We
are in Norfolk. It’s Bank Holiday Monday,
and for once it’s a perfect day – warm sunshine, clear blue skies and birdsong. An ideal circumstance for thinking about the
rural idyll depicted in ‘Nido Gaucho’.
Here as in the song the countryside is putting on its ‘plumage’, the
tree shimmering with new leaves or heavy with blossom. As we near the coast, suddenly the hedgerows
are bustling with Alexanders (somewhere between parsley & celery in
flavour, they say, and enjoyed by the Romans – and horses. My brother says they need salty air.) We watch a fat hare bounce across a ploughed
field. The roads in this quiet bit of
the county are lined with the white fizz of blackthorn in flower, and rounding
a corner we come upon fields full of cowslips.
I thought they’d become something of a rarity, but not here. They have a lovely milky quality; after the
garish blaze of oil seed rape, this is like a redefining of the colour yellow. You can see I’ve been infected by the season
and the (finally) appropriate weather: like Hector Marcó who wrote the words to
the song, it’s hard not to be filled with hope.
The
tango ‘Nido Gaucho’ is a current favourite, featuring regularly in the playlist
in Cambridge milongas and thus often
lingering in my head. It has a lovely
rolling rhythm and a great sing-along chorus: if you’re unconvinced, have a look
at/listen to the delightful ‘Chino’ Laborde (I believe his real name is Walter)
giving it everything with his mate ‘Dipi’ Kvitko and audience in El Caff (!) In
Buenos Aires:
I haven’t been there yet but
it’s certainly on my list for next time.
You
might feel that the singer makes the song.
Certainly part of the reason the lovely Di Sarli recording of 1942 is much
loved is for the singer Podestá, then incredibly only 18. Alberto Podestá was born Alejandro Washington
Alé in San Juan in 1924 and became for a time Di Sarli’s signature singer (he
owes his name change to Di Sarli) although he was soon overshadowed by Roberto
Rufino. My Di Sarli CDs alternate
between the two vocalists. I think the
jury is out as to which is better but for my money it’s Podestá every time: a
fuller voice, like velvet, like chocolate, but not so smooth that it cuts out
the pain. Podestá went on to sing with several other
orchestras and made over 500 recordings, most famously ‘Nada’, ‘La Capilla
Blanca’, ‘Al Compás del Corazón’ and, with Caló’s orchestra, the lovely ‘Bajo
un Cielo de Estrellas’. ‘Beneath a starry sky’.
Amazingly, until a year or two ago he was still performing. Although his voice is no longer reliable,
there are some recordings which, with a bit of imagination, still capture some
of the old magic – and who wouldn’t grab the chance to see him in person as
this ‘tango commuter’ did in December
2010? 
As
for the song, ‘Gaucho Nest’ seems unusual in its celebration of the country
life – a far cry from ‘Buenos Aires Querido’ and the tango halls of the
city. Roses and daisies are in bud and
thrushes – ‘zorzales’ – nest at this ‘ranchita’ – little ranch – on the hill. Marcó was a city boy himself but apparently attended
a ‘gaucho circle’ in town, as well as being an actor, poet, singer and musician
and a racing man who went on to own his own stud called, not surprisingly
perhaps, ‘Nido Gaucho.’ It’s a love
song, of course, as unashamedly sentimental as they come, you can hear it in
the music: though those characteristically choppy Di Sarli rhythms are there in the strings, for the most part they carry the melody, swelling with feeling as the notes run up the scale. There's no stream mentioned in the words but the piano ripples and bubbles over & around the violins so Di Sarli must have pictured one, I think. I've been trying (and failing) to understand how the form works: I can hear the call and response in each section, and there's a clear verse-refrain divide repeated twice, once with the orchestra alone and then again with the voice, and then the refrain once more for good measure - but there seems to be an extra bit in between, that yearning rising scale just before the chorus. Help, anyone?
It's gorgeous, though. The first word we hear is 'luciendo' - 'shining'. Now I understand why there is a school of thought that says you can't dance to sung tangos. I don't agree, but I am easily distracted by words and there is plenty to catch my interest here. The singer tells us that his illusions will ‘bloom’ – ‘florecerán’ – one of my favourite
Spanish words which appears regularly in tango lyrics (as in the beautiful ‘Remembranza’, where we hear that our love will blossom ‘volverá a florecer/nuestro querer’ like a flower) and our hearts will unite – as long as you say yes. Podestá captures perfectly the yearning in the words, his voice lingering sensually, light and shade, before the final full-throated plea - because it’s a tango, of course, we are never
far from the possibility of despair: don’t say no, the singer begs, or the
rosebush will wither and the poor thrush will die for love of you.
The
song thrush, turdus philomelos, is on
the red list for conservation concern, my brother says, although there are
still some about. My brother’s passion
is not tango but birds and so he was up at dawn and lucky enough to hear a
thrush singing (twice: a characteristic of this bird, apparently) whilst the
rest of us slept. The thrush’s nest, he
thinks, is mud-lined, with four or five spotted blue eggs; doesn’t sound too
romantic to me, but then the whole cowboy thing has never appealed to me either. For that wonderful voice, though, bird or boy, there's not much I wouldn't do.
We
leave Norfolk mid-afternoon and by the time we’re back in Cambridge it’s
clouded over a bit: rain tomorrow, according to a pessimistic fellow-picnicker
at Holme-next-the-Sea. I’m keeping my hopes
up, though; if I listen carefully in my garden here, Andy says, I should be
able to hear a thrush sing.
[You can read the lyrics of 'Nido Gaucho', translated into English and in Spanish, and listen to Di Sarli's 1942 recording here:
