TANGO SUR AND THE CANCIONES CIUDADANAS DEL RÍO DE LA PLATA
Tango Sur is formed by piano Marcelo Arnal, singer Hugo Ramírez and bandoneón Marcela Amengual.
The musician, piano player and composer Marcelo Arnal was born in Corrientes (Argentina) on March 8th 1963. His life course brought him first to Buenos Aires (from 1981 to 2001) and now to Barcelona.
Although he studied with the great Argentinean maestro Norberto Minicillo, he defines himself mostly as an autodidact.
As a composer, his most important pieces are Viva Picasso, on poems of Rafael Alberti (1987), Telarañas for the theatre play of Eduardo Pavloski (directed by Andrés Spinelli and performed at the Payró Theater in 2001), Cuerpo más cuerpo of Mónica Fraccia and his musical collaboration for the child’s play Jack, el destripador of Horacio Guevara.
He is the author of the musical arrangements and interpretation for El Cortazár Tango Club (spectacle directed by Horacio Guevara and performed at the Centro Cultural Recoleta, the Cámara Negra theatre of Santiage de Chile and other theatres in 1991-1992).
He has written music on poems of Jorge Luis Borges for the play Borges, un viaje en globo (direction and choreography by Julio López, in 1993) and the poems of J. Cortazár for the play Mitotango (Barcelona, 1998). Furthermore, he has written the music for the Soma choreography and the play Lluvia of S. Cardel and K.M.3 (Luz and Fuerza theatres and IUNA – the Instituto Universitario Nacional de las Artes of Buenos Aires).
As a piano player, Marcelo Arnal has accompanied Franklin Caicedo in Tango, the maestra Ana M. Stekelman on a dance seminar for the Contemporary Ballet of the Teatro Municipal General of San Martín. In 1999 and 2000, he played for the singer and composer María José Cantilo.
He has participated in the casting and performance of the play Canto a la memoria con Susana Rinaldi (1994) and accompanied Teresa Parodi on her national and international tour in 1995. Later, in 1998, he participated in the Festival de Música, Danza y Pintura, organized by the Cultural Centre Ricardo Rojas.
He combines all these activities with his job as accompanying musician in the modern dance classes for the Department of Movement Arts Maria Ruanova at the IUNA.
His artistic and professional quest has brought him to Barcelona, and now to Tango Sur because for Marcelo Arnal, “the tango is the artistic expression that reflects the feelings and experiences of men and women of port towns”.
The singer Hugo Ramírez was born on Octobre 11th 1960 in La Teja, a popular district of Montevideo, the capital of Uruguay. It’s here that his early relations with the Tango, football and the social fight for a more just world begin.
The Tango accompanies his nights, when, as a child, he falls asleep listening to an old radio playing between the curtains from his parents bedroom.
One day, he promised his mother to go looking for her origins and family members that live on the other side of the Atlantic. This promise, among other reason, is at the origin of his peculiar voyage to Catalunya.
Hugo Ramírez is introduced to the world of Tango at a very young age, accompanying, at the age of six, the tanguero Gaucho Peñaloza on his Sunday performances in the District. Later, Hugo will be a member of a trio dedicated to folklore: his voice is accompanied by the guitars of Roberto Pan – his godfather – and May.
From 1973 to 1985, Hugo participates, as do so many young Uruguayans, in the so-called folk songs against the dictatorship: in this tragic period, singing was a form of expressing social disagreement.
For a long time, Hugo Ramirez has accompanied himself on the guitar. However, as a Uruguayan, by conviction and necessity accustomed to fighting for a more just world, and as a freedom fighter who knows that “in spite of all, you have to keep on living”, he knows that only the tango, with its roots in the lives and feelings of the people, can express and explain pain, feeling and rebellion. By singing, Hugo claims to form part of the Tango world that does not want to forget where it comes from and still is a rebel because there are still causes for rebellion.
His experiences as a singer-songwriter include the recording of a CD in 1990 with the guitar players José Martínez and Fernando Olivera and percussionist and brother Juan Carlos.
In Uruguay, he has participated in various folklore festivals and singing contests, winning in quite a few, which earned him appearances in television programmes. He also participated in the Carnival with the folkloric percussion group (murga) La Bohemia.
After arriving in Catalunya, Hugo Ramírez has participated, with his voice and his guitar, in festivals in Barberà, Sabadell, Rubí, Les Franqueses and Castelldefels. In 2004, he performed at the important Street Theatre Festival in Tàrrega.
Nace en Buenos Aires en 1975, comienza sus estudios musicales a temprana edad de la mano de la guitarra clásica y el canto. A los 13 años integra el Coro Polifónico de la Universidad Argentina J.F.Kennedy, actuando en diversos escenarios como el Salón Dorado del Teatro Colón de Bs.As., el Teatro Coliseo, el Teatro San Martín, entre otros, En 1992 comienza la carrera de guitarra eléctrica en el Instituto Tecnológico de Música Contemporanea y explora en estilos como el jazz, el funk, blues, tango, etc. En 2002 comienza a estudiar bandoneón con Gabriel Rivano; en 2005 decide radicarse en Barcelona y perfeccionar la técnica del instrumento con Marcelo Mercadante. Forma parte de diversas agrupaciones , Tango Sur, Percal Trío, Tango Cabaret Group, entre otros, actuando en escenarios como el Teatro Orfeón, Harlem Jazz Club, Jamborie Jazz Club, el festival Urban Tango de Barcelona 2006, La Fiesta de la Rosa (Gavá), bar Pastís, el Teatro de Bellas Artes de Sabadell, etc.
Argentina, Uruguay, Catalunya and the Tango.
The origin of the tango is tightly linked to migrations, to the world of the Rio de la Plata that originates in the expulsion of the gauchos and Indians from the interior of the country by the English in the XVIII century and their arrival at the port towns of Buenos Aires and Montevideo. These towns also shelter the Europeans that arrived by boat, fleeing the overcrowding of the Old Continent to continue their lives in overcrowded cities on the other side of the Atlantic. They are joined by the black military gangs who established their territory at the edge of the towns.
It is in the outskirts of the towns that the tango is born as a “sexographic dance, a nervous dance, joyful and seducing in the beginning, but whose music evolves canalizing cathartically the frustrations, regrets and nostalgias of all those rejected by destiny that found shelter in the poor districts of town”.
The suburbs and the neighbourhoods furthest from the centre of town were the cradle of the tango. That is why this music and dance are associated with the individual and the margin versus the Government and centre.
The Tango is recognised as a complete cultural phenomenon – dance, music, song, poetry – with a popular origin and complex origins; as a result of the merging of the Creole and Spanish culture with the culture of the European immigrants, the Tango has followed a strange path of coming and going between the New and the Old Continent.
The members of Tango Sur have been living in Catalunya for some years now and have decided to unite piano, voice and bandoneón and render tribute to their origins and the urban songs of the Rio de la Plata. They do this with the Tango and the guidance of the universal and eternal Carlos Gardel.
Just as Gardel did, Tango Sur proposes a voyage and constructs a bridge between Catalunya, Argentina and Uruguay with the Tango, which is known to be the sound of immigration. It is also a platform of expression of emotions and social demands, the Tango tells the story of the “grand human comedy” and erases the distances imposed by the Atlantic and other, more unjust, factors.
Carlos Gardel, Carlitos, is said to be “the best singer, the best interpreter of Creole songs” and that “although he was born in Uruguay, he owes his glory to Argentina”. And what role plays Catalunya in this story? Well, Gardel is the grandson of Juan Escayola, who was born in the Catalan city of Sabadell.
In the world of Tango, Barcelona has always been a good platform. Apart from the family history of Gardel, Barcelona has welcomed and still welcomes the Tango and understands its vital role in the musical expression of the people. Maybe it is because Barcelona, with its own port, knows, just like Buenos Aires and Montevideo, the nostalgia of farewells and the hopes of those who arrive with just one piece of baggage for the travel between the New and the Old Continent: hope.
Someone once said that the Tango has achieved what Borges wanted to do at the end of his career: to write how people talk.
There is a misconception of the Tango, limiting it to the “the complaints of the deceived man”. This is just one of the many themes of the Tango. This mistake may come from the fact that only a few tangos are played very often, and it is very well illustrated in an anecdote told by Gardel. “When he first arrived in Madrid, he went to the Chicote, a bar, and the owner asked him where he was from and what he did for a living. When Gardel told him that he was from Argentina and that he was a tango singer, the owner asked him: ‘So you, when did your wife leave you?’”. Tango not only talks about love, but also about the neighbourhood, bars and drinks. There are tangos about childhood and mothers. Others remember the port and the sea. There are tangos in favour of women and against women. Sometimes, it has themes such as the bandoneón, carnivals and games. Sometimes the Tango gives you advice. Other Tangos talk about dance and dancers.
2005 was the year of the 70th commemoration of Carlos Gardels death, by plane accident, in Medellín on the 24th of June 1935. This date marks the start of the immortal and eternal Gardel.
