Celedonio Flores Biography

Celedonio Esteban Flores (1896 - 1947), a.k.a. “el Negro Cele”, was a poet and a tango lyricist, maybe the most important author of the so-called tangos lunfas (songs completely written in lunfardo). In his youth, he tried to imitate the pompous writing of the famous Nicaraguan poet Rubén Darío, but soon Celedonio chose the scenes, characters and language he saw and heard in his neighborhood, Villa Crespo.

            In 1920 a newspaper published one of his poems called Por la pinta; Carlos Gardel decided to compose a music for it: the result was the tango Margot, the first of the 21 lyrics of Celedonio that “El Morocho del Abasto” would record in his career.

Celedonio wrote more than 70 tango lyrics and many poems and sonnets lunfardos. Many times his writing style is defined in opposition to Pascual Contursi’s: the lyrics of Celedonio are usually humorous, sometimes sarcastic, always vigorous, unlike the sentimental and plaintive tone of Contursi.

Here the poem “Por qué canto así" that expresses the way Celedonio felt and conceived the tango. 

CELEDONIO (CIRCA 1930)

Por qué canto así

(C.E. Flores - J. Razzano)

Porque cuando pibe me acunaba en tangos
la canción materna que llamaba al sueño,
y escuché el rezongo de los bandoneones
bajo el emparrado de mi patio pobre.
Porque vi el desfile de las inclemencias
con mis pobres ojos de llorar abiertos,
y en aquella pieza de mis buenos viejos
tuvo la pobreza su mejor canción...

Y yo me hice en tangos,
me fui modelando en odio, en tristeza,
en las amarguras que da la pobreza,
en llantos de madres,
en las rebeldías del que es fuerte y tiene
que cruzar los brazos
cuando el hambre viene...
Y yo me hice en tangos,
porque es bravo, es fuerte,
tiene algo de vida,
tiene algo de muerte...

Porque quise mucho, porque me engañaron,
y pasé la vida barajando sueños...
Porque soy un árbol que vivió sin flores,
porque soy un perro que no tiene dueño...
Porque tengo odios que nunca los digo,
porque cuando quiero me desangro en besos...
Porque quise mucho y no me han querido...
¡Por eso yo canto tan triste, por eso!

THE ANTHOLOGICAL VERSION OF JULIO SOSA (1961)

History & Present of Lunfardo

Lunfardo originated as a criminal jargon at the end of the 19^th century in Buenos Aires and its arrabales [“outskirts”]. At first, it was spoken by thieves, procurers and fraudsters as a code language used to make communications unintelligible to others, but soon lunfardo spread to tango lyrics and finally to all social classes. That outlaw origin explains the variety of synonyms that lunfardo has for criminal activities and characters (and also the very name given to the jargon: the word “lunfardo” means “thief”).

Lunfardo was the linguistic result of the cultural mixing created by the European immigration, so its terms mostly have its roots in European languages (dialects of Italian, Spanish and French), but also some lunfardo words come from African and South American aboriginal languages (Quechua, Guaraní). It is not a language itself, because lunfardo follows the Spanish grammar and syntax, but its “dictionary” became so extensive that allowed an entire poetry and literature. 

It was banned in 1943 by the military dictatorship, that’s why many tango lyrics underwent ridiculous alterations until lunfardo was again permitted in 1947.

Nowadays lunfardo is part of the colloquial language of Buenos Aires and other cities of Argentina. Through the years, some of its terms have fallen into disuse, but many of them are still used with the same meaning they had more than one hundred years ago.

These are some lunfardo words you can hear in the streets and cafés of Buenos Aires:

Afanar  v.t. to steal

Apoliyar  v.i. to sleep

Bardo n. mess, confusion, muddle. Hacer ~ to make trouble, to provoke

Bife  n. slap, punch

Bondi  n. streetcar; bus

Cana  n. police; prison. Mandar en ~ to denounce, to inform on

Chamuyar  v.t. to convince; to speak loquaciously to achieve something; to deceive; to seduce

Chanta  adj. deceitful, unreliable

Deschavar(se)  v.t. to denounce; to give away

Escabiar  v.i. to drink (alcohol)

Laburar  v.i. to work 

Mina  n. woman

Orto  n. (vulg.) butt. Tener ~ to be lucky

Quilombo  n. originally “brothel”, also “mess”

Rati (vesre –reversing the order of syllables within a word– of Tira)  n. policeman