Rosita Quiroga - La musa mistonga (The humble muse)
Rosita Quiroga was from that first generation of female tango voices, the generation I call arrabalera - authentic voices of the arrabal, the poor margins of Buenos Aires, untrained, unsophisticated, but full of feeling and expression. Born and bred in the waterfront barrio of La Boca, as a child she often found, when she swung her legs out of bed in the morning, that the floor was underwater. In August 1922 she made a single recording for the Victor company (a great story that will have to wait for another time) but it was rejected by the regional manager and sat on a shelf for the rest of the year, the disc appearing only in January 1923. That same year she was the first woman to perform on the new medium of the radio, and on March 1st 1926 she was the first artist to make a recording using the new electrical system. The track she chose was La musa mistonga whose lyrics, by the celebrated lyricist Celedonio Flores, are typically full of lunfardo (the local slang), ...