Enrique Cadicamo – the tango poet

Today’s podcast features an interview with the wonderful poet and tango composer Enrique Cadicamo. When I visited him in January 1999, he was already 99 years old and therefore almost as old as the tango.

Cadicamo said to me in a greeting: “In my long life I have already talked too much. But you come from so far away and are interested in our music. I simply must receive you and talk to you”.

Cadicamo told me that as a young man he spent every night at Tibidabo listening to the young Troilo. And that Troilo played him in a dressing room his last tango, Garua, for which Cadicamo wrote the lyrics. And he told me about his friendship with Juan Carlos Cobián. In his tango ensemble, Julio De Caro played second violin. When Cobián emigrated to America, Julio De Caro took over Cobián’s musical heritage.

My conversation with Enrique Cadicamo, this courteous and still so lively and enthusiastic artist, despite his almost biblical age, is one of the most extraordinary encounters I had in Buenos Aires while searching for the secrets of tango. Enjoy the interview with Enrique Cadicamo.

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Part of the interview with Enrique Cadicamo:

“Even if everything changes, the old tangos are untouchable, nobody can touch them, the music. However, they fix everything, they turn them around; a lack of culture and respect. For the old music, ours, is the only one that is worth, because it was made with the feeling that Buenos Aires had at that time, now it does not have it anymore; the climate, the food, everything changed and then it produced…the night, it was another night, another thing, another nightlife.

Ah yes. With Cobián, because we were very close friends. We traveled together. We traveled around the United States for a while, Brazil, everywhere. But, this one… he did great works. He has “Nostalgias”, which is still going strong, “Niebla del riachuelo”.

It has many tangos that remained, remained… very good. And then a great panist of high school, but with his personality, nothing to do with the conservatory, but the feeling he had. A man who had Indian blood. Her mother was the daughter of a Mapuche Indian. And he was very strong. A big tall man, very brave, isn’t he? and so it was on the piano when he played. Here we have had many values such as Delfino, Enrique Delfino, who was a creative genius from the same era as Cobián..

Julio de Caro was Cobián’s second violin in a very fancy place called Abduhla Club, on Florida Street. And he was second violin; first was Ferrazzano, a great tango violinist.

Later, as time went by, De Caro was left with Cobián’s style. Cobián went the other way and left the scores behind. So he did nothing more than copy them and assimilate, because he liked that very much, the Cobian style.“.

Biography

Video Tribute to Enrique Caducado – www.tangodeoro.com

Nostalgias – Text (Enrique Cadicamo)

I want to get my heart drunk
to extinguish a mad love
that more than love is a suffering…
And here I come for that,
to erase old kisses
in the kisses of other mouths…
If their love was “a flower of a day”.
why is the cause always mine
that cruel concern?
I want to raise my glass for both of us
to forget my obstinacy
and the more I remember it again.

Nostalgia
of listening to his mad laughter
and feel next to my mouth
like a fire his breathing.
Anguish
of feeling abandoned
and to think that another at his side
soon… soon he will talk to you about love…
Brother!
I don’t want to lower myself,
nor ask for it, nor cry for it,
or tell him that I can no longer live…
From my sad loneliness I’ll see it fall
the dead roses of my youth.

Moan, bandoneon, your gray tango,
maybe it hurts you just the same
some sentimental love…
My puppet soul cries
alone and sad in this night,
black and starless night…
If the glasses bring comfort
here I am with my sleeplessness
to drown them once and for all…
I want to get my heart drunk
and then be able to toast
“for the failures of love”….

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