He Sings Better Every Day
(by Pablo M. Zylberglait)
1. Gaucho Meets Gringo
Good evening, and thank you for coming. My name is Julio Sosa. You’ve probably never heard of me, but where Iam from they know me as “El Baron del Tango.” I am the last of the great tango singers. Unfortunately, I had ataste for fast cars so in 1964 I hit a post and bought the farm.In any event, I’m not here to talk about me, but about the first and greatest of all tango singers. But before I start, letme bring you yanks up to speed.It is the end of the 19
th
century in the Republica Argentina. Just a few decades earlier, these vast and rich territorieswere but a corner of the Spanish empire.After a civil war that follows the birth of many a new nation, Argentina now forms part of a world undergoing not a political revolution, but an industrial one. However, instead of leading the revolution, the country becomes a sourceof food to industrialized powers that replace their factory workers with machines.Ironically, Argentina is eager to take in the unemployed of Europe. Buenos Aires explodes from a town of 230,000in 1875, to a city of 1.5 million in 1900. From the boats come the gringos. The locals assign them new names inLunfardo, the local slang. Italians become “tanos,” the Spanish are now “gallegos,” the French are known as“franchutes,” and so on.So they settle in the “conventillos” – old homes that once belonged to rich city dwellers. These old mansions arenow inhabited by several families forced to share a roof and courtyard. Spanish, Italian, French, Russian, Germanand middle eastern must now coexist in close quarters.At the same time, the government wants to conquer the wild Pampas. This wilderness, once the domain of indiansand the lonely gaucho, is now governed by settlement and the rule of law. The industrialists take over the cattle anddrive the cowboy of the Pampas into the big city.And so it is that gaucho and gringo are foisted onto one another. Both strangers in a new home – both longing for alife they lost. This clash will change the culture of their city forever. A culture rooted in nostalgia, sadness, andmelancholy. A culture that would give birth to what today we know as the tango.
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