The educated Tanguero

As a DJ, one naturally views the orchestral diversity in tango with different eyes than when considering this issue from a music historical perspective. Nevertheless, I often listen to tango music without any specific requirement of milonga suitability, and I personally enjoy many of these pieces, even though I would rarely, if ever, play them in a milonga. I’ve noticed that my preferences evolve over time. With music from the EDO era, these have recently tended to be recordings by Troilo and De Angelis, but I’ve also developed a new fondness for orchestras from the 1930s, whose clear musical lines appeal to me—less so the avant-garde sounds of De Caro, but rather the traditional style, which, despite the often challenging sound quality, still has its place in the milonga today. Here, I adhere to the old rule of playing classic tandas primarily in the early stages of a milonga playlist. So today, we’re talking about one of the oldest milonga-suitable orchestras, aside from Francisco Canaro. It is Francisco Lomuto who not only shares a first name with Canaro, but was also a contemporary and friend.

Let’s take a trip back to the early days of tango. The musicians of the so-called ‘Old Guard’ (‘Guardia Vieja’) were generally not formally trained instrumentalists with conservatory education. Consequently, their compositions tended to be rather simple, or the musicians had to overcome long and arduous career paths. Until the 1940s, it was therefore common practice for orchestras to employ professional musicians who arranged the scores for the ever-growing ensembles. Today, we see an example of an orchestra in which classically trained musicians played tango and emancipated themselves from the Old Guard. Accordingly, they were considered part of a newly emerging ‘New Guard’ (‘Guardia Nueva’). It is 1924, the era of the famous sextets, and it was precisely during this time that Julio De Caro founded his renowned sextet, which significantly influenced the development of tango for the following decade.