Rosita Quiroga - La musa mistonga (The humble muse)
Get link
Facebook
X
Pinterest
Email
Other Apps
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), even in the title. Mistonga means worthless, shabby, humble, or miserable (in absolute poverty). Flores's lyric exalts the humble and pokes fun at the image of courtly love, preferring instead "the malevo (who) draws filigree / On the hard floor to the beat of a tango". That's a phrase ("Al compás de un tango") that we shall hear again in the eponymous 1942 tango recorded by Tanturi and Demare.
Victor decided not to advertise the fact that they had switched to electrical recording in order not to prejudice sales of their existing acoustic discs, and it's impossible to tell from the label. Even the matrix numbers continued in order, rather than resetting to 1: this record has matrix number 753. However there is a small clue pressed into the wax at the 12 o'clock position in the runoff area: the letters VE.
VE stands for Victor Electrical. In Victor's internal records the matrix prefix was changed from BA (Buenos Aires) to BAVE (Buenos Aires Victor Electrical) and this is BAVE-753-2, the suffix indicating (in the case of Victor) the second take. The record sold 14,445 copies, an astonishing figure at a time when shellac records were very expensive items, out of reach of the working class who often couldn't even afford a radio.
1st March 1926: La musa mistonga, Victor 79632-A [mx: BAVE 753-2]. Listen on youtube:
LA MUSA MISTONGA
La musa mistonga de los arrabales
La mistonga musa del raro lenguaje,
Que abrevó en las aguas de los madrigales
Y al llegar al pueblo se tornó salvaje.
La que nada sabe de abates troveros
Que hilvanaron dulces endechas de amores,
Pero que por boca de sus cancioneros
Conoce la vida de sus payadores.
La que nada sabe de los caballeros
De acción de las lides de los cintarazos,
Pero sabe el caso de jugarse enteros
Un par de malevos a prueba de hachazos.
Que ignora la gloria de un día vivido
Bajo la fragante onda de Versalles,
Pero sale alegre cuando ha anochecido
A ver los muchachos jugar por las calles.
A ver cómo pasan felices parejas
Y se torna alegre la cara del ciego,
Al oír que hilvana sus canciones viejas
El buen organito que mentó Carriego.
Que ignora la cuita de la princesita
Que pecó indiscreta con el rubio paje,
Pero que se apena porque Milonguita
Ha dado un mal paso y llora su ultraje.
Que no se ha enterado que en una pavana
Se lucieron reyes de blasón y rango,
Su amigo el malevo hace filigranas
En el duro piso y al compás de un tango.
Al compás de un tango donde abreva ahora
Para literarios impecables males,
En la suburbana paz evocadora
La musa mistonga de los arrabales.
THE HUMBLE MUSE
The humble muse of the suburbs
the humble muse of strange language,
who drank from the waters of madrigals
snd turned wild when she reached the town.
She who knows nothing of troubadours
who wove sweet love songs,
but through the mouths of her songbooks
knows the life of her payadores.
She who knows nothing of knights
of combat with whips,
but knows the case of a pair of malevos
risking everything, fighting it out with axes.
She who ignores the glory of a day lived
under the fragrant wave of Versailles,
but goes out cheerfully when night falls
to watch the boys play in the streets,
To see happy couples passing by
and the blind man's face lights up
when he hears the old songs strung together
by the good barrel organ that Carriego mentioned.
She knows nothing of the little princess's sorrow
who sinned indiscreetly with the blond page,
but she is saddened because Milonguita
has taken a wrong step and cries over her humiliation.
She has not heard that in a pavane
kings showed off their coats of arms and their rank,
On 1st March 1926 the technicians of the Victor company in Argentina made the first electrical recording in Argentina, with their rivals Odeon following suit six months later. Prior to this, recordings had been made using the acoustic system in which a horn focussed sound energy directly onto the stylus which cut the groove into the wax. Musicians crowd around the horn in the recording studio using the old acoustic system The new electrical technology (with a microphone and valve amplifier) offered much better fidelity than the old system. In particular, the high and low frequencies were recorded more faithfully than before. However, neither company made a big announcement because they did not want to damage sales of their existing discs, of which they had large stocks. Was this introduction without much consequence, then? Not at all. It acted as a huge stimulus to the musicians, keen to exploit the advantages of the new system. The development of tango music - already under way...
Comments
Post a Comment