Juan Carlos Copes

May 31, 1931–

I first met Juan Carlos when I attended Stanford Tango Week, July 1993. I wanted to take of photo of him, but he handed my camera to someone else who took this photo of us. Stanford is the grandfather of tango festivals in the USA, and it wouldn’t have been complete without the Maestro. Shortly after Stanford, I approached Northwestern University’s dance department about holding the first international tango congress. Juan Carlos and Maria Nieves were both invited to teach at Northwestern in June 1995. It was a privilege to know and study with them. I went to O’Hare Airport to meet their flight and got down on my hands and knees when I saw them walk off the plane. They started dancing as teenagers in the milongas and danced in New York City in the 1950s.

Juan Carlos invited me to dance during the final milonga/reception of the tango congress. It was the finishing touch after two years to turn my dream into a reality.

 

 

 

 

 

Ernesto Ramon Delgado

May 30, 1935–

I called him today at his upholstery workshop in Boedo to wish him a happy birthday. He sounded as cheerful as always.  Ernesto has made furniture practically his entire life, and his fingers are proof. He and his son Sergio do all the work.  The youngest in a family of ten children, Ernesto still has four older siblings. I’ve been to family parties at his Valentin Alsina home. The family photo below was taken at his brother Hector’s 70^th birthday party in July 2000. Ernesto raised three sons and has been widowed since May 30, 1989. He grew up in the Almagro neighborhood where played soccer and learned to dance in his teenage years.

Salon Canning is Ernesto’s second home on Sunday evenings. When the milongueros occupied a corner table on Friday nights in Club Gricel, Ernesto was always there with his friends. It’s where I first danced with him in 1999. Those were the days when everyone smoked in the milongas. It was difficult for Ernesto to breathe since he had tuberculosis as a child. He runs out of air, but that doesn’t keep him going to the milongas.

His other favorite pastime is singing tango. I’ve heard Ernesto at parties and penas de tango over the years. He sings regularly at two amateur sessions with live accompaniment in Afiche and La Biblioteca.

 

 

 

 

Dos milongueros

Jose Guillermo Salurso (May 17, 1934–)

I heard that El Tano Guillermo was living in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, so I went there to meet him in June 1996, while I was still living in Fox Lake, Illinois, about a two-hour drive. El Tano lived thirty years in Milwaukee with his wife and three children until 1997. He has residency in the USA, but hasn’t been back for ten years to see his children and grandchildren because he can’t afford to travel.

El Tano met Emma in a dance salon in Buenos Aires when she was only 14, and he was 21. They married and moved to Chicago, but finally settled in Milwaukee where he worked as carpenter. They raised four children, Eduardo, Diana, Vanesa and Verona.

During the summer of 1996, I made several trips from Fox Lake to Milwaukee to Chicago to escort El Tano for a few hours at the Tango nada mas or Rupert’s 33 Club milongas. We had many hours on the road for interesting conversations.

El Tano Guillermo is in a milonga every night of week with a glass of whiskey in hand, singing the lyrics of every tango. He could be living in Milwaukee, but he prefers to be in Buenos Aires because he is married to the milonga.

 

Chiche (May 17, 1938–)

I shouldn’t use his real name because his family doesn’t know he is a milonguero. One search with Goggle for his name, and they could read my blog about him.

It wasn’t easy pretending I didn’t know Chiche when I met him and his wife one summer in Villa Gesell. I had danced with him many times in Gricel where he had a reserved table on Fridays. He always wore a suit and tie to the milonga. I had to remind myself not to talk about the milongas nor ask him to dance during parties at their home. I attended his daughter’s wedding where his stumbling on the dance floor was just an act.  Chiche doesn’t go to dance anymore so I suppose he has a bittersweet separation from the milonga. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Mario Alan Candamil

May 13, 1929–

Born in Veracruz, Mexico, his family immigrated to Buenos Aires when he was three years old. I met Alito for the first time when I danced valses with him in Regin in November 1998. It was an “aha” moment for me.  I danced with a milonguero.

Alito organized dances over many decades in Palacio Rivadavia (Rivadavia 6097 in Flores), Mariano Acosto, Club Almagro, Tourbillon, Club Savoy (Hotel Savoy on Callao 181), Salon Augusteo (Sarmiento 1374), and Confiteria Picadilly (Corrientes 1524), among others. In September 2001, he and Miguel Angel Balbi were partners in a milonga known as “Buenos Aires Tango (Milonguero)” held in Mundo Latino on Esmeralda near Lavalle. They were forced to close it after only three months when the city was in turmoil with President de la Rua in office. Alito’s last milonga was in Plaza Bohemia (Maipu 444) in 2004. He set the admission at one peso, hoping to entice dancers to attend. Sadly, it never came to pass, and he lost money. One evening during his milonga, I was sitting at the table with Alito. The deejay played a tanda of Alfredo De Angelis. Alito turned and said to me, “In my time, if they played De Angelis in a milonga, the disk jockey would have been taken to the street and shot. De Angelis was the music of the carousel, not the milonga.”

Last night Alito quietly celebrated his birthday at midnight in Club Gricel. We danced a tanda of Tanturi/Castillo—the only tanda he danced all night. Today, Alito and Osvaldo Centeno came to my apartment for lunch and conversation. As Alito left my apartment a couple hours ago, he said he was going home to shower, change, and go to the milonga in Plaza Bohemia.  Alito is married to the milonga.

 

  

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Dos flacos milongueros

Rodolfo Cesar Indegno (May 8, 1931 –September 23, 2008)

He is small and very thin, has never married and has no children to his knowledge, as he likes to joke. He has a reserved front row table in Lo de Celia where he danced regularly at least twice a week. He lives in the neighborhood of Chacarita. Two weeks ago, we danced a vals tanda before the floor was crowded. It was fabulous. All we could do was smile at one another.  At least he can still smile.  He is dying of inoperable lung cancer due to a heart condition. 

P.S. 9/23/08 –I danced for the last time with him on July 9, 2008.  Shortly thereafter, he was hospitalized and died on September 23.  His friend and companion Beatriz was with him.  She went faithfully every day to see Rodolfo in the hospital.  He had good days and bad days.  I saw him for the last time three days before he died, and he didn’t recognize me.  I knew that he was close to the end. 

We had conversations during times when he was feeling better in the hospital.  I learned that Rodolfo served for 25 years in the Air Force.  His favorite orchestra was Juan D’Arienzo with Alberto Echague.

 

Ernesto Hector Garcia (May 8, 1936 –)

He’s known as “El Flaco Dany” and could be called the Fred Astaire of Tango. He is slim and always smartly dressed in a double-breasted suit and tie. His specialty is milonga con traspie that he has taught in Italy and the United States. I saw him last Friday night at Salon Canning where he was singing more than dancing. I listened while he and Eduardo “El Nene” Masci sang the tangos they know and love so much. When the Miami festival organizer wrote me about inviting a milonguero, Dany was the one I arranged for her to hire. He went for three consecutive years to the Miami Beach festival to teach and perform. He lives in the family home in Villa Urquiza, not far from Club Sunderland, where he celebrates his birthday. Dany may be 72, but his dance partners are usually less than half his age. 

Cafe de los Maestros

Several years ago Gustavo Santaolalla decided to try to convince a group of tango musicians and singers to return to the recording studio and collaborate on a new project. He invited true maestros, all over 70 and as old as 90, to participate; several of them have died(*) since the project began in 2003. First, there is a two-CD set of 27 tracks with background text on the musicians. It won the Latin Grammy for best tango album in 2006. The maestros were filmed during the recording sessions and participated in a concert at Teatro Colon in August 2006. The recording sessions and concert have been boiled down to a 93-minute documentary that was presented in February 2008, at the Berlin Film Festival. Finally, a book for Café de los Maestros will be published in English in late 2009.

My friend Diana has a close association with two of the musicians of Café de los Maestros as the artistic director and executive producer of a compact disc by a tango singer. She invited me to join her at the Café de los Maestros reception on March 13, 2008, at the Academia Nacional del Tango where the maestros received certificates for their participation presented to each of them by Gustavo Santaolalla. Diana gave me the Café de los Maestros CDs for my birthday a few weeks ago.

The studio where Café de los Maestros was recorded is located seven blocks from my apartment. Diana invited me to attend a recording session there today. As I walked the hallway, I discovered that this was the studio where every important Argentine recording artist has sung or played. Estudios ION is where Osvaldo Pugliese, Anibal Troilo, and Juan D’Arienzo recorded. The photos on the walls tell the story, as does the impressive list of artists who have recorded there since 1956. I entered the actual studio, where Café de los Maestros was recorded from November 2003 to September 2004, in order to film a recording session by tango singer Ricardo Pol with Anibal Arias and Osvaldo Montes. I watched and listened in the control booth where Jorge Da Silva, the sound engineer for Café de los Maestros, was at the helm. It took three hours to record four tangos. I wouldn’t have missed a minute of it for the world.

(*) Jose Libertella (7/09/33-12/08/04); Carlos Garcia 4/21/14-8/4/06; Lagrima Rios 9/26/24-12/25/06; Oscar Ferrari 8/9/24-8/20/08; Carlos Lazzari 1925 – 6/7/09; Emilio de la Pena 1929 – 6/22/09.