The Osvaldo Pugliese Legacy

Don Osvaldo Pugliese (December 2, 1905 - July 25, 1995)

On December 2, 2005 there had been major celebrations to commemorate the 100th birthday of OSVALDO PUGLIESE.

He passed away in July of 1995 after a life of successes and disappointments. On one side, he is credited with taking the Tango to the greatest pinnacle of instrumental interpretation; on the other side, his life was marked by persecution, proscription and imprisonment because of his personal political convictions. Having waited too long and too much while he was alive, a group of Friends of Osvaldo Pugliese have started the celebrations three years earlier.

By Alberto Paz

As it has been the curse of the country since the colonial days of the eighteenth century, during August with very few exceptions, what occupied people's mind were the high cost of living, the drop in the real value of salaries, the ghost of currency devaluation, the external debt, corruption at the official levels, the rising rate of crime, and how to survive another recession. 

There were no special announcements on sight that would give the casual stroller a clue as to why people were standing in line, some from the earlier hours of the afternoon. The next day Mauro Apicella would report in the newspaper La Nacion, that the organizers of the event had lacked optimism and confidence to gauge the response of the public to an offer of a free Tango concert to launch a cycle of activities called Pugliese Vivo, 2001-2005.

Three times as many people as the capacity of the Alvear Theater can accommodate made it difficult for those who already had a ticket to gain access to their seats.

A group of people calling themselves Friends of Osvaldo Pugliese and organized as a permanent homage commission have taken the initiative to pay tribute and respect to the Grand Master, laying out an ambitious program of activities that include concerts, and exposition of plastic arts, literature and of course music associated with the Tango.

Only the seriously fanatical followers of the artistic life of Osvaldo Pugliese, remember that his debut with his Orquesta Tipica took place on August, 1939 at the Cafe El Nacional. That is why, the date was picked to launch the Pugliese Vivo, 2001-2005 cycle seemed capricious to the grand majority, but for those who know, it marked the 62nd anniversary of that celebrated debut.

It is the published objective of the commission to rescue the philosophy of the dearly beloved tanguero along with his preoccupation for exalting the music of the city.

The distinguished disciples

Perhaps the most authentic proof of a teacher's legacy is the excelling talents of his disciples. Pugliese was a teacher that touched and influenced a star studded generation of musicians, most of them still alive.

He was also an exemplary father and he was rewarded with the gift of a daughter who followed the steps of her father, and sits today at the piano, the way he did, at the helm of a gifted group of musicians.

She was again that night, a Pugliese on the piano, Beba that is, leading a monster line up of bandoneonists and violinists in the La Yumba grand finale, which is the distinctive signature of the sound invented by Osvaldo Pugliese to make music out of the plight of the city and its people.

For two hours before that, Emilio Balcarce, first violin of the Pugliese orchestra (before going away in the nineteen sixties to create the Sexteto Tango), led his Orquesta Escuela de Tango, followed by the current members of the Sexteto Tango. Another violin player, Mauricio Marcelli introduced his quintet. Daniel Binelli, who joined Pugliese after the reconstruction of the orchestra that had been decimated by the departure of what then became the Sexteto Tango, was also present; so were vocalists Abel Cordoba and Maria Graña.

The popular orchestra Color Tango, that includes Roberto Alvarez (bandoneon) and Amilcar Tolosa (bass) and faithfully follows the style of Osvaldo Pugliese, preceded a younger quintet led by Fernandez Fierro, and a duo led by Daniel Ruggiero, son of the first, most memorable and perhaps the most influential bandoneonist Pugliese ever had: Osvaldo Ruggiero.

An Exemplary Life

Osvaldo Pugliese was the son of an Italian immigrant family, and he was inspired to study music by his father, an amateur flute Tango player. Initially he studied the violin too, but soon he switched to the piano, showing an enormous talent at a very young age. At age fifteen he joined a Tango group and thus began an illustrious career that would eventually make him the greatest Tango musician of the twentieth century.

Osvaldo Pugliese in a typical session with members of his orchestra

His training ground included the group led by the first female bandoneonist in tango, Francisca "Paquita” Bernardo. In 1925 he joined Enrique Pollet's quartet, and later he played in the famous Roberto Firpo orchestra. In 1927 he became the pianist in the great bandoneonist Pedro Maffia’s orchestra. Later, he and violinist Elvino Vardaro led a group which many agree, was the most instrumentally advanced of its time.

Until 1934, Pugliese made several attempts to form his own orchestra, and he joined violinist Alfredo Gobbi, and young bandoneon Aníbal Troilo for short term engagements that included radio broadcasts. Then, bandoneonist Pedro Laurenz -ex member of De Caro’s Sexteto Tipico, decided to form his own orchestra. He called Pugliese to sit at the piano. In 1936 he played for bandoneonist Miguel Calo.

All along his ascending career, Osvaldo Pugliese was acutely aware of the political and economical crisis that had divided Argentina's population. In particular, musicians did not have a voice in decisions that affected their jobs and compensation. When he finally decided to go on his own, he set up his orchestra as a cooperative, modeled perhaps after leftist ideals which he felt attracted to. Everyone had an equitable participation, not only in the distribution of income but in the creation of arrangements and composition of new titles. The results he achieved contrasted dramatically with the unjust persecution, incarceration and proscription that regime after regime perpetrated against his unassuming figure.

The debut of Osvaldo Pugliese's first stable orchestra took place August 11, 1939 at legendary Cafe Nacional. Osvaldo Ruggiero on bandoneon, Enrique Camerano on violin, and Aniceto Rossi on bass contributed to impress the distinctive sound and style that characterized all the Pugliese orchestras ever since.

Fortunately, his legacy has been preserved on four hundred and fifty recordings, and by generations of musicians that continue to project his genius and humility into the new millennium. The recording cycle started on July 15, 1943 (Farol and El Rodeo) and ended on March 26, 1986, with El encopao, live at the Teatro Colon.

The original members of the Sexteto Tango who left the Pugliese orchestra to try sucess on their own: (left to right) Victor Lavallen, Oscar Herrero, Julian Plaza, Emilio Balcarce, Osvaldo Ruggiero and Alcides Rossi

Initially, Pugliese became the most advanced exponent of the school first proposed by Julio De Caro incorporating a strong rhythmic beat, that proved that Tango music can be very appealing to the dancers, without sacrificing quality. Soon and long before Horacio Salgan and Astor Piazzolla started to experiment with counterpoints and syncopation, Pugliese had made them an integral part of his innovative sound. With the Pugliese sound, he recreated masterpieces from both early and contemporaneous composers (De Caro, Bardi, Arolas, Maffia, Laurenz, Canaro, Firpo, Scarpino and Piazzolla). His musicians also contributed great compositions of their own. Thirty five percent of Pugliese recordings were instrumental, and fifty percent of those belonged to himself and/or members of his orchestra.

On Thursday, July 27, 1995, the skies of Buenos Aires were dark and swollen, but they did not cry. A multitude of men and women who had been shouting for over four decades Don't ever die, Pugliese!, did. Two days earlier, Osvaldo Pugliese had peacefully entered immortality. The absurd Argentine way of conveniently forgetting the atrocities committed against the lives of many who, like Osvaldo Pugliese, refused to sell out his convictions, gave way to open demonstrations of sorrow as yet another myth was being born.

Red flowers, a symbol of his absence, colored one last time the collective mourning. Five bandoneons paid their everlasting respect to Osvaldo Pugliese, sobbing the sound of his sound, forever recognized, remembered and applauded as La Yumba.