Discépolo, Enrique Santos (1901–1951)

Enrique Santos Discépolo (b. 27 March 1901; d. 23 December 1951), Argentine radio commentator, movie director, and composer of tangos. Born in Buenos Aires and the brother of the neogrotesque dramatist Armando Discépolo, Enrique Santos was known as "Discepolín" to distinguish him from Armando. Discépolo participated fully in the enormous expansion of commercial popular culture based in Buenos Aires in the golden years following World War I and the 1930 watershed marked by economic collapse and the country's first fascist-inspired military dictatorship. A radio personality of considerable note and a successful movie director, Discépolo also wrote some of the most famous tangos of the period, compositions that have become an integral part of the classical repertoire: "¿Qué vachaché?" "Esta noche me emborracho," "¿Qué sapa, señor?" "Chorra," and, perhaps one of the most famous tango lyrics of all time, "Cambalache." The latter was banned by the military dictatorship in the late 1970s because of its harshly pessimistic tone, which was interpreted as socially disruptive.

See alsoTangoxml .

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Horacio Arturo Ferrer and Luis Adolfo Sierra, Discepolín (1965).

Norberto Galasso, Discépolo y su época (1967).

Homero Manzi, Discépolo (1973).

Osvaldo Pellettieri, Tango (II) (1976).

Additional Bibliography

Ferrer, Horacio Arturo, and Luis Adolfo Sierra. Discepolín: Poeta del hombre que está solo y espera. Buenos Aires: Editorial Sudamericana, 2004.

Gálvez, Lucía, and Enrique Espina Rawson. Romances de tango. Buenos Aires: Grupo Editorial Norma, 2002.

Tahier, Julio, Pedro G. Orgambide, Juan Carlos Ghiano, et al. Tango y teatro. Buenos Aires: Fundación Autores Editorial La Abeja, 2004.

                                  David William Foster