November 17, 2016

Four years ago, Argentine-American tango composer Débora Simcovich was getting off a bus in her native Buenos Aires when a stranger asked for help with finding a nightclub. But when Simcovich walked the woman over to the address, she was skeptical.

“It just looked like a private home,” the composer said during a telephone interview from her home in San Francisco. So she was startled when the foyer unexpectedly opened up to reveal a lively concert hall.

Simcovich had unwittingly stumbled upon the popular tango club Café Vinilo. There she heard, for the first time, a live performance by Orquesta Victoria, a 14-piece band that was playing its own modern take on the music. “My jaw dropped,” said Simcovich, who is in her 60s.

When she had lived in Buenos Aires decades ago, tango orchestras tended to be composed of older men, dressed in suits and ties, with a somber demeanor. But members of Orquesta Victoria were young, casually dressed and vibrantly interacting with one another onstage. A number of them were women. “I was blown away,” Simcovich said.

When she showed her sheet music to the orchestra’s conductor, Ezequiel “Cheche” Ordoñez, the admiration was mutual. The very next day, he agreed to record a CD of Simcovich’s tango songs, titled “The Immortal Half Block,” which was released in 2015.

From Nov. 18-20, the orchestra will arrive in Los Angeles to perform fare from a second album of Simcovich’s tangos, “El Mundo Is the World,” at three venues around town: the Alex Theatre in Glendale on Nov. 18, the Pico Union Project on Nov. 19 and at the Centinela Valley Center for the Arts in Lawndale on Nov. 20.

The composer was inspired to create these songs as she was sitting on the beach in San Francisco some years ago. As she gazed out over the ocean, she recalled how far she had traveled from her childhood in a famous Jewish neighborhood of Buenos Aires, where klezmer bands played both tango and Jewish music at weddings and bar mitzvahs.

“I was thinking that the place where you’re born is not necessarily the place where you stay,” she said. “Roots are important, but people are not trees. We can be like birds and fly.”

The CD’s title song, “El Mundo Is the World,” reflects Simcovich’s thoughts about one’s homeland as a “port” to parts unknown. The album also includes her translations of songs by the celebrated late tango composer Carlos Gardel, who wrote his lyrics in Spanish.

“I thought, ‘This is such a sacrilege. It’s almost as if “Don Quixote” had never been translated into English,’ ” Simcovich said. “I also did that because there is this incredible separation Americans have from the meaning of the tango. Many people think that a tango is just a dance.”

But the genre doesn’t only refer to the march-like, sensuous dance depicted in Hollywood films; tangos also can be romantic songs whose lyrics describe “the soul of the people,” she said. “The lyrics talk about things that are deep, and truths of everyday life. The tango has been called confessional, and you can compare it to blues in a way.”

Simcovich’s forebears fled anti-Semitism in Europe to Argentina during the great wave of Jewish immigration to that country around the early 20th century. By the time Débora was growing up in the predominantly Jewish area of Villa Crespo, the émigrés already had contributed much to the tango genre. For example, Jewish violinists introduced that instrument to tango orchestras, Simcovich said. Other Jewish performers, as well as composers, producers and music publishers, helped promote and develop the emerging musical form.

Simcovich, for her part, began writing tango songs while in her teens, when she also sang with a tango orchestra, performed with her Jewish school, attended the Yiddish theater and became fluent in Yiddish, Ladino, Spanish and Italian. At 20, she recorded her first tango single, “New Year’s With the Argentines,” for RCA.

That same year, she decided to move to the United States to escape what appeared to be an imminent military coup; she went on to become a teacher and author of children’s books while continuing to write music over the years.

Her first CD, “The Immortal Half Block,” began when Simcovich visited her old home in Villa Crespo five years ago. “The house hadn’t changed, and neither had the houses in one half-block [area],” she recalled.  “But when I looked to the right and to the left, I couldn’t recognize the street. All of the old houses had been demolished and were replaced with high-rises and other buildings.

“At first I was [inspired] to write a short story, but then I started hearing music in my head and I realized, ‘This is a tango.’ ”

The songs on “The Immortal Half Block” reflect Simcovich’s experiences of growing up in a neighborhood that was very Jewish, but at the same time had multicultural elements, she said.

The upcoming Orquesta Victoria concerts will demonstrate how far the tango has come from its male-dominated origins. “I used to be perceived as an oddity,” the female composer said. “Tango was traditionally a male form.”

Not anymore. When Simcovich creates a love song, for example, she draws from her distinctly female point of view.

“I tell the story the way I would talk with my girlfriends,” she said.

Orquesta Victoria will perform at the Alex Theatre in Glendale on Nov. 18, the Pico Union Project on Nov. 19, and at the Centinela Valley Center for the Arts in Lawndale on Nov. 20. For tickets and information, visit facebook.com. 

I escaped.

A lot of celebrities — and some of you — talked about fleeing the country if Donald Trump were elected. I actually did it.

As a post-election pall settled over Los Angeles, I called my daughter at college and asked if she wanted to go with me. 

“Where?” she asked.

“Anywhere,” I said. 

Trump had vilified a lot of countries, people and genders in his campaign, but first and foremost he went after Mexico and Mexicans. Tijuana, I thought, why not Tijuana? I hadn’t been there in 30 years. First, it got too seedy. Then, it got too dangerous. Then, that image stuck. 

But for years, I’d heard the food, wine and craft brew scene there had exploded. And it was close; if we hurried, we could get there before The Wall went up. If I was going to sit shivah, why not do it with some good mezcal?

We left late at night, like Israelites fleeing Pharaoh. From our home to our hotel took 2 hours and 15 minutes. Crossing the border felt like an act of defiance. You hate them? #Imwiththem.

Our unspoken rule was that we would avoid the news for as long as possible. We walked into the lobby of Hotel Lucerna at 2 a.m. It was bubbling with young people in tuxedos and fancy dresses, coming from a wedding. No one paid attention to the soundless images on a large-screen TV of Trump and Mike Pence. We didn’t, either. TJ was going to be our no-cry zone. 

The next day, it was time to shatter stereotypes. TJ wasn’t dangerous or depressing. Over the past two decades, it had boomed — thanks, NAFTA. The businesses that free trade had lured or spawned created an ambitious middle class that fed a bold food and art scene. The city isn’t even remotely pretty — but its sprawl reflects a relentless entrepreneurialism and energy, and a lot of that translates into great food.

Our first stop was the main market, Mercado Hidalgo. At Birrieria El Rincon del Oso, we passed on the eponymous goat stew and ordered perfect huevos rancheros and coffee scented with cinnamon. A mariachi band played. People sang and cheered for some occasion. They toasted with micheladas — cold beer and spicy tomato juice. It was 11 am.

The market was spotless and sprawling. It smelled of fresh guava. Vendors hawked hunks of fresh cheese with orange rinds, pomegranates, sugar cane. The market has an indoor section offering restaurant supplies: ladles the size of oars, soup pots that could hold enough matzo ball soup for an army division. That’s when I noticed something: the prices. In TJ, things cost half of what they do here. Those pots, that cheese, our breakfast — half. Every meal became a giddy case of reverse sticker shock.

I turned a corner and came face to face with one lone Trump piñata. Reality must have been sinking in by then — it didn’t amuse me. I don’t like the thought of anyone hitting the president of United States, and, yeah, he was my president. I needed a glass of wine. 

We ate lunch at Hotel Caesar, where the original Caesar salad was invented in 1924. No, it’s not a tacky tourist trap. Think Musso & Frank with better food at 50 percent off. The waiter who made our salad tableside turned out the single best one I’ve ever tasted. Two glasses of superb L.A. Cetto Cabernet from Baja (I drank both) and things were looking up.

Dinner was even more impressive. For years, I remembered a great meal along the Baja wine route at a restaurant called Laja, from chef Jair Tellez. The Tijuana native (who, despite his first name, swears he is not Jewish) opened Verde y Crema in TJ, and it is among the city’s best. Farm-to-table ingredients cooked mainly over a wood oven. My wood oven-roasted local grouper with smoky tomatoes and lentils came closer to true California cuisine than what even the best Cal-Med restaurants in L.A. put out. There’s a curated list of artisanal local mezcals, as well. And wood oven-baked banana bread pudding with mamey gelato. 

The restaurant restored us. It was packed with upscale couples and celebratory groups. If these people were worried what a President Trump would do to Mexico’s economy, they sure weren’t in mourning. 

 “We’ll see,” our Uber driver, Raziel, said to us that evening. Raziel, like most of the people we met in TJ, spoke perfect English and had a life on both sides of the border. He was getting his MBA in international business. Ending NAFTA could hurt the medical parts company he worked for during the day, but he didn’t see it happening.

 “It benefits both sides,” he said. “Trump will see.”

 “And what about the wall?” I asked.

 “I don’t care. I have a green card,” Raziel said. “But we’re not paying.”

Raziel dropped us off at La Mezcalera, a smoke-free, mellow bar that serves all things mezcal. Backlit religious icons adorned the wall. With no squinting at all, you could be at a Williamsburg or Echo Park hipster hangout. 

The next day, we took in a little news at a time, titrated, to ease our re-entry. Trump already had backed down from “a wall” and was now talking about “fencing.”

Things were looking up, or at least we were feeling better. We stopped for coffee at a La Stazione Café, ground zero of the artsy crowd. Inside, a mural proclaimed the store motto: “Coffee Is Hope.” We had two shots of hope.

We headed south for a half-hour, one last meal, at Puerto Nuevo. It was a stunning, warm day, the ocean a vast blue swirl beneath us. The Angel del Mar restaurant was full — at 11: 30 — with families drinking those micheladas, eating giant spiny lobsters or whole fried snapper with rice and beans. Mariachis played, and the couple next to us got up and began dancing. 

We toasted them, and toasted love, and toasted life, and crossed back home.

You can follow Rob Eshman’s food adventures — including pictures and recommendations from Tijuana — on Instagram and Twitter ” target=”_blank”>jewishjournal.com/foodaism.