Gardel Tango Song Saves Lives in Burma

From the blog of Martin Varsavsky,

I just want to tell the story of how my Argentine school buddies Diego Wainer and Raul Chevalier and myself were detained in Burma in 1988, and how we got out.

... After the Jefe gave our passports to a colleague and we thought we were headed to Burmese jail or worse, I could hear Diego rumbled something about us being "locos de mierda", stuck in a "jungle de mierda" and "metidos en un lio de mierda".

Raul and I were only slightly more positive at this point. The Jefe then asked each of us what we did.

Diego said he was an architect which the Jefe found boring, I said I was a real estate entrepreneur, which then I was and the Jefe found that even more boring, and then it was Raul´s turn and Raul said he was a musician and that made the Jefe happier.

"A musician" he said and turned to his troops and said something in Burmese that made them all laugh. He then looked back at Raul and still pointing at him with the rifle said "sing something!".

Diego and I glanced at Raul and our stare said it all "sing or we are dead".

And Raul, who used to be the bass player and singer at Zas, then the leading rock band in Latin America, chose the most appropriate song to sing at that moment.

It was not a rock song, it was a tango, "Adios Muchachos" the famous Gardel song that is basically one long good bye of a friend to his buddies:

Adios muchachos compañeros de mi vida (good bye my dear life long friends).

The song was very appropriate for the moment. Diego and I did not know if we should laugh or cry. But we chose the former, and it worked. Because as Raul sang everyone seemed to relax and enjoy his tango.

When he was done the Jefe clapped and his troops followed suit. So did Diego and I.

And then the Jefe much to our surprise said to us "now we sing" and he again addressed his troops in Burmese and we were very pleased to see that they started laying down their weapons and sat on the floor, in a circle.

We sat as well and the Jefe and his troops started singing to us.

We were pleasantly shocked. A few seconds before it looked like I was going to follow the faith of my cousin David Horacio Varsavsky who was murdered by the Argentine military and moments later the Burmese military were singing for us!

And they sang, and we sang, and then they took out a bottle of a liquor that tasted like pure alcohol to me and I could not stomach, but Raul with his Rolling Stone habits of course could. The singing marathon went on for hours.

... As I read the papers these days and think of the Burmese quiet revolutionaries who are confronting the military with chants and I remembered how we managed to get the Burmese soldiers to sing to us, I felt like telling this story.

Will the Burmese soldiers go on killing or join in the singing? The outcome is still uncertain.

In the meantime I want to dedicate this story to Kenji Nagai who died trying to alert to us that there is a peaceful revolution going on in Burma. My heart is with him and his family in Japan.

Read the full story at Singing in Myanmar