Chamuyo

And chamuyo?  

Axel, an Argentinian tango dancer living in New York, gave his definition of chamuyo:  it was about trying to get someone to do something or buy something, but it would likely be a lousy deal and at your expense; something you would regret.  Yes, it was a kind of manipulation.  It had a connotation of length - a long lie. So was it a con?  Maybe not as much as a con but yes, a salesman would be a chamullero.  It could be funny he said, but in essence, chamuyo was a bad thing.  Yes, it was tied to seduction which can be good or bad.  In that way, and because it is a lunfardo word, it is connected to tango; lunfardo being old Buenos Aires slang associated with crime, with the underworld and with the origins of tango.

In a milonga I saw another  Argentine who I knew had lived in Europe for a long time.  I had chatted to him briefly about music in the past.  Excuse me... I said.  His dance brims with fun, his partners giggle, yet his answers to me were bland and straight.  Piropo was a compliment, chamuyo was small talk.  Was that it?  I persisted.  Was there no double meaning?  There can be, he conceded but giving nothing away.  Were there other words in castellano that had this double sense, I asked.  Many, he said, surprising me.  We like to play with words a lot.   But he said it briefly, factually and that was as much insight as I found with him.  It was an odd, disconcerting experience.  I guessed I was bothering him.  He was courteous though, patient with my questions and generous in helping me decipher parts of the tango about piropos: Simplemente.

I asked another Argentine in another milonga.  It's chat he said simply.  But it also has the connotation of a lie.

At the carwash in Edinburgh I chatted to a young guy, Francés.  He was from  Alicante but said his name was Catalan. 

- Chamuyo?  he said No.  

- Chamullar?   Chamullero?

- Chamullero?  No.

He called over to his colleague Victor but it was clear neither of them knew these words.  Chamuyo  isn't known in Spain. 

In Murcia my Catalan friend also claimed no knowledge of the word. Again, I thought he was joking. But it is lunfardo, not a Spanish word.  Still, his wife had heard of it.  Almost mirroring the dictionary definition she said:  It's inconsequential chat, to fill a silence. 

Let's ask more people! I said. I watched my friend introduce himself to others in our group.  We were all walking through the streets of Murica. He would catch up with someone and say in Spanish:  Excuse me, I'm J, this is Felicity, we want to know what 'chamuyo' is? He spoke with a charming sociability, a lightness of touch and good humour that reminded me of one or two Argentinians.  We asked Antonio who was from Salamanca where they apparently speak the best Spanish. It was comer la oreja: to eat your ear off.  That had some of Axel's sense of the word.

At the carwash, Francés started jumping up and down in the cold.  In my high-ceilinged, single-glazed house in the winter, despite five layers of clothing, I shiver - inside.  My husband came home this week to find me cooking in a coat and hat.  But I am British, half Scottish even. We are supposed to be used to it, accept it or at least tolerate it. I endure it but I felt sorry for these young Spanish men.    

- You guys from Spain working outside in Scotland in the winter....  I shook my head.  I don't know how you do it. 

- I feel the cold,  said Francés.  But Vicor is from León.  It's colder there than here.  They have snow just now.

Decidedly, it is not like much of Spain here just now.  There, in some part, the oranges are out and people, well wrapped out, sit outside in the sun at the cafes.

Murcia, Jan 2019, Teatro Romea (above)

So what finally, was chamuyo?  I had thought that chamuyo could be just chat.  Here, apparently, it can be that chit-chat that my friend's wife says fills a silence, precisely what happens between tracks in a milonga:

La palabra chamuyo es parte del argot lunfardo y se refiere a la conversacion que le hace un hombre a una mujer para llevarla a la cama, o la conversacion trivial que hacen las personas para llenar huecos de silencio.

Chamuyo is lunfardo slang, referring to the conversation that a man makes to a woman to take her to bed or to the small talk people make to fill a silence.

Wander Argentina says something similar:

Another word that sounds so pretty but can turn out ugly is chamuyo. This can be innocent sweet talk from a guy trying to score with a girl or out-right scheming and scamming. The verb for the word is chamuyar and a person who does it is called a chamuyero. A worker who talks about what a great job he’ll do while dollar signs are rolling in his eyes, or an acquaintance who swears they’ll do a favor and then evades phone calls or a guy who swears he’ll love a girl forever and then abandons her after she’s knocked up –- all fall within the chamuyero spectrum.

Not only does one meaning of chamuyo mean something dubious - a seduction that may or not exist,  that may or may not be a positive experience, but the very definition of the word is equivocal. It encompasses a whole range of possibility.

Assuredly, the milongas in Buenos Aires that I attended had that sense of ambiguity about them:  that a man could treat you well or not might depend on your responses, on what looked possible.  Like the Italians, the Argentine is a great improviser. The dance is famous, after all, for being improvised.  I have met Argentinian men who are personable, pleasant, intelligent, lovely to dance with.  Given half a chance those same men have taken my friends to bed.  And then the friends find out about the others he has on the go on other nights or in other countries. What is remarkable is those I have spoken to on this topic have either had this experience or have stories about other friends.  Some men behaved well, some did not.  Some would try it on, some would not.  Some would manage, some would not.  In a way that is just not the same here in Europe, especially in northern Europe, there was, never far away, that sense of an improvised game, a slightly dangerous or decidedly grown-up game, a sense of roles, of actions and consequences and you had to be alert to it.