Modern Tango World N° 11 (Paris, France) | Page 5

A Century of Parisien Tango Gwen-Haël Denigot This article contains excerpts from the book Dictionnaire Passionnée du Tango co-edited by Gwen Haël Denigot, Jean-Louis Mingalon and Emmanuelle Honorin and published by Seuil, in 2015 On the Western side of the Atlantic, they say: Buenos Aires is the wife, Paris is the mistress Paris has infected, and sometimes upset, the history of tango. The first intervention took place at the beginning of the 20th century. when Parisian high society falls head over heels in love with this music and dance, born about thirty years earlier in Argentina and Uruguay. The French capital, considered at that time to be the cultural center of the world, lent its nobility to the tango. Paris offered at an ideal place for the reception for the tango, the cabaret, a formula that has evolved since 1911. It all begins with a legend. Around 1905-1906, a few mu- sical scores arrived in Europe aboard the Argentinian frigate, Sarmiento, at the port of Marseille. From there, they must have taken to Paris. Among these melodies to arrive from the Rio de la Plata, were two titles ahich would become huge successes in coming the years — El Choclo and La Morocha. An alternative hypothesis is that a French violinist, named Pierre Baetz was engaged on a liner between Le Havre and Buenos Aires. after hearing El Entrerriano, he is said to have stolen tango scores there to publish them in hs own house of musical editions which would later become Universal Editions, after its purchase by the Baquet brothers. Beyond 1907, the hypotheses give way to almost certainties since many testimonies exist. In that year, the company Gath & Chaves sent to Paris some musicians to record with a new process, acoustic disc recording. The Uruguayan singer-actor-songwriter Alfredo Gobbi and Uruguayan singer-songwriter Flora Ro- driguez, along with the Argentine composer-song- writer-guitarist-singer Ángel Villoldo arrived in Paris as special envoys. . In those same years, l’Orchestre de la Garde Républicaine played many tangos, in- cluding a recorded version of El Sergeant Cabral by Manuel Campoamor.Gobbi, who will return not re- turn to Argentina until 1914, records, publishess his music scores with Baetz. The Gobbi couple performs in the great music halls of Europe, before giving birth a boy who is to become one of the greatest musi- cians in the history of tango, Alfredo Gobbi. — 5 — Alfredo Gobbi. TO SUBSCRIBE, CLICK HERE