The maestro sat just offstage, waiting patiently for the theater to fill. Everyone else was jittery. ”There are going to be a lot of people tonight,” said the maestro`s wife, with some doubt. ”You`ll play great,”
said the maestro`s grandson, patting the star on the back in a way that said, ”You can do it. You can do it one more time.”
But 85-year-old Osvaldo Pugliese seemed unconcerned-impassive and secure. Almost deaf and legally blind, Pugliese is one of Argentina`s greatest tango composers and still one of its greatest band leaders and pianists.
He is also one of the country`s best-known communists, a man who has been jailed more times than he can remember, who has been threatened and persecuted and harassed most of his life. Music is important to Pugliese, but politics, social justice and revolution are his great passions, his life`s work.
”I never get nervous playing music. It`s only music. As long as I play well enough so they don`t throw me in jail, that`s good enough for me,” said Pugliese, half in jest, as his wife escorted him on stage before a rousing ovation.
A grade-school dropout who rose to international fame, Pugliese is in many ways the ultimate Argentine, the master of the music that has come to symbolize his country abroad. Yet Pugliese also represents everything his country is not, and plays a style of music that has lost much of its popularity in recent decades.
He is a self-made man in a place where real success is now rare. He remains true to his political beliefs in a country rocked by instability.
He has made huge personal sacrifices in a place weakened by self-indulgence and corruption. He is personally secure, truly humble, in a country plagued by self-doubt, cynicism and false pride.
The frail old man, the tango master, has lived his life in a way that inspires Argentines.
”Pugliese is a musical genius, but that`s not the only reason people admire him,” said Gustavo Noya, artistic director at FM Tango, Argentina`s only all-tango radio station. ”They admire him because he defended his ideas and beliefs throughout his life, even though they were unpopular and caused him many problems.”
Since the establishment of a democratic government in Argentina, in 1983, Pugliese has been free to play his music and proclaim his beliefs, in the process becoming something of a national institution.
Riches in music
Pugliese was born into a family of musicians-laborers in a working-class barrio of Buenos Aires. His father and mother were poorly paid factory workers who loved music and wanted Osvaldo and his two brothers to be musicians.
The neighborhood where they lived, Villa Crespo, was tough. Osvaldo began selling newspapers when he was 9, dropped out of school when he was 11, and resold stolen trash cans, shined shoes and worked as a printer`s apprentice to support his family.
But the Pugliese family escaped on the weekends into a world of music. His father, Adolfo, played flute in a band, and Osvaldo spent most of his free time listening to musicians playing tango in the bars and dance halls that crowded Villa Crespo.
Tango was relatively new music then, born two decades earlier in the brothels and bars of La Boca, the port area of Buenos Aires. Written primarily by impoverished Italian immigrants, tango was the language of lost loves, failed dreams, disappointment, pain and hardship.
”I used to sit in the doorways of cafes and listen to the music. I used to climb up on the balconies to watch the bands play. My father always played music at home. All of this gave me the spirit, the love, of music,” Pugliese said.
Keys to his success
Osvaldo began playing the violin, an instrument that his two brothers played and that he hated, when he was 9. He switched to the piano when he was 14, and began formal musical studies the same year.
Practicing 10 or more hours a day, Pugliese joined a local tango band the following year. For the next several years, the young pianist shuffled between bands playing in countless cafes, bars and dance halls.
Pugliese was still just a kid, a prodigy, playing the music that captured the lost soul of a city. His father pushed him to work harder; his mother often whispered to her son while he was practicing, ”al Colon” (”to the Colon”), referring to Buenos Aires` famous Colon Theater, where only the country`s finest artists play.
The young musician loved classical music and American jazz, but tango was in his heart. He wrote his first tango, ”Recuerdo,” or ”Memory,” in 1924, when he was 19. Two years later, when it was finally recorded, it became a classic. Pugliese was on his way, touring Argentina as pianist in one of the country`s top tango bands.
”My songs always begin in the heart, move into the head, and then onto the piano,” Pugliese said before a recent rehearsal.
”At the beginning, I didn`t know how to write music, so I would play the melody to a friend who was a violinist, and he would write it down. I thought of the notes for `Memory` when I was riding on a streetcar.”
But music was not the only thing that captured Pugliese`s spirit. He grew up in an era of labor strife, when newly-organized workers were demanding better wages and working conditions. Pugliese saw striking workers and their children shot by police; he was outraged.
Pugliese`s politics moved further left in 1930, when Argentina`s military ousted a democratic government and he saw the suffering caused by the Depression. He joined Argentina`s small Communist Party during the Spanish Civil War, along with scores of Latin writers, musicians and other
intellectuals.
Plagued by Peron
From then on, Pugliese was a marked man, a communist in a nation where the Left was not tolerated. A series of military leaders and conservative civilian presidents frequently prevented Pugliese from playing his music, and he was often jailed.
Pugliese was first imprisoned in 1936, for 19 days, shortly after helping found the Argentine Musicians Union, to help musicians find work and earn better wages. But Pugliese remained active in the union and frequently attended Communist Party leadership meetings.
He never renounced his beliefs, never sought exile, even after being jailed for six months in 1955. When his band performed without him, a red rose was placed atop Pugliese`s black piano; at soccer matches, giant balloons inscribed with the phrase, ”Tango is prisoner. Free Osvaldo Pugliese,” were released.
Pugliese`s most determined adversary was the late President Juan Peron, who ruled this country for a decade during two terms, and whose presence still weighs heavily on Argentine political life. Peron frequently jailed Pugliese in the `40s and `50s, but made a famous public apology to the musician at the start of his second term, in 1973.
”That was a significant event coming from someone who had cut off somebody`s freedom to work,” Pugliese said. ”I can`t explain why he and the others threw me in jail. I never planted bombs. I never supported violence.
”What has always been important to me is peace and democracy, whether in a capitalist or a socialist country. I would rather die than give up my beliefs,” added Pugliese, who still tries to convert people rural Argentina, where he was always allowed to play and has his biggest following. He has toured dozens of countries, including China, the Soviet Union, Japan, Cuba and the U.S., stopping in Chicago in 1979.
In 1961, he wrote ”Milonga Para Fidel” to show his support for the Cuban revolution. Twice married, with one daughter who is also a tango pianist, Pugliese returned recently with his band from a three-week tour of Mexico. He also toured Spain and Portugal this year.
Pugliese`s wife, Lidia, is always at his side, helping the musician walk, communicating what others say by shouting into his left ear, the only one that works reasonably well.
When he is not playing music, Pugliese spends much of his free time drinking mate, a bitter Argentine tea, and playing truco, a popular Argentine card game.
”I am just one of the workers of tango. Nothing more. I would have accomplished nothing without the support of the people,” said Pugliese, when asked about his contribution to tango.
Said Lidia: ”Osvaldo doesn`t like to talk about himself. He doesn`t think he has accomplished anything special.”
Pugliese is credited with composing a half-dozen tango classics, and leads what experts say has long been Argentina`s finest tango band. He is also credited with elevating the bandoleon-an accordion-like instrument-from the background to the center of the music, and with making rhythm more important than melody in tango.
Pugliese`s most famous piece, ”La Yumba,” features his familiar style of a strong beat, sudden starts and stops of different instruments, and heavily syncopated rhythms punctuated by Pugliese`s strong keyboard work. ”La Yumba” drew the biggest applause when Pugliese finally played at the Colon Theater, in 1985.
But for all his innovations, Pugliese is considered by experts to be a tango traditionalist, especially when compared with Argentina`s other great tangoist, Astor Piazzolla. Piazzolla, who no longer plays and is in poor health, mixed tango with modern jazz to produce a distinct sound that has influenced a generation of tango composers.
”Piazzolla is the modernist. His music is sophisticated, and communicates the stresses and pressures of life. It`s meant to be listened to. Pugliese`s music is for dancing. It has a clear beat and rhythm,” said Jose Gobello, a tango expert and secretary of the Portena Lunfardo Academy, which teaches the Buenos Aires ghetto slang that developed along with tango earlier this century.
Juan Carlos Copes, one of Argentina`s premier tango dancers and choreographers, credits Pugliese with maintaining tango`s traditions at a time when the music has fallen sharply in popularity, especially among the country`s youth, who prefer rock and pop sounds.
The success of FM Tango-it went on the air last year and is the second-highest-rated radio station in Buenos Aires-encourages Copes and other tango enthusiasts who believe the music is making a comeback, something they say is crucial for strengthening Argentina`s historically weak national and cultural identity.
”Today`s youth know nothing about tango. This has to change. We have to go back to our roots,” said Copes, who has worked with Pugliese and compares him to American Big Band greats Artie Shaw, Glenn Miller and Benny Goodman.
Several teenagers walking past the theater the night of Pugliese`s recent concert said they had never heard of him, or of any other tango composers.
”Tango is for old folks. It`s from another era. It`s depressing. I like Madonna, and Depeche Mode,” said Maximiliano Fosco, 16, a high school student, referring to the American pop singer and the trendy European rock group.
Fans dance on
For his part, Pugliese said he isn`t worried about tango`s future, even though most of his audience at the concert was 40ish and older. But they cheered and danced as if Pugliese were a rock star, screaming ”Genius!” and ”Immortal!” and ”We love you, Osvaldo!”
They shouted for their favorite songs, including ”Recuerdo,” ”La Yumba” and ”La Mariposa” (”The Butterfly”). Pugliese and his band-four bandoleons, four violins, a bass and a cello-and two singers played a powerful two-hour concert that ended in an ovation.
”Pugliese is the great maestro. Those are the only words to describe him,” said Horacio Rofrano, 41, one of the 100 or so fans that mobbed Pugliese after the concert, leaning over to touch and kiss the frail musician. Asked how long he intended to keep playing, Pugliese smiled, paused for a moment, and said, ”Until I die.”
