Alma de Bohemio

"Alma de Bohemio" — Soul of a Bohemian — finds Roberto Firpo in romantic territory that suited the early tango milieu perfectly. The bohemian self-image was central to early Argentine intellectual and artistic culture, and tango in its formative years was associated with exactly the marginal, nocturnal, creatively restless figures this title celebrates. Firpo's arrangement carries the piano prominently, giving the piece a slightly salon quality that reflects the music's position between the drawing room and the dance hall. The melody has a romantic sweep appropriate to its subject — this is music for someone who genuinely believes that loving art, wine, and beautiful melancholy constitutes a life well-lived. The cultural context draws from a specific Buenos Aires mythology: the artists and writers of the cafés, the poets who stayed up until three arguing about beauty, the musicians who played for next to nothing because the music itself was compensation. Whether Firpo inhabited this self-image sincerely or with some irony is difficult to determine from the recording alone, but the music takes the bohemian ideal seriously enough to give it genuine emotional weight. Best heard in dim light with a glass of something considered.