by pablo toledo
Herald staff

If ever there was a poster boy for the varón porteño, that is Raúl “Negro” Lavié’s: a lifelong history as a tango singer, an acting career, a big booming voice that can just as easily fill a room as woo a lady’s heart, an easygoing smile pasted on his lips, a studiously casual care for his image, but most of all a strong on-stage presence that is just the right combination of devil-may-care and the assertive aplomb that comes with experience (this is not diminished in any way by the fact that he was actually born in Santa Fe).
His latest CD, Las mujeres de Lavié, plays on that image: a lush presentation of him as a ladies’ man, surrounded by some of Argentina’s finest female voices: Susana Rinaldi, Soledad, Cecilia Milone, Valeria Lynch, Estela Raval, Ligia Piro, Julia Zenko, María Martha Serra Lima, Patricia Sosa, María Graña, Violeta Rivas, María Volonté, Vicky Buchino and the late Eladia Blázquez. The contents of the CD confirm him as a versatile baritone that provides solid performances in a wide range of genres from tango to melodic/romantic music, chamamé, jazz and musical comedy, as well as a generous host that provides each singer a chance to shine and show themselves at their personal best, paying a visit to their neck of the musical woods rather than forcing them to adapt to his own. But there’s a history behind the project, and a major role model.
“One day my wife and I were listening to an album by Tony Benett, a collection of duets with the great North American female singers. Laura suggested I should do something like that with our great female singers. I liked the idea, and we started planning who could be included in it: I knew from the start who should be featured here, and started asking the girls how they felt about it: some I had worked with on stage, others were longtime friends. They all loved the idea, so we got busy – we had to match keys, arrangers, song lists... a male and a female singer have different tessituras so it’s not easy to find this common ground, but there were no problems. This album has all the best female singers in a single CD, with great arrangments and top musicians, so listeners are bound to enjoy it,” promises Lavié to the Herald in the backstage of Madero Tango, where he has become pretty much the resident male singer.
With more than 50 years in the music business, his first recordings came as the voice of Héctor Varela’s orchestra in 1957, followed by collaborations with such tango names as Astor Piazolla, Horacio Salgán, Osvaldo Fresedo, Héctor Stamponi, Cacho Tirao, Juan Carlos Cirigliano and Walter Ríos. In the 60s he joined the Club del Clan, a young crew of nueva ola singers with a weekly high-ratings TV show playing beat and pop songs. He would then expand his acting career, with 17 silver screen credits including Un guapo del 900 (under Lautaro Murúa) and the film adaptation of Manuel Puig’s Boquitas pintadas (under Leopoldo Torre Nilsson), as well as several musical comedies and plays.
“I always loved singing. The audience has identified me with tango, even though along my career I have done everything... People are not shocked at the thought of me singing in English, for instance, because I have always expressed myself in different ways. I really wanted to do the songs that have nothing to do with tango – it was the audience that defined I was a tango singer, not me, I always took different paths. Diehard narrow-minded tangueros don’t take me as a ‘serious‘ tango singer, but I don’t care because I really had a great time and I enjoyed it,” he says.
The English singing he refers to is one of the most unexpected moments of the CD: a version of the jazz standard All of Me with Ligia Piro, one of our undisputed female jazz voices today, and outstanding guitar work by Ricardo Lew. “Singing in English was a thrill... I wanted to take an original English song, not singing tango in English as Gardel did (his pronunciation was worse than mine, but he was Gardel so it was fine). Tangos have been translated into Italian and English, but I wanted to do an original song, and nothing less than All of Me, a jazz classic. I had worked with Ligia very early in her career, and she was the one who suggested this song,” he explains – indeed, his pronunciation could be better, but his swing and attitude are spot-on (and, once again, Ligia Piro is simply flawless).
In a close register comes a playful big band arrangement of Chico Novarro’s Contigo, in a spicy duo with Cecilia Milone full of gusto and piquant interplay and studio banter. Other songs display similar chemistry, with Eladia Blázquez’ Golpeá que te van a abrir as another notable example – and an excellent way to remember the late singer and songwriter. “That had been recorded in 2001 or 2002, for a candombe and milonga album I did which included this very funny song by Eladia with her. I included it here out of the great respect I have for Eladia as a writer but also as a performer: she’s a great, very musical singer, and I always respected that in her.”
Two surprising moments in the album, showing Lavié’s broad span of interests, are a Broadway-quality rendering of the Spanish version of Andrew Lloyd Webber’s The Music of the Night with Valeria Lynch, from Phantom of the Opera, and a throwback to his native Santa Fe in the form of a duet with Soledad Pastorutti in Antonio Tarragó Ros’ chamamé classic María va, including Ros’ participation. “I always liked Tarragó Ros – I love litoral music, I think it’s one of the purest and most singular styles in our folk. I think this song is a great piece by Tarragó. On the studio, he recorded a reference background voice for me on the choruses. When I heard it, I just loved the way his voice and Soledad’s worked together so I left his part without recording my voice on top,” explains an ever-so-humble Lavié.

his first love. Lavié’s career in tango is, also, unique in that it covers a most singular period in the history of the genre.
“I debuted in 56: some of the greats were still there, Troilo, Pugliese, but the scene was changing because after the Golden Age popular music started going on the wane. In the early 60s orchestras started disappearing because the venues for them were closing as well. People’s tastes changed, too, and that was when Club del Clan came in. I was lucky to be involved with the last musical group where young people embraced tango, which was Héctor Varela’s orchestra in 1957, 58, perhaps 60: a successful, popular orchestra with an all-young audience. But then that youth looked for other things, we already had access to Elvis Presley, Chubby Checker, Neil Sedaka, the Beatles, musicians that fundamentally changed the musical taste of young people and mine too! I am strongly influenced by songs and music, and I felt the need to change. I was also criticized in tango circles because of my singing style, and I had a hard time battling those criticisms: back then I was a bit fed up with people saying ‘el Negro sings very well, but that’s not tango.’ That was my excuse for going into other genres,” explains Lavié of his beginnings at a time a long winter was breaking for tango in the local scene.
In the long decades that went by until the genre’s rebirth in the late 90s, when young people started dancing the tango and new names and styles emerged (including two of Raúl’s sons in Ultratango, one of the first electronic tango experiments), Lavié was anything but idle: he worked with Piazzolla, who once called him “a mighty and bold baritone, the big voice of Buenos Aires,” and produced many albums, shows and tours that warmed up that chilly winter of tango discontent.
With that experience under his belt, he can afford to be critical of the current role of tango and its fans. “Today, anyone sings the tango. Tango has become an important promotion tool, tango’s importance has been rediscovered – that’s great, I’m all for it, but now there are all sorts of musicians doing tango, some do it well and time will tell about the rest... Tango singers have no chance for promotion or airplay: I have recorded many songs that have never, ever been played on the radio... I got fed up of recording, of looking after the musical quality and the arrangements, of finding original material, and then not having the chance of having that material reach audiences. There is just one FM radio that plays tango, and others on AM, but they always play songs from the 40s, their audience asks for the same 60- or 70-year-old tracks. Tangueros are hard to convince, it’s hard to get them to accept other musicians getting into tango... that’s not good for the music they love,” he says, his smile hardening just a tad.
He is enthusiastic but rigorous about the new trends in the genre, and exemplifies with the career of Piazzolla, with whom he fought shoulder to shoulder. “I have recorded electronic tango with my sons, I respect what they’re doing just as I respect what all musicians who are looking for new directions do. I like some writers and musicians, there’s good stuff happening like Ofidio Della Soppa – I love what they do as writers, and how they sell it, it’s a fresh, funny thing. I don’t like everything, though, some things are awful! In the Golden Age there was personality, and different styles, and we have lost that: D’Arienzo, Troilo, Alfredo Gobbi, Osvaldo Pugliese, you heard them and you could tell who was who, the same with singers. That doesn’t happen today. Let’s be fair: in those days musicians took time to develop. Take the case of Astor Piazolla: he started out playing the bandoneon for Troilo and others, he was Troilo’s arranger too... When I hear a Troilo recording arranged by Astor I can tell it’s him. Then he had the chance to grow through his orchestra, which was based on his talent, but had nothing to do with the later Piazolla. But he had time to develop his personality. It was a difficult time to change, especially Piazolla, who did a fundamental change in tango music which cost him harsh criticism and the recognition that he deserved... even today! People don’t understand that since the birth of tango there have been constant changes, that it has changed over the years. Living music changes, it is dead music that remains the same. Opera is dead music, in my view: they repeat the same thing, for a small group of opera lovers. Tango mustn’t fall into that. I think music must be alive, in constant movement and creativity: musicians must do that, and the audience must be grateful for musicians like Astor because otherwise music will disappear. I don’t care if people say ‘Piazolla’s not tango’: yes, that’s the tango of the times when it was written, just as electronic tango is tango today, when we have new sounds and forms of expression, when people talk differently, play differently.”