Hi Tango Friends: 

Tonight I went to Club del Vino to see the (www.BettinottiFernadez.com.ar) Bettinotti Fernadez performance at this charming cafe concert venue, located across the central colonial patio of this beautifully appointed restaurant.
Bettinotti composes music and writes lyrics.  Curiosity about contemporary tango lyrics led me there. I have been wondering who may be writing tango poetry about relevant issues of Argentines today.
Bettinotti does. His lyrical show was quite impressive.  I liked the poetry which is so different from lyrics of 1920's-to 1950's (mostly nostalgic), and those from 1950's-to 2000's (nostalgic and surrealistic). 
Bettinotti's themes are not necessarily "pretty"; they reflect reality and the problematic of today's porteño (the person who lives in the port city of Buenos Aires), men and women's obsessions with migration to other countries, their disillusionment with Argentina and with what they encounter elsewhere, their preoccupation with making a living in a country of leaders "tramoyeros." (He has a tango about these leaders: "Tramoyero Viejo").
 
Bettinotti treats serious themes with humor, mixes tragedy and comedy. He writes about Buenos Aires characters that we all know but take for granted, such as the Buenos Aires professional waiters who have an enormous memory - they do not write down the orders-, who never make a mistakes, who can do math quickly and accurately in their heads. He also writes about the "cartoneros" (the nocturnal poor who collect, from trash cans in the wealthy neighborhoods of Buenos Aires, anything that can be sold).
"Cartoneros" appeared on the scene after Argentina's economic collapse. He writes about the little old lady with a touch of Alzhaimer whose family wants to confine her to an institution; this elderly woman has a will of her own, and one can tell she is not going to surrender. Bettinotti's characters have agency, self affirmation and, even the elderly woman has "balls." They are not the passive ones of the lyrics of the 1920's through 1960's, who suffered passively from a loves gone bad, or from life's blows.

One of my favorite Bettinotti songs was "Incommunication," a satire about the demise of communication in the era of communication technology.
"Preferimos mirar una pantalla que mirarnos a la cara y decirnos la verdad"
(we prefer to watch the screen rather than to look at each other in the eye and speak the truth). I liked "A veces bailo el tango con mi propia sombra" (sometimes I dance the tango with my own shadow). Bettinotti looks -with realism and cynicism- at the porteño's characterological flaws; he is "rezongon" (a complainer), has "bronca" (a chronic type of resentment), is an artist with melancholic tendencies. Bettinotti speaks the truth with compassion and understanding, never with criticism or anger.

He uses the Argentine lunfardo (slang) heavily; on a few occasions I had to turn around to ask my neighbors the meanings of recent lunfardo terms which I did not understand. "Sudaca de cuarta," I learned,  is the lunfardo for "Sudamerican" of lower than lower class ("de cuarta").
 
Music ranged from traditional tango, tango canción, tango jazz, tango rock, milonga, and tango candombe. The bandoneonist (Leonardo Gessi) interjected some Piazzolla moments in the middle of some candombe pieces, which was most delightful.

Bettinotti is a gym and music teacher, lives in Buenos Aires, has performed in Spain, and is looking forward to an upcoming invitation to perform in Switzerland. His Cd's are sold at Zival's.

Beatriz, (of course nostalgic for her friends).