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Morning Open Thread Thursday June 19, theme: La Cumparsita [1]

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Date: 2025-06-19

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Note: I use a ‘theme’ for my diaries, in an attempt to keep my writings on a cohesive path while I compose the diaries. It is also fun to see comments that fit within that theme. However, here in MOTland, all topics are welcome, it is an open thread. There are no demerits for being so-called ‘off-topic’. Thanks!

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===== My Thursday theme for June is Flamenco-style songs (instrumentals) ==========

Wiki Flamenco, it’s complicated to abridge into a meaningful description: flamenco

=== June 5 Desperado, June 12 Tico Tico, June 19 La Cumparsita, June 26 Malagueña =====

>>>This diary is about the song ‘La Cumparsita’, a famous tango of Uruguay, a song we surely heard but may not know the name.

Words are from this Wiki: La Cumparsita

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Side words on Montevideo, Uruguay link: Montevideo

The 2019 Mercer's report on quality of life rated Montevideo first in Latin America, a rank the city has consistently held since 2005. The city features historic European architecture, and is in fact considered one of the cities with the most art deco influence. It is the hub of commerce and higher education in Uruguay as well as its chief port and financial hub, anchoring the metropolitan area with a population of around 2 million.

There are several explanations for the word Montevideo. Montem vídeo ("I see a hill"): This version suggests that the name comes directly from Latin, stemming from the spontaneous expression of a learned member of Magellan's expedition, who, upon spotting the Cerro de Montevideo, exclaimed: Montem vídeo ("I see a hill"). The rest of the crew, who did not speak Latin, mistakenly registered this as the name of the hill they had just sighted, Monte Vídeo. This theory is supported by numerous maps and documents from the colonial period that refer to the Cerro de Montevideo with the name Monte Vídeo.

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"La cumparsita" (little street procession) is a tango written in 1916 by the Uruguayan musician Gerardo Matas Rodriguez. It is among the most famous and recognizable tangos of all time.

The song was originally a march, whose melody was composed in early 1916 by an architecture student in Montevideo, an 18-year-old man named Gerardo Hernán "Becho" Matos Rodríguez, the son of Montevideo's Moulin Rouge nightclub proprietor Emilio Matos. On 8 February 1916, Matos Rodríguez had his friend Manuel Barca show the music sheet to orchestra leader Roberto Firpo at the cafe called La Giralda. Firpo looked at the music and quickly determined that he could make it into a tango.

As presented to him it had two sections; Firpo added a third part taken from his own little-known tangos "La gaucha Manuela" and "Curda completa", and also used a portion of Giuseppe Verdi’s "Miserere", a chorus and duet from the opera Il trovatore.

Years later, Firpo recalled: In 1916 I was playing in the café La Giralda in Montevideo, when one day a man was accompanied by about fifteen boys – all students – to say he brought a carnival march song and they wanted me to review it because they thought it could be a tango. They wanted me to revise and tweak the score that night because it was needed by a boy named Matos Rodríguez. In the 2/4 [march time signature] score there appeared a little [useful melody] in the first half and in the second half there was nothing. I got a piano and I remembered my two tangos composed in 1906 that had not had any success: "La gaucha Manuela" and "Curda completa". And I put in a little of each.

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Castellani Andriaccio

Christoph Denoth

Roby Di Nunno e Olga Landi

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