I´m sure you heard about Carlos Gardel if you have a minimum interest in the Tango. Carlos Gardel is an argentine singer, composer and actor of French or perhaps Uruguayan origin; According to this second hypothesis, he would have been born in 1887 in Tacuarembó. At the end of the 1920s, Gardel’s identification with tango was already a universal phenomenon. Since then, his essential role in the development and dissemination of tango and his status as the best interpreter in the history of the genre has never ceased to be recognized.
As is often the case with figures of such enormous popular dimension, the biography of the “criollo thrush” is tinged with legends, and its posthumous fame has barely diminished over the decades. For many years it was common to see how many people made a pilgrimage to Carlos Gardel’s tomb to ask him for health and work; in Argentina, the expression “is Gardel” is equivalent to “is incomparable”.
Carlos Gardel had that childhood punished by the adversity that seems to characterize every successful and suburban hero. His mother, Bèrthe Gardès, never knew exactly who was the father of that son born on December 11, 1890 in the hospital of La Grave (Toulouse) and baptized with the name of Charles Romualdo, although an important part of scholars maintain that the above data are a fabrication aimed at hiding his status as the illegitimate son of Carlos Escayola and María Lelia Oliva, and that he was actually born on December 11, 1887 in Tacuarembó (Uruguay).
Later, in the suburbs of the city of Buenos Aires, where Bèrthe Gardès fled in search of a few crumbs of fortune when Gardel was not yet three years old, he resigned himself to seeing how his offspring or his adopted son scampered between the shacks of Retiro, Montserrat or Los Corrales, and he sought his life by kicking ramshackle and dirty streets, growing up with resentment, anguish and insecurity.
Gardel’s appearance and sympathy overwhelmed his voice, especially among women. Revealing is the interview “in the shadow of Gardel”, which was published in Tango Moda in 1929. The shadow was a beautiful French woman who followed the idol everywhere after having seen him perform once at the Florida cabaret in Paris. “When at night I retire to my hotel room, I consider my efforts very well paid if I have heard him sing three or four songs,” confessed this unconditional admirer. His films, such as Flor de durazno, shot in Argentina in 1917, Luces de Buenos Aires and Cuesta down, in France in 1931 and 1934, and Tango Bar, in the United States in 1935, as well as Melodía de arrabal, El tango en Broadway, The Day You Love Me and Star Hunters, among others, contributed to increasing his fame, thanks to his magnificent voice and his fascinating personality.
His way of singing the little existential dramas of his tangos is going to mean a revolution. No one is capable of imitating Gardel’s phrasing or his ability to transform himself into the characters in his songs. In addition, his sympathetic figure, a mixture of mischievous and punisher always well dressed and combed, becomes a model for the porteños. Now he is a born winner, a model of “the one who arrived”, a River Plate myth admired by men and adored by women.
On June 24, 1935, when he was at the peak of his fame, the singer died in a plane accident whose causes have never been clarified, at least not for the millions of tango fans who all over the world cried the death of their idol and even today they speak of him in the present tense. Gardel was traveling from Bogotá to Cali in an F-31 from the Saco company. After stopping in Medellín, the plane crossed the runway to take off, but as soon as it had taken off it rushed to the ground, colliding with another German plane that was waiting at the head of the runway.
Carlos Gardel is undoubtedly a legendary figure of Tango, a representative icon of the Rio de la Plata culture.
Where can I hear music of Carlos Gardel in Buenos Aires?
Well in Buenos Aires, whether you’re dining at a traditional tango restaurant, attending a dinner show, or simply exploring the streets of this beautiful city, you’re likely to encounter the music of Carlos Gardel, keeping his legacy alive in the city where tango was born. A good idea is to attend a Dinner Tango Show in any of the traditional tango houses you can find in Buenos Aires!
How is the music of Carlos Gardel?
The music of Carlos Gardel is a captivating blend of nostalgic melodies, distinctive tango rhythms, and emotive lyrics that capture the essence of the genre. His unique vocal style, characterized by his deep baritone voice and emotional expressiveness, became a hallmark of his music.
Gardel’s songs are often accompanied by exquisitely crafted tango arrangements, incorporating instruments such as the bandoneon, guitar, and violin to create a melancholic and passionate atmosphere. His lyrics often explore themes of love, nostalgia, melancholy, and the urban landscape of Buenos Aires, reflecting the experiences and emotions of everyday life in the city.
In terms of musical structure, Gardel’s songs often follow the traditional form of tango, with sections of introduction, verse, and chorus, often followed by an instrumental bridge or solo. His music is known for its pulsating rhythm and its ability to evoke a wide range of emotions, from passion and euphoria to sadness and melancholy.
In summary, Carlos Gardel’s music is a poignant and evocative expression of Argentine tango, which continues to captivate listeners worldwide with its timeless beauty and profound sense of emotion and cultural identity.
Carlos Gardel: a movie star
By the late 1920s, the Argentine film industry showed tremendous vitality, making it one of the three most important in Latin America, alongside Mexico and Brazil. Carlos Gardel, on the other hand, had already made a significant foray into the silent film era, demonstrating his sensitivity in detecting modern mechanisms for achieving mass popularity, even beyond national borders. His friend Enrique Cadícamo would say:
“Gardel, at the height of his fame, thought of nothing else but cinema.” Enrique Cadícamo
In many ways, Gardel would anticipate mass cultural phenomena by decades, where passion, personal identification, and music converge, such as the Beatlemania of the 1960s or Latin equivalents like Sandro, Soda Stereo, and Luis Miguel in the 1970s, 80s, and 90s. The critic Claudio Iván Remeseira has even used the term “gardelmania” to refer to this latter stage of Gardel’s life.
Argentine Musical Short Films of 1930
In 1930, Gardel starred in fifteen short musical films, each based on a song, directed by Eduardo Morera and produced by Federico Valle, one of the pioneers of Latin American cinema. Valle, born in Italy in 1880, after working with the Lumière Brothers and taking classes with Georges Méliès, emigrated to Argentina in 1911 and since then produced dozens of highly valued cinematographic works, including the first newsreels and the animated feature films of Quirino Cristiani, the first in the history of world cinema in its genre.
Of the fifteen shorts, five were ruined in the laboratory, including one titled “Leguisamo solo,” featuring jockey Irineo Leguisamo. In 1995, another of the unreleased shorts, “El quinielero,” by Luis Cluzeau Mortet and Roberto Aubriot Barboza, was found.
The ten released shorts were: “El carretero,” “Añoranzas,” “Rosas de otoño,” “Mano a mano,” “Yira, yira,” “Tengo miedo,” “Padrino pelao,” “Enfundá la mandolina,” “Canchero,” and “Viejo smoking.”
The most elaborate of all is “Viejo smoking,” a tango with lyrics by Celedonio Flores and music by his guitarist Guillermo Barbieri, in which Gardel, before singing, stars in a dramatic sketch with César Fiaschi and Inés Murray about unemployment, poverty, and eviction, in the context of the Great Depression. Also noteworthy are “Yira, yira,” “El carretero,” “Mano a mano,” and “Rosas de otoño,” in which Gardel holds very meaningful dialogues with their authors, Enrique Santos Discépolo, the payador Arturo de Nava, Celedonio Flores, and Francisco Canaro, respectively.
The short films were shot in Buenos Aires between October 23 and November 3, 1930, and premiered on May 3, 1931, at the Astral cinema on Corrientes Street. In some cases, they were presented as “theatricalized tangos.”
It has been claimed that Gardel’s short films were the first music videos in the history of cinema and the first sound film production in Argentina and eventually Latin America. The claim is partially true. Gardel’s short films constituted the first sound film production with soundtracks incorporated into the film (Movietone system) made in Latin America, but since 1927 worldwide (The Jazz Singer) and 1929 in Latin America (Mosaico criollo), musical sound films had been made using the synchronized disc system (Vitaphone system), and the Movietone system (soundtrack) had also been used previously to film musical clips by Sofía Bozán directed by José Bohr, although made in New York. Beyond the debate about chronological priority, the ten short films by Gardel, directed by Morera and produced by Valle, constitute a pioneering effort in both the Latin American film industry and the musical video clip.
The French Films
In January 1931, Gardel embarked on a new tour of France, starting with two successful months of performances in Nice, where he dismissed his guitarist Aguilar due to a homophobic comment made against him. By late April, he arrived in Paris with a firm determination to film a movie at the studios of the American company Paramount in the town of Joinville-le-Pont, 40 kilometers southwest of the French capital, dedicated to producing films for non-American markets. A few days later, on May 1st, he achieved his goal and signed a contract that included him in a musical feature film starring the figures of the revue company of the Teatro Sarmiento in Buenos Aires, owned by Augusto Álvarez, led by Manuel Romero and Luis Bayón Herrera. The film was completed by the end of the month and was called “Las luces de Buenos Aires”.
The director was the Chilean Adelqui Millar and the screenwriters were Manuel Romero and Luis Bayón Herrera. The main actors were Gardel, in the leading role of the rancher Anselmo Torres, and Sofía Bozán, as his girlfriend who is about to be corrupted by a businessman from Buenos Aires, like her friend, played by Gloria Guzmán, who ends up being rescued by the gauchos, to return her to the rancher (Gardel). The cast was completed by Vicente Padula, Pedro Quartucci, and Carlos Baeza, among others.
The film includes singing and dancing scenes (tango, malambo, and other folk dances). To compose the music, Gerardo Matos Rodríguez, the author of “La cumparsita,” was hired, and to perform it, Julio de Caro (violin), his brother Francisco de Caro (piano), and Pedro Laurenz (bandoneón). Gardel sings two songs, one of his own tangos titled “Tomo y obligo,” with lyrics by Romero, which he sings in a tavern in La Boca in a famous scene that generated popular frenzy, and the waltz “El rosal,” by Matos Rodríguez and Romero, which is the romantic theme with which the film ends, while Gardel kisses his girlfriend (Bozán). Bozán also sings two songs, while Guzmán sings one.
“Las luces de Buenos Aires” premiered in Buenos Aires on September 23, 1931. First in the most important cinemas in Buenos Aires and then in the neighborhood cinemas and throughout the country, with enormous success. But the most important thing was the reception of the film in Spanish-speaking countries that had never been able to see Gardel. In Guatemala, it was exhibited for three years, in Madrid every day for three months, and in Barcelona and New York, the public forced the operators.
Gardel was beginning to materialize the image of a singer-heartthrob that had been the core of his artistic project from the beginning. His figure had become more refined and would continue to refine until he weighed 76 kilos, after having reached 120 kilos.
In August 1931, he returned to Buenos Aires, where he would stay for nine weeks. Paradoxically, while his popularity in Argentina, Uruguay, and throughout the Spanish-speaking world began to reach unprecedented proportions, in the artistic world and media of Buenos Aires, there was a growing sense of rejection of Gardel for what was perceived as a loss of contact with his “creole” roots. On September 15, 1931, his friend, the writer Carlos de la Púa, published a harsh open letter in the newspaper Crítica, titled “Hey Carlitos, give up the songs.”
Upon returning to Paris, Gardel found the French Paramount in the midst of a crisis, amidst the world depression and a political climate that was becoming tense, just months before Hitler took power in Germany. After the first semester of 1932 passed without news and when Gardel had already decided to return to Buenos Aires, the company decided to make new films with the Argentine singer. For this, they appointed the experienced French director Louis Gasnier, defined a script adapted from another one from the United States, and set the filming date in September 1932 for a film that would be titled “Espérame,” with the subtitle “Adventures of a Creole in Spain.”
At that moment, the presence of Alfredo Le Pera became important, with whom Gardel had begun to get along with the previous December. Le Pera took on the task of rewriting a script full of cultural and geographical inconsistencies in a very short time, a product of American stereotypes about the Hispanic-American world, and fought against the director to bring everyday humanity to the scenes, a role he would reiterate in the following films, but which would never leave him satisfied. But also, the meeting of Gardel and Le Pera would give life to much of the songs with which his worldwide fame would be associated.
The American Films
On November 7, 1933, Gardel left on tour again, marking the last time he was in Argentina. He first went to Barcelona and Paris before traveling to the United States with the talented pianist Alberto Castellanos. He made his debut on the National Broadcasting Company (NBC) radio in New York on December 30 of the same year. During his radio performances in New York, Gardel dispensed with his guitarists, except for the broadcast on May 5, 1934, where he sang from New York, accompanied by the guitars of Barbieri, Vivas, and Riverol, who were in Buenos Aires, through a link between NBC and LS5 Radio Rivadavia of Buenos Aires, an unprecedented event in the history of radio broadcasting.
At NBC, Gardel sang accompanied by the distinguished orchestra of the New York radio, led by Hugo Mariani, with arrangements by the Argentine musician Terig Tucci, who had been living in the United States for years, contributing a new sound based on innovative harmonies. Tucci and Castellanos immediately hit it off and were the ones who suggested to Gardel a major change in his singing: to extend the range of his voice towards the low tones, to reach a high baritone. It was with this voice that Gardel would record his last and most famous songs. Gardel went through a period of adaptation to the orchestra and the new harmonies of Tucci, but when it came time to form the team of musicians who would accompany him in his American films, he brought Tucci in as musical arranger and director.
Gardel’s auditions were extremely well-received in the significant Latin community of New York, which at the time numbered around 500,000 people, in an era when the Latin-origin population in the United States was very small.
Gardel summoned Le Pera to New York to act as his representative in negotiations with Paramount, at a time when the United States was suffering from the Great Depression of the 1930s. The contract was signed on March 20, 1934, agreeing to create a subsidiary production company of the American film giant under the name Éxito Corporation, whose sole shareholder would be the Argentine singer. Initially, two films would be made that same year: “Cuesta abajo” and “El tango en Broadway.”
“Cuesta abajo” had to be filmed in two weeks, with a script written by Le Pera, based on his own autobiographical experience. Gardel and Le Pera were clear that they were not going to repeat the European imposition that characters should dress as gauchos. The director once again was the Frenchman Louis Gasnier, imposed by Paramount. Finding actors who spoke Spanish was one of the major production problems. For the main roles, they hired Mona Maris, an Argentine who had lived in Europe since childhood, Vicente Padula, Manuel Peluffo, and Anita del Campillo. For the supporting roles, Gardel convinced diplomats from Argentina, Chile, Colombia, Venezuela, and Peru to act in his film.
The plot revolves around a tango singer (Gardel as Carlos Acosta) who leaves his girlfriend (Anita del Campillo) when he falls in love with a prostitute (Mona Maris). In the climactic moment of the film, Gardel duels with the pimp (Manuel Peluffo) and tries to kill her, in a famous scene in which he sings “Cuesta abajo” (“If I dragged through this world, the shame of having been and the pain of no longer being…”), by Gardel and Le Pera.
In the main songs of the film (“Cuesta abajo,” “Mi Buenos Aires querido,” “Amores de estudiante,” and “Criollita decí que sí”), Gardel is accompanied by a notable quintet led by Alberto Castellanos on piano, along with Remo Bolognini and Hugo Mariani on first and second violin, Washington Castro on cello, and Humberto Di Tata on double bass.
Gardel, Le Pera, and Castellanos were not entirely satisfied with the film, especially because in the editing process, Gasnier and the Paramount technicians removed many of the funniest and most sparkling scenes. Nevertheless, the film was a tremendous success, both in the United States and in Latin America. In New York, thousands of people overflowed the cinema, filling the streets, to the point that the exhibiting company placed speakers on the street so that the audience that had not been able to enter the theater could hear the songs.
Paradoxically, only in the journalistic media of Buenos Aires were there criticisms of the film, especially in the upper class. While the public overflowed the cinemas and demanded that the songs be repeated, the traditional newspapers La Nación and La Prensa criticized the film for the bad image it gave of Argentina. The lyricist Homero Manzi also harshly criticized the film in an article published in the magazine Antena, for lacking “nationalistic value.”
After a short time in France, at the end of 1934, he returned to New York, performing on NBC and filming the musical “Cazadores de estrellas” (whose original title is “The Big Broadcast of 1936”), a showcase of the musical stars of Paramount, including Bing Crosby, Richard Tauber, Ray Noble’s Orchestra with Glenn Miller on trombone, and the Vienna Boys’ Choir, among other great figures. In this film, Gardel worked alongside Celia Villa, daughter of the famous Mexican revolutionary Pancho Villa, whom Gardel admired. There, Gardel sang two of his songs with Le Pera: a country theme, “Apure delantero buey,” and “Amargura,” in a bilingual Spanish-English version titled “Cheating muchachita.” The film was released shortly after Gardel’s death, and for that reason, Paramount decided to remove the segments in which he appeared. The cut sections in which the Tango King appears are very difficult to find, although it is known that some copies of them are held by private collectors.
Encouraged by the success of Gardel’s films, Paramount decided to shoot two more films in 1935, which would be his last films. Gardel and Le Pera had already decided that their working relationship with Gasnier was exhausted and chose John Reinhardt, a young director of Austrian origin, who had directed several films with Latin actors and who showed himself to be much more receptive to Gardel and Le Pera’s suggestions. Two central characteristics stand out in these last two films: the first is the decision to record Gardel’s singing live, eliminating traditional post-production dubbing; the second is the decision to direct the tone of the films towards the Spanish-speaking audience, moving away from both the porteño tone and the European-North American stereotypes.
“El día que me quieras” was filmed in January 1935, with Reinhardt as director and Le Pera as scriptwriter, due to the failure of the scripts that Paramount commissioned from Argentine and Latin American authors in an attempt to improve the level.
The quality of the selected actors also improved. In the main roles accompanying Gardel (Julio Argüelles) are the Spanish actress Rosita Moreno (who plays Margarita and her daughter Marga), Tito Lusiardo (Rocamora), Fernando Adelantado (Carlos Argüelles), and Mario Peluffo
The death of Carlos Gardel
On June 24, 1935, Carlos Gardel, along with Alfredo Le Pera, his guitarist Guillermo Barbieri, and his secretary Corpas Moreno, died in the collision of two airplanes at the moment of takeoff, on the runway of Olaya Herrera Airport, then known as “Las Playas” Aerodrome, in the city of Medellín, Colombia. Days later, Alfonso Azzaf and guitarist Ángel Domingo Riverol also died. In the accident, Colombian aviation ace and owner of SACO Ernesto Samper Mendoza, radio operator Willis Foster, Chilean entrepreneur Celedonio Palacios, and show promoter Henry Swartz also perished, along with the seven occupants of the other plane. In total, 17 fatalities. There were only three survivors: guitarist José María Aguilar, José Plaja, and SACO official Grant Flynt.
The accident occurred when the plane carrying Gardel, a Ford tri-motor operated by the SACO company, veered off course during takeoff and collided with another similar plane from the German-origin SCADTA company, which was waiting its turn to take off, causing both to catch fire.
The causes of the accident were never clearly established. Both aviation companies were engaged in fierce competition, behind which lay the strategic-military interests of the United States and Germany. Immediately after the accident, each of the companies hastened to blame the other. The Colombian president himself harshly blamed the German company. The judiciary, on the other hand, determined that the causes of the accident were due to the characteristics of the runway and a strong southeast wind.
Gardel was initially buried in Medellín, but later Armando Defino―his executor―managed to repatriate the body. For this purpose, the coffin containing Carlos Gardel’s mortal remains had to undertake a long journey that included travel by donkey, cart, train, and boat. His body traveled through the interior towns of Colombia, then went to Panama, was mourned in the United States, and finally arrived in Argentina by boat around 1936. After a massive funeral at Luna Park Stadium, he was taken along Corrientes Avenue to Chacarita Cemetery, where he remains in a vault alongside his mother.
