La última curda

I can't resist the temptation to link another song from Sur. (Note that the cafe is just closing. That's about as close as we get to being inside it.) I've been really knocked out by the music in the film. Most of what we listen to is the tango of the 30s, 40s, 50s, the golden age, a time of reasonable prosperity and stability in Argentina. I've also listened to music from the last nine years: El Arranque, Orquesta Escuelo Emilio Balcarce, and all the great new groups, Color Tango, Ciudad Baigon, Fernando Fiero, the music of a time in Argentina that's been sometimes difficult but reasonably optimistic, mostly a time of growth: music with great optimism and energy played by musicians who've grown up since the bad days. But I think the music of the 80s and 90s is something else. The musicians were older, had suffered through the dreadful tragedy of oppressive military rule, and moreover had no way of knowing that their music would ever become popular and vital again, let alone so soon. I think you hear all this in these clips from Sur. Great musicality, pouring out of the harshest environment.

I think you also hear it in the CD Pugliese en El Colon, the concert Pugliese and his orchestra, with Goyaneche singing, gave in the opera house on December 26 1985: you hear bitterness, anger, fierce joy, tenderness, defiance... They'd lived through it all, and for all they knew it was the end of tango, and they used the opportunity to say everything. As a group they'd stayed together for so many years they could play personally, and yet together. It's a CD I can't listen to that often: it's not something you can have on in the background.

I'd like to hear more from that time. There can't be that many releases, tango wasn't yet popular. It's not easy because CDs on the internet tend to give the date of the CD re-release, rather than the original recording. The only place to research this is a record shop with a lot of tango. But there is a Goyaneche CD called Vuelvo Al Sur from 1989, which is probably the film soundtrack.

PS: the 1989 album is a Piazolla album, not the film soundtrack. It includes Goyaneche singing Vuelvo al Sur, but that's the only track with Goyaneche, and the only track related to the film.