Astor Piazzolla: Chapter 5.2 in The Landfill Chronicles
ASTOR PIAZZOLLA — THE POLITICS OF TAMPERING WITH TRADITION
Chapter 5, Part 2 in the Medium book The Landfill Chronicles, the conversation memoirs by Dan Ouellette
Long buried in the landfill: the 1989 Conversation on Music Elevated to a State of Art with the father of nuevo tango (1921–1992)
The conversation continues:
Chapter 5.2
ASTOR STAYS TRUE TO HIS VISION
After Astor’s exhilarating 1989 Tango: Zero Hour show at UC Berkeley’s Zellerbach Hall, I go backstage to meet the master. He is a gentle, diminutive man, eager to smile. He shakes my hands to thank me for my recent telephone interview with him.
This is the continuation of our conversation that began in the earlier part of this chapter (5.1). Here Astor begins by talking about the key figure in his life: renowned French composer and conductor Nadia Boulanger (1882–1979) who mentored dozens of composers and musicians, including Philip Glass and Quincy Jones, in their searching years.
When did you begin to see the potential for nuevo tango?
A turning point for me came in 1954 when I received a scholarship to study with Nadia Boulanger in Paris. I am what I am today thanks to her. Back when I first started to study with her, I was writing contemporary music and symphonies, which she was analyzing. Finally, one day she told me, “This music is very well written, but I don’t find Piazzolla in it.” She then asked me what kind of music I played because she knew I was making my living by being a musician.
I was very much ashamed to tell Nadia that I was playing tango music. She said, “Oh, that’s wonderful. I like tango very much.” Then she asked me what my instrument was because she knew I couldn’t play the piano very well. Again, I was ashamed to tell her that I played the bandoneón that was considered to be a very low-class instrument in Argentina at the time. Of course, now everyone wants to play it.
Nadia got very excited and asked me to play some of my music. I played eight bars of one of my tango compositions. When she heard that music, she took my two hands and said, “This is Astor Piazzolla. Never leave it. The other music, throw it away!” So, I threw away all the other music I had been writing and focused on writing tangos. And I haven’t stopped since that day in 1954.
When I returned to Argentina, I started my war against everybody. It was me against anybody else who didn’t understand my music. I began working with complex musical arrangements in my tangos, using counterpoints, fugues and unusual harmonies. The only people who embraced my music were young people and students. I started giving concerts at universities, which helped to inspire young people to listen to tango.
Since tango is considered a national treasure and even sacred to many Argentines, you must have been considered a subversive.
I was definitely seen as a rebel. I like to be called one. I’ve always liked doing what I’m not supposed to do. As long as people let me compose and perform my nuevo tango, I’m a very happy person. I’ve had a lot of experience with people wanting me to conform to their expectations. The most common occurrence is people wanting me to play dance tango.
I’m more interested in moving people to think when I play. That’s why I got involved in nuevo tango. It’s like Beethoven and Bartók. It forces you to listen and think. Nowadays people don’t expect to hear dance tango when they come to hear me play. They know I’m doing something different. They come out of love for the music even though it sounds strange to them sometimes. Yet they know that they can hear and feel the pulse of the tango rhythms at the root of my music.
But it wasn’t always the case that audiences knew what to expect from your performances. Early on, weren’t there some very violent reactions against what you were doing?
My most dramatic experiences trying to play nuevo tango came in the 1960s when my band and I would get calls to play tango dances. Those shows were necessary if we wanted work, but it was tough because people stopped dancing soon after we started to play. They said my work didn’t have a strong enough dance rhythm. Plus, that’s when I started writing compositions to be played with an electric guitar in the band. People cursed and insulted us. Some were so upset they threatened to beat me up. Fortunately, I was raised in New York where I had learned to fight. It took us four or five years to finally get hired for shows where people would come only to listen.
You’ve worked with many jazz musicians over the years. How much has jazz influenced nuevo tango?
It’s been very important to my experimenting with tango. I always felt that traditional tango music was boring. After listening to musicians like Charlie Parker, Gerry Mulligan and Miles Davis, I began to think of jazz possibilities in tango. The main difference between nuevo tango and jazz is that while jazz relies on a lot of improvisation by the musicians, my tango pieces are ninety-nine percent composed and one percent improvised. What I have learned from jazz is to allow for a great liberty of expression. For example, when I play a melody, I can turn it upside down and inside out so that it takes on the quality of improvisation.
Another important thing I learned from jazz artists was to have fun while performing. I always saw good jazz players enjoying themselves, which was never the case with tango artists. Tango is very dramatic and lonesome music. Sometimes I refer to it as black tango. Even though it will never be happy music, I decided that playing tango was going to be an enjoyable experience for my band and me.
Why is tango so melancholic?
It’s dark music because it was the music of Italian, Spanish, French, German, Polish and Jewish immigrants in Argentina. Most of these people had to leave their homes and move to a new country to work. Their music was integrated into tango. Tango has also represented the lower classes in society, the people who have to struggle in life.
The lower class loves tango. There might be some fans in the upper class in Argentina, but you won’t find one tango musician here from that social class. All the tango musicians, poets and composers come from the lower Argentine classes.
In the liner notes to your Libertango album, which you recorded in Milan in 1974, you wrote that “the artist who has no desire to experiment, to feel new sensations, is a dead artist.” Fifteen years later, are you still experimenting with tango?
My goals are to keep my tango important, to go on experimenting, to make new innovations, to amaze my audience as well as myself. Last year when I toured the States with my quintet, my music and arrangements were very romantic. Now my music sounds religious. The music is composed for two bandoneóns. The bandoneón originated from the organ and harmonium, both of which are important church instruments. When I write for both bandoneóns, I try to make them sound like an organ or harmonium, which creates a religious sound in the middle.
The most beautiful thing about being an artist is being understood. The most terrible experience is when people who do something different are not understood. They insult you and won’t let you work. I don’t write for people to like me. What’s most important is when my fans tell me, “That’s good music. Thank you for the passion you put into your performance.” In the last twenty years, I’ve been very fortunate. I think people are finally embracing nuevo tango because it’s a new expression. It’s a reflection of the new culture of Buenos Aires and the culture of Argentina.
— Published in May 1989 in The Monthly (The Berkeley Monthly)
POST SCRIPT
After suffering a debilitating stroke two years after our conversation, Astor died the following year at the age of 71. But today his life continues to be honored as a legendary artist who cut across many genres and traditions. His recorded music lives on.
In his career, for years Astor had been widely celebrated in Europe for his creative output. And finally, even Argentina recognized that he was an important artist as a cultural pioneer who challenged the old tango traditions.
But his appreciation in the United States came late in his life. What finally woke people up came in the late 1980s when the maestro recorded for saxophonist Kit Hanrahan’s indie label, American Clavé. The word slowly spread in 1986 when Astor recorded his masterpiece Tango: Zero Hour.
However, although the distribution of Astor’s work was weak, it found its way to aware open ears.
Sadly, his work only came to greater visibility posthumously in 1998 when Nonesuch Records licensed three of Kip’s produced albums with Astor for reissue (including Tango: Zero Hour; La Camorra: The Solitude of Passionate Provocation; and The Rough Dancer and the Cyclical Night (Tango Apasionado)).
In May 2022, Nonesuch championed Astor again by releasing for the first time Kip’s albums in a remastered three-LP/three-CD box set, Astor Piazzolla: The American Clavé Recordings.
END CHAPTER 5
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