A California Tango?

California has a long and illustrious history of contacts with Chile, about which I’ve regularly written, but its relations with Argentina have been less conspicuous. Perhaps the most infamous episode was an invasion by the Franco-Argentine privateer Hipólito Bouchard, who occupied the Presidio of Monterey for six days in 1818, when the area was still under Spanish rule.

The sheet music for La Reina, Francisca Carrillo Vallejo's tango

Last week, though, I found a new and somewhat enigmatic connection when I accompanied a Buenos Aires visitor to the Oakland Museum of California. There I found, behind a vitrine in the Gallery of California History, the sheet music to “La Reina,” described as a California tango by Francisca Carrillo Vallejo. Published in 1925, when Carlos Gardel was at his peak, the song probably reflects the early 20th-century globalization of this distinctively Argentine music and dance.

General Mariano Vallejo, grandfather of the tango composer

There is scant online information about this piece of music, but the museum's Program Administrator Eileen Hansen informed me that the author was the granddaughter of General Mariano Guadalupe Vallejo, a Californio who spent his life under Spanish, Mexican, and US governments. Ironically enough, Vallejo (born 1807, d. 1890) would have been a boy in Monterey when Bouchard occupied the Presidio. Unfortunately, Ms. Harris could not access the sheet music from the vitrine on short notice, so I’ve been unable to see the lyrics.

This house on San Francisco's Filbert Street was the home address for the song's publisher.

From the limited genealogical information available, I’ve not been able to determine Francisca’s exact lineage, but there were three Vallejo sons who might have been her father (there were also several Vallejo daughters, but their children would have had different surnames). The señorita depicted on the sheet music would appear more appropriate to a Mexican ranchera than an Argentine tango but, coming from an apparently Anglo publisher—Dudley and Barrett—that stereotype is perhaps unsurprising.

I look forward to reading the lyrics, eventually, and learning more about this topic.

Is Francis a Freudian? The Pope and His Shrink

Earlier this month, the world’s most prominent religious figure made international headlines when Pope Francis acknowledged that, in his early forties, he had regularly visited a Freudian psychoanalyst for several months. Now 80, the Pontiff wouldn’t reveal the reason for what, statistically at least, would appear to be a midlife crisis, but his position and celebrity made this a high-profile story.

The Facultad de Medicina at the Universidad de Buenos Aires is a hotbed of Freudianism.

For many, there’s still a stigma associated with psychoanalysis, and the Catholic Church was slow to accept the idea. Still, while New Yorkers may stereotypically chatter about their therapists, the porteños of Buenos Aires can match or surpass them—in the Argentine capital, psychoanalysis and other therapies are not for the upper and upper-middle classes alone. Once, during registration time at the Universidad de Buenos Aires medical school, I saw a flurry of flyers offering psychoanalysis and psychotherapy with UBA professionals—the first session free—for individuals, couples, and groups. Subte handouts may declare that “Asking for help is the start of solving the problem” and tempt commuters with “unlimited sessions.”

Francis had his therapy during the dictatorship of the “Proceso” but, at the turn of the century, the therapy obsession was at least partly a function of economic crisis, and even the former corralito banking restrictions have been interpreted in this context. In an early 2002 interview with National Public Radio’s Martin Kaste, a Freudian psychiatrist argued that “Money has a certain symbolic equivalence to the penis. People put their money in the bank, but at the moment they want to withdraw it they lose their money, so this produces a castration anxiety.”

"Tango therapy" may be an option - Francis was a dancer in his youth.

Another claimed that “sexual desire has also been caught in the corralito—men worry about lack of desire and premature ejaculation, and women are unable to have orgasms.” The 2002 Festival de Tango even included a session on Tango de Autoayuda (Self-Help Tango). Meanwhile, angry real-estate brokers picketed the residence of caretaker President Eduardo Duhalde—himself a former realtor—but not necessarily in hope of any relief for a frozen real-estate market. Rather, proclaimed one protestor, “This turned into our therapy, a place to set our anguish free.”

Clients purchase their meds at Farmacia Villa Freud.

Therapy, though, is not just a function of recent times; it began with the 1930s arrival of Jewish refugees from Europe. Historian Mariano Ben Plotkin has chronicled this tale in Freud in the Pampas: the Emergence and Development of a Psychoanalytic Culture in Argentina (Stanford University Press, 2001). Many of Buenos Aires’s thousands of shrinks practice in Palermo’s so-called Villa Freud, where their clients can top off their meds at the Farmacia Villa Freud. One online magazine specializes in listings for professional office rentals, and even acting classes are often exercises in therapy.

In 2002, the Centro Cultural Borges paid Freud a month-long homage.

Institutions add to the therapeutic ambience. The Asociación Psicoanalítica Argentina once organized a month-long exhibition on “Psychoanalysis, Culture and Crisis” at the Centro Cultural Borges. The Museo de Psicología Experimental Horacio Piñeiro recounts the experimental efforts of an early-20th-century pioneer. Villa Freud’s everyday literary locus is Librería Paidós, an inconspicuous bookstore in a small shopping gallery, but the annual Feria del Libro always shows the latest in psychoanalytic scholarship.

Amateur and professional Freudians crowd the display at Buenos Aires's 2016 book fair.

In Argentine cinema, therapy is no less common than in Woody Allen films—in Rodolfo Durán’s 2007 comedy Terapias Alternativas (Alternative Therapies), an apathetic loner psychoanalyst winds up unexpectedly caring for his own son by a brief relationship and simultaneously sharing accommodations with a suicidal patient. Woody himself is a great favorite, for that matter; he once even suggested he might film in Buenos Aires.

"Help Me, Dr. Freud!" - a stage play in downtown Buenos Aires.

Not that long ago, a hit play on Avenida Corrientes went by the title Therapy…If Only Freud Could See This, but such matters are not always humorous. In the summer of 2010, after junior lightweight boxer Rodrigo “The Hyena” Barrios killed a pregnant woman in a Mar del Plata hit-and-run, he took several hours to surrender to police, apparently to avoid alcohol and drug tests. In the ensuing days, he managed to remain free on bail as he underwent “psychological testing,” but he is currently in prison.

A year ago in May, the Argentine Psychoanalytic Congress held its annual meetings in Recoleta.

Where the Pope fits into this context is open to speculation. Might it be that, in his midlife crisis, he harbored doubts about the existence of a supernatural being for which there is no empirical evidence? Freud, after all, dismissed theistic beliefs as a collective neurosis.

The Gods of Tango: A Book Review

I enjoy listening to tango music even if, for me, the dance itself is a spectator sport.  I also enjoy reading about tango’s origins, and the trajectory it took from the slums of Buenos Aires to Parisians salons, whence it returned with a veneer of respectability. Today, it’s often about Vegas-style floorshows, with skilled musicians and dancers, that pay superficial homage to its origins, while participatory milongas preserve something of the past. There’s nothing quite so gritty today, though, as there was a century ago.

Novelist Carolina de Robertis, a fellow Oakland resident who’s also an acquaintance of mine, addresses those complexities in her recent effort The Gods of Tango (in the coming months, I plan to publish most of an interview I did with her in preparing a short article on Uruguay for a national magazine, but confidentiality prevents disclosing more details at present). De Robertis is a true cosmopolite, born to Uruguayan parents in the United Kingdom but long resident in the United States. She has three passports and, with Buenos Aires family connections, would probably qualify for a fourth.

The Gods of Tango starts with the immigrant experience – or rather with the pre-immigrant experience, since her youthful Italian protagonist heads for the Americas to be united with her husband (also her cousin) in a proxy marriage. When Leda arrives in Buenos Aires, though, she learns that her Dante has died in a political protest and, ambivalent about returning to her dysfunctional Italian family, she decides to remain in Argentina.

In the process, running out of money, she becomes a seamstress, living in the tenement room her husband had rented, but her wages are insufficient to remain there. The depiction of life in the immigrant barrio of La Boca (pictured above, in the not too distant past), where she discovers the allure of tango and begins to play the family violin she brought, inspires her to make it her vocation – despite the musicians’ overwhelmingly macho subculture. She leaves her original tenement, cuts her hair, wears Dante’s clothing, and even adopts his identity – moving to a San Telmo tenement where she is literally closeted. De Robertis’s depiction of the extremes to which Dante must go to protect this new identity offer eloquent insights into everyone’s living conditions – not just those of one unique individual.

Recruited to a tango orchestra, Dante manages to fool everyone, including more than one woman with whom she/he becomes sexually involved. That may sound preposterous, but there is precedent – in the US, Billy Tipton – born Dorothy Lucille Tipton – passed decades as a male jazz pianist in the western states. Leda, though, can’t avoid the intrigues and violence that are part of the early tango scene and, eventually, has to flee for his/her life – but manages to keep the secret. Saying more than that would be a spoiler but, in the end, this apparently improbable novel tells us that many contemporary issues are not so new as we might have imagined – but it does so without indulging in anachronistic projections.

Bueno Aires, Beyond Tango: Struggling and Striving in the Music Scene

I first met Grant Dull a few years ago when, on assignment from National Geographic Traveler, part of my job was to consult an expert on local nightlife and spend a night on the town with that person. In the end, for that assignment I went with an Argentine rather than an expat, but there’s no doubting Grant’s commitment to the city’s creative music scene in particular.

The stereotype of Buenos Aires nightlife is, of course, tango, but there’s much more and Grant’s made himself a career of exploring and promoting it through his record label ZZK. In Argentina’s complicated economy, though, musicians often have a hard time of it – something he’s hoping to help remedy through expansion in the near future. What follows is a lightly edited email interview with him.

WB: When did you arrive in Buenos Aires, and where did you come from originally? What brought you to Argentina, and why did you stay?

GD:  I first arrived to Buenos Aires in 1999. Fresh out of college. Wet behind the ears. Itching to see the world. I’m from Texas but studied in California. What brought me essentially was a book, and a song. My Buddhism professor my last semester at the University of San Diego told me I should read Borges. He blew my mind. Then about three months later, while deciding where I was going to start my international adventure, I heard Astor Piazzolla on the radio and that was it. Buenos Aires I was going. Fifteen years later, here I am working in music, arts and culture. So you can also say it’s what’s kept me here: music and culture.

WB: Am I correct that your first professional project was the What’s Up Buenos Aires website? Is that what led you to become a music promoter (if that’s a fair term)?

GD: You are correct. I came back to Buenos Aires in 2004 after teaching English for five years around the world.  I wanted a change and decided to put all my know-how of getting to know a city and being a traveler hunting for the best and most authentic experiences into the website. It was at a time where Buenos Aires was becoming a sort of  “hot spot” for travelers looking for a great city on a budget and WUBA became a great source of information. That is what led me to start being a promoter.  I wanted to translate what we were doing online to real life. So I started getting involved with the scene I was promoting online, throwing parties, producing events, producing content (music, visual) for different events. That's what lead to starting a weekly party Zizek, that inevitably birthed the record label, ZZK.

WB: How would you describe the Buenos Aires music scene? I think when most people hear the word cumbia, the initial impulse is to think of the tropical Caribbean. Is there anything in common between that and cumbia villera?

GD: The Buenos Aires musical scene is as diverse as the city itself. Anything you’re into, you can find. Rock, blues, jazz, electronic, cumbia, folklore, salsa, classical.  Really, it’s everywhere, and a lot of it, and a lot of it’s really good (see the video above). Argentines are very musical and Buenos Aires breeds good artists. Cumbia is a rhythm that was born on the Carribean coasts of Colombia and Panama, with origins from Africa, that mixed with the music from the European settlers and the indigenous people. A real mash-up of the Americas and New World.

Cumbia villera was born out of the slums of Buenos Aires and was a musical, cultural and societal reaction to a country in crisis. The common thread of what we do and cumbia villera is that it tends to get really raw, synthy and psychedelic. But our scene isn’t necessarily directly related to cumbia villera, rather it shares the same platform (Buenos Aires) but in a different socio-economic-cultural context.

WB: Where did the name ZZK come from? How many acts do you have, and what styles do they play? It seems the thrust is electronic dance music, but some performers incorporate strong folkloric elements such as accordion-based chamamé (which bears some resemblance to Tex-Mex conjunto?).

GD: We decided to stop using Slavoj Zizek’s name when we realized we were going to become a global brand.  One thing is to name an underground nightclub after a famous philosopher, another is to start a business. So ZZK is just an acronym of Zizek.

Historically, we’ve produced 15 acts. Their styles are all pretty different but always thread the line of “New Latin American” or “Latin American Digital” meaning they’re all working with Latin American sounds and rhythms, but in a new, contemporary context. Yes, chamamé is featured on the La Yegros album (see video above), malambo on Tremor’s album, coplas on Chancha Via Circuito’s album, huaynos on Mati Zundel’s album. They all tend to experiment with different folkloric rhythms. That’s what makes it so interesting. It’s not your typical electronic dance music. There are roots involved, swaths of earth, traditions, culture! 

WB: What are the best places in Buenos Aires to hear the latest music? Are there any up-and-coming performers who deserve special attention?

GD: Niceto Club, Club Matienzo, Salón Puerreydón, La Trastienda (pictured above), La Oreja Negra. So many little underground spots that are popping up every day.  The newest artist we’re about to present to the world is Nicolá Cruz. He’s based in Quito, Ecuador. Here in Buenos Aires I’d keep an eye out for Barrio Lindo, Dat Garcia, SidiRum, Femina and Sofía Viola.

WB: How do you deal with the challenges of operating a business – music is a business, after all – in such a complex economic environment as Argentina?

GD: By staying on my toes, being creative, working a ton, calling on our friends and fans to help out, being open to change, being flexible to adversity and day-to-day struggles that are commonplace in Argentina, and the music industry. 

WB: What are your plans for the future? I understand you have a crowd-funding project underway.

GD: More music, more everything.  I’ve started working in documentary filmmaking too as a branch of ZZK, our first project is in development. Our crowdfunding project through IndieGoGo is about our future. We launched it about three weeks ago and we have about four weeks to go. We’re calling on our friends and fans to give a little something back to a little, independent operation that has given the world some amazing music, and wants to continue to doing that.

WB: Where can people find ZZK music to buy?

GD: Bandcamp, iTunes, Amazon, Beatport, Spotify. If you’re in a big city with some great music stores you might be able to find them there too, like Amoeba in Berkeley, San Francisco or Hollywood.