MORES, Mariano – Tango ‘Cafetin de Buenos Aires’ (1949) – TRIO OF VIOLIN or CLARINET, CELLO or VIOLA, AND PIANO

Other Identification:
Cafetín de Buenos Aires is an Argentine tango with lyrics by Enrique Santos Discépolo and music by Mariano Mores. It is considered a pivotal composition in the history of Buenos Aires, one of the city’s “fundamental tangos,” or “golden tangos.” It combines personal experience with the exchange of café experiences as an alternative to empirical science.

Cafetín de Buenos Aires was composed for a scene in the film ‘Corrientes, Calle de Ensueños’ (Corrientes, Street of Dreams), in which Mariano Mores himself played the leading man. He gave the melody to Enrique Santos Discépolo, commissioning him to write the lyrics with a week’s deadline, a task fulfilled, before the film’s premiere in September 1949.

The music is by Mariano Mores, whose real name was Mariano Alberto Martínez (1918-2016), an Argentine musician, pianist, composer, and tango orchestra conductor, author of several of the genre’s most widely known works.

The Mores-Discépolo partnership in this case repeated the collaboration that had produced other memorable works, such as the tango “Uno.”