Orquesta El Arranque

Historical background

The Orquesta El Arranque was formed in Buenos Aires in 1996 on the initiative of double bassist Ignacio Varchausky and bandoneonist Camilo Ferrero. It has no director. Varchausky recounts that it was born of the wish to play the tango they listened to obsessively without any of them having had real experience of traditional tango: that first line-up was more of a study group, because they wanted to learn and understand, and had nothing to say. Beginning as a quintet, it became an orquesta típica of traditional make. Its search turned towards the repertoire and style of Alfredo Gobbi, which marks it still - Gobbi being, for Varchausky, the encyclopaedia of tango, the orchestra that is in a way all orchestras. Ariel Ardit sang with it from 2000. To covers were added their own arrangements, then original works.

Sofía Cecconi casts it as the precursor of a line distinct from the rest of the revival: musicians barely twenty years old leading a current that recovers orchestral tango and promotes a politics of memory. Driven by Varchausky, they made contact with the musicians of the golden age - José Libertella, Julián Plaza, Emilio Balcarce, Víctor Lavallén - and set up encounters in which they sought to capture their ways of making music, to document and pass them on. From this came the Orquesta Escuela de Tango, funded by the city from 2000, then, in 2002, the non-profit association TangoVía Buenos Aires, devoted to methodically collecting and preserving tango's heritage. Cecconi notes that this undertaking, unlike the others, seeks neither to challenge nor to appear rebellious.

Source: Sofía Cecconi, "La crisis de 2001 y el tango juvenil : de la protesta política y social a las formas alternativas de organización y expresión," Estudios Sociológicos vol. XXXV, no. 103, 2017, DOI 10.24201/es.2017v35n103.1517, https://www.redalyc.org/journal/598/59849770006/html/ ; Andrés Valenzuela, "El Arranque: más que 25 años de éxito," Tango21.info, 14 April 2022, https://tango21.info/el-arranque-mas-que-25-anos-de-exito/?lang=es (accessed 31 July 2026).