From the start the sole survivor of the beginning tango music the violin never vanished from the scene. As the guitar and the flute slowly disappeared, their seats taken by the bandoneon, the piano and the bass, the violin reflected the nomadic life of the instrument, traveling from Europe, probably from Italy or Eastern Europe. 

Easy to carry, from the cart to the ship, from the ship to the docks and from the docks to the bars and brothels. If you play, you had an income. I can imagine the first trio, a guitar, a flute and the companion the violin, played by gypsies or a Jewish klezmer immigrant to the streets and patios or a pulperia (a farm bar in the vast pampa's), entertaining the compadrito's, the cocoliches (Italian immigrant) or the gauchos visiting the village of Buenos Aires, not yet to be the metropole which it is now. 

I imagine the violin was the first instrument that played a tango-like song. As a gaucho on a guitar played a slow milonga, probably a jewish or gypsy violin player played along next to a fire somewhere in the outskirts of Buenos Aires. 

The nostalgic sorrow of an immigrant from the Hungarian, Balkan or Ukranian lands you clearly still can hear in the violin. The improvisation of the gypsy fingers, the tear of the jewish husband longing for his family who stayed behind, somewhere in Eastern Europe. 

Of course we think about the bandoneon when we hear some sorrow note of a crying Fueye. But the bandoneon came probably fifty years later to Buenos Aires. The violin just opened the door for the German Church instrument. And it seduced the bandoneon, leaving the holy altar, to be a bohemian nomad and instead mimic the church organ, which it supposed to do, it embodied the nostalgic cry of longing of the immigrant.

It was a violin player and orchestra leader Francisco Canaro who in 1916 decided to replace the guitar with a double contrabass. He didn't even have to lay off his guitar player as Leopoldo Thompson played guitar and contrabass. The change was necessary as tango venues grew, the amount of dancers too and the sound of the guitar couldn't reach the necessary volume. Thus also the bandoneon and the piano made their appearances and the amount of violins: from one to two and later four and even more violin players. 

Canaro was not the only violin player who played a crucial role in the the history. Next blog you can follow how two other violin players changed the tango music. 

Part II will be published in Feb 2025.

© by Mariano Diaz Campos | 18 April 2024