05 Enrique Santos Discepolo Argentine Tango (Tango Argentino)

Philosophy in small coins

Some years before, in his essay Les Assassins de la Mémoire —an acute study on the neo-nazi revisionism in contemporary Europe—, the French writer Pierre Vidal-Naquet transcribed lyrics of “Cambalache”, the seminal tango by Enrique Santos Discépolo. A far-fetched quotation? Maybe a feature of exotism by an intellectual in search of oxygen out of the European culture environment? According to the author´s confession, he was acquainted with Discépolo´s work by way of some Latin American friends. And he decided to include him in a book not at all connected with tango. The image of a cambalache (second-hand shop) as scenery for insolent random, of a confusion of values and desacralization seemed to him most adequate to seal his denouncing text.

That was not the first time which Discépolo´s work aroused interest in the field of thought. The Spaniard Camilo José Cela included him among his preferred popular poets and Ernesto Sábato had no doubt in identifying himself with the pessimistic philosophy of the one who wrote “Qué vachaché”: «True love got drowned in the soup». Several years before these recognitions, the lunfardo (slang) poets Dante Linyera and Carlos de la Púa defined Discépolo as an author with philosophy. Another writer from Buenos Aires, Julián Centeya, when reviewing one of his films, talked of «philosophy in small coins», and at the same time was risking an analogy —undoubtedly exaggerated— between Discépolo and... Charlie Chaplin.

Unlike other popular creators who displayed their talent in an instinctive and somewhat naïve way to be later recognized as future exegetes, Discépolo was always conscious of his contribution. It could also be stated that all his artistic renderings were articulated by common sense, a certain Discepolian air or spirit which people immediately recognizes with affection and admiration as if his work —more than once defined as prophetic— should express the common sense of the Argentines. Discépolo´s singularity keeps on disquieting either in the tango universe or outside it. While most of his contemporaries are today strange to new generations, the man who wrote and composed “Cambalache” persists, is in force. Or to say it with one of his most loved images: he keeps on biting.

Enrique grew up seeing theater guided by his brother Armando, the great playwright of the River Plate grotesque, and soon later he was attracted by popular arts. He arrived at tango after having tried with uneven success, play writing and acting. In 1917, he made his début as an actor, in the company of Roberto Casaux, a comic star of that time, and a year later he wrote together with a friend the play Los Duendes, mistreated by critics. He later improved his level with El Señor Cura (adaptation of a Maupassant´s story), Día Feriado, El Hombre Solo, Páselo Cabo and, especially, El Organito, fierce social painting sketched with his brother in the mid-20s. As an actor, Discépolo evolved from chorus member to a cast name, and his work in Mustafá, would be remembered, among many other renditions.

Although the worlds of tango and theater were not divorced in the Argentina of Yrigoyen and Gardel, Discépolo´s decision to be an author of popular songs was resisted by his elder brother —Armando had been responsible for Enrique´s education after the early death of their parents—, and it cannot be said that things had been easy for the feeble and shy Discepolín. A mild familiar influence (Santo, his father, was a noted Neapolitan musician settled in Buenos Aires) may have been the first evidence towards the combined art of sound organization and lyrics, but the revelation was not immediate. On the contrary, either the anodyne “Bizcochito”, his first composition commissioned by the playwright Saldías, or the remarkable and revulsive “Qué vachaché”, published by Julio Korn in 1926 and premiered at a theater in Montevideo where