Because that fusion of Gardel with the hundreds of characters that transfigured in his performance, beyond, far beyond the intention of the composers and the writers, is a phenomenon that has not been explained yet.

That’s why many speak of the tangos “of Gardel”, referring to the many tangos that do not belong to him as an author, but that without doubt, it was him who made them. Is there any doubt that, for example, “Viejo Smoking” by Barbieri and Flores, or “Yira Yira” or “Chorra”, by Discépolo, or “Barrio reo” by Fugazot and Navarrine, belong as much to him than to those who imagined them?

It is not always understood that those pieces were know by Gardel without a previous model. He didn’t listen to them before and if he did it was to change them as they should have been. He translated them in his head, as the architect that imagines the phenomenal dome or the astonishing columns just by looking at a vacant lot. These songs were not. They were nothing more than some pieces of paper, that had to be abstractly assimilated, and be given a definitive shape in the performance. We can compare certain tangos, recorded two or three times by Gardel, in which we can notice the subtle changes made through time, always for the better. That’s why Gardel is named co-author of all those pieces that don’t carry his signature. I will give an example: “Callejera”, a tango by Cadícamo and Frontera. The lyrics say in some part: “...va diciendo ese taquear, que tenés de milonguera, callejera, callejera, adónde irás a parar...Y ese empilche que llevás, etc, etc...” Well…between the word “parar” and “Y ese empilche…” there is a sound bridge(hold) that links both phrases, and that Gardel invents, because that is definitely not in the stave. It’s not reproducible. Some, with pain, have tried without success. Another one: In “Silbando”, the well known tango by González Castillo, Piana, and Cátulo Castillo, where it says “Y desde el fondo del dock gimiendo en láguido lamento” we can hear how he deconstructs the word “lamento” (moan) to transform it in “la-me-en-to”, and that subtle touch, some sort of curl almost imperceptible for the inexperienced listener, is what makes the difference.

The majority of the pieces recorded by Gardel did not stay in his memory, since his usual repertoire was made of a bit more than a dozen of the more solicited songs by the public, that is three or four classics like “Mano a mano”, “El carretero”, or “Rosas de Otoño”, and the rest were what was in fashion at that time. Because tangos and valses were produced like croissants in a bakery, and the hit of the moment was immediately substituted by another one, since records were sold in fabulous quantities and the public was always thirsty of new pieces. So those final records, eternal, that we listened to a million times, passed by the hands of Gardel for recording and maybe he didn’t sing them again, always urged for new themes, new hits. The authors wrote to gain the success of the moment. Nobody would have thought that those little things that were swept away would constitute with the passing of the years some sort of interpretative, poetical and musical testament without resemblance in the universal songbooks of all times.

It’s true that Gardel didn’t have predecessors. All that history that attributes to the old “payadores” some sort of ad-hoc teaching are not more than unsustainable legends. Today it is not difficult to find records of Gabino Ezeiza or Arturo de Nava. Very little or nothing, to be frank, have this predecessors to do with Gardel.

He didn’t have successors either. After the death of Gardel, in which many believed to realize the death of Tango (among them Enrique Gonzalez Tuñon), many tried to find the successor of the singer. (In my opinion Tango didn’t die, at all. But for me, and for many, a form of Tango died, maybe the most valuable). Because…, would we have to live without Gardel? Magazine made public votings in contests that were followed with fervor every week. The initial success of Hugo del Carril, for example, comes from that need, and he even films as the main role “La vida de Gardel”. Others managed to be a bad copy and had temporary success, because the memories of the public associated them with the image of the singer, to whom a tribute was tried to be paid, by applauding anyone that perpetuated, even in such a modest way, his figure and his repertoire. But beyond the vocal and performing qualities of the diverse singers that tried that, for a long time we know already that the place that Gardel has in the hearts and the memories of the people cannot be shared. That is, it’s shared only with himself. The character of the legend, of the pictures, of the anecdotes and of the glossers, is accompanied of the other one, the singer, that one that we listen all the time, that sings so easily, with that anguishing tension of the simplicity, and that he also has time, between one phrase and the other, to sip mate or to have a smoke.

The successor of Gardel is Gardel.

 

Enrique Espina Rawson
From his book “Disparen sobre Gardel – Toda la verdad, sólo la verdad y nada más que la verdad” (Shoot over Gardel – All the truth, only the truth and nothing but the truth) – Editions de la Rue du Canon d’Arcole, 2006.