In his autobiography, the Argentinian singer and songwriter Juan Carlos Marambio Catán (1895-1973) described his first encounters with tango. They took place at the beginning of the 20th century, when he was less than 10 years old. Marambio Catán was born in Bahía Blanca, but after his mother died when he was 5 years old, his father sent him to Buenos Aires to live with an uncle David Marambio Catán, a high-ranking military officer. There he was introduced to the theater, more precisely, to the Apolo Theater. Marambio Catán wrote:
I had an uncle—a brother of my mother—who lived in Corrientes Street, next to the Apolo Theater. They took me there to stay for some days with him and his wife, Doña María Gatti, daughter of a stout businessman who owned a large store on the sidewalk facing the theater. I was entrusted to an employee who took me—halfway being smuggled in, since it was not customary for children to attend such shows—to see the sainetes at the Apolo. There, listening to the music and the amusing and daring texts that the singers interpreted, my love, my passionate vocation for the song of Buenos Aires was born...
The music and staging
impressed Marambio Catán so much that he learned the songs and
performed them at home to the great amusement of his uncle:
Occasionally, Colonel Gramajo and his wife Misia Arminda came to visit my uncle David at his house. He shared with my uncle the responsibility of commanding the military company of President Roca. For these events, a well provided table was set up because both enjoyed an extraordinary appetite, which provoked continuous jokes and hilarious comments in the press of the time. At the end of the dinner, one talked about everything and when the commensals' excitement over the spark of a good wine and the satisfaction over a good dish began to diminish, my uncle asked me affectionately with a convincing gesture: “Let's see, Juan Carlitos, dress up as a compadrito and sing something for Gramajo.” I did not wait to be asked twice and ran into the house to prepare myself. Coming out again wearing a slouch hat and a neckerchief around my neck, I made my entrance showing off the walk of a hoodlum [malevo]—which is called “egg walk” (pisahuevos) in popular jargon because of the vacillating manner with which they slid their feet over the ground—while I exhibited at the same time some colossal shoulder pads and a cocky gaze. Thus set in character, gesturing and doing a few dance steps, I cut loose singing in full voice:Qué calá, calá
qué calamidá
calaté el funyi
calaté el funyi
hasta la mitá.
(Excerpt from the tango Qué calamidad by Bernardino Teres and Pascual Contursi)
The performance ended in
roaring laughter after the uncle asked the young singer at the end to
which political party he belonged, and Juan Carlitos answered
“Intransigent Radical”, which was a group in opposition to the
governmental party that the military officers in the audience
supported.
It was the theater company
of Pablo Podestá and his extended family that impressed Marambio
Catán so much at the Apolo Theater. The Podestá family started as
circus artists. Soon they also performed pantomimes with stories
taken from narrative gaucho poetry. Then, in 1892, the first sainete
(burlesque, farce) criollo
, “El año 92” by the Argentinian playwright Ezequiel Soria, was
performed by a Spanish theater company in Buenos Aires. It was the
first play that put local characters on stage, and it was a huge
success with the audience. As the teatro criollo
developed into a genre in its own right, the Podestá left the circus
rink for the theater stage and became important proponents of the new
Argentinian theater style. The teatro criollo presented
plays with plots located in the lower-class neighborhoods of Buenos
Aires. This was the milieu
associated with tango, and with the recognition of the teatro
criollo, tango gained great
popularity with the general public of Buenos Aires.
Marambio
Catán was thus introduced to tango through theater plays; it does
not surprise, then, that he dressed up and impersonated a character
in order to sing a tango. The compadrito he was asked to enact
in his little performance is the quintessential figure of the
lower-class criollo, that is, an Argentinian-born inhabitant
of the suburbs surrounding Buenos Aires. (Variants of the compadrito
criollo are the malevo [delinquent, criminal] and guapo
[pretty boy, pimp]). The image of the compadrito emerged
around the turn of the 20th century. It appeared not only
on the theater stage of the teatro criollo, but also in
literature and graphic depictions and remained prevalent until the
1930s-40s, when it was canonized in films.
Marambio
Catán's choice of costume and enactment reflected the attributes of
a compadrito criollo: a slouch hat and neckerchief. High-heel
ankle boots that provoked a particular walk are another attribute. Surely he must
have seen actors dressed up this way on stage. As a young boy of a
well-to-do military family, he would not have had many opportunities
to study the dress code and behavior of the suburban hoodlums and
loafers, nor would the family have appreciated his performance if it
was not a re-enactment of a common stage figure.
One
actor that Marambio Catán may have actually seen was Arturo de Nava,
a well-known singer who appeared in productions of the Podestá as a
payador and tango dancer. There also exist photographs that
show de Nava posing as a tango dancer (published in 1903, at the time
when Marambio Catán lived at his uncle's in Buenos Aires).
The
dress of the male dancers in these photos is characteristic of the
compadrito: slouch hat, neckerchief, and high-heel boots. It
is reasonable to assume, then, that de Nava appeared in a stage
costume for the photo shoot.
The
dress attributes of the compadrito remained more or less the
same during the following decades. That is, they became part of the
iconography of the lower-class inhabitant of suburban Buenos Aires. A feature
story published in Caras y Caretas in 1906 described the
appearance of two compadritos as sporting a
greased mane, red neckerchief, tailor-fitted jacket, French trousers, high-heel ankle boots, and a long nail at the little finger 'to scratch the dandruff'.
 |
From
"Entre gauchos...", Caras
y Caretas,
No. 421, 1906:
The two compadritos appear on the left. |
The
illustrator of the story added a chambergo,
the slouch hat, to the compadrito's
outfit. In contrast to the photographs
of Arturo de Nava above, the apparel described in this
examples—including a tailored jacket and “French”
trousers—appears to be more “stylish”, but it is essentially
the same, including the “high-heel ankle boots”. We find them
again in a caricature of 1912:
“The Psychology of the Phonograph”
 |
And
while they demand the acrobatic waltz from The Merry Widow at
the suburban dances, the chic girls in their parlors go crazy over
the tangos of the compadritos.
|
The original cartoon presents eight pictures that illustrate the effects of music associated with one class of society upon another class, which was made possible through the gramophone and records. Our excerpted two pictures depict situations that might happen if lower-class compadritos (left) dance to a waltz from Franz Lehar's “Merry Widow” (premiered in 1905) in their style with “corte y quebrada”, or upper-class people (right) dance to tango music. It is again the dress code of slouch hat, neckerchief, and high-heel boots that distinguishes the suburban male from the urban one (no hat, collar and bow tie, no boots).
 |
Caricature
of a compadrito from 1930
|
Walking Criollo
When Marambio Catán made his entrance as a compadrito, he also adopted a particular walk, which he called pisahuevos, “walking on eggs”. This walk has a direct relationship to tango. In a feature story published in Caras y Caretas in 1899, a guapo mutates his gait when he hears tango music:
When he walked down the streets, the lascivious milonga music of the barrel organs gave him a prurient tickle in the ankles. When he turned a street corner, he slid the leg around the corners as if it were the curlicue skirt of the china, and continued walking in baile con corte steps, the arms raised, the head filled with images of the brothel and lustful sensations running down his entire spine.
 |
From
"Plétora Mortífera", Caras y Caretas No. 63, 1899
|
SargentoPita (1903),
the author of the text accompanying the photographs of Arturo de Nava
(see above), attributed the peculiar walk of the compadritos
to their footwear, the high-heel boots:
The characters [compadritos] of Alto and Balvanera have disappeared: with their country trousers, poncho on the shoulder, insolence readily on their lips (the inseparable companion of the telltale dagger), and the pointed heel, which inhibited the step and, while seeking to keep their balance, resulted in a feminine swaying of the hips!
There
is evidence, however, that compadrito walk was just another stage prop—like the slouch hat and high-heel
boots. The journalist Juan José de Soiza Reilly recounted the first
performance of a successful sainete
criollo
by Ezequiel Soria, “Justicia criolla”, in 1897. According to de
Soiza Reilly, it was Soria who instructed the Spanish actor Enrique
Gil in the proper stride of a compadrito:
At the opening night, hours before the performance, [Ezequiel] Soria himself taught [Enrique] Gil in between the curtains the way of “walking criollo”: boastfully, and with the arms raised in the manner of the time of the long mane and the pointed heel.
—“Yes, yes, I understand now,” said the great actor.
The curtain was about to be raised when the impresario Larco all of a sudden noticed that Gil had stretched out a rope on the floor and walked on it like a tightrope artist.
—What are you doing, Enrique?
—I am learning to walk in criollo!
A slouch hat, neckerchief, a sliding gait, with raised arms, dancing tango: the figure of the compadrito, it appears, was created on the theater stage. And with the success of the Argentinian teatro criollo, the music of the compadrito—tango—became accepted and loved by the bonaerense audience, which adopted it as its own. The image of the tango-dancing compadrito was no longer confined to the theater stage but quickly became a fixture in popular culture. And it is still recognized as such today.
Libertad Lamarque dancing La Morocha with a compadrito.
© 2017 Wolfgang Freis
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