Osvaldo Pugliese
Encyclopedia
Buenos Aires
Buenos Aires is the capital and largest city of Argentina, and the second-largest metropolitan area in South America, after São Paulo. It is located on the western shore of the estuary of the Río de la Plata, on the southeastern coast of the South American continent...
, December 2, 1905 – July 25, 1995) was an Argentine
Argentina
Argentina , officially the Argentine Republic , is the second largest country in South America by land area, after Brazil. It is constituted as a federation of 23 provinces and an autonomous city, Buenos Aires...
tango musician. He developed dramatic arrangements that retained strong elements of the walking beat of salon tango but also heralded the development of concert-style tango music.
Some of his music, mostly since the 50s, is used for theatrical dance performances. In Buenos Aires, Pugliese is often played later in the evening when the dancers want to dance more slowly, impressionistically and intimately.
Pugliese is a great choice for slower tango dance music, but the arrangements can be a bit more rhythmically challenging than those played by other orchestras. 'Recuerdo' (1924) and 'La yumba
La yumba
La yumba is a tango created by Osvaldo Pugliese in 1946.The term yumba - although its indigenous origin - was not chosen by Pugliese for its etymology but for its onomatopoeic similarity with the profound gasping from a bandoneón - and the resulting mixture of that sound with other orchestra...
' (1946) are two of Pugliese's most popular tangos.
Pugliese was outspoken in his political opinions. His communist
Communism
Communism is a social, political and economic ideology that aims at the establishment of a classless, moneyless, revolutionary and stateless socialist society structured upon common ownership of the means of production...
sympathies, though never violent, at times earned him the hostility of those in power. Populist President Juan Perón is said to have had labor union heavies once intimidate Pugliese by locking him in a sinking boat, rescuing him at the last minute; though the alleged 1949 incident has never been proven (Pugliese, likewise, seldom spoke of it publicly), the day Pres. Perón awarded the great pianist the Order of May (Argentina's highest civilian award), he embraced Pugliese, saying: "Thank you, maestro, for forgiving".
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