Don Osvaldo Pugliese – The master of Argentine tango

Today we have an interview with Osvaldo Pugliese. When I met him and interviewed him in Holland in 1993, the great Master was already 88 years old. He was the first artistic director of the Tango Department of the Rotterdam Conservatory.

When he came to Rotterdam for the inauguration, I had the honour of accompanying and performing for him. Unfortunately, I didn’t speak Spanish very well at the time and Pugliese was already a little deaf. So his wife Lydia repeated my questions.

Pugliese called me “Helenita de oro”, something that filled me with pride. His great calm and aura impressed me and accompanied me ever since, even after his sad passing, 2 years later.

In addition to making music, Pugliese loved two things very much: telling jokes and dulce de leche, an Argentine sweet that he ate by the spoonful.

During our talk, Pugliese choked on a slice of tangerine, which got stuck in his esophagus and didn’t want to move anymore.

He was the only one who remained calm as everyone around him panicked. I ran out to buy powder to sneeze. Fortunately, on my return to the hotel room soon after, the situation had been resolved and the piece of tangerine was already quietly in his stomach.

Let us now listen to the words of the great Master Osvaldo Pugliese.

Part of the interview with Osvaldo Pugliese:

“Tango as life, as plants, as the universe has to be transformed by the work of new values and new talents that are appearing. So it was; is, the tango, from the moment it was born to the present and will continue from here until later, in the same way, historically so.“.

“Well, in truth today we can say that, for example, at the beginning of the century; at the time when tango went to Paris through Villoldo, the spouses Gobbi and Alfredo, who have introduced it; then Bachicha, Bianco, tango has entered Paris, something that in Paris they admitted it and in Buenos Aires they reneged on it. It was denied by some social classes that did not want to know absolutely nothing about popular, Creole, Buenos Aires music such as tango. That is why tango spread a lot in the neighborhoods, in the conventillos and in the brothels at the beginning of the century. But then they had to sign up and say well, huh! the people send it and we have to accept it“.

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Wikipedia

He was born on December 2, 1905 in the Buenos Aires neighborhood of Villa Crespo, in the bosom of a family of musicians. His father, Adolfo Pugliese, played flute in neighborhood ensembles, essentially in quartets. Two of his older brothers, Vicente Salvador and Alberto Roque, were also musicians.

Adolfo, his father, helped him make his first “palotes” in music, bought him a violin with which he was sent to the Odeón Conservatory in the neighborhood of Villa Crespo. But in this place he found the instrument that would be part of his life and the one that would stand him out above many: the piano.

He studied with great masters such as Vicente Scaramuzza and Pedro Rubione, with whom he became an extraordinary pianist.

At the age of fifteen, he was already part of a trio with the bandoneonist Domingo Faillac and the violinist Alfredo Ferrito, with whom he debuted before the public in a neighborhood bar called Café de la Chancha, name given by the parishioners in allusion to the poor hygiene of its owner and the place.

Some time later he was able to reach the Gran Ciudad, Buenos Aires, where she debuted as part of a group that had, as a particularity, the first female bandoneonist in the country: Francisca Cruz Bernardo, better known as “Paquita”,” “La Flor de Villa Crespo”, director of that typical orchestra, who accepted his departure for the sake of a better economic future.

Later, and with much more experience and ease, he was part of the quartet of Enrique Pollet (1924), and then of the orchestra of another famous of his time, Roberto Firpo. Already in 1926, he was the pianist of the orchestra of the great bandoneonist Pedro Maffia, continuing with his rise in the world of tango and taking more and more prestige every day.

But Osvaldo Pugliese’s dream was to have his own orchestra. It was thus that he disassociated himself from that of Pedro Maffia, in 1929, together with the violinist Elvino Vardaro to form his own ensemble. Both played for the first time at the Café Nacional with great repercussion, which pushed them to tour throughout the country. However, the tour was an economic failure and they had to pawn part of their instruments to get the tickets back to their city. On his return he joined Alfredo Gobbi’s orchestra and later accompanied Daniel Héctor Álvarez, Roberto Firpo and Miguel Caló.

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