chameleon in tango color

With his little siblings, Samuel and Fanny, he used to sit by the sidewalk in order to sing tango with the help of some copy of El Alma que Canta. Those were the same tango pieces that in the evening the big radio stations of the period daily broadcast. At that house where he spent his childhood in the city of Santa Fe, by the side of an unpaved dusty street, his father treasured discs with recordings of Carlos Gardel, Rosita Quiroga and Francisco Canaro. That absolute kingdom of tango ended for Bernardo Mitnik the day his brother turned up with a drum set and introduced him into the world of jazz. He was a fan of Gene Krupa. In that milieu Bernardo would be known as Miki Lerman.

Alberto, a cobbler born in Ukraine, and his wife (Lerman), a Rumanian Jew, came to Argentina in 1923 with their two older daughters. World War I had made them met when he, as Russian soldier, had arrived at the Rumanian town of Marcoles. Later in the humid Santa Fe, where those three kids who used to sit at the sidewalk would be born, he worked as itinerant cobbler and drifted around Laguna Paiva and other towns. But that balance was broken: as Bernardo was asthmatic, when he was twelve years old his family moved to Deán Funes, in the north of the province of Córdoba, in search of a drier climate. That town was, like Laguna Paiva, a railway junction and needed a cobbler as much as the other town. Don Alberto never installed a workshop: he preferred to carry it on his shoulders, to be suntanned and dusty, to enjoy the hospitality of people. He did not read and was quite fond of talking.

Bernardo’s mother sang songs in Yiddish at home, and she used to say that her father sang so good and so loudly that he was heard at other villages. Her son, perhaps trying to emulate his grandfather, sang to the top of his voice tangos so bombastic like "Remembranza" or "Alma de bohemio". When he was fourteen he began to make a living with his twofold art: he was a jazz drummer and vocalist in a tango orchestra. He only had to change clothes and go back to the stage without a rest.

But his father wanted him to study in the high school of commerce and to later study medicine. So Bernardo entered a commerce school and was an employee at an accountant’s office in Córdoba. On one of those occasions his boss was the old Briski, father of the actor Norman Briski. But soon it was evidenced that Bernardo was able to earn more money by beating a drum than by accounting. So the mambo beat brought him to Buenos Aires for the first time in 1951 with a female rhumba dancer. In that group he played bongo and drums even though he was able to play bass as well. But the contract failed as it usually used to happen. After many trips, and after much going to and fro, only in 1960 he would definitively settle in the Capital.

In 1955, surviving in Santiago de Chile, he wrote a letter to Horacio Salgán offering himself as singer. He signed as Bernardo Mitnik, but between brackets he dared to suggest that his sobriquet could be Mario Bernal. Of course, he did not sing with Salgán.

Seven years later with a tropical music combo he would join, instead, El Club del Clan. The latter was a commercial venture of Ricardo Mejía, an RCA-Victor official, who achieved imposing an anodyne light music but also his objective was to make tango become a marginal expression. Even the Victor company destroyed the record matrices in order to prevent the future playing of tango discs. That dark Mejía was the one who invented Chico Novarro, a pseudonym created in opposition to Largo Novarro (so called because he was quite tall), with whom Bernardo formed a duo. And, as such, Bernardo recorded "El orangután" and "El camaleón”, numbers that represented that pitiful new wave, name that was given to this type of music after a television program.

In 1965 Bernardo decided, however, to compose his first tango. He conceived it while he was traveling on an Onda bus from Colonia to Montevideo and he named it "Nuestro balance". This piece is greatly influenced by bolero but it also discovers the rare and ubiquitous talent that Bernardo has that imagines a couple seated at a café talking about the crisis of their relationship. It makes the emotional tension grow up to a touching dramatic outburst which finally flows back. He sang that tango of his at the Festival del Parque del Plata in Uruguay and then Novarro was awarded.

In 1971, he composed "Cordón", the best of his tangos, now in an absolute porteño vein. While Bernardo was queuing up at a bank, he started to compose a melody. While he was looking for words he looked at the sidewalk curb, imagining that it was «hard like the soul of a main wall». So that dialogue was being born, full of ideas and metaphors between man and that urban element, which is closer in childhood, at that time when the streetcar shaved it, and that finally expresses, symbolically, all that reality. In fact it is, for Bernardo, a fancy reality because on that unpaved street of Santa Fe when he was a child there was no curb at all. Chico premiered this tango in 1972 at a café concert show titled No le Vengo a Vender whose main character was a street vendor who handles a big boa to offer spot-removers, potato peelers, ball point pens, and so he becomes a poet for people.

The Novarro’s tango output is relatively scarce. "Nuestro balance" was followed in 1970 by "Cantata a Buenos Aires". The latter was derived from an engagement for the advertising of the Peñaflor wine. Then he thought the phrase «¿Cómo no hablar de Buenos Aires, sí es una forma de saber quién soy?» (Why not talking about Buenos Aires?, if it’s a way of knowing who I am). But the commercial failed and from that failure the tango remained. That same year he released the forgettable "Un sábado más", previously conceived as a ballad. A fines de los '70 aparecieron "El último round", "Sueño de cupé" and the milonga "Mi negro volvé". In 1980 he recorded Por Fin al Tango, title of the only long-playing record he devoted to the genre.

In 1981, he together with Eladia Blázquez wrote "Convencernos", a tango that, maybe unconsciously, picks up the nationalism with slogans, empty and full of voluntarism which was an article of the official propaganda during the tenebrous military dictatorship that began in 1976. In that unhappy lyric was greater the contribution of Eladia than Chico's, even though both accept their responsibility.

Later he wrote "Somos los ilusos", "Nadie mejor que vos", the milonga "Minas de Buenos Aires" with music by the pianist Héctor Stamponi, and the tango "Se juega" with music composed by the singer and bandoneonist Rubén Juárez.

As composer, with lyrics by Federico Silva, he wrote the tangos "Se te hace tarde" and "Amor de juguete", and the milonga "Por ejemplo". He as well created "Buenos Aires terminal". He wrote with Eladia Blázquez (the lyrics belong to him, the music, to her) "Pazzia" (madness), in allusion to the contemporary Argentina. With Amanda Velazco, Mandy, he wrote "Salón para familias", that room with certain privacy at the cafés where couples broke up.

His is a curious case: for each category of public there is a different Chico Novarro. For women he is the one of "Arráncame la vida". For grown-up men, he's the one of "Cordón" or "El último round". Truck drivers identify him with "El orangután" or "El camaleón". The young rock fans were touched by "Carta de un león a otro". Whether because Bernardo was unable to define himself or because he had fun in that artistic transformism (such as singing the tango "Destellos" to the beat of a cha-cha) or because with that pliability he was in tune with the trend in vogue and took advantage of its benefits he always wavered among Miki Lerman, Chico Novarro and that Mario Bernal that he was as well, but never with that name so artificial.

Excerpted from the book Tango Judío. Del Ghetto a la Milonga, Editorial Sudamericana, Buenos Aires, 1998.hospitality of people. He did not read and was quite fond of talking.