Víctor Hugo Díaz was a 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...

, folklore

Folklore

Folklore consists of legends, music, oral history, proverbs, jokes, popular beliefs, fairy tales and customs that are the traditions of a culture, subculture, or group. It is also the set of practices through which those expressive genres are shared. The study of folklore is sometimes called...

 and jazz

Jazz

Jazz is a musical style that originated at the beginning of the 20th century in African American communities in the Southern United States. It was born out of a mix of African and European music traditions. From its early development until the present, jazz has incorporated music from 19th and 20th...

 harmonicist.

Early life

Díaz was born to a poor family in the small city of Santiago del Estero. At the age of five he lost his sight hit by a soccer ball, which led him to play the harmonica

Harmonica

The harmonica, also called harp, French harp, blues harp, and mouth organ, is a free reed wind instrument used primarily in blues and American folk music, jazz, country, and rock and roll. It is played by blowing air into it or drawing air out by placing lips over individual holes or multiple holes...

. Two years later, after a surgery restored his eyesight, he was already performing regularly for a local radio.

Musical career

All his life, in spite of a highly successful career, the ex-child prodigy remained loyal to the companions of his youth like the Abalos brothers and the great percussionist Domingo Cura with whom Díaz recorded on many occasions. His debut in Buenos Aires around 1944 resulted in a series of record contracts with Odeon Records

Odeon Records

Odeon Records was a record label founded in 1903 by Max Straus and Heinrich Zuntz of the International Talking Machine Company in Berlin, Germany. It was named after a famous theatre in Paris, whose classical dome appears on the Odeon record label....

, TK Records

TK Records

TK Records was an American record label started by record distributor, Henry Stone in Miami, Florida, one of several labels that he founded in the 1960s and 1970s...

, Jockey

Jockey

A jockey is an athlete who rides horses in horse racing or steeplechase racing, primarily as a profession. The word also applies to camel riders in camel racing.-Etymology:...

 and later, RCA

RCA

RCA Corporation, founded as the Radio Corporation of America, was an American electronics company in existence from 1919 to 1986. The RCA trademark is currently owned by the French conglomerate Technicolor SA through RCA Trademark Management S.A., a company owned by Technicolor...

. Although mostly known for his tango performances, his music has deep rural roots, above all in the provincial folkloric music he had grown up with: chacarera

Chacarera

The Chacarera is a dance of Argentine origin. It is a genre of folk music that, for many Argentines, serves as a rural counterpart to the cosmopolitan imagery of the Tango...

s, zambas and milongas camperas. Nevertheless, such a brilliant musician could never really be confined to a single style or type of music.

In 1953 during a European tour, Hugo Díaz had the opportunity to meet in Belgium with two admired musicians, Larry Adler

Larry Adler

Lawrence "Larry" Cecil Adler was an American musician, widely acknowledged as one of the world's most skilled harmonica players. Composers such as Ralph Vaughan Williams, Malcolm Arnold, Darius Milhaud and Arthur Benjamin composed works for him...

 and Toots Thielemans

Toots Thielemans

Jean-Baptiste Frédéric Isidor, Baron Thielemans , known as Toots Thielemans, is a Belgian jazz musician well known for his guitar and harmonica playing as well as his whistling. Thielemans is credited as one of the greatest harmonica players of the 20th century...

. The admiration was mutual since Thielemans never failed to pay homage to the artistry of Díaz.

He also played in the United States

United States

The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...

 with Louis Armstrong

Louis Armstrong

Louis Armstrong , nicknamed Satchmo or Pops, was an American jazz trumpeter and singer from New Orleans, Louisiana....

 and Oscar Peterson

Oscar Peterson

Oscar Emmanuel Peterson was a Canadian jazz pianist and composer. He was called the "Maharaja of the keyboard" by Duke Ellington, "O.P." by his friends. He released over 200 recordings, won seven Grammy Awards, and received other numerous awards and honours over the course of his career...

, and in La Scala

La Scala

La Scala , is a world renowned opera house in Milan, Italy. The theatre was inaugurated on 3 August 1778 and was originally known as the New Royal-Ducal Theatre at La Scala...

 in Milan

Milan

Milan is the second-largest city in Italy and the capital city of the region of Lombardy and of the province of Milan. The city proper has a population of about 1.3 million, while its urban area, roughly coinciding with its administrative province and the bordering Province of Monza and Brianza ,...

 with Renata Tebaldi

Renata Tebaldi

Renata Tebaldi was an Italian lirico-spinto soprano popular in the post-war period...

 and Mario del Monaco

Mario del Monaco

Mario Del Monaco was an Italian tenor who is regarded by his admirers as being one of the greatest dramatic tenors of the 20th century....

.

Díaz was to record the most important part of his musical legacy during the 1970s.

Family

Díaz was married to Victoria Cura, sister of percussionist Domingo Cura, and they had a daughter together, María Victoria (Mavi), born in 1961. Mavi Díaz went on to become an important part of Argentine rock and roll in the 1980s as a member of the Viuda e Hijas de Roque Enroll (Widow and Daughters of Roque Enroll - is how sounds like Rock & Roll in Spanish) band.

Movie soundtracks

The sound of his harmonica was captured in the song Milonga Triste included in the film The Tango Lesson

The Tango Lesson

The Tango Lesson is a 1997 drama film by British director Sally Potter. It is a semi-autobiographical film starring Potter and Pablo Verón, about Argentinian Tango....

, directed by Sally Potter

Sally Potter

Charlotte Sally Potter is an English film director and screenwriter.-Career:Having left school at sixteen to become a filmmaker, Potter joined the London Film-Makers' Co-op and started making experimental short films, including Jerk and Play...

.

More recently as a background music in the 2006 Austrian film The Counterfeiters

The Counterfeiters (film)

The Counterfeiters is a 2007 Austrian-German film written and directed by Stefan Ruzowitzky. It fictionalizes Operation Bernhard, a secret plan by the Nazis during the Second World War to destabilize Great Britain by flooding its economy with forged Bank of England bank notes.The film centres on a...

(2008 Foreign Film Academy Award winner) in which many tangos recorded by Díaz contribute to create the sad atmosphere of the film.

The Argentine documentary film A los cuatro vientos (Spanish: To four winds) premiered in 2007. The film, deeply musical, is a homage to Hugo Díaz and includes many of his interpretations.

Discography (Not Completed)

Discographic Marc:Odeón: Cantares de mi tierra.
Discographic Marc:Tonodisc: Hugo Díaz en Buenos Aires (tangos) vol 1,2 y 3 (ca.1975) ;
Homenaje a Carlos Gardel (1979);Nostalgias Santiagueñas; Hugo Díaz Chacareras;
Discographic Marc:RCA Victor: Magia en el Folklore vol. 1y 2, (ca.1968) Gigante del folklore, (1982) Mi armónica y yo;
Discographic Marc:Music Hall. Asi es Hugo Díaz, Baile en el campo, Aquí está Hugo Díaz,(1972), Tacita de plata, (1987).
Discographic Marc:Difusión Musical: Lo mejor de Hugo Diaz. (ca.1967).
Otros sellos: Jazz.