Juan de Dios Filiberto

Juan de Dios Filiberto was born Oscar Juan de Dios Filiberti in La Boca, and worked the Buenos Aires docks and a lathe before he came to music in earnest. He learned guitar, entered the conservatory and studied with Celestino Piaggio. His compositions include Caminito, to words by Gabino Coria Peñaloza, Quejas de bandoneón, El pañuelito and Malevaje. He founded and directed an orchestra devoted to Argentine popular music that outlasted him as a national institution. He died in 1964. Before he took up formal study he had been employed at the Teatro Colón, and his training included work with Alberto Williams. The orchestra he founded in 1932 as the Orquesta Porteña passed into state hands in 1948 and was given his name in 1973; Clavel del aire belongs to the same body of songs as Caminito. His first tango, Guaymallén, was composed in Mendoza in 1915.