Archive for the ‘ African Descent ’ Category

1929, February 5 – GARDEL SINGS AT PARIS OPERA HOUSE

“Who would have thought back then, sixteen years ago that one day I would be singing here” wrote Carlos Gardel to his friend and manager Jose Razzano referring to their boyhood when the thought of performing at the mythical Paris Opera House was only a wildly unattainable dream for boys from poor immigrant families…indeed to have been invited [ READ MORE ]

1938, January 26 – Nestor Feria Records “CHUMBALE LOS PERROS”

Singer, Composer (born March 5, 1894, Pisces) – Nestor had struggle for many years and he felt he had paid his dues; he wanted to be treated with a certain amount of respect and he wasn’t getting it…in a moment of rage he told the producer at Radio Stentor to go to hell and he stomped out…walking alone [ READ MORE ]

1942, September 29 – RAUL BERON RECORDS “AZABACHE”

The world “Azabache” means black and the lyrics speak of the abandonment in African candombe rythms of a young mulatto girl  in San Telmo, Buenos Aires whose hips movements are captivating….there is a reference to blood and “tumba” which in the lunfardo dialect means the boiled meat typically served in prisons…in the mind of legendary [ READ MORE ]

1925, September 25 – GARDEL SINGS WITH JOSEPHINE BAKER

French newspapers in 1925 were ecstatic about Carlos Gardel…Le Figaro waxed with child like enthusiasm, “his consumate artistry…his magnetic charm over the public…perfectly cadenced”…his photo graced the cover of the magazine “La Rampe” in a luxurious end of the year edition…Gardel was stunned by his success and almost incredulously he wrote to a friend, “I [ READ MORE ]

2005, September 20 – PUBLISHED, “TANGO THE ART HISTORY OF LOVE”

The topic of “Race” is still a topic which awakens deep passions….Robert Farris Thompson’s, “The Art History of Love” in which he makes a strong argument for the African roots of tango, even precipitated a heated battle of critics over the subject…in startling acrimony, reviewer Anthony Howel says of Thompson’s book “this irrelevant and dishonest [ READ MORE ]

1868, August 7 – BIRTH OF CAYETANO SILVA

Cayetango Silva died forgotten, alone and in extreme poverty without realizing that his San Lorenzo march, the same one he had sold for a small sum of money, would become immortal and be played and recorded many times…indeed it would be the march that the victorious Nazi army would play as it marched in into a [ READ MORE ]

1896, August 3 – BIRTH OF CELEDONIO FLORES

The fascist like overthrow on June 4, 1943 of the elected government did not augur well for poet Celedonio Flores…the dictatorship’s censors, in a misguided attempt to raise the moral level of Argentine society, began to prohibit precisely the kind of language he used to describe the tough underworld which he was familiar with…Celedonio Flores, [ READ MORE ]

1881, June 16 – BIRTH OF MODESTO OCAMPO

Composer, Guitarist, Violinist (Gemini) - his paternal gandparents Agustin Ocampo and Angela Vilaza came to Argentina in leg irons; they were slaves from the Congo…although Modesto Ocampo was brought up in extreme poverty in Montevideo’s tough “Barrio Sur”, where two other tango pioneers of African descent Lagrima Rios and Carlos Olmedo also grew up, he was also given the gift [ READ MORE ]

1868, April 21 – BIRTH OF ROSENDO MENDIZABAL

Composer, Pianist (Aries) – for the last two years of his life he was ill, bedridden, partially paralyzed in one single, squalid room…on June 30, 1913, mercifully, he finally passed away, he was forty-five years old…and yet, just a few years earlier he had been a very wealthy man having inherited a huge sum of [ READ MORE ]

1921, October 26 – BIRTH OF CARLOS OLMEDO

Singer, Composer (Scorpio) – he died relativel young from a heart attack just when things were finally beginning to come together for him in his career and he left few recording but he was immortalized by some of his compositions which were made into great hits by other singers years after his demise…he was born [ READ MORE ]

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