Author: Tarantino Luis

Osvaldo Pedro Pugliese was born on December, 2nd, 1905 in Buenos Aires and during his 90 years of life (he passed away on July, 25th,1995) he installed a true mystical dimension.

The year 2005 was Pugliese´s year, the city, the Buenosairean and the tangueros offered him deserved tribute, to this remarkable popular artist who was compromised with the social reality of his people.

Osvaldo Pugliese developed his tango from some beginning of century cafés where he alternated in the set of the first tango concertina player, Paquita Bernardo. Later, he did so with many other creators of a tango that was producing a remarkable musical evolution headed by the brothers De Caro and their sextet, whose influence would be remarkable in the sound of his first orchestra that makes debut on August 11th, 1939 in the “Café Nacional”.

Pugliese was director, pianist and orchestra conductor. Faithful to his militancy in the Communist Party, his orchestra worked like a cooperative where each member had a score according to their antiquity, something that was maintained until the end of his days.

The communist militancy, the coherence of thought and action, the fervor in defense of men rights, made of Pugliese a character admired by his opponents and also gave him many days in jail at dark times (Juan Domingo Perón, in his return to the country in the decade of the ' 70, apologized to him for having put him in jail in the ' 50).

Musically speaking, he always maintained the roots, but within his style he developed an evolved tango that even shot the creativity of at that time the young Astor Piazzolla.

When Pugliese composes his work "Negracha" which he records with his group as a point of departure of another evolution, he had already composed in 1925 his beautiful tango "Memory" and soon he would also do it with his classic "Yumba" and with another great evolutionist work: "Malandraca". With the proliferation of milongas (dances) around the world and the great success of the show "Argentine Tango" in France and soon in Broadway, the unmistakable style of Osvaldo Pugliese was transformed into a phenomenon that continues growing and that abounds in followers like the "Colortango Orchestra", the "Canyengue Sextet" of Holland, the orchestra of his daughter, Beba Pugliese, and others.

In Holland, Japan, Germany, France, Italy and many other cultures of the world, Osvaldo Pugliese is analyzed, studied, honored and imitated so much by university professors, in Music Conservatories, and by musicians, dancers, choreographers, collectors, journalists or sociologists. Pugliese is the magical word that opens the doors of the perception of a Buenosairean mythical world.

A meticulous and dynamic picture of the Buenos Aires man through the music and behaviour of a unique creator.

The appointment with the work of this great artist cannot be delayed.