Rafael Canaro

Rafael Canarozzo, better known as Rafael Canaro (22 June 1890 – 28 January 1972), was an Uruguayan musician, orchestra conductor, and composer who became a naturalized citizen of Argentina.

He was the younger brother of fellow conductor Francisco Canaro (1888–1964).

Professional career The son of an Italian couple—Don Francisco Canaro (father), a gravedigger by profession, and Doña Rafaela Gatto—Canaro's family settled in Buenos Aires in 1897 when he was very young. They lived in tenement houses (known as conventillos) under conditions of extreme poverty.

Rafael Canaro was raised in a family of artists connected to the tango genre. Among them were his other brother, the singer Juan Canaro, and the pianist and composer Humberto Canaro.

In 1905, while Francisco Canaro had taken up the violin, Rafael was working as a guitarist accompanying payadores (improvisational folk singers).

He began his musical career in his brother Francisco’s orchestra in 1925, touring in Paris, specifically as a double bassist and saw player. The group also included Fioravanti De Cicco (piano), Romualdo Lomoro (drums), and Teresita Asprella (vocals and guitar). Francisco Canaro (in the background) and Rafael Canaro on tour during the 1920s. In 1926, he traveled to New York with the same company, and after that tour, he returned to France, where he led his own orchestra until 1939. Due to the war, he returned to Buenos Aires after touring all of Europe—with both local and European musicians who had embraced tango—as well as the Middle East.

Figures such as vocalists Aldo Campoamor, Héctor María Artola, Mario Beltrán, Ricardo Duarte, Raúl Sanders, Luis Scalon, Alberto Tagle, Luis Mariano, and Jorge Cardoso passed through his orchestra. The prestigious musician Lucio Demare was also part of his orquesta típica.

Songs performed by his orchestra