A prostitute persecuted by the police, receives the interested protection of a greedy merchant. He takes refuge in his house one night and meets his nephew, a sensitive boy who wants to be a musician.
Two sisters struggle to get out of a Buenos Aires suburb, where debts with a loan shark have kept them apart. But soon the inhabitants of the neighborhood forget their differences before the appearance of an epidemic.
The film tells the story of the payador José Betinotti, a mythical character in Argentine music. It faithfully reconstructs the scenarios of the early twentieth century: the workers' struggles, the party meetings of the caudillos and the circus criollo, the cradle of Argentine theater and music.
