thank a friend who, by mistake, handed me the cassette by Rosaura Silvestre Canto por vos... Buenos Aires, thinking that it was by Margarita Silvestre. I was surprised when I heard a tango artist like she is, a lyrical singer with a privileged voice. When I searched data in the Internet, I discovered that her songs were heard and were very well known in Japan.

She was born in the neighborhood of Barracas. Her parents were Ramona Ruiz and León Alderete, both played instruments and enjoyed music very much.

Her stage name is connected to a wild bird of the countryside. Her discoverer and the one who gave her that sobriquet was Roberto Jiménez, speaker of the La Casa de Carlos Gardel. There Rosaura used to sing folk music alongside great tango figures like José Basso, Héctor Mauré and Gloria Díaz. Roberto baptized her as: La Alondra de Buenos Aires.

Rosaura is a complete artist who has been polished with the passing of time. She has a mezzosoprano range. She studied singing with the soprano singer Sara César and learnt Spanish dances at age five. She plays guitar and castanets and dances flamenco and tango music. Her sponsor was José Pepitito Marrone, who helped her very much in her career. She appeared alongside him at the Teatro Cómico. Rosaura comments that to be allowed to sing you had to possess a number as variety artist. He helped her to get it and he recommended her to appear at the show in the Carpa Celeste y Blanca in Mar del Plata.

In her beginnings she sang in Michelangelo and at El Portal de San Pedro. In the summer of 1974 she appeared at the Carpa Celeste y Blanca located on Luro and Corrientes Streets in the show Grandes Valores del Tango along with Enrique Dumas, Roberto Rufino, Gloria Díaz, Jovita Luna, Guillermo Fernández, Jorge Sobral and the dancers Mónica Crámer Ayos and Víctor Ayos.

The following year, the newspaper La Capital de Mar del Plata, on February 3 published: «Rosaura Silvestre succeeds. She started as chorus girl and in only two years she has become a special singer». In August 1975 she appeared at the homage to Pichuco (Aníbal Troilo) at the Teatro Solís in Montevideo.

On Channel 10 of Mar del Plata she was at the contest Nace una estrella and she won it. It allowed her appearance on the Buenos Aires television. In December 1980 she appeared at the Auditorium of the Hotel Bauen with a show of her own, to very good acclaim by the critics: «A woman who gives her heart, her feeling and all the strength of her temper in each note, in each gesture... This evening is not one more evening, it is an evening to share a bouquet of songs with tenderness made song in the voice of a woman».

In the 80’s she is seen as a sentimental vocalist similar to Azucena Maizani but with a bigger power, in a period in which women with lower ranges are favored, singing a tango with the same format (using the same nuances and intonations), making us difficult to identify the singer. Rosaura was regarded as «a different voice».

She likes Azucena Maizani and Susy Leiva. She emphasized that she admires Azucena very much. I think that they are linked by the way of conveying her emotions through singing. We can also place the female singers María de la Fuente, Carmen del Moral and Aída Luz into this category, singers with a unique expressiveness. She as well sings another kind of songs like waltzes, boleros, milongas, chamamés and galopas. It is surprising her capability to adapt herself to the pieces she sings.

She is lyricist and composer. She set music to the poems by Luis Alposta, “Ante un recuerdo” and “Canción para Noriko”, pieces which were also recorded by her.

Rosaura rescues a woman very important in her career, Irma Lacroix, lyricist and poet, with whom she composed her best known pieces, the tangos: “Canto por vos Buenos Aires”, “Una alondra en el Japón”, “La sonrisa inmortal”, “No quemes tu vida” and the walz “Guiame mamá”. With Constante Aguer he wrote three chamamés “Y tú también me querías”, “Bienvenida [b]” and “Recuérdame”. Other lyricists which whom she collaborated were Alberto Lago, Abel Aznar and Eugenio Majul.

She traveled to Japan four times. In 1985 she appeared at the show Tango Dinámico with the José Basso orchestra along with the singer Fernando Soler. They toured several places of Japan for three months. In 1987 she traveled with Raúl Barboza, in 1991 with Jorge Dragone and, in March 1993, on the twentieth anniversary of a Foundation in Tokyo.

A Buenos Aires newspaper said about her: «With her overwhelming personality Rosaura Silvestre charmed the Japanese. It was like a piece of a tango neighborhood there in Tokyo».

In 2007, at the Jardín Japonés (Japanese Garden), her CD Voces para el amor together with her partner Shoshei Taniguchi, was presented. Rosaura was invited to sing at different homages to great tango figures like Francisco Canaro and Roberto Firpo. She appeared at the Festival de Cosquin in 2008.

Her first album was for the Music Hall label under the direction and arrangements by Oscar Cardozo Ocampo in which she sings “Amariré” (Guarani love legend) and “Pájaro campana”; she later recorded the disc Canta una alondra with the pieces “Serenata romancera” and “Canción para tu ternura”. She released an album for Japan Rosaura Silvestre canta tangos, along with the Trío Típico, Tito Ferrari (piano), Fabio Cernuda (bandoneon) and Roberto Beltrocco (double bass), produced by Akihito Baba, recorded in Buenos Aires in 1995. She also recorded the song “Canto por vos Buenos Aires” with Roberto Siri and his Orquesta Juvenil de Tango in an album produced by Baba.

She traveled to Germany and Spain in 2012, made several appearances in Buenos Aires. In 2015 she was awarded the Orden del Buzón granted by the Museo Manoblanca. She appeared in the radio program Japón Hoy, with Shoshei Taniguchi, on Radio Palermo.

Rosaura, with her tangos, succeeds in pairing up two nations with a different idiosyncrasy, Argentina and Japan, under the same feeling, tango.

Acknoledgements: to Luis Alposta, who got me into contact with Rosaura, to Rosaura for her kindness and for all the information she gave me, to Eduardo Bouisson, to Alfredo Álvarez, to Fabián Cernuda and Zygmunt Jankowski.