Olga Lamas: The Mischievous Voice of Tango

Olga Lamas, born in Rosario in 1924, built a career on humorous tangos and milongas and earned the nickname La voz traviesa del tango, the mischievous voice of tango.

At a glance

  • Born Olga Casabona on 3 June 1924 in Rosario (Santa Fe); died on 21 October 1988 in Buenos Aires
  • Known for humorous interpretations, which earned her the nickname La voz traviesa del tango
  • Recorded for Magenta and RCA-Victor, including the milonga Despedida de soltero (1955); appeared in the unreleased film Soy del tiempo de Gardel (1954)

Fuente original: «Efemérides tangueras (junio)» (Efemérides tangueras, Club de Tango) · Resumen en español ↓

Most tango singers of the 1940s and 1950s built their careers on drama: lost love, the old neighbourhood, the mother left behind. Olga Lamas went the other way. She sang tangos and milongas meant to make the audience laugh, and became known as La voz traviesa del tango, “the mischievous voice of tango”. The old Club de Tango anniversary calendar, Efemérides tangueras, remembers her in one line. This page adds what the tango historian Néstor Pinsón and the record and film catalogues say about her.

Olga Lamas – La budinera · Official release on YouTube. The player loads from YouTube only after you click.

What the calendar records

Under 3 June the calendar notes that the cancionista (female tango singer) Olga Lamas was born in 1924 in Rosario, in the province of Santa Fe. It says she stood out for her humorous interpretations, and that this earned her the nickname La voz traviesa del tango. That is all the entry contains.

Néstor Pinsón’s biography on Todotango confirms the date and place and adds her real name, Olga Casabona, and the date of her death: 21 October 1988, in Buenos Aires.

From Rosario to Buenos Aires

According to Pinsón, Lamas first performed in her home town and then moved to Buenos Aires. There she worked in night venues, on the radio and in theatres as a member of revue companies (revistas, the musical shows that mixed sketches, dance and song). She was also heard on Radio El Mundo, which Pinsón describes as a station that chose its performers carefully, and she appeared in some television programmes. For a short time she sang as a soloist in the best dance halls (salones).

The comic repertoire

Pinsón places her in what was then called the género frívolo, the light or frivolous genre: humorous tangos and milongas, delivered with a picaresque, caricature-like style that suited her voice. He is frank about the limits of that choice. In his view she was funny, but the style tied her to a particular audience and never brought her the wider success she hoped for. He ends on a friendly note: listened to today, she still makes people smile.

For dancers, the milonga is the key to this repertoire. Comic lyrics fit naturally into its quick two-beat rhythm, and most of the titles linked to Lamas are milongas.

Records and a film that was never released

Pinsón mentions an LP for the Magenta label in the 1950s with eleven milongas, among them El marido and La bataraza, and recordings for RCA-Victor such as El llorón and Pipistrela, some of them with her own Orquesta del Tiempo del Jopo.

Todotango’s recording catalogue gives one exact date. On 29 June 1955 Olga Lamas recorded the milonga Despedida de soltero (“Stag night”) for RCA-Victor in Buenos Aires, with the Orquesta del Tiempo del Jopo. The music and words are credited to Alberto Losavio, Rodolfo Serrao and Héctor Serrao. Her one film was Soy del tiempo de Gardel (1954), written and directed by Homero Cárpena. The film database cinenacional.com lists her in the cast with Pedro Quartucci, Maruja Gil Quesada, Lydia Quintana and Marcos Zucker. According to Pinsón, the film was never released in cinemas. (The cinenacional.com page gives her birth year as 1964, clearly an error, since she acted in the 1954 film; the day and place match.)

A specialist of the light genre

Olga Lamas was not a star in the sense of Libertad Lamarque or Tita Merello. Her place among the tango artists of her time is that of a specialist. She chose humour, stayed with it, and left a small set of recordings that still show how much of the old milonga repertoire was written to be funny.

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