By Roberto Selles

n 1922 the "Troupe Ateniense" was created in Montevideo. It was one of the most well known carnival groups of the neighboring riverbank like the "Oxford" or "Un Real al 69", among others.

But the "Troupe Ateniense" was as well the origin of memorable tangos composed by musicians and creators of the level of Gerardo Matos Rodríguez, Ramón Collazo, Adolfo Mondino, Alberto Vila, Juan Antonio Collazo, Victor Soliño and Roberto Fontaina.

Together or separately, these artists gave birth to pages that not only were widely acclaimed in Uruguay but also they crossed the River Plate and were welcome forever by the Buenos Aires public. As a sample we have these: "Agua florida", "Maula", "Patoteros", "Araca París", "Pato", "Negro" "Mama yo quiero un novio", "Adiós mi barrio" and "T.B.C." (with music by Edgardo Donato), among many others.

One of these associations, Juan Antonio Collazo in music and Víctor Soliño and Roberto Fontaina in lyrics, produced between 1927 and 1928 two tangos that made fun of certain characters of the period. The pieces successfully included in the songbooks of Alberto Vila, Rosita Quiroga and Tita Merello were: "Niño bien" and "Garufa". Another tango of these three authors, but with much less acclaim, was "Que reo sos", recorded by Vila and the Carlos Di Sarli Sextet with Santiago Devin singing the refrain.

"Garufa" -that is the piece we are interested in now- was recorded by the oriental singer Alberto Vila and was soon premiered in Buenos Aires by Rosita Quiroga, official performer of the troupe this side of the River Plate.

Like "Niño bien", "Garufa" is a response with much humor to the melodramatic contents of some tangos then in fashion. The authors fortunately reprised a hit using the same formula.

There was, in fact, a drawback when changing the tango from Vila's vocals to Rosita's voice. What would mean in Buenos Aires the allusion to a street of Montevideo?

Tu vieja dice que sos un bandido,
porque supo que te vieron
la otra noche en la calle San José.

Yes, San José Street. Because that was what precisely the original version of its lyrics said and still today the Uruguayan vocalists keep on singing it like that.

Obviously, the Buenos Aires public would not connect that name with a street of Montevideo but instead with our San José Street, and then the piece would fail its witty remark.

Cleverly, Soliño and Fontaina succeeded in replacing the name of that street by Parque Japonés (Japanese Park), an amusement park, a place for public recreation which also had dancehalls, placed in front of the terminal train station of Retiro. It is located where nowadays the Sheraton Hotel of Buenos Aires is.

What was not modified in the lyrics is the "barrio La Mondiola", a generic name of the coastal area where a bohemian kind of life, more permissive, was common. There the "Troupe" had a small house which they kept as their headquarters.

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