I recently interviewed Horacio Ferrer (Part One), one of the premier lyricists of the Argentine tango of the last fifty years. Besides being a superb poet and noted figure of the musical stage, Horacio is a renowned educator of tango music and lyrics.
Terry: The work you've done with the Academy of the Tango; we'd like to know something of the Academy's history, how it got started and what was its intention.
Horacio: I'll tell you. In 1954, many years ago, I was an adolescent, and I founded La Guardia Nueva in Montevideo. The musicians came, and we worked very well together; and we began to do intellectual work there in the history of, and the thought behind, the tango. It was a very modest group; we were almost all university people, and there were some artists. We worked on magazines that were printed by...it was called "mimeograph." We did them and we were very keen about it, as much in Montevideo as in Buenos Aires and other cities. The work we did!
A lot later, after becoming an Argentine citizen as well, and since there were national academies in Argentina, it occurred to me to found a National Academy of the Tango. So I spoke with the Secretary of Culture, and then the President called me to ask me for one of my books, and I said to him, "What would you think, Mr. President, if we were to...?"
He said to me, "I'm a tanguero, and I love the idea. You put it together, and I'll support you." And so in six months the Academy had been constituted. And now it's been in existence for nine years. We have our publications, our first academics, our exhibitions, our CD's. We have the Liceo Superior of the tango where we've had fourteen graduates. It's our fourth year. We have corresponding academies in several parts of the world, that aren't branches, but rather independent institutions with which we collaborate.
I think we've brought back together the people who know the most about the tango, from many different angles, eh?, because the tango can be approached from a scientific point of view, by demography, sociology, psychology, from an esthetic point of view, an artistic one.
It can be approached from a philosophical point of view, from the musical point of view, from the choreographic point of view. So that there are many ways of analyzing the tango and arriving at knowing the tango. And so I think we've brought together the people who know the most...the titled academics, the honored ones who are also artists, no? Plus the young people and the generation in between, plus the corresponding academics and a permanent assemblage of knowledge, of exchange, that I hope can be disseminated through fellowships, through the exchange back and forth of people, by doing conferences, courses, etc.
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