album rating: ★★★★☆
Genre: Tango / tango nuevo / candombe / milonga / world music. Daniel Melingo is one of the most singular figures in contemporary Argentine music — a singer, multi-instrumentalist and composer who emerged from the alternative rock scene of the Buenos Aires of the 1980s (playing in groups such as Los Abuelos de la Nada and Los Twist during the years of military dictatorship) before devoting himself entirely to a deeply personal and subversive reinvention of tango. Maldito Tango ('Cursed Tango') is his second album and his most celebrated, constructed over six months of building, dismantling and rebuilding. Melingo retains tango's essential instrumental voices — bandoneón, double bass, violin, guitar — while introducing a trombone, baritone saxophone, musical saw, steel drum, cajón and tablas alongside his own piano, clarinet, kazoo and vibraphone. The album's lyrics are written in lunfardo, the argot of the Buenos Aires underworld and tango's traditional poetic language, and Melingo's central stated purpose is to restore the slang poets of tango to their place in Argentina's cultural pantheon. Guest vocalists include Juan Carlos Cáceres, Cristóbal Repetto, Skay Belinsky, Horacio Fontova and Gabriel Fernández Capello (Fito Páez's drummer).
Label: Mañana (Argentina / France), 2007; licensed to Naïve for France, Switzerland and Belgium.
Producer: Daniel Melingo (self-produced).
Recording studios: Buenos Aires and Paris, 2007.
Critical reception: Maldito Tango was enthusiastically received in world music and tango circles internationally. The label's own notes describe it as 'a flamboyant and rare piece of work that breaks the rules of tango'. The All About Jazz review praised Melingo's 'excitingly innovative arrangements and masterful instrumental performances', comparing him favourably to Tom Waits, Serge Gainsbourg and the great tango singer Roberto Goyeneche. Amazon reviewers described it as 'sort of ghetto tango, candombe and milonga, dirty and sentimental, with modern elements but rooted in the genuine forms and styles of traditional tango.' The album is notable for being released on Mañana, the label founded by Eduardo Makaroff of the Gotan Project.
Commercial success: Maldito Tango reached a substantial and dedicated international audience across Europe and the Americas, particularly in France (where Naïve distributed it), Argentina and Spain. It is the album that established Melingo's international reputation and remains his most widely known and distributed work.
text generated by artificial intelligence — claude, sonnet 4.6 — free version, liable to contain errors