INTERNET THE FIRST ARGENTINE SITE OF TANGO

The Parisian postcards "Le Tango" are displayed on the screen: French women possessed by Argentine tango since the second decade of the century dance with sensuality. But a single touch of the mouse changes the scene: now Astor Piazzolla’s "Caliente" is heard by his 1964 quintet. 0r, if you prefer, "Pebeta canyengue", by Francisco Canaro with Agustín Irusta in 1927. The website which displays its paraphernalia rea is called Todotango.com.ar, it belongs to Coleccionistas Porteños de Tango and, a few months after it creation, it lives under a crossfire of e-mails that arrive from any place in the world where somebody, Argentine or not, would die for Arolas or for Troilo. Project Cool, an iniciative which strives for excellence in Internet, appointed August 31 as the day any navigator should start to know Todotango. Archibaldo Lanús, ambassador to France, established a link which leads to Todotango from the embassy page. The Chancery did something of the sort.

The menu begins with "The artists". Within these are included musicians, poets and singers. Now dancers will be added, a section that will be premiered by the mythical Cachafaz. The tour can lead to Anselmo Aieta or Agustín Bardi, to Homero Manzi or Enrique Cadícamo, to Charlo or Angel Vargas, among many others, that –it is announced- will go on multiplying with time. Of each of them there is a biographical sketch, in general, an evaluation and photos of the unsurpassable Bruno Cespi’s collection. For example, from the artistic career of Mercedes Simone, for many the supreme, you can go toward the original music scores (brought by Cespi as well) of some of the pieces she wrote and sang, among them "Inocencia", labeled by the author as "sentimental tango".

In "The selection", anthological versions can be found, such as that of "Entre sueños", composed by Aieta and Francisco García Jiménez, by Carmen Duval (one of the major voices in the genre) with Argentino Galván (indisputable arranger) recorded in 1946, which can be free downloaded. The material is renewed periodically, with a strong presence of hard to find recordings, generally contributed by Héctor Lorenzo Lucci, president of the tango collectors. Something similar happens with "The radio", the section where the broadcasts of "Siempre el tango" can be heard, the program Néstor Pinsón conducts on Radio Nacional AM on Saturdays from 19 a 21, and that is online reaching to remote listeners lost in the world. On many places is the only possibility of keeping a living contact with the music of Buenos Aires.

Gardel has obviously his special section, within which it can be enjoyed his voice in works by Cadícamo, like "Madame lvonne" or "La reina del tango" (the latter, one of the anthological lyrics of the author of "Los mareados"). In another Gardelian sector is alphabetically included the remarkable work of Orlando del Greco (Carlos Gardel y los autores de sus canciones, Akian Ediciones), which offers a summary the life and work of each of the hundred of composers and lyricists who had the luck to be interpreted and recorded by the Zorzal. The 416 pages of texts begin with Alberto Hilarión Acuña, singer, guitar strummer and composer, and end with José María Horacio Zubiría Mansilia, author.

The section "The library" promises a dictionary of lunfardo, but in the meantime it offers other decoys. For example, the complete discography of Ricardo Tanturi (his orchestra is among the ones preferred by the milongueros (dancers) of today) or Angel Vargas’s, the remembered Ruiseñor de las calles porteñas. Or chronicles on various subjects, from the phenomenon of the estribillistas (those orchestra singers –some of them as great as Charlo, Ada Falcón or Fernando Díaz- who, between the 20s and the 30s, were confined to sing a refrain or bridge of each tango), to a research by Emilio Zamboni about the tenor Tito Schipa’s adventure in tango. Complete music scores can be found from "Una noche de garufa" by Eduardo Arolas, to "Como dos extraños" by Pedro Laurenz and José María Contursi, passing through "Pequeña", that delicious waltz by Osmar Maderna and Homero Expósito which was sung by Héctor de Rosas. In "Images" advertisements of the period can be seen, when phonographs and even pathephones, all meticulously well-kept by Lucci (and not only on paper).

Already consigned in the explorers, the page received in August, its first official month of life, 2853 visitors, a 76 per cent of them did it from outside Argentina. Half of them were from the United States, a 30 per cent Italian, French and Spaniards. Its impulsor, Ricardo García Blaya, expects at least the same geometric growth that other tango sites experienced in the latest years.

Between tango.dk (a site created in Denmark) or tangoreporter.com (created in Los Angeles) and team2it.net/tango (from Bolonia), among the hundreds of sites which can be found in the Dutch world directory of Go Tango.

World Wide, todotango.com.ar introduces a suggesting esthetic, designed by Jorge Vilas, and a more intimate vision, closer to the River Plate roots of the genre, as reassuring the porteña paternity of a tango that the Argentines let go off their hands, by detachment or carelessness.