e composed only two tangos. This forgotten musician was born at a house on 1017 Carlos Gardel Street —previously Isla de Flores— that still exists since the mid- nineteenth century in the heart of the Barrio Sur of Montevideo (Uruguay) and which was owned by a family of African origin that descended from Ocampo and Vilaza.

His father, León Ángel, was a musician in the carnival parades, but he worked as a coachman and his mother, Juana Carril Berro, used to iron clothes for a living. Very little is known up to now about his maternal grandparents, José Carril and Regina Berro. But much more is known about his paternal grandparents: Agustín Ocampo, an African from Congo, musician and slave of Manuel F. Ocampo and Ángela Vilaza, an Uruguayan, also daughter of African slaves.

Despite his childhood as a poor boy he was brought up with love and was sent to study to an institution by his uncle Pedro Ángelo Pérez Vilaza, well known as a harbor porter and professional tailor, and he was also raised by his grandmother Ángela that was a housemaid.

He attended the complete education at the free school for boys at the Sociedad San Vicente de Paul where he evidenced his gifts for music (guitar and violin) and drawing. He studied with Juan Peluffo, Italian teacher of painting, and portrait painter and, his musical beginnings were in charge of José Lisandro Pérez.

The tough environment in the streets of the low lands of the Barrio Sur would forge in this young man all the requirements to become a sturdy guy who in his scarce confrontations did not care if his opponent was older or if he caried a weapon: he trusted in his blows.

The twentieth century had started and things in the country were beginning to be politically complicated. It was possible that Modesto could be recruited because he was already a grown-up person. Then his family decided to move to Argentina.

When he was just twenty-two, one day in 1903, he left to look for better horizons: a profession as photographer in the city of Buenos Aires. His son told us: «his first job was as an apprentice in the laboratory of the Fotografía Bixio run by an Uruguayan professional... soon thereafter he would join the photo studio owned by the American citizen Chandler on 260 Florida Street. There Víctor Modesto managed to handle completely the technical knowledge of what is known as «illuminated» portraits, that is to say, a photograph with finishing touches as a painting». And he became head of the workshop.

In 1905 he married Paula Pérez in Montevideo. They settled in Buenos Aires where their first two daughters María del Carmen and Paula Ángela were born. In the span between the birth of one daughter and the other he composed his two tangos "Queca" and "Te amo con delirio". The first recording —by the Típica Criolla led by Vicente Greco— of "Queca" was made and he began a friendly relationship with the bandoneon player Francisco Famiglietti (aka El Tano). The second recording of that tango was made by Francisco Canaro for Odeon and gave rise to a lawsuit because Modesto’s surname was wrongly mentioned on the record.

The reseacher Oscar Zucchi mentions Ocampo in his story about Famiglietti in his book El Tango, el bandonéon y sus intérpretes, volume I. In it he comments that the bandoneonist never recorded and never played as a sideman because he put together —after c.1912— small groups that appeared at cafés. He even precisely enumerates the fellow players that accompanied him and there our Oriental Afro-descendant will appear: «... and among the violinists Amado Simone and the outstanding black musician, Modesto Ocampo, —like Espinoza (Lorenzo Espinoza, flutist)— the popular player and composer that was for a rather long time with Famiglietti».

Below he transcribes a story by Luis, brother of the bandoneon player: «On one occasion Francisco was required to play with his trio at a café in Boedo; the violinist was Modesto Ocampo. As I said above he was dark black, a great instrumentalist and a great person. They were asked to play onstage and the owner was quite satisfied but he privately told my brother: “Look Francisco, I like the trio very much but I’d like that you change the violinist: he’s quite black, it won’t fit here”... Francisco replied: “Look, he’s black as you say but he’s been working with me for a long time because he’s a good musician and has a big heart. So instead of firing him I reject the job you offer me”. This action indicates how noble boy Francisco was, a godly soul».

The friendly tie was evidenced in the dedication of Famiglietti’s tango “El contrapunto [b]”: «To my friends and partners Modesto Ocampo and Juan Della Santa». Finally, Zucchi tells us about Francisco’s stay in Montevideo for a series of appearances in 1914 when for six months he was regarded as one of the most proficient bandoneonists in the night scene of Montevideo. During that period alongside Famiglietti, Modesto Ocampo had an outstanding role and indeed it was his professional debut in his fatherland.

On a visit to Buenos Aires, in 1917, his father León died. Ocampo returned to his country with sorrow and with some health problems. Soon thereafter, in June 1920, his beloved uncle Pedro also passed away.

In Montevideo he is the support of his wife and his two children —Pedro Víctor (1913) and María Magdalena (1915-2000)— so he run a photo shop that, for several reasons, he had to close. Those were hard times for household economies. Finally, he began to work in the Montevideo Town Hall.

Modesto did not refrain from social actions when he was confronted with inequalities, either those concerning race and gender or the ones about labor opportunities, in which the group of Afro descendants that have come due to the colonial period of slavery always was immersed and to which he himself belonged. Definitively settled with his family, he did not hesitate in contributing thought and action according to his ideas but he was at a loss when his actions were not understood or accompanied.

Discouraged about his political work, he devoted to his family’s support. His attic at home was the place he chose to recover his vocation for drawing and painting. After his trip to Buenos Aires in 1946 maybe the sole exhibition of his oil paintings together with other Afro descendant artists was held in Montevideo by the committee Amigos y Colaboradores de Nuestra Raza.

The colective and familiar memory do not forgets either the fist fighter or the violinist and the guitar strummer, or even the professional of the «illuminated» photography, or the one who was secluded in his attic —«his workshop in heaven»— to devote to his oil paintings or his charcoal drawings that he would later give for free here, there and everywhere. Or the sound of his music in his workshop or on the balcony of the Rambla Sur with his friends when the sun was serenely setting. For some he was simply Don Vito, for others, in a low voice, he was identified as El Negro Vilaza.

But regretfully, they were oblivious of the composer of two anthological tangos, of the recordings of “Queca”, of his development as music player alongside his friend Famiglietti and his claim made to the Odeon label in 1946.

Finally the day of his last departure arrived. The same route, from the same house and towards the same place, the Cementerio Central of Montevideo, like with his grandfather Agustín Ocampo, the African, nearly a century before. His remains were placed fairly close to the ones of the former.

The coincidences of fate made that in the evening of that day of prayer for the dead the orchestras led by Osvaldo Fresedo and Aníbal Troilo had their debut in Montevideo. The latter, like Modesto, were one, a «milonguero viejo» and the other, «nunca se fue de su barrio» (never left his neighborhood).