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By Julio
Nudler
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Pianist, guitarist, composer, author, singer
(February 24, 1931 - August 31, 2005) |
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She was often nicknamed "la Discépolo con
faldas" (Discepolo with skirts), but that comparison with Enrique
Santos Discepolo (the author of "Yira
yira" and "Cambalache")
is really exaggerated. Although Blázquez is generally critical,
piercing and skeptical, her verses neither have except for some
flashes- the deepness, the richness of imagery nor the poetry of those
by the "Canción
desesperada"´s author. Within the irregular quality of her
pieces, she makes use, at times, of a unmeasured and rhetoric exaltation
of Buenos Aires, which does not take into account the deteriorated quality
of life in that great metropolis of disordered growth, with pollution
and chaotic in some sectors.
Another despicable feature of her creation is the empty
nationalism she at times professes. An example of it can be evidenced
with the tango "Convencernos",
that she wrote together with Chico
Novarro, launched in 1976, when Argentina was beginning to undergo
the most bloodthirsty military dictatorship of our history. The lyrics
says:
"Y ser al menos una vez nosotros,
sin ese tinte de un color de otros, recuperar la identidad, plantarnos en los pies, crecer hasta lograr la madurez, y ser al menos una vez nosotros, bien nosotros, tan nosotros ¡como debe ser!" (And to be, at least once, we ourselves, without that
tinge of others' color, to recover our identity, to stand up on our
feet, to grow until reaching maturity, and to be, at least once, we
ourselves, so much ourselves, so ourselves as it has to be!)
Perhaps unintentionally, with this composition, seen
at a distance, Eladia offers us a good sample of the distortion of the
ideas then in vogue.
Blázquez has been walking different roads throughout
her life as an artist, according to the circumstances, looking after
a place for her creative drive.
In her early childhood she succeeded by singing the
popular Spanish repertoire, determined by her parents' origin. Spanish
immigrants formed an enormous audience, and Buenos Aires was the biggest
Galician city in the world, with more inhabitants born in Galicia than
La Coruña, capital of that Spanish region. Argentine folk music,
later boleros, subsequently tangos and lastly ballads were following
one another in her labor.
From 1970 is her first LP record devoted to tango,
where she sings her own compositions. In the two previous years she
had successively lost her mother and her father. On that historical
release she included the excellent "Sueño
de barrilete" (Dream of a Kite), that in fact she had composed in
1959 and made it be known only in 1968. With a masterly blend of melody
and verses, she presents a frustrated character, who failed in reaching
the level of his ideal. On that same album we find others of the best
tangos that Eladia would ever compose, such as "Contame
una historia" and "Sin
piel", as well as "Mi
ciudad y mi gente", which was the winner at the Festival de la Canción
de Buenos Aires in 1970.
After "El precio de vencer", one of her most questioning
numbers, that she recorded in 1973, a year when in Argentina predominated
radicalized political ideas, "El
corazón al sur" clearly outstands as her most popular tango,
that she recorded in 1976. Blázquez was born in Avellaneda, a
city bordering with the south of Buenos Aires. This cardinal point is
equivalent to poor and popular for the Buenos Aires inhabitants. As
a matter of fact, success allowed this artist to live in the Barrio
Norte, one of the most expensive places in Buenos Aires, but with that
tango she came to say that her heart had remained on the other side.
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