41  Romance de Barrio

Date: Mon, 25 Jun 2001 14:05:09 -0700
From: Carlos Lima <amilsolrac@YAHOO.COM>
Subject: Romance de Barrio

Product warning: this posting is about tango. Music, dance, you know ...

I think there is some real value in understanding tango lyrics, especially
those of pieces that have original ones, rather than something grafted after
the fact not by the initiative of the composer. What one will do with that
knowledge is, of course, a very personal matter.

The lyrics of Romance de Barrio were for me an interesting study. This is
another piece (a vals, as it happens) that I danced a long time to
instrumental versions, knowing otherwise only the title. Without really
trying, I formed the impression that this vals had to be about some
enchantingly happy little love story involving two young people in the
barrio. The wonderful music (by Troilo) is nothing if not enchanting. Maybe
bewitching is the word.

Eventually I found the words by Manzi. It is nothing like that. It is the
story of a love that starts with great intensity and self destructs within
perhaps just a few months, amidst mutual recriminations, one may infer. The
"narrator" is the man.

Manzi is one of the greatest lyricists of the tango, some will say the
greatest. This, while perhaps not quite Carriego, is better poetry than one
would find in the virtual totality of sung tangos. The two verses are like
rewrites of each other. Bear with me.

"Primero la cita lejana de Abril" starts the first verse: *First the
encounter in April, lost in time;
"Ceniza del passado la cita de Abril" echoes the second: *Embers of the past,
that encounter in April.
"Tu oscuro balco'n, tu antiguo jardi'n" both continue: *Your darkened
balcony, your old-fashioned garden.
"Ma's tarde las cartas de pulso febril" versus "Las cartas trazadas con mano
febril", both saying virtually the same: *Then letters written in a feverish
hand.
"Mintiendo que no, jurando que si'" follows in both: *Lying with a no,
swearing to a yes.
At this point the verses diverge a little more.
"Romance de barrio, tu amor y mi amor, primero un querer, despues un dolor"
in the first verse: *Barrio romance, your love and my love, first a yearning,
then great sorrow;
"Retornam vencidas, tu voz y mi voz, trayendo al volver, con tonos de horror"
in the second: *Our voices return defeated, yours and mine, bringing along,
with undertones of horror ... [the blaming].
And both close almost identically.
"Por culpas que nunca tubimos, por culpas que debimos sufrir los dos" first
time around: *For blaming that we never deserved, for blaming that was to
make us both suffer;
and second time nearly the same, but with "pay" instead of "suffer".
Here the music, which I do not feel partakes much of the pathos of the poem,
comes closest to crying along with the words.

This simple parallel device, which might be a tad thread-bare in poetry as
such, works wonderfully here. The words re-inforce the part song ABBABB
structure of the music, helping a somewhat closer marriage between the lyrics
and the music. The same story is told twice, from subtly different
perspectives. First almost as it unfolds, wiewd from that fateful time when
the lovers were breaking apart; later, as if being remembered from a more
distant time, when the break down had been long consumated and only sadness
and a feeling of loss remained. The ability of each verse to convey a little
story and an emotional landscape in just a few words is a mark of high art.
One of the devices that make this happen --- and is a constant in tango
lyrics, I feel --- is the exploitation of the evocative power of single
words. More importantly, Manzi brings to this vals, not high drama and
overdone sentiment as are so often found in tango, but genuine feeling,
expressed in a bittersweet, beautiful, lament.

Manzi (almost) breakes with the "tradition" in tango lyrics whereby the man
is the sufferer of sorrows for which a woman is to blame. Under Manzi the man
says: the misunderstandings were mutual, both paid for them; but while he
later says that the woman punished herself, or perhaps in part because he
says that, the symmetry is broken. He is the one who cared, the one who
really loved, she the one more concerned with the recriminations. So this is
tango business as usual --- but done with far more ... shall we say ...
class.

Then we have the refrain. Here Manzi cannot be bothered with high poetry: he
is taking care of very serious vals business. The words are not remarkable.
They do not add much of consequence in meaning, poetic force, evocative
power. Form becomes all important.

Going back to the verses for a moment ... they were written in five-sylable
meter (two feet in the "English system"), with units sometimes more or less
strongly bound into 10 and 11-sylable lines. Very proper to embelish smoothly
a ternary rhythm (1-2-3-1-2-3 ...) with strong word accents falling
uneventfully on the strong musical accents (the "ones").

The refrain is something else altogether. This something else is found in
other valses criollos. It goes like this (only Castilian/Spanish is needed
here):

HOY viveRA'S despreCIANdome tal VEZ sin soNNAR que laMENto al no ...

The music goes: ONE two three ONE two three ONE two three ...
The words go: ONE two THREE one TWO three ONE two THREE ...

Syncopation (the real kind) rears its pretty head again. Or, perhaps better,
contretemps. No syncopation or contretemps in the music to speak of? No
problem, between Troilo and Manzi something interesting can be arranged. The
refrain has two parts. In each of them the above scheme goes on from the top
most of the way, then the words settle back into a ONE-two-three pattern to
finish.

Since I cannot just stand idly by while all this is going on, I try to add a
little spice to my dancing of that refrain --- this is not always possible,
it takes a bit of extra co-ordination.

Steps mostly on the capitalized counts: one TWO three ONE two THREE one TWO
...

I am not sure whether this does anything, really, but it is fun. It is the
best I can do until I learn to dance to the melody or to individual
instruments. That is going to take years.

Cheers,

Date: Tue, 26 Jun 2001 15:52:14 +0100
From: Mike Lavocah <mlavocah@IPWIRELESS.COM>
Subject: Re: Romance de Barrio

Carlos

It is nice to meet another fan of Romance de Barrio!

But, I have to disagree a little with you about the interpretation of the
lyric. Maybe it's just my poor Spanish?

Where does he actually blame the woman?

Mike Lavocah
Bristol, England

P.S. I think that "Por culpas que debimos sufrir los dos" means "We should
both take the blame"

Date: Wed, 27 Jun 2001 10:09:12 -0400
From: Silvia Borelli <silvia.borelli@OPERAMAIL.COM>
Subject: Re: Romance de Barrio

>===== Original Message From Carlos Lima <amilsolrac@YAHOO.COM> =====
> Since I cannot just stand idly by while all this is going on, I try to add a
>little spice to my dancing of that refrain --- this is not always possible,
>it takes a bit of extra co-ordination.
>
>Steps mostly on the capitalized counts: one TWO three ONE two THREE one TWO
>...
>
>I am not sure whether this does anything, really, but it is fun. It is the
>best I can do until I learn to dance to the melody or to individual
>instruments. That is going to take years.
>
>Cheers,
>

Carlos,

I agrees with you that "Romance de Barrio" is a very difficult piece to dance
to. You may want to get a hold of the video of Chicho and Cecilia dancing this
vals in Buenos Aires last March at the CITA. Every step and figure seemed to
be perfectly in tune with the music, and yet completely improvised.

Cheers,
Silvia.