Edmundo Rivero
Encyclopedia
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
Tango music
Tango is a style of ballroom dance music in 2/4 or 4/4 time that originated among European immigrant populations of Argentina and Uruguay . It is traditionally played by a sextet, known as the orquesta típica, which includes two violins, piano, double bass, and two bandoneons...
singer, composer, and impresario
Impresario
An impresario is a person who organizes and often finances concerts, plays or operas; analogous to a film producer in filmmaking, television production and an angel investor in business...
.
Early days
Rivero was born in the southern Buenos AiresBuenos 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...
suburb of Valentín Alsina
Valentín Alsina, Buenos Aires
Valentín Alsina is a city in the Lanús Partido of Buenos Aires Province, Argentina. It is located next to Buenos Aires city in the Gran Buenos Aires urban area....
. Joining his father in some of his travels, he was exposed to the lifestyle and the music of the gaucho
Gaucho
Gaucho is a term commonly used to describe residents of the South American pampas, chacos, or Patagonian grasslands, found principally in parts of Argentina, Uruguay, Southern Chile, and Southern Brazil...
s of Buenos Aires Province
Buenos Aires Province
The Province of Buenos Aires is the largest and most populous province of Argentina. It takes the name from the city of Buenos Aires, which used to be the provincial capital until it was federalized in 1880...
from his early days. His maternal great-grandfather, named Lionel, was a British
British people
The British are citizens of the United Kingdom, of the Isle of Man, any of the Channel Islands, or of any of the British overseas territories, and their descendants...
immigrant, and fought against the Pampas tribes in the mid-19th century, being wounded by a spear. From him, Rivero inherited his blond hair and his first name.
In his teens, Rivero's family moved to the Belgrano
Belgrano, Buenos Aires
Belgrano is a leafy, northern barrio or neighborhood of the city of Buenos Aires, Argentina.- Location :The barrio of Palermo is to the southeast; Nuñez is to the northwest; Coghlan, Villa Urquiza, Villa Ortúzar and Colegiales are to the southwest....
neighborhood, in the days where tango developed as a dancing phenomenon, but also as an ever more complex music form under the "ABC" of composers/directors Arolas, Bardi, and Cobián. At the same time, the themes of tango lyrics evolved from light-hearted ribaldry
Ribaldry
Ribaldry is humorous entertainment that ranges from bordering on indelicacy to gross indecency. It is also referred to as "bawdiness", "gaminess" or "bawdry"....
into more complex stories delving on love and manly honor.
Rivero learned classic guitar and also trained as a singer; he had a deep bass-baritone voice that was one of his trademarks, together with his huge hands (due to his acromegaly
Acromegaly
Acromegaly is a syndrome that results when the anterior pituitary gland produces excess growth hormone after epiphyseal plate closure at puberty...
) that made him the butt of many jokes.
Singing career
After working as a cover singer in small venues, Rivero got his first radio appearance singing a duet with his sister Eva in Radio Cultura. He spent the early 1930s alternating radio work with dance hall gigs.After singing for bandleader José De Caro in 1935, Rivero's qualities attracted José's more famous brother Julio De Caro
Julio de Caro
Julio de Caro was an Argentine composer, musician and conductor prominent in the Tango genre.-Life and work:...
, who drafted Rivero into his orchestra, which incorporated non-traditional instruments and was a fixture of the Pueyrredón theatre ballroom in Flores
Flores, Buenos Aires
Flores is a middle class barrio or district in the centre part of Buenos Aires city, Argentina. Flores was considered a rural area of the Province of Buenos Aires until 1888 when it was integrated to the City....
. Rivero gained some fame, and the moniker that stayed with him forever: el feo (the ugly guy).
Even though Rivero was featured in many Argentine films in the 1930s and 1940s, the early forties were a time of uncertainty for him. Even bandleaders who did hire him (such as Humberto Canaro) would not retain him for long. Later, Rivero would claim that his deep voice was a severe handicap during this time.
In 1944, Rivero joined Horacio Salgán
Horacio Salgán
Horacio Adolfo Salgán is an Afro-Argentine pianist, composer, orchestra leader, and arranger who specializes in tango music....
. His three-year tenure there left no recordings (with his Bartók
Béla Bartók
Béla Viktor János Bartók was a Hungarian composer and pianist. He is considered one of the most important composers of the 20th century and is regarded, along with Liszt, as Hungary's greatest composer...
influences, Salgán was too "far out" for the general tango audience) but earned Rivero the respect of avant-garde and jazz musicians. To make ends meet, Rivero also worked in a duo with fellow singer Carlos Bermúdez that recorded tangos in a more commercial vein for the Colombia
Colombia
Colombia, officially the Republic of Colombia , is a unitary constitutional republic comprising thirty-two departments. The country is located in northwestern South America, bordered to the east by Venezuela and Brazil; to the south by Ecuador and Peru; to the north by the Caribbean Sea; to the...
n market.
In 1947, Rivero was hired by Aníbal Troilo
Aníbal Troilo
Aníbal Carmelo Troilo was an Argentine tango musician.Anibal Troilo was a bandoneon player, composer, and bandleader in Argentina. His orquesta típica was among the most popular with social dancers during the golden age of tango , but he changed to a concert sound by the late 1950s...
, who was having a stellar run of recordings with new hit songs, many of them in collaboration with lyricist Homero Manzi
Homero Manzi
Homero Nicolás Manzioni Prestera, better known as Homero Manzi was an Argentine Tango lyricist, author of various famous tangos....
. During his three years with Troilo, Rivero shared the limelight with Floreal Ruiz and Aldo Calderón, and recorded 22 songs, including the mega-hit Sur
Sur (tango)
Sur is a tango song with music by Aníbal Troilo and lyrics by Homero Manzi. It was first recorded by Troilo's orchestra with vocals by Edmundo Rivero on 23 February 1948...
, where Troilo's melody frames Manzi's elegy for a young love and also for the old barrio.
Having found fame and fortune, Rivero left Troilo in 1950 and started a solo career. For accompaniment, he would alternate between guitar quartets and a full orchestral format for the remainder of his career. The most famous musician to follow Rivero was guitarist Roberto Grela, who was also the guitarist of Troilo's quartet.
Guitar-only formations were used by countryside milonga
Milonga
Milonga can refer to an Argentine, Uruguayan, and Southern Brazilian form of music which preceded the tango and the dance form which accompanies it, or to the term for places or events where the tango or Milonga are danced...
artists, early tango singers, and even Carlos Gardel
Carlos Gardel
Carlos Gardel was a singer, songwriter and actor, and is perhaps the most prominent figure in the history of tango. He was born in Toulouse, France, although he never acknowledged his birthplace publicly, and there are still claims of his birth in Uruguay. He lived in Argentina from the age of two...
in his youth, but Rivero's 1950s recordings, during a period of total dominance by big orchestras, was a bold statement, which forever cemented his identification with the silent masculinity of the countryside, as opposed to the emphasis that "urban" tango put on stories of lost love.
In the sixties, Salgán and Rivero had their revenge, and recorded several tunes together. Rivero also collaborated with other artists, who noted his generosity and his devotion to music. In 1966 he appeared in the film Buenos Aires, verano 1912.
El Viejo Almacén
By the late 1960s, tango had become mostly "for export", since musicians and audiences were aging and making little progress from the orchestral format of the 1940s and 1950s. many tango fans rejected the music of Ástor PiazzollaÁstor Piazzolla
Ástor Pantaleón Piazzolla was an Argentine tango composer and bandoneón player. His oeuvre revolutionized the traditional tango into a new style termed nuevo tango, incorporating elements from jazz and classical music...
and his followers, but Rivero himself admired Piazzolla, and recorded his creations on more than one occasion. Even major artists had trouble finding venues to play.
Fearing for tango's viability, in 1969 Rivero opened El Viejo Almacén ("The old store"), a tango club in the San Telmo
San Telmo
San Telmo is the oldest barrio of Buenos Aires, Argentina. It is a well-preserved area of the Argentine metropolis and is characterized by its colonial buildings. Cafes, tango parlors and antique shops line the cobblestone streets, which are often filled with artists and dancers.San Telmo's...
district. His hospitality was enjoyed by many visitors to Buenos Aires, who went to Rivero's club to savor the tango music and dance in its full intensity. Among the recurring visitors were Joan Manuel Serrat
Joan Manuel Serrat
Joan Manuel Serrat i Teresa is a Catalan Spanish singer-songwriter.Serrat is considered one of the most important figures of modern, popular music in both the Spanish and Catalan languages...
and Camilo José Cela
Camilo José Cela
Camilo José Cela y Trulock, 1st Marquis of Iria Flavia was a Spanish novelist and short story writer. He was awarded the 1989 Nobel Prize in Literature "for a rich and intensive prose, which with restrained compassion forms a challenging vision of man's vulnerability".-Biography:Cela published his...
.
Rivero's place was a venue for tango, where musicians knew they'd be respected and paid on time. Famed tango lyricist Horacio Ferrer wrote a milonga
Milonga
Milonga can refer to an Argentine, Uruguayan, and Southern Brazilian form of music which preceded the tango and the dance form which accompanies it, or to the term for places or events where the tango or Milonga are danced...
about the almacén http://www.elportaldeltango.com/indice/coplasde.htm for which Rivero later composed the music, and took to calling Rivero by his forgotten first name, Leonel, a gesture that many friends would imitate.
Rivero was an icon in Japan
Japan
Japan is an island nation in East Asia. Located in the Pacific Ocean, it lies to the east of the Sea of Japan, China, North Korea, South Korea and Russia, stretching from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north to the East China Sea and Taiwan in the south...
ese tango circles. He toured Japan in 1968, and got to know many Japanese musicians and dancers. Rivero composed "Arigato Japón" and "A lo Megata" (honoring Tsunayoshi "Tsunami" Megata, one of the top tango dancers of his age). Japanese tourists were a constant presence in Rivero's place.
Rivero hosted a TV show in the early seventies, which featured artists from the club (such as Beba Bidart), as well as lively dialog sprinkled with lunfardo
Lunfardo
Lunfardo is a dialect originated and developed in the late 19th and early 20th centuries in the lower classes in Buenos Aires and the surrounding Gran Buenos Aires, and from there spread to other cities nearby, such as Rosario and Montevideo, cities with similar socio-cultural situations...
. Some of his 1960s and 1970s reunions with Troilo and Grela were televised. In 1980, Rivero took part in Osvaldo Pugliese
Osvaldo Pugliese
Osvaldo Pedro Pugliese was an Argentine 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...
's 75th birthday concert. In his later years, he delegated the day-to-day operation of the club to his son Edmundo ("Muni").
Rivero was hospitalized in late 1985, and died from heart failure on January 18, 1986, in Buenos Aires.
In 2011 it was reported that many artifacts germane to Rivero's legacy were stolen from a warehouse in Ramos Mejía
Ramos Mejia
Ramos Mejía is a locality of La Matanza Partido in Greater Buenos Aires. The city has an area of 11.9 km² and a population of 98,457 .It is one of the largest commercial districts in the Western Zone of Greater Buenos Aires.-History:...
http://notio.com.ar/ultimas-noticias/robaron-herencia-cultural-de-edmundo-rivero-en-una-casa-de-ramos-mejia-7559.
Selected Recordings
- Sur (perhaps the most popular tango in Argentina)
- El ciruja (an underworld saga sprinkled with heavy doses of lunfardo)
- Amablemente (a sonnetSonnetA sonnet is one of several forms of poetry that originate in Europe, mainly Provence and Italy. A sonnet commonly has 14 lines. The term "sonnet" derives from the Occitan word sonet and the Italian word sonetto, both meaning "little song" or "little sound"...
sung as a milongaMilongaMilonga can refer to an Argentine, Uruguayan, and Southern Brazilian form of music which preceded the tango and the dance form which accompanies it, or to the term for places or events where the tango or Milonga are danced...
—the lyrics lead to a dramatic ending) - Pucherito de gallina
- No te engañes corazón
- Malón de ausencia
- Yo te bendigo
- Falsía
- El último organito