250  preserving original orchestra´s recordings:a coleccionist

Date: Fri, 28 Sep 2001 11:49:57 -0300
From: SMC Administracion <adm@SMCAR.COM.AR>
Subject: preserving original orchestra´s recordings:a coleccionist

Dear friends of Tango list

Follows excerpts from an interview made by Paul Lange &
Michiko Okazaki from London (El Once Tango News- Autumn edition )
to a man from Japan , Akihito Baba , that represents the spirit
of preservation of Tango .The comments between brackets are
from myself. I met Baba SAN in Buenos Aires and bought him two
masterpiece recordings from early Canaro of the 30´s "Todo Milongas"
and "Todo Vals". Later I send this CD´s to Paul & Michiko for their
milonga venue in London, and later , when they went to Tokyo, have
the chance to met personally this man, quite a character , really.


"..P & M : We have heard that you have visited Buenos Aires
for the past 30 years and in that time collected over 10.000
78rpm tango records and have been reproducing them into
CD´s ...

Baba: ..I started with collecting as many LP´s as I could at
first, then later, when I realised the differences between SP
(78rpm) and LP, LP´s were available from the 50´s and the
old SP´s from the 20´s...you know there are differences..
sound-wise, it transmits completely different feelings to
me, Since then I have collected more SP´s.

...P & M: So you found the way to reproduce records
easily , through your profession( Baba SAN worked
at Nippon TV,Channel 4) .How did you go about
recording SP´s to CDs ? Did you do it yourself ?

Baba: Yes, recording was my profession.I didn´t
want to make any CD´s as in my opinion anything
for CD´s has to be good in sound quality.Especially,
the old feeling you get from LPs, even some scratch
sounds when I reproduce my collection, I thought
it didn ´t work for CD´s. However the member of
my club (Club Tango Argentino or CTA, they made
a monthly concert in Tokyo with Baba SAN recordings)
persuaded to continue recording them
onto CD´s. I made about 132 CD´s .

P & M: You can clean some noises during the process
of recording CDs these days.

Baba:Yes , but on the other hand I don t´want to cut
the noise when I reproduce SPs. I like to reproduce
SPs without cutting down hig waves to reduce the
noises. You can use an equaliser to cut the noises
down well, but I decided not to do so. There are
others who make clean sound reproductions in
Japan. But there are good SP´s not containing
any so-called noises, so you don´t have to cut
any noises. When you cut the noises, quite often
it loses the other sounds as well at the same
time. That´s a shame as well.

P & M : Didn ´t you make contact with the
record companies (in Buenos Aires)??

Baba : Record companies don t keep them.
It´s the other way around- they want SPs from
me, from my collection. They can´t produce any
CDs because they don´t have the originals like
I have. During the period that Tango disappeared
from the surface in Buenos Aires because of political
reasons, the Victor and Odeon companies in Buenos
Aires closed their offices as they couldn´t sell any LPs,
and at that time they threw away all the original master
copies away too.So they want to have SP´s like I
have so they can produce CDs. In England there
is a company called "Harlequin".They collected much
historical Latin America music and started to produce
many tango CDs .I know them because a friend of
mine in Argentina offered his tango photos to
them for using on the covers of CDs. Perhaps if I
have a chance to visit them in London we might
be able to do something together in future.

warm regards
Alberto Gesualdi
Buenos Aires