Organito de la Tarde

"Organito de la Tarde" evokes with remarkable specificity the sound of an afternoon street organ — the portable instrument that once provided the soundtrack to Buenos Aires neighborhoods before radio made such things obsolete. Canaro's orchestra mimics and transcends this humble source material, creating music that is simultaneously nostalgic for a vanishing urban soundscape and beautiful on its own terms. There is a circular, repetitive quality to the melody that recalls the hand-cranked mechanism of a barrel organ: patterns that return with small variations, suggesting the limited but somehow inexhaustible repertoire of a street musician. The production has a warmth appropriate to afternoon light filtering through apartment windows, the orchestra's smoothness suggesting memory's tendency to round off edges. This is tango archaeology — the preservation in sound of a Buenos Aires that had already begun to disappear when it was recorded.