montevideo by a street poet who had a penchant for writing risky lyrics to existing tango music. Gardel loved what Pascual Contursi had written for a tango named Lita composed by Samuel Castriota. In private gatherings he was amused at Contursi’s clever use of lunfardo expressions to describe the sappy tale of a pimp in love who laid awake at night hoping for the return of his former whore.

It began with, “Percanta que me amuraste, en lo mejor de mi vida…” (Woman who left me at the best moment of my life) and ended with,

“Porque tu luz no ha querido, mi noche triste alumbrar…” (Because your light (talking to a lamp in the room) has not wanted to illuminate my sad night.” And those three last words, MI NOCHE TRISTE, became the title of the first and foremost tango lyrics, setting the stage for a rich chapter in the glorious book of tango history.

Going against the advice of his friends, Gardel decided to take a chance singing “Mi noche triste” at a theater performance. Razzano bailed out, and Carlos Gardel made history by singing his first tango in public, sending the audience into a frenzy and receiving a standing ovation.

What followed was a body of work touching on tales of love, hate, infidelity, and crimes of passion depicting the fictional relationships between pimps and their whores. Record companies couldn’t press enough vinyl to keep up with the demand, and many popular bards followed Contursi’s suit and inundated the market with one of the most prolific productions of lyrics in tango history.

Gradually, Gardel began to incorporate tangos in his recordings, and by the early nineteen twenties the popular demand and the pressure from the record companies made him become a full time tango singer.

Soon he traveled to Spain and was met with great success. Then he ventured into Paris where he became the darling of a decadent aristocracy who catapulted him into international fame. He kept returning to Buenos Aires in what became trips “to enjoy the city as a visitor, rather than as a resident.”

The Radio Broadcasting Company brought him to New York from where he made history by broadcasting a program via telephone lines to Buenos Aires. Paramount saw in Gardel their golden opportunity to enter the Latin American film market. At the time of his death, he had become an idol among fans from all over Latin America.


When Gardel died, so did the hopes of any aspiring singer to ever reach universal acceptance. Agustin Magaldi and Ignacio Corsini were great popular singers contemporaries of Gardel but withered under his shadow. Horacio Deval’s register was identical to Gardel’s so he was chastised for that, and in spite of a short success with the Horacio Salgan orchestra, he never achieved popular recognition. People have found Horacio Deval and heard him sing the Gardel repertoire at one of the many Argentine restaurants and tanguerias in the city of Miami, where he had been residing for many years until his recent death.

Uruguayan born Julio Sosa came very close to reach the pinnacle but his life was cut short in a car accident. Roberto ‘El Polaco’ Goyeneche reached cult-like following and respect, but he managed to age and deteriorate in the eyes of the public. They say that it will snow again in Buenos Aires the day a replacement for Gardel is born.



Posted June 24, 2009 by Alberto & Valorie in ESSAYS

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