Biography

Breakups.

They happen in relationships, friendships and professional life. 

Some are mutual; some are dramatic.

Some hit you like lightning, others you see coming for miles.

What caused the breakup between the man we explored in our first month of Notas de Oro, Juan D’Arienzo, and his star pianist Biagi is unclear. Biagi’s testimony and the rapid, well-organized launch of his band soon after leaving D’Arienzo point to a professional split. But the more dramatic version, which suits D’Arienzo’s temper and makes for great tango lore is that D’Arienzo became jealous of Biagi’s popularity and didn't want to share the spotlight with him.

Ironically, D'Arienzo was right, Biagi’s sound deserved its own stage...

Rodolfo Biagi (Manos Brujos) was born in San Telmo in 1906, studying piano from a young age at the La Prensa conservatory and playing for silent films when he was thirteen.

He was later noticed and invited to play with the band leader 'Pacho' Maglio—one of the true OG’s of tango, who will have is time in the spotlight in a future month. Biagi worked in cabaret bands, recorded with Carlos Gardel, co‑wrote the tango “Indiferencia” with Juan Carlos Thorry, and was a member of the orchestra of Juan Canaro (Francisco Canaro’s brother) before life took an unexpected turn.

Biagi would often go to the cabaret Chantecler to listen to the orchestra of his friend Juan D’Arienzo. One night the pianist Lidio Fasoli, who was notoriously late for shows, didn’t arrive and D’Arienzo asked Biagi to sit in. D’Arienzo liked what he heard, and when Fasoli’s contract ended in 1935 D’Arienzo called the young Biagi.

Together they forged the signature sound that kicked off the Época de Oro. Biagi and D’Arienzo quickly increased the number of violins and bandoneons to five each and created a driving, staccato beat that dancers adored. Biagi wrote new, brisk arrangements and pushed the steady compás forward. He left such a mark that his successors Juan Polito and Fulvio Salamanca had to carry on his style.

Often a breakup makes room for something new. And we still have the 71 outstanding records they created together.

Like a river that must fork, their partnership divided into two currents—each powerful, each carrying music the other alone could not have created. In September 1938 Biagi formed his own orchestra. He debuted at the Marabú cabaret, signed to Odeon, and earned the nickname “Manos Brujas” (Spellbinding Hands) from a radio sponsor. 

Biagi’s orchestra is a favourite of milongueros. His piano is percussive and bright with arpeggios that punctuate phrase endings. Biagi favours off‑beat accents that can momentarily disorient dancers but in a playful manner that dancers find captivating to attempt to capture.Singers such as Teófilo Ibáñez, Andrés Falgás, Jorge Ortiz, Alberto Amor and Hugo Duval gave voice to many hits. Biagi never lost his rhythmic drive, but he balanced it with a smile and a twinkle; that blend of punch and charm is why his music still fills floors today.

The narrator finds himself on his knees before an altar built out of lies and money-boxes shaped like hearts, forced to “commune” in everyday hypocrisy just to earn his daily bread and a corner to exist in.

Ibáñez doesn’t sing the full lyric (see unsung parts below in the lyrics), but later verses strip away even the comfort of love; what remains is a bohemian night mixing dreams and alcohol, with a glass bought in coins precisely because, unlike people, it cannot sell him out.

The closing image of daily life as a circus full of clowns makes the song feel less like a lament over one failed romance and more like a broadside against a whole social order... exactly the kind of bitter, lucid anger that runs through Gorrindo’s work.

“Gólgota“ from August 1938:

El Trece – 1938

Across cultures, people have treated certain numerals as more than digits: 

tiny talismans or tiny curses, carrying stories, linguistic quirks and historic events that turn a harmless glyph into a social blessing or taboo.

4 is bad luck in East Asia, 666 in Christian lore, and our Western classic: The number 13. Widely feared in Europe and North America thanks to layered stories: Loki caused trouble as the uninvited 13th guest in Norse mythology, Judas was the 13th guest in the last supper, plus later cultural reinforcement such as “Friday the 13th”).

The fear of 13 even has a name (triskaidekaphobia) and shows up in real life…omitted hotel floors, skipped aisle numbers, extra caution around that date.

Even in tango we can’t seem to escape it! “El Trece” - “The Thirteen” was recorded by Rodolfo Biagi as one of his first instrumentals with his newly formed orchestra. 

What’s with that title? Was including the number 13 in the title meant to ward off a rival band by tempting bad luck onto their sheet music? Or is it like telling an actor to ‘break a leg’, where courting bad luck is wishing good luck?

...

No. 

In tango, numbers like that often point to a very concrete moment in time, and “El 13” was simply written in the year 1913. 

Alberico Spátola, a Montevideo-born musician settled in Buenos Aires, shuttling between opera pits and café pianos, showed his new tango composition to his old colleague Ángel Villoldo, the same poet who also wrote the original lyrics for “El choclo”. Villoldo hears the hook, adds a light, catchy lyric that begins “Qué lindo es bailar un tango así”, and soon the operetta company Caramba-Sconamiglio is opening a topical show at the Teatro Coliseo simply titled “¡Trece!”. Spátola followed it with a string of tangos titled “El 14”, “El 15”, “El 16” and so over the years, so his catalog literally counts its way through the years.

You can find more numerical easter eggs in the milonga if you pay attention: “Milonga del ‘900” which was named to evoke the “novecientos” — the turn-of-the-century — signalling a nostalgic, old-style milonga atmosphere tied to that era. Piazzolla’s Michelangelo '70 was written in 1970 as a tribute to the Michelangelo nightclub. Or take “El Once” (The Eleven) for example… composed by Osvaldo Fresedo, who composed it for the eleventh edition of the Baile del Internado — the medical students’ annual “Boarders’ Ball”.

Many bands took “El 13” up over the years. With Biagi cutting his instrumental take in 1938. And if you’re superstitious, there’s a nice irony: with the success of this tango, Spátola and all the orchestras interpreting it probably did more than anyone to rescue the number 13 from its “bad luck” reputation.

I for one am not afraid to play it at a Milonga. To the contrary!

“El Trece” from November 1938:

Indiferencia – 1942

Much of the history of tango music revolves around the question of who “owns” a song.

We emotionally connect a song with a specific artist or orchestra, but behind any tune is an industry of composers, writers, singers, musicians, audio engineers, managers, and publishers working to make that song a hit. Given music is, at the end of the day, a business, the question of ownership can cause quite a bit of tension.

The song “Indiferencia” sits right in the middle of that tension. Tango dancers often associate the song with D’Arienzo’s 1938 version with Alberto Echagüe; which we encountered in the first month of “Notas de Oro”. Hugo del Carril picked it up the same year with Tito Ribero’s orchestra, and Francisco Canaro followed with his own version sung by Roberto Maida. But the song was actually written in 1937 by Biagi and Juan Carlos Thorry.

At the time, both Thorry and Biagi were playing for Fancisco Canaro’s brother, Juan Canaro, and working for Radio París in a theater hidden inside the Casa Argentina Sherrer department store on Suipacha.

Juan Canaro’s típica and Rudy Ayala’s jazz band would alternate sets and the audience would vote which was their favorite. In a rehearsal break Biagi sat down at the piano and played Thorry a new tune he had just written, asking what he thought of it. Thorry liked it so much that he started jotting phrases right onto the piano lid, trying to catch the lines as Biagi repeated them.

While Biagi played piano on the D’Arienzo ’38 version, it wasn’t until September 1942, in the Odeon studios, that Biagi finally record Indiferencia under his own name with Jorge Ortiz on the mic (it was paired on disc with La Cumparsita, a tune you all know well). In Biagi’s 1942 recording, the beat for dancers is just as clear as in D’Arienzo’s, but the air inside the music changes. The phrases breathe more, the piano throws out bright off beat comments, and the violins sing longer lines that curl around Ortiz’s voice rather than simply pushing him forward.

The lyrics travel from comfort to coldness. The narrator remembers a time when he had money, friends and a home, and believed in the people around him. Then comes betrayal and hypocrisy, and when he finally reaches the moment of true need and asks for help, no one steps forward. People avert their eyes and answer him not with words but with silence, the pure “indifference” of the title.

As a historical side note, one chronicler remembers a young radio actress named Eva Duarte asking Biagi to play Indiferencia when they were working together at Radio Belgrano, because it stirred up personal memories for her. Biagi would later speak warmly of that friendship, even after she had become Eva Perón and moved into an entirely different kind of spotlight.

Now, picture the piano lid, Thorry scribbling, Biagi repeating the phrase until it sticks. Years later, the loop closes on shellac. Tonight, Indiferencia sits firmly at Biagi’s keys.

“Indiferencia” from September 1942:

Humillación – 1941 (Guest Post by Milton "El Gallo")

In the early 1930s, Biagi was the pianist in Juan D’Arienzo’s orchestra. Night after night, dancers began watching the piano instead of the bandleader. Biagi’s hands snapped across the keys with razor-sharp precision - staccato, percussive, almost defiant. He didn’t decorate the rhythm; he commanded it. The crowd started calling him “Manos Brujas” which means Witch Hands.

Eventually, the attention became a problem. D’Arienzo wanted discipline and uniformity. Biagi’s piano had too much personality. So Biagi walked away, and in 1938, he formed his own orchestra.

What followed was one of tango’s most dramatic transformations. Biagi didn’t soften. He doubled down.

In 1939, his orchestra recorded one of my personal favorites of his: “Humillación.” The title alone (Humiliation in English) feels like a personal declaration (and perhaps a message to D’Arienzo?) The track launches with a stark, driving whirlwind of a sequence, each note landing like a verdict. When the band enters, it doesn’t swell romantically; it marches. Dancers feel it immediately. The song doesn’t invite you to float, it demands precision, tension, and control. Oh, that ending, pure mischievous magic by Biagi!

At milongas, people reportedly stopped mid-conversation when Biagi’s records came on. You didn’t dance Biagi casually. You either committed or you sat down.

What makes the story fascinating is that Biagi never tried to be fashionable. While other orchestras chased lyricism or lushness, he obsessed over time. He believed tango lived or died by the exact placement of a beat. His piano wasn’t emotional in the traditional sense but it made dancers feel powerful, grounded, inevitable.

Years later, when tango tastes shifted and Biagi fell out of commercial favor, dancers never abandoned him. Even today, when “Humillación” hits the floor, there’s a subtle change in posture: backs straighten, steps sharpen.

Rodolfo Biagi didn’t just play tango. He disciplined it and in doing so, gave dancers a rhythm they could trust with their bodies.

"Humillación", March 1941:

En El Lago Azul – 1959 (Guest Post by Milton "El Gallo")

I have one more contribution to make: Biagi with Duval ❤️

When Rodolfo Biagi hired Hugo Duval, it surprised people. Duval didn’t have the anguished, broken sound that tango singers were expected to carry. His voice was clean, controlled, almost calm. On paper, he seemed like the wrong match for Biagi’s relentless, percussive orchestra.

In reality, it was a calculated risk and a brilliant one.

Biagi believed tango didn’t need excess drama to be powerful. He believed in tension through restraint. Duval understood this instinctively. Instead of fighting the rhythm, he stood inside it, letting Biagi’s piano do the striking while his voice delivered the words with cool inevitability.

That aesthetic comes into sharp focus in their 1950s recording of “En El Lago Azul.”

The song’s imagery is deceptively serene - a blue lake, reflection, stillness - but Biagi refuses to let it drift into sweetness. The piano enters with precise, clipped insistence, keeping the scene grounded, almost restrained against its own beauty. When Duval begins to sing, he doesn’t paint the picture romantically. His delivery is calm, nearly motionless, as if the memory is being observed from a distance rather than relived.

The effect is quietly unsettling. The lake feels less like a place of peace and more like a place where emotions have been carefully submerged.

By this stage in his career, Biagi rehearsed with an almost surgical focus. He obsessed over timing, over the exact weight of each accent. Duval was never asked to emote more, only to be exact. The contrast between the disciplined piano and Duval’s measured voice creates a tension that never resolves, only deepens.

On the dance floor, “En El Lago Azul” changes the room. Dancers soften their movements without becoming loose. Pauses stretch. Steps become intentional. The music asks for listening, not display.

This is Biagi and Duval in the 1950s at their most refined: tango that looks calm on the surface, but underneath holds everything in place with iron control like a still lake, hiding its depth.

En El Lago Azul, March 1959: