No one knows — least of all himself — why Arie Maasland, as Dutch as the bulbfields, the wooden shoes and windmills of tourist-poster fame, should have taken to Latin-American music so completely and successfully that in Argentina, the land of the tango, he is regarded as the best tango composer in the world. Arie Maasland — Malando to the world of light music — has never been to Argentina. “Somehow I’ve never got down to it”, he says, “I’ve been too busy, but I hope to go there someday”.
The amazing thing is that not only is Malando a musical “emigrant” himself, but also an “exporter” of the tango and rumba to other countries besides the Latin-Americas. In 1959 he won an “Oscar mondial de l’accordeon” for the best performance at the Accordion Concours in Pavia, Italy. His repertoire was Latin-American pure and simple. The gramophone record dealers in Japan awarded him the bronze “Legendary Archer” in 1964 (on the occasion of his first tour of that country) to mark the phenomenal success of his record sales. It has been statistically demonstrated that twenty times more of his records are sold in Japan than in his own country! Currently there are twenty of his LPs on the market there. One of them consists entirely of Japanese melodies with a South American flavour, the most popular being “Furusato”, based on a Japanese lullaby.
Also in 1964 Malando was the winner of an Edison for the LP released to mark the 25th anniversary of his tango and rumba orchestra. In 1966 he was distinguished with the “Golden Harp” award by the Conamus Foundation for his services to light music in the Netherlands.
Malando himself once remarked to someone from Buenos Aires that he considered his “exports” to the Latin American countries as rather like taking coals to Newcastle, and was at a loss to understand why there was so much demand for his music there. The answer was: “Your orchestra is different. It has a special touch about it”. The Malando touch is indeed recognizable immediately the orchestra is heard. Each melody it plays is, as it were, a signature tune. It is South American music with a Dutch touch. Many of his tangos, for instance, are slower than those of the Argentine, and this seems to have a special appeal. He explains the difference in tempo by pointing out that, though his tangos are so popular in South America, they are written in a rhythm adapted to dancers for whom the Latin American rhythm is not just a matter of course. Malando’s strength lies, in fact, in his having made millions of people Latin American minded by suiting that type of music to their own taste, thus admitting them to a world which might otherwise have remained “foreign” to them for ever.
