A new milonga has recently opened up in Sydney called Tinta Roja. Tinta Roja means red ink in Spanish, and the dominant colour theme of the venue's interior is red.
Here's a popular tango song by the same name, which has no doubt also inspired the name choice.
lyrics by Cátulo Castillo translated by Derrick del Pilar
A big stone wall,1 red ink over yesterday’s grey, the emotion of your happy bricks over my little alleyway took a blot and painted the corner and that cop who in the depths of night walked the borders of his beat like a badge… And that lipstick-red mailbox and the corner bar where the Italian used to cry over his distant blonde lover, soaking himself in bon vin.2 What has become of my arrabal? 3 Who has stolen my childhood? On what corner, moon of mine, do you spill out your clear joy like you used to? Sidewalks that I have tread, gangsters that now are gone— under your cloudless satin sky a little piece of my heart whiles the night away. Here's the song in Spanish...
Tinta roja
Paredón, tinta roja en el gris del ayer, tu emoción de ladrillo feliz sobre mi callejón con un borrón pintó la esquina y al botón que en el ancho de la noche puso al filo de la ronda como un broche… Y aquel buzón carmín, y aquel fondín donde lloraba el tano su rubio amor lejano que mojaba con bon vin. ¿Dónde estará mi arrabal? ¿Quién se robó mi niñez? ¿En qué rincón, luna mía, volcás como entonces tu clara alegría? Veredas que yo pisé, malevos que ya no son— bajo tu cielo de raso trasnocha un pedazo de mi corazón. 1 A stone wall (paredón) can be a big wall, a thick wall, a ruined stone wall, or the wall where the condemned are placed to face the firing squad. 2 The Spanish original contains the French phrase “bon vin,” meaning “good wine,”
3 'arrabal' - A low-income, working class suburb on the outskirts of Buenos Aires. Some choose to translate it as “slum”, but the English connotations of that word don’t have quite the right flavour. Most of the tangos have a fond attitude toward the neighborhoods they call arrabales.
image: sourced from tango.info |
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