The easiest way to identify D’Arienzo’s music from the mid-thirties is to listen for the bright sound of Biaggi’s piano, and that distinctive, wavering violin. We've already heard D’Arienzo use it to accent the music in Pensalo Bien, and El Cencerro. I think the way he uses it to offset the relentless bandoneon compás of Cencerro raises an average tango to the level of a masterpiece (at least for dancers).

This tango isn't a Cencerro, but it's still a very nice one that provides a clear example of Biaggi’s bright piano, and it also has that unforgettable violin, with D'Arienzo's bandoneons chunking away in the background. I included a few lines of Hector Mauré’s voice at the end (we’ll listen to him more later):

Once your ear learns the old-fashioned sound of this violin and Biaggi's piano, you shouldn’t have any trouble identifying the D’Arienzo-Biaggi tangos... but the lyrics can fool you. Up until today, I thought Tierrita was about something nice. Mauré's voice sounds friendly enough, and Tierrita normally means "a nice little bit of land", so I figured he was probably singing about somebody's garden in Buenos Aires. But when I translated it, I found the tierrita in this tango actually refers to the selfishness inside the head of a young woman. And now that I know what the tango is about, I suddenly hear Mauré's words dripping with sarcasm instead of friendliness. We'll translate a few lines, but instead of using the unpleasant literal translation of "dirt in the head", I'll use "vain illusions ":

Porteños love shrinks. BsAs has the highest ratio of psychiatrists to patients in the world, and it's funny that even in this very barrio, 70-year-old tango, this man is telling the girl she's a head-case, and needs psychiatric help! We're rolling with D'Arienzo, so let's do one more. On the next page we'll listen to how he and Mauré sounded ten years later.