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ADVERTORIAL
Of tango DJs, tandas and cortinas

Marathon in Partyslava - Street Style Edition

ADVERTORIAL

Guest Author | On July 15, 2015

Experience a perfect tango alchemy that we are
all addicted to!
A friend of mine, milonguera from San Francisco, likes to repeat – if you have a tango-related question, you will
undoubtedly find an answer in the universe of tango lyrics. While this statement is mostly related to “profound questions”,
about relations in and out of milongas, interpretations of codigos, etc. there are two tango-trivia questions, often asked in
tango DJ forums – “when the first tango DJs emerged?” and “when the custom to play tandas separated by cortinas
appeared?” that also have unambiguous answers in the tangos themselves. NOTE FROM GANCHO:

Within the last few years, many web sites

1. When the first tango DJs emerged? developed and started to present nice tango
events' calendars. Due to this fact; gancho will
In January 1931 Mercedes Simone, and, later in the same year, Orquesta Tipica Victor with Vicente Crisera recorded a not continue with the regular 3 months events
delightful tango “La Victrolera”, with lyrics of Melecio Peres to the music of Pascual Clausi:https://youtu.be/BEnhPM1T7mM anymore, but only keep promoted events.
Under our "Promoted Events" tab , you can also
Victrolera, noviecita de mi vida, find links to some of the websites that provide
por qué te fuiste un día tango events' calendars.

y huiste con otro amor.

si yo tanto te quería
que eras alma y vida mía,
volvé, volvé victrolera
que me mata el dolor…

Victrolera, girlfriend of my life,

Why did you leave one day
And run away with another love?
I loved you so much
That you were my life and soul,
Come back, come back victrolera
And put an end to my pain…

Victrola logo with the famous “His master voice” reproduction from the early 30s.

Who was this mysterious victrolera? “Victrola” was the trademark for the Victor Talking Machines  gramophones that soon
became a generic name for any gramophone of that era. And victrolera was the name for the girl in charge of changing the
disks on the Victrola, or a DJ as we call them now. And so we can conclude that by 1930, victrolera was already an
established job with a name, pretty much like pulperafrom the famous vals “La pulpera de Santa Lucia”, and that this job
was given predominantly to girls.

Gramophone advertisement in 1905 (Scan by M. Mateo)

Can we move back in time a bit more, and find out when the first victrolera emerged? Actually, we can, by reconstructing
some of the events in the recording industry and tango history. The initial, acoustic recordings appeared as far back as in
XIX century, and it was indeed promoted for the dance parties, as we can see from the 1905 advertisement, but the sound
lacked both the quality and the loudness required for using gramophone records for any reasonably sized milonga.
However, the things changed dramatically with the introduction of electric recording and new players – so called
Orthophonic Victrolas. One of those (the big cabinet without even a hint of a familiar horn) is shown in the 1949 movie,
“Alma de bohemio”, where la victrolera saves the night of Alberto Castillo: https://youtu.be/0VIxM3LmGeE .

The electric recording was introduced to Buenos Aires in 1926, and so, pushed to higher artistic standards by Julio De Caro,
accepted into the higher societyand propelled by the technology, new tango sextetos started appearing almost daily. But
their life was quite short. Less than three years later, the crisis of 1929, together with the introduction of sound motion
pictures put an end to their blissful existence. (See M. Lavocah “Tango Stories: Musical secrets“, ch. 19).

With the swing of a pendulum from “a lot” in 1926 to “a few” in 1929, the increased demand for tango music could easily
become higher than the supply, and the job of victroleras, which had been technically feasible since 1926, became a
demanded occupation in 1929. Tango “La victrolera” was recorded only a year later. And so, we can firmly place the
emergence and the consolidation of victroleras in Buenos Aires into a single year period between 1929 and 1930.

However, as Matt Mateo pointed out in an online discussion, we cannot yet say for sure, whether these victroleras were
indeed playing music for dancers in the clubs, akin modern musicalizadors or DJs, or served more like long-legged “local
attractions” for the patrons of cafes, as the heroine of this Fellini-like
story:http://www.todotango.com/english/history/chronicle/114/The-Vitrolera/

2. When the custom to play tandas separated by cortinas

appeared?
Firstly there exists a well-thought answer that initially appeared in Tango-L mail list, and can be found in its entirety
here:http://totango.net/tandaspiece.html . However, this answer was met with lots of criticism on the ground that “live
orquestas do not play music in tandas”. Well, modern tango orquestas, as a rule, do not play any danceable music at all,
and those few that do, actually use tandas format, in one or another form. But what about the orquestas of the Golden
Age? And what about the early DJs?

Alfredo De Angelis playing in 15 minutes sets starting at 11:00 in the morning on Radio El Mundo. (Scan by M. Krugman).

In the Golden Age a contract on the radio was a prestigious and a lucrative source of income for any orquesta tipica. The
standard radio format was to let an orquesta tipica to play a live quarter-hour set, change the type of programming for the
next quarter-hour, then let it play another quarter-hour set, and so on. Of course, any orquesta worth of its name, would
not just randomy chose pieces from its repertoire, but rather build this 15 minutes set into a certain story, with a
beginning, culmination and conclusion. That is to say that, at least for the radio performances, an orquesta tipica would
use a format, both by its length and its design similar, although not identical to a modern tanda.

Now let us consider the cabeceo. When did the peculiar custom for the men to gather in the middle of the dance floor and
to cabeceo the ladies sitting at the tables emerged? “Muchachos, comienza la ronda”, the tango by Leopoldo Diaz Velez to
the music of Luis Porcellano, that directly alludes to this custom was recorded by both Osvaldo Pugliese and Ricardo
Tanturi in August of 1943, which means that this custom indeed existed in the peak of the Golden Age:

Muchachos, comienza la ronda

que el tango invita a formar
¿Quién, al oir el arranque
de un son tan brillante,
no sale a bailar?

Guys, the round is starting

That the tango invites us to form.
Who, hearing this starter
which is so brilliant
would not go dancing?

Osvaldo Pugliese with Roberto Chanel: https://youtu.be/D2XoNHztR4A

Ricardo Tanturi with Enrique Campos: https://youtu.be/yhZjxxbfAfk

But in order for men to gather in the middle of the floor, or, for that matter, to use across-the-floor cabeceo, the floor itself
must have been cleared of all dancing couples, and the only way to achieve that for the live orquesta was to stop playing
the music. But when they used to stop? How long was a tanda of the Golden Age?

Original Azucena Maizani recording of “Danza maligna”, released in 1929.

As it turns out we have precise answers to those questions. Listen to a wonderful tango “Danza maligna”, with its anthem-
like lyrics by Claudio Frollo to the music of Fernando Randle. It was first recorded by Azucena Maizani in 1929, then by
Imperio Argentina (real name Magdalena Neale del Río), Carmelita Aubert, and Francisco Lomuto in 1932, and by Enrique
Rodriguez with Armando Moreno in 1940:

Imperio Argentina with guitars:https://youtu.be/iCP6rlZbdBM

Carmelita Aubert with orquesta:https://youtu.be/H1u6m1JXvcs

Enrique Rodriguez with Armando Moreno:https://youtu.be/mUtsdpZATo4

Francisco Lomuto with Fernando Diaz: https://youtu.be/PgdhiXsOBtY

This tango contains by far most favorite quote of mine:

Te invito a penetrar en este templo

donde todo el amor lo purifica.
¡Viviremos los dos el cuarto de hora
de la danza nostálgica y maligna!

I invite you to enter this temple

where everything is purified by love.
Together we’ll live through the quarter hour
of a nostalgic and evil dance!

Orquesta Tipica Enrique Lomuto shares the stage with Jazz Orquesta Rene Varela (top right corner) and Orquesta Tipica
Anibal Troilo playing together with Orquesta Oscar Aleman (Scan by M. Krugman)

And this very quote gives us both the timing of the historical tanda, and the proof that the custom of dancing with the
same partner for quarter hour existed as far back as in 1929, when this tango was first recorded. And it does not look like a
coincidence at all that this timing is exactly the same as the timing of an orquesta tipica set on the radio – the same
magical quarter hour.

That is, a live orquesta of the 30s would play five to seven songs in one non-interrupted set (given a standard length of a
song between two and three minutes), which would include predominantly tangos, but possibly an occasional vals, polca or
fox-trot, and in later years – a milonga as well, and then go silent for a while, allowing to clear the floor and change
partners. While the word “tanda” itself is of dubious origin, the etymology of “cortina” (a curtain) now becomes obvious –
the stage curtain would be closed when the orquesta was not playing. But also, we can easily imagine that in a big venue,
cortinas might have been spiced up by a solo number of an aspiring talent of any kind. The most prestigious venues and
carnival organizers might have hired more than one orquesta on the same date, and alternate them after each tanda, or,
maybe, only a few times in the course of the night.

An additional proof comes from the interview with Felix Picherna, probably the oldest living DJ, who started his career in
1958. There, he answers that the habit of playing four tangos, four valses, etc. e.g. the modern tanda format, surfaced only
in the 60s, while “the cortinas existed forever”:https://youtu.be/ZXlAziV8yFo?t=5m25s

3. Conclusions
Without either disputing the “academia” origin of tandas circa the turn of the XX century,  or arguing about modern
orquestas habits, or relying on eye-witness accounts, we have established that the custom to play music in quarter-hour
tandas separated by cortinas (e.g. closed curtains) was firmly planted with the live orquestas by the year 1929.

Coincidentally, or not so, it is the same year when the job of a victrolera was established. To me, the account of events of
1929 is sufficient to believe that at least some of the victroleras were indeed playing in smaller milongas for the dancers,
pretty much like the modern DJs, yet, I cheerfully admit that I lack another tango letras to prove this claim. But whenever it
happened, be it right in the 30s or later, the early DJs had no choice but to follow established by 1929 pattern of the live
orquestas to play the music in tandas with either silent or musical cortinas.

Igor “El Espejero”

Republished from Igor’s blog with his permission. Thank you, Igor! Blog and article can be reached here.

Who is Igor?

I am a DJ and audio engineer from Toronto, Canada, with a tango-flame steadily burning inside since May, 2011.

I play only traditional, Golden Age music with frequent departures into the delightful era of Guardia Vieja sextetos, always
with  consistent tandas and cortinas. As each milonga is unique, there could not be any “playlist” prepared in advance – it is
only the dance floor that can dictate the choices to the DJ, and never other way around. I do not attempt to either
“educate”, “impress” or “surprise” the dancers, or “to control the traffic”, my only goal is to deliver the best danceable
music and abundant energy to the floor, from the first to the last tanda, without a single exception… or, saying all of the
above in just one line of Claudio Frollo:

“¡Viviremos los dos el cuarto de hora de la danza nostálgica y maligna!”

TAGS july 2015 tango on the road

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