Often, it’s impossible to find out about the original meaning or context of a tango song and lyric. We are many decades too late to ask the authors about it. However, at least in the picture below Rodolfo Sciammarella, a composer of a few important songs, is asked about his favourite (own) composition.

Sciammarella highlights ”No te engañes corazón”, a popular dance track nowadays, and goes on to explain the meaning of that song. I always understood it in a different way, a man trying to console his own heart, but the author takes a different view. Soon, I hope to present you an adapted translation on one of my other blogs.

-”What motives inspired your best composition?”
S: ”Two men and a woman…”
-”Tell us”…
S: ”A typical tango story, no doubt. Someone who loved deeply, one day ends up deprived of his love by another man, yet gives him some important advice, from the bottom of his sorrow and his extreme sadness [quote from the lyric]:
‘Don’t let your heart be deceived, if she dumped me like this, will it be any different for you?’
‘Neither sadness nor spite cause me to talk to you this way….’
Words without rancour. Words for a friend, and words for a heart which believes in the love for someone who has no emotional capacity… good, heartfelt words, with almost no bitterness.”
-What’s the title of that tango?
S: ”No te engañes, corazón”. [Heart, don’t be deceived/Heart, don’t deceive yourself]
-Thank you.
And Sciammarella goes back to work. To his rehearsals. Or to catch that melody he feels in the air, a motive, some rhythm that he will write down as music so that all of us may hum or whistle it.