Ninety summers after a roaring propeller gave out above Medellín, the city where Carlos Gardel died—and a legend was born—has once again wrapped itself in tango, staging vigils, dances, and scholarly debates to prove that the man’s voice still shapes Colombia’s soul.
How a City in the Andes Became Tango’s Second Home
Before jet engines ever touched down in the Aburrá Valley, Medellín had already fallen in love with tango.
The first notes came crackling through shortwave radios in the 1920s. Young textile workers huddled around sets, tuning in to distant Buenos Aires stations and memorizing Carlos Gardel’s smooth baritone. His music made its way into Medellín’s bars, its bedrooms, its bloodstream.
Then came the crash.
On June 24, 1935, Gardel’s Ford Tri-Motor clipped another plane on takeoff at Las Playas airfield, killing him and sixteen others. Headlines across Latin America called it “el tango immortal“—the day tango lost its king.
But for Medellín, it was the moment tango became its own.
“Death fixed Gardel’s image at the height of his charisma,” said Melisa Jurado, a musicologist interviewed by EFE. “And Medellín made him family.”
You can still feel that kinship on Avenida Gardel, though most locals call it La 45. On Tuesday, residents streamed down the avenue carrying violins and Bluetooth speakers, heading into Manrique, a neighborhood scholars call “the most tanguero block outside Argentina.”
Silence, Song, and a Statue That Won’t Stop Smiling
At exactly noon, members of the Asociación Gardeliana de Colombia gathered beneath the bronze statue of Gardel; their fedoras tilted just so. They called for a minute of silence. Then, right on cue, the crowd broke into “Volver,” Gardel’s haunting ballad about time and longing.
“Gardel isn’t just music here,” said Gloria Franco, wiping mist from her glasses. “He’s a living feeling.”
Anthropologist Óscar Hernández, who studies grief and ritual in Latin America, says the annual repetition of songs in shared space turns places like Manrique into what he calls an “aural archive.” Children learn the lyrics to “Por una cabeza” before they can recite Colombia’s national anthem.
Across the city, the Museo Casa Gardeliana—founded in 1973 by Argentine expatriate Leonardo Nieto—was packed with visitors poring over 78 rpm shellac records, sheet music, and a microphone said to have accompanied Gardel to Havana. Ruth Marina García, a volunteer guide draped in a vintage shawl, summed it up best:
“From man to myth, his mysteries still seduce us.”
EFE
Where a Runway Became a Marble Memorial to Music
While the tango faithful laid roses at Gardel’s statue, staff at Olaya Herrera Airport polished a row of brass plaques in a quiet corridor above the runway—just yards from where the crash occurred. There are twenty-five plaques in all, installed over the decades by embassies, fan clubs, and family foundations. One reads:
“Here, tango found its martyr.”
The terminal also houses Patio Gardel, a tucked-away shrine filled with sepia-toned photos and handwritten setlists. Urban geographer Patricia Ramírez refers to places like this as “palimpsests of sonic heritage.” In her 2021 study, she documented over 70,000 visitors annually to the site before the pandemic—nearly 8% of the airport’s domestic traffic.
On Tuesday, as airport staff hung a new banner for Festitango, someone in the crowd whispered, “Volvió…“
He returned.
Festitango, now in its 19th year, is Medellín’s international tango festival, a week-long celebration that fuses old-school reverence with new-school flair.
Dancing the Line Between Nostalgia and Now
By nightfall, Plaza Gardel, just steps from the crash site, had been transformed.
Searchlights painted the sky. A 35-piece ensemble of Colombian and Argentine musicians performed “Gardel: Ninety Years of an Eternal Song,” blending bandoneón solos with modern choreography—dancers in sneakers slicing the air with moves that flirted with hip-hop but stayed rooted in tango’s heartbeat.
“Medellín is our bridge to the Río de la Plata,” said Mayor Federico Gutiérrez, kicking off a slate of concerts, seminars, and a fiercely contested tango competition running through June 30.
Backstage, dancer Harold Castro, last year’s champion, laced up his shoes and tried to explain what makes Medellín’s tango different.
“We dance like this city climbs the Andes,” he said. “Steep and quick.“
Still, the tradition wasn’t forgotten. A seminar at the festival paired Brenda Romero, an ethnomusicologist from UC Berkeley, with Antioquian scholars to analyze the Caribbean rhythms hidden inside Gardel’s “Melodía de Arrabal.” The consensus? That guajira undertone helped tango find fertile ground in Colombia, weaving itself into danzón and local folk styles.
As the night wound down, candles flickered in the plaza. A massive screen lit up with Gardel’s eternal smile. Teenagers in hoodies danced beside retirees in suits. And when the final notes of “Por una cabeza” filled the square, the crowd leaned into each other—swaying, remembering.
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At that moment, ninety years of myth felt real. A voice silenced in 1935 still echoed, not from speakers or statues, but from the people who continued to dance in Medellín.