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Amainaron guapos junto a tus ochavas Esquina porteña, vos hiciste escuela El “Odeón” se manda la Real Academia De Esmeralda al norte, p’al lao de Retiro Le glosa en poemas Carlos de la Púa |
The local punks retreated to your corners* Port-city street corner, you got your education The “Odeón” makes like the Royal Academy,* From Esmeralda north, toward the edge of Retiro, You are noted in poems of Carlos de la Púa |
* Local punks: Guapos. The term guapo is probably used loosely here (as in other lyrics of the period), to denote a local tough or hoodlum, colloquially a punk, whereas the historically prior guapo was something very different. Suffice it to say, the real guapos fought with knives, not fists; they acted as individuals, not as a group; and when faced with danger, they did not retreat.
* corners: ochavas. The ubiquitous eight-sided, angled street corners of Buenos Aires.
* Rich kid… cross: Legend has it that the great Argentine aviator Jorge Newbery, also a champion boxer, swordsman, and kung-fu fighter, caused quite a stir when he was hassled by some of the the local lads of the area, landing a very impressive punch (“cross”) on one unfortunate fellow’s jaw, causing the rest of the aggressors to scatter.
* Bold youth-gangs: patotas bravas. Patotas were loosely knit gangs of upper-class youth, often violent, usually with a right-wing political orientation. They acted as provocateurs and troublemakers, sometimes in opposition to gatherings of the popular, democratic Union Civil Radical, sometimes out of naked, unprovoked, youthful aggression.
*Sugar-cane booze…: The word caña may denote a variety of cheap alcoholic beverages including beer, grappa, and more specifically a cheap liquor distilled from sugar-cane, generally consumed by the lower classes.
* coke-sniffing hookers: locas de pris. Loca (literally, a crazy woman) is a euphemism for a loose woman or prostitute. De pris, from the French meaning “having a stuffy nose,” is a slang expression for a person who sniffs cocaine.
* “Odeón”… Royal Academy: The Odeón theater (previously Eden, then Variedades), built 1891 on the corner of Corrientes and Esmeralda, was part of a complex that included also the Hotel Roi and the Royal Keller restaurant, the latter a well-known literary haunt. Famous performers on the Odeón’s stage included Leopoldo Lugones, Jean Juarés, Anatole France, Eleonora Duse, and other luminaries of Argentine and world theater.
Among those luminaries was the Spanish classical actress María Guerrero (1867-1928) who with her husband, Fernando Díaz de Mendoza, the Marquess of San Mamés, had resettled in Buenos Aires in 1897. Guerrero’s company subsequently had great success performing zarzuelas and adaptations of classical Spanish literature on the stage of the “Odeón” as well as nationwide. So pleased was the actress with her reception in her adopted country that she and her husband devoted a considerable part of their personal fortune to the construction of the Teatro Nacional Cervantes, built in the Spanish Baroque style, and named after Spain’s emblematic novelist and dramatist. Among the benefactors of the project were the King of Spain, Alfonso XIII. The theater opened in 1921 and is still active at its original site on the Avenida Córdoba.
The Real Academia Española (Spanish Royal Academy) was (and is to this day) the official organization responsible for preserving and regulating the Spanish language. While the “Odeón” is not known to have enjoyed direct support or participation by the Academy, the presence on its stage of a highly-regarded Spanish classical actress, coupled with the favor shown her by a reigning Spanish monarch, seems to have engendered a fanciful association between the theater and the Royal Academy itself.
The use of the verb mandarse is ambiguous. It probably refers to the popular expression mandarse la parte, meaning “to feign, pretend, or imitate.” Hence, the “Odeón” imitates or pretends to be (“makes like”) The Royal Academy.
* Royal Pigall: A well-known café located at Corrientes 825, where Roberto Firpo, Francisco Canaro, Eduardo Arolas and other tango greats performed. Later site of the “Ta-Ba-Ris” cabaret.
* streetcar to the arrabal. The arrabales were the poor quarters at the city limits, inhabited primarily by immigrants living in group housing with poor sanitation. The image is of a malnourished resident of the arrabal who has stayed out late gambling, lost everything, and who now waits for a streetcar that will take him home.
* Montparnasse: The quasi-mythic bohemian crossroads of Paris centered at the intersection of the Boulevard Montparnasse and the Rue de Rennes, home of artists and intellectuals, dandyism, nightlife, prostitution, and all the other trappings of bohemianism.
* Carlos de la Púa: Argentine poet, (b. Carlos Raúl Muñoz y Pérez, 1898-1950), best known for his collection of Lunfardo poems La Crencha Engrasada (“The Well-Combed Part”).
* Pascual Contursi: Argentine poet, lyricist, and playwright (1888-1932) best known as the lyricist of Mi Noche Triste (Lita), an early tango-canción (1913) whose baleful lyrics set tango on a new emotional trajectory, prompting Jorge Luis Borges to deride the post-Contursi tango as “the effeminate whinging of jilted pimps.”
* nobody: cacatúa, literally “cockatiel.” The word is used to denote an inferior, mediocre, or merely ordinary person, “a nobody.”
Tango Decoder 