Carlos Gardel

Carlos Gardel
Carlos Gardel (1933)
Carlos Gardel (1933)
Background information
Born December 11, 1887/1890? France
Died June 24, 1935
Medellín, Colombia
Genre(s) Tango
Years active 1917-1935

Carlos Gardel (11 December 1887/18901 - 24 June 1935 Medellín, Colombia) is perhaps the most prominent figure in the history of tango. Although his birthplace is disputed between Uruguay, Argentina & France, he lived in Argentina from childhood and acquired Argentine citizenship in 1923. He grew up in the Abasto neighbourhood of Buenos Aires, located near the Central Market of Fruit and Vegetables, an enormous art-deco styled building which today is a shopping mall. He attended Pio IX Industrial high-school located in the Almagro neighbourhood. He died in an airplane crash at the height of his career, becoming an archetypal tragic hero mourned throughout Latin America. For many, Gardel embodies the soul of the tango style that originated in the barrios of Buenos Aires and Montevideo at the end of the 19th century. He is commonly referred to as “Carlitos”, “The King of Tango”, “El Mago” (The Magician) and, ironically “El Mudo” (The Mute).

The unerring musicality of Gardel’s baritone voice and the dramatic phrasing of his lyrics made miniature masterpieces of his hundreds of three-minute tango recordings. Together with lyricist and long-time collaborator Alfredo Le Pera, Gardel wrote several classic tangos, most notably: Mi Buenos Aires querido, Cuesta abajo, Amores de estudiante, Soledad, Volver, Por una cabeza and El día que me quieras.

Contents

Career

A statue of Carlos Gardel outside the Abasto Market in Buenos Aires, near which he grew up.

Gardel began his singing career in bars and at private parties, and sang with Francisco Martino and later in a trio with Martino and José Razzano. Gardel created the tango-canción in 1917 with his rendition of Pascual Contursi and Samuel Castriota’s Mi Noche Triste. The recording sold 10,000 copies and was a hit throughout Latin America. Gardel went on tour through Argentina, Uruguay, Chile, Brazil, Puerto Rico,Venezuela, Colombia, and also made appearances in Paris, New York, Barcelona and Madrid. He sold 70,000 records in the first three months of a 1928 visit to Paris. As his popularity grew, he made a number of films for Paramount in France and the U.S. While sentimental films such as El día que me quieras and Cuesta abajo lack lasting dramatic value, they were outstanding showcases of his tremendous singing talents and moviestar looks.

In 1915 Carlos Gardel was supposedly wounded after being shot by Che Guevara’s father, Ernesto Guevara Lynch, as a result of a bar room brawl in the belle epoque Palais de Glace in the Recoleta district of Buenos Aires, although different versions assert that he was shot in the chest or in the leg, yet another variation holds that it was not Che’s father but rather Roberto Guevara, an upper-class boy often involved in quarrels.[1]

Death and ongoing profile

Gardel died in 1935 on an airplane crash in Medellín, Colombia. Le Pera, two of their guitarists (Guillermo Desiderio Barbieri and Ángel Domingo Riverol) and several business associates and friends of the group died in the crash as well[2]. It is believed that a third guitarist, José María Aguilar, died a few days after the crash.[3] Others state that Aguilar lived until 1951, although he never regained full use of his hands and sight.[4][5]

Millions of his fans throughout Latin America went into mourning. Hordes came to pay their respects as his body was taken from Colombia through New York and Rio de Janeiro. Thousands rendered homage during the two days he lay in state in Montevideo, the city in which his mother lived at the time. Gardel’s body was laid to rest in La Chacarita Cemetery in Buenos Aires. In the neighborhood of Abasto, Buenos Aires, in the house where Gardel lived with his mother, the Carlos Gardel Museum opened in 2003.

Gardel is still revered from Tokyo to Buenos Aires. A popular saying in Latin America, which serves as a testimony to his long-lived popularity, claims, “Gardel sings better every day.” The fingers of his life-sized tuxedo-clad statue on his tomb nearly always hold a burning cigarette left by an admirer. Another commonly used phrase in Latin America, which asserts that Veinte años no es nada (Twenty years is nothing), comes from his song Volver.

Birthplace controversy

The place of Gardel’s birth is a matter of considerable controversy[6] that still provokes passionate debate in Uruguay, Argentina and France.

Some believe that Gardel was born in a small town called Valle Edén in the Uruguayan department of Tacuarembó. This theory is supported by his application for Argentinian citizenship, in which he claims to be Uruguayan, and the half-burnt passport recovered from his body, which gives Tacuarembó as place of birth. There is speculation, however, that Gardel gave Tacuarembó as his birthplace to evade military service during World War I for his native France.

Written evidence, however, tends to suggest that Gardel was born Charles Romuald Gardès in Toulouse, France to Berthe Gardès (1865-1943) by an illegitimate father, who brought him first to Venezuela (from which she apparently returned to France after finding little demand for the hats she handcrafted), and later to Argentina, when Gardel was 27 months old. An original French birth certificate is owned by the estate of Puerto Rican Gilbert Mamery, a radio personality and Gardel scholar. In addition, Gardel’s apparent holographic will asserts that he was born in Toulouse, France.

When asked about his nationality, Gardel would answer, “I was born in Buenos Aires, Argentina, at the age of two years and a half...” It is thought that Gardel gave an evasive answer in order to hide the circumstances of his birth to a single mother.

In his biography about Gardel, Carlos Gardel, La Biografía, Argentine writer Fernando Esteves gives evidence that Gardel’s father was named Paul Jean Lasserre, a mechanical engineer who had befriended Berthe while she was employed at his mother’s hat shop. Lasserre married another woman soon after Gardel’s birth, and because of this he was only incidental in Gardel’s upbringing, although he did pay for Berthe’s travels to South America, at her request. He would later look for Gardel in Argentina, after the singer had become internationally famous, but Gardel chose not to meet him, and Lasserre died in 1921[7] of hepatitis.

Films

References

  1. ↑ Un balazo mudo (In Spanish)
  2. ↑ Clavell, M. (1996), Biografía. In: Los Mejores Tangos de Carlos Gardel. Alfred Publ. Van Nuys, California.
  3. ↑ Clavell, M. (1996), Biografía. In: Los Mejores Tangos de Carlos Gardel. Alfred Publ. Van Nuys, California.
  4. ↑ Un hombre que nos evoca a Gardel prolonga en vida los resplandores de la tregedia en Medellín (In Spanish) Originally published in ANTENA 1950
  5. ↑ Carlos Gardel & his eight Guitarists
  6. ↑ Gardel Biografía web page
  7. ↑ web page “Paul Lasserre, el padre de Carlos Gardel”, visited 2008-09-18 (Spanish)
  8. ↑ Julián y Osvaldo Barsky (2004), Gardel la biografía, Taurus.

External links

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