Susana Rinaldi

UNESCO Courier, Dec, 1992 by Fernando Ainsa

Susana Rinaldi is one of the world's great tango singers. In this interview she retraces the origins and development of this original blend of poetry and music that was forged in the cultural melting-pot of the Rio de la Plata region and draws inspiration from eternal themes such as solitude, time, love, and death. As a tribute to her efforts to promote the ideals of UNESCO, Susana Rinaldi was earlier this year appointed Goodwill Ambassador for UNESCO.

* You were already a well-known actress when you started out as a tango singer. How and when did you discover this vocation?

--I started to dance and sing the tango when I was four. Later on, when I was a student, I used to enjoy singing tangos for my friends, although like all young Argentines of my generation I was also mad about the bolero, rock and the Beatles. Then I went to drama school, and later pursued a career in the theatre and television. In 1966, when I was asked to make a record of poems by the Spanish poet Miguel Hernandez, I refused because I was afraid that I wouldn't do it as well as Maria Casares, who had recorded them earlier. I asked whether I could record some tangos instead, and to my great surprise the record company agreed. So I made my first tango record, which featured some of the numbers that I have often sung since, such as Melodia de arrabal ("Melody of the Slums"), Maria and Sur ("South").

Since then I have tried to carry on the tradition of the tango, with its recurrent themes of injustice and the solitude of men and women in big cities. I try to convey the human qualities of the Argentine people and their profound sense of solidarity with others, something one does not often find elsewhere.

During the dictatorship in Argentina, between 1976 and 1982, I mainly sang abroad. I tried to present an image of the tango that was unfamiliar to Europeans. I tried to show that it is not only a slinky and spectacular dance, but a total experience, whose poetry is a blend of music, words and dance.

* What is the tango, in your opinion?

--First and foremost, it is a form of music so distinctive that even a newcomer to it can distinguish it from other Latin American rhythms. But it is much more than that. The lyrics are often pieces of literature that have a poetic language of their own and express a vision of the world. And of course the tango is also a dance. Perhaps the best definition is that given by the great tango composer Enrique Santos Discepolo, who called it "a sad thought that is danced".

* To those who do not live on the banks of the Rio de la Plata, the tango seems very complicated.

--It is true that dancing the tango is an art full of virtuoso touches; its cortes, quebradas, sentadas, pataditas and lustradas are all steps that are rigorously codified and ritualized. The tango dancer's body seems to be divided into two parts. The top half is almost immobile, and the dancing is concentrated in the bottom half. This is why the tango was accused of being suggestive and sensuous when it first appeared.

I wonder whether the tango is a not a way of walking rather than a dance. When the portenos--the people of Buenos Aires--look out across the pampa to the horizon and when they think of the aggressive immensity of the city, they feel a kind of melancholy that affects their way of walking and gives the tango its hidden rhythm. It is a dramatic, introspective dance. Ernesto Sabato once said that Italians dance the tarantella to enjoy themselves, but the portenos dance the tango to brood on their fate and chew over their bitterness.

* All over the world, the tango is identified with its legendary exponent, Carlos Gardel.

--Yes. This is because the tango is above all a performing art. The great tango singers like Gardel have had a style of their own, their own particular way of singing. The style may be mannered to the point of caricature. This is often because of the words, the way in which lyricists have tried to outdo each other in embroidering familiar themes. For years, the tango was a prisoner of these cliches. The myth of "Carlitos", "the magician of the tango", dictated the behaviour and physical appearance--the clothes, the hairstyle, the smile--of any tango singer who wanted to succeed. At the same time, tango singers had to act tough--the tango was a dance for hard men.

* In his novel 62, modelo para armar, Julio Cortazar caricatures the Argentine male as a man of mature age, greying at the temples, with his hair plastered down, and dressed in a pin-striped double-breasted suit.

--People who are into tango do tend to have a certain style, something that goes far beyond the way they look. Don't forget that this music from the poor districts of Buenos Aires has become our trademark, at home and abroad. Horacio Arturo Ferrer, a prolific writer of tango lyrics, says that the tango is an emotional state specific to the culture of the Rio de la Plata. When young rock fans say that the tango is old-fashioned, they do not realize that it is an expression of the cultural identity of a people. That way of life still goes on in the streets of Buenos Aires. The tango may be a passing fashion in other countries, but for us it's the expression of our deepest experience.