Who new to tango hasn't sought ought instrumentals first so they didn't have to listen to the "annoying" singers? Of all the aspects of tango requiring acquired taste, the singers take the most getting used to - to a non-Latin, non older-person ear.

For the first 30 or 40 years of tango, there were no singers. They kind of had to fight their way in. The one who really kicked the door down, of course, was Carlos Gardel. His was tango's biggest "before-and-after" moment.

I think it's true to say that tango lovers get used to the singers soon enough; one begins to realize that all that perceived vocal posing and histrionics don't interfere with the dancing ... they enhance the experience. Soon, one actually has favourites: Berón, Vargas, Podestá, Castillo. (These guys were all in their teens/early 20's when they made those recordings). You hear their great hits so much, you get used to them. And start to appreciate their great talent.

But even after that phase, the singers for Biagi, Pugliese and other orquestas are quite the dose to take. Who hasn't wished all the singers went down smoother?

Blame it on Caruso. Blame it on the Italians. (I say this affectionately!).

Argentine Tango is the world's most sophisticated folk dance and music. Yes, it is a folk idiom - of the common people - but the sophisticated part is still at the heart of it all.

In my early tango days of enthrallment, I recall sitting people who knew nothing about tango down and playing them Quejas by Troilo and saying, "Beethoven took 50 minutes to say what he wanted to in a symphony. These guys do it in 3-and-a-half minutes! This is music made for today's short attention span - but still with the whallop! Listen to all the changes of mood and how many great themes there are in such a short time. Western pop music takes 2 themes and runs them over and over and fades it all out because they don't know how to end it. Tango goes all over the emotional spectrum in a few heartbeats and then goes - bup, bup! Start, middle and finish like a good story has to be."

Well, that's true. But it wasn't a symphony they were composing, it was opera.

Take the sons of Italian immigrants to Argentina/Uruguay away from tango and you don't have tango any more - no matter what the vital influence of all the other cultures is to the mix. Just look at the names of the composers, authors, band leaders and musicians. What - 80% or more of them are of Italian origin.

So, the people who gave the world Rome and all that means, then the middle ages, the middle class, the merchant class, The Renaissance, spaghetti, pizza, the mafia, Verdi and good-old Machiavelli also gave us the tango scores and tango singers. No wonder tango is so complicated in its simplicity!

Even people who don't like opera know it takes the highest skill levels to perform it. And this brings me to the tango singers and my plea to listen to them in a new way, if you don't like them much. If you love the orquesta, the singer is there because he's awfully good. No slouches were allowed.

If you know anything about singing, you know that singing a tango well calls for unbridled passion wrapped in phenominal control and execution skills. You can't fake it or just get by like you can in other kinds of music. It is operatic in its demands.

Tango started out with simple musical themes borrowed from many cultures. The Italian sons and others got to work and made the themes more expressive and grand (while still felicitously concise).

And we must consider the Caruso influence.

Enrique Caruso (1873 - 1921) was the first global pop (and recording) star. (It didn't hurt that he was a client of American Edward Bernays - the father of public relations).

All the young singers in Argentina wanted to be him. What he represented was in their blood. And that's what it took to sing tango. Before there was Gardel, there was Caruso.

It's because of my admiration for musical performers - especially while recording and producing them and through all my restoration work - that I've come to realize how silly I was to have closed ears to many of the singers in tango. Oh, yes - I still cringe when I hear over-the-top crying by singers from the 50s onward (one exception: the late Jorge Falcón) who are trying to be great but just don't have it; but when I listen to the recordings from the previous era, I say no more, "why did Biagi/Di Sarli/Troilo/Pugliese use that guy"? I simply listen to the exquisitely precise vocal powers instead of wanting to hear tonalities I "want" to hear if it were my choice. And I am SO impressed.

I think the best singer most un-noticed is Hector Mauré. It's curious that his recordings with the great D'Areinzo orquesta ov the 40's are among the worst quality recordings of D'Arienzo extant. So, I've put a lot of effort in restoring them.