Carlos Gardel y Pascual Contursi en "Caferata". El intérprete como autor

Abstract

The tango “Caferata” (music by Antonio Scatasso, lyrics by Pascual Contursi) might have been conceived as a part of the dramatic plot of the homonymic sainete premiered in 1927. Nevertheless, it was actually inserted into Saltó la bola, a revista by Contursi, Alippi and Terés, where the tango was performed by Sofía Bozán and Azucena Maizani. In the tango sung in two voices, the characters played by both actresses and singers fall into arguments contending for the preference of a pimp. A little later, Carlos Gardel recorded “Caferata” deciding to fuse both roles in his own voice and to add a third one, a presenter or host who addresses Contursi himself (that is to say, the author) –and, as a matter of fact, addresses the listener–, in order to reconstruct the whole situation. The device allows us to think about the nature of the voice of tango and of every popular song, as well as about the dramatic modality of its enunciation.