Sucesos Semanales

He was born in Montevideo suburbs on January 2^nd, 1926. His name was Julio María Sosa Venturini. His family was composed by his mother, his father and his sisters. His parents were nice working people. His childhood was very humble. Many privations were forming his character, which characteristics were his arrogance, his verbosity and his constant need of having everyone’s attention. However, this was a mask he used as a protection from the world he thought hostile to him. This description makes possible for us to understand the reason why he had such a conflictive personality. When he left Uruguay and moved to Buenos Aires to pursue a career as a tango singer, he did it with the attitude of a winner, determined to succeed. And he certainly did it… In 1949, Uruguayan people was having a hard time, because of a generalised lack of jobs. By that time, Julio was singing in a group directed by Luis Caruso, with which he had recorded some songs; but in a pauperised country, they had no success. The situation in Argentina was completely different, and Julio knew that: everyone had a job and a good economic situation. Besides, it was said that it was Tango’s best time. (This was confirmed when the years passed, since that was the time we now know as the “Golden Age” of Tango, the 40s decade.) All these news he had from Argentina made him decide to move there. In Buenos Aires lived Rogelio Casali, an Uruguayan friend of him, who offered him a place to live, so Julio didn’t think it twice. When he arrived in Buenos Aires, he began to look for a place where he could sing. He went to the café “Los Andes” in Chacarita neighbourhood, where he auditioned. As the owners of the café liked him, he was offered $20 and dinner with the waiters. For him, it was like touching the sky with his hands. He had arrived less than 48 hours before, and he already had his working situation solved. Luck, or maybe fate, wanted composer Raúl Hormaza to go to that café looking for new artists. When he heard Julio singing, he was shocked by this thin, bad-dressed young boy, who sang Tangos in a peculiar way, with a natural technique in his gesture expression, that none of the singers that were fashionable those days had. Around that time all the cabarets and cafés in downtown Buenos Aires had a “tipica” orchestra, so “porteños” could choose to go see the orchestras of Troilo, D’Arienzo, Di Sarli or De Angelis; or singers such as Floreal Ruiz, Alberto Echagüe, Roberto Rufino and Carlos Dante. The orchestra of Francini and Pontier performed at the Piccadilly Cabaret. Raul Berón and Alberto Podestá were the singers of that orchestra. As Hormaza knew Berón was going to leave the orchestra, he went to see Pontier, who was his personal friend, and told him about the young singer he had discovered, so he would let him audition to see if he could replace Berón. Pontier said “If he is half as good as you describe him, bring him here and we’ll see”.

Hormaza went to “Los Andes” café and told Julio the good news. That same night, both of them went to the Piccadilly an hour before the show started. Pontier looked at Julio and asked him “What are you going to sing?”, and Julio answered “Tengo miedo (I am afraid)”. Pontier asked him again “The tango or are you really afraid?”. Francini was not very convinced about Julio when he first saw him, but when the young man finished singing, the director looked at Pontier and asked him “Can you start tonight?”. Podestá told, years later, that they introduced Julio to him and that Pontier asked him to go with the new singer of the orchestra to rent a suit to make him look more elegant. The two vocalists picked up a dark suit. It was incredible how 23-year-old Julio looked in it. From that moment on, a real friendship was born between Podestá and Sosa, which lasted until the tragic end of the latter. After a while, Podestá saw that with his attitudes and reactions Sosa was seriously compromising his career, and tried to advise him. In a paternal way he used to tell Julio “You are young, Julio. Take good care of yourself. You go to bed very late, and then you are late for appointments. You will pay for this eventually…” Porteños went to the cabarets to dance, however when Julio made his debut singing “I am afraid”, he made such an impact in everyone listening to him, that people stopped dancing and kept staring at this new phenomenon of Tango. Maybe, that was because Sosa waved his hands and accompanied the lyrics with his face while singing, making live the stories in each song. A new Tango star was born. Some beautiful recordings are left from that period for us to enjoy. The first songs he recorded with Podestá were: “El hijo triste” (“The sad son”), “El ciruja” (“The beggar”), “Lloró como una mujer” (“He cried like a woman”), “Tan solo por verte” (“Only for seeing you”), “Dicen que dicen” (“They say that they say”), “Mi sentencia” (“My sentence”), “Princesa de fango” (“Mud princess”), “Pa’ que sepan cómo soy” (“For them to know how I am”), “Viejo smoking” (“Old smoking”)and many more. When he sang, Julio became the character of the story the lyrics talked about, so whoever was watching him thought he was living what the author had imagined. But when he was off stage, he was another person. He wouldn’t stop talking or making jokes. Whenever he arrived in some place, he liked to have everyone’s attention. This situation brought him many problems, specially with the husbands of boyfriends of the women he seduced with his strong and charming personality. Although many directors wanted to have him in their orchestras, his polemic personality discouraged them. However, there was a director who bragged about having had the best singers in his orchestra, and offered Sosa $5,000. He was Francisco Rotundo, in whose orchestra sang Floreal Ruiz, and was looking for a replacement for E

nrique Campos, who had just left the orchestra. The amount of money he was offering Sosa was huge, and the singer told this to Francini and Pontier. The directors had an incredible gesture and, although they were going to lose their star, advised him to accept the offer. Sosa joined the orchestra of Francisco Rotundo, with which he recorded “Levantá la frente” (“Lift up your head”), “La casa está triste” (“The house is sad”), “Carnaval” (“Carnival”), “Secreto” (”Secret”), “Justo el 31” (“Right on the 31^st”), “Pa’ mí es igual” (“It is the same for me”), “Farolito Viejo” (“Old street lamp”), “Eras como la flor” (“You were like the flower”)and “Yo soy aquel muchacho” (“I am that boy”), amongst many others. But Sosa led a careless life, and what Podestá had warned him about some time before, began to happen. “El varón del Tango” (“Tango Lord”) as he was called, started losing his voice in an alarming way. Rotundo and his wife Juana Larrauri (who was a National Representative at the time), asked dr. León Elkin to examine him. The professional accepted and, after some tests, found polypus in Sosa’s vocal folds. The only solution was an immediate surgery, and Sosa, knowing he would be no one without his voice, accepted to have it right away. Two months after surgery, he began to vocalize gradually and discovered something amazing: his voice had gained in colour, depth and shades, which consolidated him in popular taste. In this new stage of his life and his career, he decided to leave the orchestra, because the situation in Argentina was changing. By the end of the 50s, the new authorities of the country discouraged all kinds of popular expression, such as Tango. This situation encouraged a new youthful current that played foreign music and was known as the “New Wave”. Julio knew he was a talented artist and that he would still be successful. That`s why he asked Leopoldo Federico, the young bandoneon player who directed the orchestra of Belgrano radio station, to direct the orchestra that would accompany him. We all know how this union worked out. The communication singer-orchestra was so perfect, that each performance was a real pleasure to whose who were watching them or listening to their albums. Julio turned each song into an extraordinary performance. Just a few people know that there was a forbidden tango in Julio’s repertory. It was “En esta tarde gris” (“In this grey afternoon”), with lyrics by Contursi. He was reluctant to sing it because, evidently, its lyrics reminded him of something he didn’t want to remember. The musicians that played with him in the recording of “Destellos” (“Shinings”), “Soledad” (“Loneliness”) and “Otario que andás penando” (“Silly boy, you are in sorrow”), say that when they recorded “In this grey afternoon”, Julio had a knot in his throat so they had to stop recording and try again. Julio was more calm, but when he was singing the second part of Contursi’s tango, in the verses that said “ven pues te quiero tanto, que si no vienes hoy voy a quedar ahogado en llanto” (“Come back, because I love you so much that if you don`t come back today, I’ll drawn myself in tears”), his voice trembled. But he finished the song, anyway. Federico asked him “Julio, do you want to do it again?” And the singer answered “No, let’s leave it as it is. I can’t sing it again”.

He lived the life he wanted, and he loved speeding in his car. That’s how he found death. On the rainy night of November 26^th, 1964, Sosa was driving his Union Fisure really fast. He tried to avoid a lorry from hitting him, but he made a bad maneuver and he crashed into a cement indicator in the middle of the street. He passed away a few hours later, at the Anchorena Hospital, where doctors could not save him. The ones who loved Tango, were in a great pain for his death. Nowadays, his tangos are still heard. I had the chance of going to his funeral, and I remember being shocked about seeing thousands of Argentines saying goodbye to their Idol. The wake took place at the Luna Park, and he was buried in the Chacarita cemetery, in the same neighbourhood where he started his career. The crowd was walking down Corrientes Avenue, and arrived to the Cemetery at 9.30 p. m. More than 200,000 people said goodbye to him. The older ones said that that ceremony was superior to Gardel’s. From that opinion, it came to my mind that they both had similar lifes. They both were of humble origin, they both died tragically at an early age, and they both were famous because of the same art. It was Tango which made myths of them.