Carnaval de mi barrio (27.03.1939)

Music and lyrics: Luis Rubistein

Orchestra Edgardo Donato
Voc: Lita Morales and Horacio Lagos
T: 2:30, BPM: 66

Edgardo Donato - Lita Morales und Horacio Lagos - 1939

Countless tangos refer directly (Carnaval, Siempre es Carnaval, Después Carnaval) or indirectly (Ríe, Payaso/Laugh, Clown) to the tradition of the días locos brought by the immigrants before the Easter holidays, which fall on the summer months in South America and are therefore all the more inviting for exuberant celebrations. Although tango dance and music reached their peak in carnival for many decades, tango is only one of many building blocks within Argentina's carnival culture, and the Carnaval de Barrio in particular had many facets.

Carnival of the Afro-Americans - Candombe parties

The first carnival celebrations can be traced back to the beginning of the 17th century. In the following centuries, Argentinians of Afro-American origin also took part in the traditional carnival dances, especially in the form of exuberant candombe parades. After these were banned in 1778, the Afro-Argentines celebrated for a time in the community centres of their neighbourhoods. These are sometimes regarded as the nucleus of the tango, as it was perhaps here that candombe, habanera and other dances merged at the end of the 19th century to protoforms of  tango.

Parades of the Murgas at the Carnaval de Barrio

As in Europe and Brazil, parades are the highlight of the festivities.
In the 19th century these parades were initially organised by ethnic groups in the city centre. From 1920 onwards they were dominated by ethnically much more mixed so-called murgas, who identified themselves with the respective barrio. The Carnaval de Barrio was born.

Murgas were initially groups of a good dozen men. They went around wildly disguised, singing cheeky, provocative songs, often accompanied by percussion instruments, accordion or wind instruments. From these anarchic beginnings, neighbourhood networks developed as a mixture of carnival club and samba school.

They competed for first place in the Corso de Barrio with elaborately costumed, choreographed dance parades, magnificent floats and socially critical mini theatre plays.

There were over 100 murgas in Buenos Aires, comprising up to 120 mostly male members, each with typical colours and a typical dance style.

In addition to local, smaller parades, seven barrios organised well-known, magnificent parades. All generations took part in the parade, with community members decorating the houses and elaborately preparing the presentation floats.

Grotesque, monstrous masks were created from papier-mâché. Boys dressed up as pirates, sailors, clowns, gauchos or elegant gentlemen in tailcoats with bow ties and top hats, while the young brats took part in the street hustle and bustle as ballerinas, old ladies, travelling ants, queens or traditional Creole country girls.

While the murgas remained popular, the corsos lost their appeal in the 1930s. Instead, the tango took over and the big football clubs in the neighbourhoods organised huge dance parties for thousands of dancers, each with up to three orchestras (tango, jazz, tropical). Club names such as Racing Club, Boca or Atlanta were legendary.

Carnival customs

While, in keeping with the summer temperatures, water fights with buckets, hoses and anything else that was handy were taking place in the streets, members of the upper classes were elegantly teasing each other around 1940 with small water sprays filled with scented water, ink or even dirty broth. It was all about leaving your mark, a custom that was particularly popular with the ladies.

The film Carnaval de Antaño from 1940 gives a great insight into the goings-on

Shot in 1940, this film historicises the carnival in the decades before. (E.g. 00:08 or 1:08)

In the grip of the conservative authorities

It was not only the carnival activities of the Afro-American groups that were a thorn in the side of the conservative upper class. Again and again, the governments regulated the popular festivities and banned the battles with flour and eggs, as well as the water fights so typical of the Argentinian carnival. After the more liberal President Sarmiento, himself a great fan of the carnival who celebrated wildly, loosened the reins again in 1853, he was forced to ban the dances and revelry in 1871: Disease control was the order of the day, yellow fever was rampant in Buenos Aires.

The wearing of masks was also repeatedly restricted: in 1932, anyone wishing to hide their face behind a mask had to have their good character confirmed by the police.

In 1938, all masks that were sad or macabre were banned so as not to frighten children or adults.

As expected, dictatorial regimes were the most repressive. Driven by fear of the street and conservative regulatory fury, carnival activities were severely restricted after the coups of 1930, 1943, 1955 and 1966. The last, most brutal military government completely cancelled carnival from the calendar after taking power in 1973.

And so it was only at the end of the 1980s that the carnival traditions slowly began to revive. Since 1997, the city council of Buenos Aires has been suporting the Murgas, especially in socially disadvantaged neighbourhoods, with the aim of promoting culture and education, but also literacy, health and nutrition. Since the carnival holidays were reintroduced in 2011, strongholds such as Entre Ríos or Gualeguaychú with their gigantic parades with over 12,000 people no longer have to hide from the Brazilian samba schools.

Video of Carnaval de Gualeguaychú 2019

Carneval and Tango

Tango combos have also been taking part in the carnival since 1914. Vincence Greco, Canaro, Fresedo and Firpo performed at major venues such as the Teatro Nacional, the Teatro Opera, Luna Park, the legendary former ice palace Pabellón de las Rosas and, for a few years, the Teatro Colón. From 1940 onwards, the eight big carnival balls formed the highlight of the tango year. The great Orquesta Típica now often saved their hits for the carnival and tested them at the balls so that the record companies could then release the most popular numbers on the market.

Carnaval de mi barrio
full of examples of water battles ...

Carnaval de mi barrio
Around the world in 80 Tangos
Tangomundo, Berlin

Carnaval De Mi Barrio
Pablo Rodriguez & Noelia Hurtado, Antalya 2019

To listen

Composer Rubistein, singer, music journalist and tango poet of Jewish-Russian origin, gave his work the subtitle Street Painting at Tango Tempo. His finely chosen, emotional, loosely sketched linguistic images paint a bittersweet picture of the outside and inside of the poorer people during the Carnaval de mi Barrio, using great lyrical power to cover everything from the wild gang of children and the failed woman to the emigrant dreaming nostalgically of home.

The arrangement is typical Donato: rhythmically stable, not very complex, but rich in variety thanks to Donato's violin playing, the sound of Bartoli's accordion and the beautiful female voice.

Typically for Donato, a phrase of five semiquavers, which is later repeated several times, introduces the verse, which is characterised by crisp quavers played in unison.

The refrain from 0:30 is characterised by a question-and-answer game between the bandoneon group, which is influenced by Bartolin's accordion, and Edgardo Donato's violin and Osvaldo Donato's piano.

In the sparsely orchestrated vocal section (1:00 - 2:00), the verse lives entirely from the voice of Lita Morales, while in the refrain the question-and-answer game unfolds as an enchantingly airy duet between Lita and Horacio.

The fifth section, again instrumental, closes this bestseller with a wonderful bandoneon solo.