Category Archives: Julio De Caro

My favorite tandas: mixed tanda – ‘A don Pedro Maffia’

Pedro Maffia (1899-1967) played in the orchestras of Roberto Firpo, Francisco Lomuto, Juan Carlos Cobián and Julio De Caro. Perhaps his most important legacy, however, was as a composer of some of the greatest tangos of all time. This tanda features four of those masterpieces (‘Amurado’ was co-written by Maffia and Laurenz).

My favorite tandas: De Caro – ‘Saca chispas’

This is another rare tanda, comprising three great milongas by Julio de Caro (the first two composed by De Caro himself). My original plan was to play this set at El Metejón, a local BA milonga where I’ll be DJing tonight. However, a few days ago I announced on my Facebook wall that I’d play “Milonga de los fortines”, by Orquesta Típica Victor, and then realized I couldn’t really fit two milonga tandas from similar periods and orchestras on the same night. So I’ve decided to play a mixed tanda combining “Milonga de los fortines” with Lomuto’s “Qué tiempo aquel” and De Caro’s “No hay tierra como la mía”. I look forward to seeing how dancers react when I play the full De Caro tanda next time I’m DJing.

(With thanks to Alia, the multi-talented Syrian DJ.)

Discographies of the major tango orchestras

The discographies of the tango orchestras are scattered all around the web. Below is my best attempt to make the relevant links all available in one place. When I found more than one discography for a given orchestra, I chose the one which seemed most complete and reliable. I plan to keep this post updated, so if you think I’m missing something, please let me know.

Update: See here for my current attempt to improve on these discographies. The links below will gradually link to my own discographies, as they become available.