La Murga se Formo un Dia que Llovia

We lived in the barrio of Liniers in Buenos Aires, donde termina el asfalto - where the asphalt ends... It was a poor Spanish - Italian - Turco (Arab) - del interior (mixed blood native from the provinces) neighborhood, built by the Ferrocarril del Oeste and near the Iglesia San Cayetano, where a multitude of people came to ask the saint for the miracle of a job. It was an era with no television nor computer games, when we boys spent all our time on the streets. Sex was our main preoccupation and we had experts among us who initiated us into the mysteries. No one had disk-players and we bought cheap booklets with the music of popular songs. We were hinchas de Velez Sarsfield, the local soccer club, and collected figuritas with the names of the players. In Carnaval the barrio met in the Mercado de Liniers and our noisy murga went singing and dancing around. The murga (an informal street singing and dancing gang) was led by the director dressed in a black frac with sombrero de copa , with a baton and a pito, and we started our presentation with "Esta murga se formo un dia que llovia, y por eso le pusimos .......”. Everybody had some "instrument" to make noise, like boxes and frying pans. Our repertoire consisted in bawdy songs, here is one I remember:

Los Hermanos Pinzones
eran unos mari… neros,
que se fueron con Colón,
que era otro mari… nero
y se fueron a Calcuta
en busca de una… ruta,
conquistaron Camboya
con la punta de la… espada,
los indios motilones
les cortaron ... la retirada,
Una india muy maja
a Colón le hizo una… pipa
al piloto Pedro Angulo
le quisieron dar por… muerto,
y a su hermano Bobadilla
le llenaron de la… ureles,
y a la Reina de Castilla
le gustaban las… natillas.

and we loved to scandalize the girls - chicas de su casa - who in turn loved us. PC had not been invented yet and with absolute lack of sensitivity (and malice) we provoked las negras culonas African ladies, the turcos alibajalajaula and the rusos dame joivos. We accepted donations, more precisely the only way to be left alone was to drop a few coins into our paper hats, and we felt free and happy. Old and forgotten Buenos Aires.