Club de Tango

During my first visit to Buenos Aires in 1996, our tango tour group was taken on a special tour of tango sites by Oscar Himschoot.  I remember that the Palais de Glace in Recoleta, where young porteños danced in the 1920s, was one of our stops.  During another trip in 1997, I visited Oscar’s tiny office on Paraná in San Nicolas from which he edited his monthly magazine Club de Tango and fulfilled orders for books, scores, and compact discs from tangueros around the world.  The two-room office contains posters, cards, DVDs, CDs, books, sheet music, and Club de Tango magazines.

Oscar was working on compiling a book of milonga lyrics.  He completed it before his death in 2005, but it hasn’t been published.  His wife and granddaughter have that project in hand.  Oscar found approximately 1,500 milongas for his book. 

There are others  like Oscar Himschoot who love tango so much that they continually investigate it.  One has to step outside the milonga in order to find them.

One of Oscar’s most popular books is El tango: la pasión del 2 x 4.  Ediciones La Llave S.A. printed 100,000 copies of this 80-page booklet in 2000.  I bought it recently at Club de Tango, along with the book he co-authored with Ricardo Ostuni: Los Cafes de La Avenida de Mayo.  The former has 19 chapters giving a brief synopsis of tango’s origens, the bandoneon, lunfardo (one of Oscar’s favorite subjects), the first tangos, the singers, the 1940s, the tango in movies, etc. 

I had been searching years in book stores for El Tango en la sociedad porteña 1880-1920 without success.  After attending a lecture by Dr. Emilio Santabaya in May and hearing how highly he recommended the book, I set out to find it.  The publisher Hector Lucci listed Club de Tango as the source.  I went for a visit and requested a copy.  Two days later, Oscar’s wife Hilda called that she had obtained the book for me.  It has been published in larger print by Abrazos Books, although it hasn’t been translated to English.  I admit that I was stunned by the size of the book, but the larger type font meant more pages.  It is the definitive work on the early history of tango taken from public records by Hugo Lamas and Enrique Binda. 

You can visit Club de Tango at www.clubdetango.com.ar and when you are in Buenos Aires.  Hilda is there from noon to 6:00 to personally attend to customers.

Tags: Club de Tango, Oscar Himschoot