Associated Press http://www.heraldtribune.com/
June 25, 2005

BUENOS AIRES, Argentina -- Argentines left carnations and burning cigarettes at the tomb of one of the country's greatest tango singers Friday, the anniversary of his death in a plane crash 70 years ago.

With a fedora hat rakishly pulled over his brow and a cigarette dangling from his lips, Carlos Gardel set the standard in the 1920s and early 1930s for Latin American leading men as he gave tango a huge boost worldwide.

The decades since Gardel's death while in his 40s in a 1935 air crash in Colombia have only added to the cult following of the Frank Sinatra-like crooner.

"Gardel is the greatest," said Nicolas Medina, 28, one of dozens of fans who showed up at his marble mausoleum. "There will never be another tango singer like him."

Misty-eyed, the Argentine lit a cigarette and cupped it in the outstretched bronze hand of a larger-than-life Gardel statue near his crypt.

A couple danced the tango for a few minutes in the cemetery as a guitarist played and fans filed into the mausoleum to see Gardel's wooden casket and black-and-white photographs now fading yellow.

In Buenos Aires, authorities organized tango ballroom competitions around the anniversary, radio replayed old hits and one TV station devoted hours to his life. Even the Carlos Gardel Museum organized a street fiesta for Friday night, planning for dark-suited men to lead women in slinky dresses through their tango steps.

Tourists on the waterfront, meanwhile, reveled in Gardel week as entertainers belted out cafe renditions of such songs he made famous as "Mi Buenos Aires Querido" - Spanish for "My Beloved Buenos Aires."

Tango today has traveled far from the muddy River Plate docks where it arose over a century ago, aided by Gardel as one of the early pioneers for the melancholic form of song and dance that has gained adherents as distant as the United States, Europe and Japan.

Through song, Gardel expressed the angst of a difficult age when millions of often penniless Italian and Spanish immigrants arrived early last century by ship seeking a new life in South America. But instead of propserity, many simply encountered hard knocks and songs like "My Sad Night" gave voice to the hardscrabble life of many a migrant.

Orfelina Cortejo Moya, 64, grew up in a family of 13 children in frigid, windswept Patagonia in the decade that followed the death of Gardel. The housewife said his songs still move her today.

"In Patagonia, where the wind always blows and the cold chills you to the bone, we used to listen to Gardel on a radio powered by a windmill and my mother sang me Carlos' songs as lullabies," she said.

"We were 13 children and we all used to sit around the radio keeping warm by listening to that amazing voice," she added tearfully. "It's something you feel deep inside and something that stays with you every day and makes you want to shout: 'viva!' "

The Carlos Gardel museum in Buenos Aires is filled with sounds of old, scratchy recordings, chipped wooden guitars of the era and historic newspapers reporting Gardel's death in bold, frontpage headlines.

"Carlos Gardel is everyman's hero," said museum coordinator Horacio Torres. "He triumphs in life and then dies an early death and that only serves to enhance his stature further."