Argentina's greatest tango singer Carlos Gardel still popular 70 years after his death in a plane crash
Hoodoo
Associated Press
http://www.heraldtribune.com/
BUENOS AIRES, Argentina -- Argentines left carnations and burning
cigarettes at the tomb of one of the country's greatest tango
singers Friday, the anniversary of his death in a plane crash 70
years ago.
With a fedora hat rakishly pulled over his brow and a cigarette
dangling from his lips, Carlos Gardel set the standard in the
1920s and early 1930s for Latin American leading men as he gave
tango a huge boost worldwide.
The decades since Gardel's death while in his 40s in a 1935 air
crash in Colombia have only added to the cult following of the
Frank Sinatra-like crooner.
"Gardel is the greatest," said Nicolas Medina, 28, one of dozens
of fans who showed up at his marble mausoleum. "There will never
be another tango singer like him."
Misty-eyed, the Argentine lit a cigarette and cupped it in the
outstretched bronze hand of a larger-than-life Gardel statue near
his crypt.
A couple danced the tango for a few minutes in the cemetery as a
guitarist played and fans filed into the mausoleum to see
Gardel's wooden casket and black-and-white photographs now fading
yellow.
In Buenos Aires, authorities organized tango ballroom
competitions around the anniversary, radio replayed old hits and
one TV station devoted hours to his life. Even the Carlos Gardel
Museum organized a street fiesta for Friday night, planning for
dark-suited men to lead women in slinky dresses through their
tango steps.
Tourists on the waterfront, meanwhile, reveled in Gardel week as
entertainers belted out cafe renditions of such songs he made
famous as "Mi Buenos Aires Querido" - Spanish for "My Beloved
Buenos Aires."
Tango today has traveled far from the muddy River Plate docks
where it arose over a century ago, aided by Gardel as one of the
early pioneers for the melancholic form of song and dance that
has gained adherents as distant as the United States, Europe and
Japan.
Through song, Gardel expressed the angst of a difficult age when
millions of often penniless Italian and Spanish immigrants
arrived early last century by ship seeking a new life in South
America. But instead of propserity, many simply encountered hard
knocks and songs like "My Sad Night" gave voice to the
hardscrabble life of many a migrant.
Orfelina Cortejo Moya, 64, grew up in a family of 13 children in
frigid, windswept Patagonia in the decade that followed the death
of Gardel. The housewife said his songs still move her today.
"In Patagonia, where the wind always blows and the cold chills
you to the bone, we used to listen to Gardel on a radio powered
by a windmill and my mother sang me Carlos' songs as lullabies,"
she said.
"We were 13 children and we all used to sit around the radio
keeping warm by listening to that amazing voice," she added
tearfully. "It's something you feel deep inside and something
that stays with you every day and makes you want to shout: 'viva!' "
The Carlos Gardel museum in Buenos Aires is filled with sounds of
old, scratchy recordings, chipped wooden guitars of the era and
historic newspapers reporting Gardel's death in bold, frontpage
headlines.
"Carlos Gardel is everyman's hero," said museum coordinator
Horacio Torres. "He triumphs in life and then dies an early death
and that only serves to enhance his stature further."
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