Fernando del Priore’s career began at gunpoint. Back then, in the early 2000s, Argentina was reeling from national bankruptcy, supermarkets were being looted, and there were daily demonstrations on the streets of Buenos Aires. But Del Priore still had big plans. He was in his mid-twenties and had just opened his own recording studio with money he had saved over the years. A small fortune was invested in equipment, instruments, microphones, cables and recording devices. An investment in the future, del Priore believed, easy prey, thought the men standing in front of him.
They had posed as a music group interested in making a recording. Instead of guitars and sheet music, however, they had brought a pistol, and now del Priore lay tied up in a corner while the thieves cleaned out his studio. “It wasn’t nice,” says del Priore today, twenty years later. “But it had to go on somehow.” And so the Argentinian became what he is today: a tango journalist.
It’s a Tuesday morning in early August, winter in the southern hemisphere, and the sky is gray over Buenos Aires. Fernando del Priore is sitting in the Café de los Angelitos, outside, in front of the window, cars are pushing along the Avenida Rivadavia, one of the main thoroughfares of the Argentine metropolis. Inside, waiters in black and white livery are waiting for orders, one cortado some sweet ones for the gentleman reading the newspaper at the back table in the corner medialunas for the older ladies who sit chatting next to the entrance.
Tango was frowned upon, a spit from the gutter, shattered dreams cast in notes with lyrics that told of the tragedy of life
The Café de los Angelitos is now a venerable institution with wooden counters and velvet curtains. But in 1890, when it opened, it was little more than a bar in a slum and working-class area. Thugs and crooks met here, pimps and prostitutes, failed immigrants and uprooted gauchos. They drank and they danced to music that was still frowned upon at the time, tango, a spit from the gutter, shattered dreams cast in notes, with lyrics that told of the tragedy of life, of overcrowded tenements and unrequited love. “There is no more consolation for me,” sings Carlos Gardel I’m still sad“that’s why I throw myself into alcohol to forget the love for you.”
Years later, tango became popular worldwide, Gardel became one of the most famous singers of the genre and his favorite bar, the Café de los Angelitos, became a legend itself. Today, Gardel looks down from a large black-and-white photograph on the wall, next to him all the other greats, Troilo, Piazzolla, Pugliese, De Angelis. Fernando del Priore knows them all, he has even seen some of them live, at concerts to which his father always took him.
Fernando del Priore is 47 years old, has a three-day beard and only gray strands in his hair. The love of tango was put into his cradle, so to speak. His father, Oscar del Priore, is something like the gray eminence of tango reporting in Argentina, a radio presenter who still has his own show today and a gigantic record archive.
A portrait of tango legend Carlos Gardel.
(Photo: Natacha Pisarenko/AP)
It all started with his father, says Fernando del Priore: when the big radio orchestras played, he took him with him, just as he did to the bars and tango pubs when the legends gave concerts there. “My father had a suit tailored for me,” says del Priore. “As a boy, I always thought it was great when I was allowed to come with him.”
But as a teenager, Fernando del Priore would rather listen to rock music. Back then, in the 80s and 90s, tango in Argentina was considered music for the elderly and the elderly, even the Café de los Angelitos had to close for a few years. At the same time, however, there was a loyal fan community, not only in Buenos Aires, where tango originated more than a hundred years ago, but worldwide. Many lovers were looking for very special recordings, for songs from vinyl records that were no longer available for sale, but at the same time could almost always be found in Fernando del Priore’s father’s record collection. “I then placed advertisements in newspapers and put up notices in tango cafés,” says del Priore: “Tango recordings as desired”. Soon the first customers called with precise specifications, del Priore searched his father’s archives, went over to the tape recorder and pressed “Record”.
Del Priore dreamed of a recording studio – but then thieves came and Argentina fell into national bankruptcy
It was good business back then, says del Priore, enough to save up and enough to buy the equipment and instruments for the recording studio he dreamed of. But then everything turned out differently, instead of musicians there were thieves, and shortly afterwards Argentina finally fell into national bankruptcy, it wasn’t the first and it wasn’t supposed to be the last.
Perhaps it is no coincidence that the tango was also invented in Argentina, this huge and actually infinitely rich country. The magnificent boulevards in the center of Buenos Aires still bear witness to the old glory, but every high in Argentina has always been followed by a low, sometimes it goes down, then up again. What better soundtrack could there be for this than tango?
After the thieves, Fernando del Priore had another chance with an offer from an acquaintance: Wouldn’t he like to present on the radio, like his father? At first del Priore only worked on the weekends, he chose records, talked about tango singers and the stories behind the songs. “It was all fun for me,” he says. He begins training as a speaker and studies the history of tango.
Fernando del Priore now teaches courses at the university on tango texts, he works as a presenter at events and he also has programs on tango radio stations, of which there are several in Buenos Aires and Argentina.
Even in Japan, tango fans would hear his show, del Priore says
According to Fernando del Priore, his audience tends to be older, after all, many young people today simply don’t listen to the radio anymore, and in Argentina, too, they prefer trap to tango. Fernando del Priore, on the other hand, does not believe that he will die completely in the end. “There’s a loyal scene,” he says, not just here in Buenos Aires but around the world. He knows of fans who listen to his show over the Internet even in Japan.
Fernando del Priore is currently working with students on a tango podcast, he is planning a book and who knows, maybe one day he will write a tango himself? “That would be nice,” he says, the empty coffee cup in front of him.
Outside, in front of the window, the traffic is moving by, tough and slow, there is probably another detour somewhere a few streets away, because of a construction site or because of one of the demonstrations that are currently taking place almost every day. Argentina, it is said, is once again on the brink of bankruptcy, the country’s economy is in a serious crisis, and inflation could top 100 percent this year. But what good does that do? In the end you have to keep going, just like with tango, every step is improvisation, a new risk, there’s only one thing you can’t do: stand still.
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