Carlos Gardel: the eternal voice of tango

Every art form has one face that stands for all of it. Tango's face smiles under a fedora, and it belongs to Carlos Gardel. He turned tango into song in 1917, became Latin America's first modern superstar, and died in a plane crash in 1935 at the peak of his fame. In Buenos Aires they still say: Gardel sings better every day.

The mystery of his birth

Even his birth is legend. The strongest evidence points to Toulouse, France, around 1890, as Charles Romuald Gardes, brought to Buenos Aires as an infant by his mother. Uruguay maintains a rival claim to Tacuarembo. Gardel himself, a man building a myth, kept the story conveniently flexible. What is certain is where he was made: the Abasto market district of Buenos Aires, whose streets gave him his nickname, El Morocho del Abasto.

1917: the recording that created tango song

Until Gardel, tango was instrumental dance music with the occasional throwaway verse. In 1917 he recorded "Mi Noche Triste" — a lament of an abandoned man, sung with the phrasing of a serious interpreter — and tango canción was born: tango as three-minute drama. The same year, across the river, La Cumparsita was written. Tango's modern era begins in that double moment, a chapter in the larger story of what tango is.

Over the next two decades he recorded hundreds of songs, many written with lyricist Alfredo Le Pera, including the melody the whole world knows: "Por Una Cabeza" (1935), the tango of the horse-racing gambler, heard since in films from Scent of a Woman to True Lies.

The films and the smile

In the early 1930s Gardel became a movie star, filming for Paramount in Paris and New York — musical dramas built to deliver his songs to all of Latin America. The smile, the tilted fedora, the unhurried baritone: the image of the tango singer was fixed by these films, and a teenage Astor Piazzolla even appeared beside him as an extra in New York — the beginning of another chapter of this story.

Medellin, 1935

On June 24, 1935, at the height of the greatest tour Latin America had seen, Gardel's plane collided with another on the runway at Medellin, Colombia. He was about forty-five. The continent went into mourning; there were suicides reported among fans. His body traveled home slowly, through crowds in Colombia, New York, Rio and Montevideo, to Buenos Aires.

He lies in Chacarita cemetery, under a bronze statue in a dinner jacket. Visitors still slot a lit cigarette between its fingers, so that Gardel can smoke while he listens to the city that never stopped listening to him.

Where to start

Start with "Por Una Cabeza", then "Mi Noche Triste" for the origin, then "El Dia Que Me Quieres" and "Volver" for the late masterpieces with Le Pera. His voice needs no subtitles: the phrasing carries the story. To read the slang his songs swim in, our Lunfardo dictionary is the decoder.

Questions