What would have happened to Tango without Berlin?

How a Company From Berlin Helped Tango to Get a Move On

A Digest

1. Lindström

Carl Lindström (1865-1932) establishes his first workshop in Berlin and produces phonographs and film projectors in 1897. In 1904, his workshop and the Salon Kinematograph Co. GmbH, also of Berlin, join forces and are incorporated as the Carl Lindström GmbH. The directors of the Salon Kinematograph Co., Max Straus and Heinrich Zunz, become the managing directors of the new company; Lindström is responsible for technical management and development.

Carl Lindström, from whose workshop emerged the Lindström AG

In 1910, the company is converted into a public company and traded at the Berlin stock exchange. The English company Fonotipia and its subsidiaries Fonotipia Milan and International Talking Machine Comp. are acquired. The latter firm, owner of the record label Odeon, is also foundet in Berlin.n.

Further acquisitions are made in 1913 and include the Dacapo Record/Lyrophonwerke (Berlin) and Favorite Record (Hannover). The Lindström concern has grown to one of the largest music record producers in the world.

2. Max Glücksmann, 1908-1913

Max (Mordechai David) Glücksmann (1875-1946) arrives, just 15 years old, in Buenos Aires and enters the Casa Lepage as an apprentice. The firm is importing equipment for film and photography. Later, it will furnish the first movie theaters of the city.

Max Glücksmann

Glücksmann acquires Casa Lepage in 1908. With the change in ownership, the firm now also offers phonographic products of the american company Victor. The main focus of the business remains the film, however. Glücksmann launches a production company for documentaries and weekly newsreels. Within the next 20 years the business grows into the market-dominating film distributor and theater owner in Argentina, Uruguay, and Paraguay.

A new business sector opens up for Glücksmann in 1913: he is made the exclusive representative (Argentina, Uruguay, and Paraguay) for the products of Lindström's trademarks Odeon and Fonotipia. At first, Odeon's catalog offers an international list of records but beginning in 1914, the “repertorio criollo” prevails. Among the tango musicians taken under contract by Glücksmann are Eduardo Arolas and Roberto Firpo, whose orchestra will dominate the Argentinian record market well into the 1920s.

3. Tango in Paris

At the beginning of the 20^th century, an interest in dance music from the New World—undoubtedly fostered by the developing phonographic industry—emerges in Europe. It reaches its peak with the tango, which from 1911 to 1914 balloons from fashion to virtual obsession at fist in Paris, then spreading all across Europe and North America.

In Germany tango attracts broad attention for the first time in 1913 after a dance championship in Baden Baden is widely publicized in the news media. The following dance season is dominated by tango. It is learned and danced everywhere. Berlin becomes the German center for tango and enters into competition with Paris. In both cities international championships are held, thus competing for the leading role.

Buenos Aires is infected by the tango fever as well. At first, it is noted as a curious fact that this simple dance causes such a stir abroad. But soon one follows the Paris example: dance schools offer courses, competitions are held, and an increasing number of tango records are offered for sale.

Pictures from the school of the tango teacher Carlos Herrera, Buenos Aires, 1913

4. World Music and the German Record Industry

Phonographs and talking machines (gramophones) are at first developed to record and play back the human voice. Quickly it becomes evident, however, that recordings of music offer a much wider field for commercial exploitation. The curiosity of hearing new things is taken up as a marketing strategy very early in the history of the record. Record producers send out engineers to make recordings in foreign countries. The recordings are sent back to the home factory were they are processed, made into disk records, and sold.

The records can also be sold in the country where the recording was made, but the transportation costs raise the sales price. In addition, many countries charge import taxes to protect domestic companies from foreign competition. In order to avoid transportation costs and import taxes, Lindström builds factories in foreign countries with large sales markets.

5. Atlanta

Atlanta is a subsidiary of a record producer from Berlin, Dacapo Record GmbH / Lyrophonwerke. At the time of the European tango fever, Atlanta establishes a recording studio in Buenos Aires and sells the records locally. Tango has a prominent place in Atlanta's catalog. Records with tango music were no novelty in Argentina. They were mostly songs with guitar accompaniment, however. Atlanta offers dance music. The company forms its own “Atlanta” orchestra, but records other groups (for example, the City Brass Band, the Rondalla Vazquez, etc. ) as well. For the first time, the name of a tango musician appears that is still remembered today: Roberto Firpo.

Announcement of Atlanta's entry in register of companies in Berlin

Atlanta's records are sold only in Argentina, but the music recorded there reaches Germany, too. The Lyrophonewerke of Berlin (associated with the parent company of Atlanta, now a subsidiary of Lindström) publishes in 1914 a list of “original south-american tangos” played by four music groups from Buenos Aires, among them the Atlanta orchestra and the City Brass Band of Buenos Aires. It is likely that the other groups were recorded by Atlanta as well. The “Argentinian Gaucho Quartet” performs the tangos “La Viruta” and “Vamos a ver” by Vicente Greco and Francisco Canaro, respectively. Both tangos are also found on an Atlanta record, however, without an indication of the performing musicians.

Tango advertisement by Lyrophonwerke, September 1913

Atlanta exists in Buenos Aires for hardly more than a year. Another subsidiary of Lindström will take its place: Odeon.

6. Odeon and Glücksmann, 1913-1019

Odeon records were sold in Buenos Aires at least since 1906. The exclusive distributor for Fonotipia, the parent company of the International Talking Machine Comp. (Odeon), was Casa Tagini.

In 1913, Fonotipia and its subsidiaries are incorporated into the Lindström concern. A new factory of Lindström starts production in Rio de Janeiro the same year. Max Glücksmann, who has sold until then only phonographic products by the American company Victor, becomes the exclusive representative for Odeon and Fonotipia in Argentina, Uruguay, and Paraguay.

Glücksmann now also sells records and gramophones by Odeon. The record repertory offered until 1914 remains international. With the closing of Atlanta, however, Odeon's offering includes an extensive list of “criollo” records. Roberto Firpo, formerly with Atlanta, is taken under contract by Glücksmann and becomes the most prominent tango composer and orchestra conductor for next 10 years. It is likely that Glücksmann purchased Atlanta's recording equipment since the recordings are done on the premisses of the Glücksmann company.

Odeon advertisements with tangos, Buenos Aires, March 1914

With the outbreak of WWI it becomes more and more difficult for German companies to participate in international trade. Odeon continues to release new records in Buenos Aires unitl 1917. Thereafter, Glücksmann's musicians are cataloged as “national records” or appear under the brand name of the artists (“discos Gardel-Razzano“, “discos Roberto Firpo“, etc.). It is apparently difficult to assert contractual responsibilities under war conditions.

7. Glücksmann and Odeon, 1920-1923

In 1920, Glücksmann announces “sensational news”: the first records with international artists that were produced in the “first and only factory” in Argentina. Lindström has taken up production in the most modern factory in South America. The contractual situation has been cleared up. Glücksmann's records appear now under the label “Disco Nacional”. The number of the musicians, whose music is recorded, is still small. The “stars” of the list are Roberto Firpo, the duo Carlos Gardel and José Razzano, and the singer Lola Membrives.

From 1922 on, the Odeon trademark appears again on the record label. Newspaper announcements point out that only “Disco Nacional” records with the Odeon trademark are authentic.

The repertory of the Nacional-Odeon list expands in the following year. New argentine musicians are taken under contract, for example, Francisco Canaro, Pacho Maglio, and Juan Carlos Cobián. Musik from Germany is also present with the “Gypsy-Orchestra Sandor Jozsi”. Sandor Jozsi is a pseudonym for the violinist Dajos Béla, who leads a dance orchestra in Berlin, under contract by Odeon. He will become a fixture in Odeon's list in Germany and Argentina.

Odeon remains an important connection between music and musicians in Argentina and Europe. Odeon sells records by Firpo, Canaro, Fresedo and others in Europe. When Glücksmann's musicians go Europe—as Carlos Gardel, for example—they record with Odeon. Dajos Béla, who as a jew has to leave Germany in 1933, moves to Argentina, founds an orchestra, and composes music for films that are produced by Francisco Canaro.