Osvaldo Natucci, the person behind the tango scholar

-The earliest is obvious: listening to tango as a child, four, five, six, seven years old, lying in bed with my mother until she went to bed.
Because I was born six blocks from the Federal Capital, in the province of Buenos Aires, that is, practically in the capital. It was a favorable time, economically and socially speaking, in terms of what it means to be Argentinian. This meant that the street was a playground for kids of seven, ten, fifteen. We played all sorts of games. Tango wasn’t part of those games for us.

It was present on the neighbors’ radios, when we passed by somewhere… For example, I lived in a house with three apartments. The first one belonged to a Uruguayan family, then we came in, and the last one was my father’s brother.
But I went in and out a lot. I went in and out on the street a lot. And the Uruguayan woman was a tango fanatic. More so than my mother. She was a tango lover too, though not my milonga lover. You could hear it.
And every now and then, when the radio was on, the music came on much more often—tango, folk music too. A football match or two. But the radio was like an echo, one of the echoes of the atmosphere of my little homeland.

-From the neighborhood where you were born. You were telling me there was a very important club.

-Very important. Yes.
There were several clubs because it was the era of the emergence of clubs. The most important club was Defensores de Florida. Why was it the most important? Because it had two large dance halls.
The basketball court and a hall with a stage. Spacious, large. So, filling both halls made it profitable to hire an orchestra, but I didn’t go to see orchestras very often.
The orchestras went to venues with higher revenue.

-When orchestras played, did you go with your mother? Did your mother take you to see orchestras?

-Yes. The first orchestra I saw was Troilo’s, from 1947.
There was a singer who is very etched in my memory, who was…

-Floreal?

-Ruiz. The only thing I remember is that, off to the side, sitting on the stage, I remember his very warm, very clear voice, remarkable diction.

-And you were seven years old!

-Yes, I understood everything he said.

-Amazing.

-Then came high school. In high school, I only had one friend with whom I would go to see El Polaco Goyeneche.

-Oh, right.

-Yes, he sang with Troilo.

-Where did you go? Where did you perform?

-At the Richmond café on Suipacha Street. El Polaco had just joined the orchestra and I loved him, I loved him.
It was expensive, I don’t remember how much, but… It started at three in the afternoon. We would skip school and go.
His name was Carlos Hoffman.

-Your friend?

-Yes.

-Natu, you said they were expensive. How did they get their money?

-The 1940s were the last period of relative prosperity that Argentina experienced. Exportable products were coming in. Fewer inhabitants.
And the middle classes, poor like us, had money.

-They could afford it.

-We could.
My father, for example, who was a bus driver, owned a bus, when I finished high school at Krause, at 17, he spoke to me and said, well, let’s try another stage, engineering.
Because he always pushed me towards courses of study, technical studies, mechanical, bus driving, driving, filling in. In other words, a partner for the continuity of work. And I said, yes, well, let’s do it.
And I studied, my brother and my sister studied.

-Isn’t that great?

-Because my father’s antifascism, his reading in Italy, and his exposure to communism here in Buenos Aires, enlightened him.
He read…
And he instilled in us that the poor had to save themselves with their minds. Not just with work. And that was more or less fulfilled.
I don’t have it here, because I would have shown it to you. When my father died, I went to look for his things, his room, and among them I found the clipping, the newspaper La Prensa, where the headline was “Engineers Graduated in 1968.” The list was there.
On that list, Osvaldo Américo Natucci’s name is underlined, and I have it laminated.

-How lovely! Well, I’d love to see it later.

-I’ll show it to you later.

-So, you didn’t know your dad kept that memento?

-No.

-Were the graduates’ photos published in the newspaper?

-Yes.

-How wonderful, how lovely, Natu!

-Yes, I have it there. I didn’t know, and I have it there; I laminated it myself.

-Of course, to preserve it.

-Well, more on to tango.

-Yes. So, we’ll go back to your…

-Carlos Hoffman used to come with me to see, and I had already danced a couple of tangos back then.

-Do you remember your first tango?

-Yes, I danced my first tango with Nelly, a friend of my mother’s. Not the same age as my mother, but not a young girl either.
At a simple neighborhood club.

-Not Defensores?

-No.
I learned the tango dance incorrectly. I could sort of manage it.

-How did you learn it? Excuse me.

-A cousin taught me.

-This cousin who lived…?

-In the house behind us. Etzio. His name was Etzio.
He was old enough to dance tango.

-He was older than you.

-Yes. He must have been in his early twenties. He taught me the basic steps, the ocho cortado, and the corrida.

-So, it was instruction directly from him.
You didn’t attend the practices. He didn’t invite you to the practices.

-No, no. In the backyard of the house.
And I went for it. I didn’t just go for it. Actually, I was motivated to go, because at that Defensores de Florida club, I helped the DJ play music.

-That’s very interesting.

-Yes. Because they were playing music from the first LPs that had come out. I think it was in ’74. And he asked me if I wanted to help him and watch the dance, because the curtain was closed and you could peek sideways at how the dance was going.
And why was I helping him? To make the tandas faster and more appropriate. Because the tandas aren’t on the LP, you have to create them.

-Right.

-On the LP there can be two, at most three in a set.

-That are suitable for dancing.

And from the same orchestra, the same singer. It’s a construction.

-Right.

-That’s why there are music directors.
The same rhythm. Each orchestra didn’t have… the same… musical organization as time went on. Well, and that’s when he asked me: find me Marino with Troilo, “Tres Amigos.”
It’s on one of those…
I’d go, find it, give it to him. Because he had already gotten two other Marino records.

-Of course, and he had to quickly change the record or turn it over.

-Yes, yes.

-A skill. Do you remember his name? So you were with him, to give me some context. It was the Defensores de Florida Club. Obviously, when there weren’t any orchestras playing and the music was played on records. Where the orchestra usually performed, there was a curtain that closed, and the DJ stayed behind it. In other words, people didn’t see him.

-No.

-They didn’t see him.
Very interesting point.

-They didn’t see him, nor did they criticize him. Nothing.

-But at the same time, you were helping him behind the scenes, preparing the tandas. Do you remember the name of that DJ? You don’t remember.
You don’t remember. And for the people, was he really anonymous? It’s clear they didn’t see him.

-Completely.

-Completely anonymous.

-It didn’t matter.

-But he did care about doing his job well.

-Yes, he was paid. And then he didn’t want to receive criticism from the milonga dancers. When he left, and so on.
And that was another great historical moment for tango, I drew back the curtain and saw the milonga.
And I think I thought, well, memories always adapt. But I think, I’m almost sure I thought, I want to be there.

-The anonymous music director.
Do you realize the role that man played in your life? Because the music you prepared, the criteria you have for choosing music, what you are as a music director—do you realize it? That man is Osvaldo Natucci’s anonymous music director who awakened the beast.

-Of course.

-I started the interview with the question I usually ask, and I’d like to end with the one I usually ask at the end. Can you define tango in one word?

-Just one word?

-If possible.

-Tango?
.…
Emotion.

-I like it.
Thanks, Natu!
…
How lovely! Thank you!