Tanda of the Week: Salamanca. Tango lyrics translated. Plus a short tutorial!

Tanda of the Week: Salamanca. Tutorial with lyrics translated and beautiful historical pictures.

-Timeslots-
00:00 start
00:38 Tutorial Salamanca
04:56 Bomboncito
07:16 Adiós Corazón
09:14 Mano Cruel
11:31 Hasta Siempre, Amor

Hello, this Tanda of the Week features a pianist that is best known for his violins. And I will share with you some thoughts on which choices you have to make when putting a tanda together – with the orchestra of Fulvio Salamanca.

The tanda of this week is Fulvio Salamanca. It’s an orchestra that you either love or hate, there’s really no inbetween. Before Salamanca started his own orchestra he was the pianist in the orchestra of Juan d’Arienzo in the 1940’s and 1950’s. Salamanca was also the musical arranger for d’Arienzo in the 1950’s, a time when d’Arienzo really returned to a very strong beat and emphasis on rhythm.

But when Salamanca left, and started his own orchestra in 1957, he went in quite the opposite direction: Especially his sung tangos are in a very romantic style, with lots of violins and sugar on top. And some love that, and others just can’t stand it, it’s really a matter of taste. And just like with Fresedo in the 1930s there’s quite a difference in style between the sung tangos and the instrumental ones, the instrumental tangos have much more emphasis on the rhythm than the vocal ones.

The best known tangos of Salamanca are those with singer Armando Guerrico – and that’s also the tanda of this week. To me personally, there are three tangos by Salamanca and Guerrico that stand-out: Bomboncito, Adios Corazón, and Hasta Siempre Amor (composed by Donato Racciatti) so these are included in this tanda. The challing part is finding the right track to combine with them to have a complete tanda.

We talked about this topic in the Tanda of the Week introduction video: a tanda is a consistent set of tangos, it should feel like they all belong together somehow. But at the same time a tanda should be interesting as well, so we also need some diversity.

For this tanda, there are several options: One idea is to go with something similar, same singer, same style. I could add ‘Todo es amor’, ‘Vuelve amor’ or ‘Yo Tengo un Pecado Nuevo’ as the second song in the tanda, and that would be just fine. However, for me it would be a bit too much of the same thing… The instrumentals on the other hand are too different in style. With some orchestras it’s perfectly ok to mix singers and instrumentals, but with Salamanca it doesn’t really work for me.

Another idea that’s possible: same atmosphere, different singer. Sometimes I play ‘Dame Mi Libertad’ with singer Mario Luna as the third track in the tanda. It works, it’s quite a dramatic piece that matches ‘Hasta Siempre, Amor’ for instance. This tango is a bit challenging to dance to, but still doable. Or: we take a duet – and there are basically two choices: either ‘Alma en Pena’ with Jorge Garré and Andres Peyró, which – in spite of its title – has a very ‘light’ feeling, or ‘Mano Cruel’ which is more dramatic, sung by Garré and Guerrico.

Let’s go for a bit of drama this time. And then we’ll have:
Bomboncito Armando Guerrico, 1958
Adiós Corazón Armando Guerrico, 1957
Mano Cruel Jorge Garré & Armando Guerrico, 1957
Hasta Siempre, Amor Armando Guerrico, 1959


Enjoy!
Please note: We do not own the music in this video. Songs are included for educational purposes only. All songs have been edited/cut to prevent downloading of the complete songs. You can buy them from various providers (like iTunes) or stream them on Spotify.