Miguel Caló - Overview

Miguel Caló is a name each tanguera and tanguero should be very familiar with. He is best known for his beautiful Golden Age recordings from 1940ies. But that is not all, we should know more...

Caló started his musical career in mid twenties. In 1926 he joined the orchestra of Osvaldo Fresedo, as a bandoneon player. A year later he joined Francisco Pracánico. His first own orchestra was created in 1929, but the project did not last long. Only 3 years later, in 1932, the second attempt of creating orchestra was successful.

Miguel Caló should be appreciated for his great musical legacy. Further more, he had another contribution to tango by introducing two greatest singers in the history: Raúl Berón and Alberto Podestá.

To learn about Caló´s music in more systematic way, I suggest to split his work into 3 parts:

- early recordings (1932-1938)

- Golden Age recordings (1940ies)

- late recordings (1950-1972)

Golden Age recordings are very famous and you will hear them in most milongas. The music from the other two periods is much less known, but also very interesting and worth discovering.

For more detailed biographical and discographical information please go to:
Todo Tango - Miguel Caló

In the next post I will start with Miguel Caló and Alberto Podestá...

European Tangos part 1

The opinions on European tangos are very mixed. Some conservative tangueros don't consider them appropriate for milongas. Other, more “progressive” dancers and DJs simply love it! A few years ago a festival organizer ”advised” me not to play any non-Argentinian music because the dancers don’t appreciate it. Playing it turned out to be a great success :).

As usually, I think that the best approach is in-between. European tangos should be played in milongas, because they add variety and make milongas more interesting for the dancers. At the same time those tangos should not be abused by playing them too often. The dispute between "conservative" and “progressive” sides is not so important anyways… Vast majority of dancers will probably not realize that they are hearing and dancing to European music :).

In this and few other posts I will present you some of my favorite European orchestras and tangos. Some of them are famous and popular. Others are unknown, but worth discovering.

The most famous and frequently played European orchestra is Rafael Canaro. Some time ago I have written a post about him:

http://tangomusic4all.blogspot.com/2012/10/rafael-canaro.html

Some of my favorite songs are the following:

Paciencia, Canta Luis Scalon, 1938

Que le importa al mundo, Canta Luis Scalon, 1938

Yo no sé por qué te quiero, Canta Raul Sanders, 1936

Rien que nous deux , Canta Raúl Sanders, 1937 - in French

La mélodie de notre adieu, Canta Roger Toussaint, 1936 - in French

Jean Auguste Pesenti was a leader of another orchestra, which I would like to present in this post. Unfortunately, I can’t find any online information about this ensemble. You can find several interesting recordings below:

Duelo Criollo, Jean Auguste Pesenti, 1932

Poema, Jean Auguste Pesenti canta Nena Sainz, 1932

Paris, Paris, Jean Auguste Pesenti canta Nena Sainz, 1933 

More to follow in coming posts. Stay tuned :)