Edmundo Rivero: The Bass-Baritone of Tango

The golden age of tango singing belonged largely to tenors and high, smooth voices. Edmundo Rivero changed that. With his deep, resonant bass-baritone, he opened an entirely new register for the tango voice — and became one of the genre’s most distinctive and beloved interpreters.^[1]

"El Feo" from the southern suburbs

Leonel Edmundo Rivero was born on 8 June 1911 in Valentín Alsina, a southern suburb of Buenos Aires, where he was steeped early in the music and lore of the gauchos of the Buenos Aires countryside.^[1] Rugged in appearance — his face marked by pockmarks from a childhood illness — he was nicknamed "El Feo" ("The Ugly One"), a label he transcended completely through the beauty and depth of his singing.^[1]

His great innovation was vocal. Rivero is widely regarded as the singer who pioneered the deep bass-baritone voice in tango, a striking departure from the tenor and higher-range styles that had dominated the genre — and a sound that gave the tango canción a new gravity and intimacy.^[1]

Troilo and "Sur"

Rivero’s defining association came in 1947, when he was hired by the great bandoneonist Aníbal Troilo, then in a brilliant run of recordings often made with the lyricist Homero Manzi.^[1] During his three years with Troilo, Rivero recorded some twenty-two songs — among them the immortal "Sur," in which Troilo’s melody frames Manzi’s elegy for a lost young love and for the old neighborhood itself.^[1] "Sur" became one of the most beloved tangos ever recorded, and Rivero’s deep, tender reading of it is definitive.

Master of lunfardo

Rivero was also the great champion of lunfardo, the streetwise Buenos Aires dialect woven through tango lyrics. A singer, guitarist, and composer, he became its foremost disseminator, and in 1978 he was named a full academician of the Academia Porteña del Lunfardo, where he occupied the chair named for Carlos Gardel — a fitting honor for an artist seen as an heir to Gardel’s legacy in song.^[1]

Fearing for tango’s survival in an era of changing tastes, in 1969 Rivero opened El Viejo Almacén, a tango club in the San Telmo district that became a celebrated institution and a haven for the music.^[1] He died on 18 January 1986.^[1]

Why he matters

Edmundo Rivero matters because he expanded the very voice of tango. By making the deep bass-baritone a vehicle for the genre’s poetry, he proved there was more than one way to sing a tango, and in "Sur" he left one of the music’s supreme recordings. As a guardian of lunfardo and the founder of a legendary tango house, he also worked to preserve the culture itself. Alongside Roberto Goyeneche, "El Feo" stands among the greatest tango singers of the post-Gardel era — the deep voice in which the old barrio speaks.