Biography

  Javier “Cardenal” Domínguez's biography

Javier “Cardenal” Domínguez took his first musical steps in the early 1990s, during those unrepeatable days of tango renaissance. He was an exponent of a period that also witnessed the success of other singers such as Alfredo Rubín or Chino Laborde, some of which came from the rock scene or from other artistic backgrounds, but with the common denominator of a thirst for renovation. The tango singers of that generation, somewhat underground, pursued their own personal style, as far as possible from the style of impersonal, interchangeable tango singers, at the risk of being shunned by the entertainment industry. Domínguez, however, does not intend a break-up, but, on the contrary, he prefers to maintain contact with those earlier singers, taking as a model the typical Argentine singer with guitar accompaniment, such as Gardel, Rivero and Atahualpa Yupanqui. “At the beginning, people would give me a weird look when I said I sang tangos. Tango singers were believed to be nerds who had been born inside a gramophone. Nowadays it’s different because we have overcome prejudice by showing there’s other ways of doing tango.”