The kids are dancing tango again in Buenos Aires, fueled by new styles of tango music that are laced with hip-hop elements, jazz riffs, rhythm and blues licks, and suggestions and samples of rock and roll. You still encounter some younger people in this city that feign a lack of interest, who say that tango is the music of their grandparents and parents. That is so, but one of the glories of Argentine tango, besides the history that it embodies, is its elasticity and its ability to accept and be broadened by so many new musical elements.
Tango is, after all, a child of the great immigrations to Argentina and Uruguay from everywhere in the world. Describing the early 20th century, the Uruguayan writer Eduardo Galeano writes that “tango had been born in the corrals at the city's edge and in tenement courtyards. It came from gaucho tunes of the interior and came from the sea, the chanteys of sailors. It came from the slaves of Africa and the gypsies of Andalusia. Spain contributed its guitar, Germany its bandoneon, Italy its mandolin.
“The driver of the horse-drawn streetcar contributed his trumpet, the immigrant worker his harmonica, comrade of lonely moments. With hesitant step, tango spanned barracks and dives, the midways of traveling circuses and the patios of slum brothels. Organ grinders paraded it through shore streets on the outskirts of Buenos Aires and Montevideo, heading downtown; and ships took it away, where it drove Paris wild.” In this last bit he’s referring to the introduction of tango to the French prior to World War I, who then took it so excitedly to the world.
All those people who had gone to — or, in the case of black people, had been taken to — South America had brought their various kinds of music with them, and the result of all those rhythms and chords, instruments, ethnicities, cultures, and sounds was a fine musical madness, from the moil of which tango came bubbling to the surface. It was that most wonderful of cultural events, a bastardization from innumerable parents, a burst of musical languages and unusual couplings from which sprung a single, yet endlessly complicated, gorgeous flower.
Article comments
1 - Cherie Magnus
Very nice article!
I too have written a lot about La Ideal.
But now that I live here in Buenos Aires (since 2004) and dance and teach tango with my Argentine partner, I have to say that rarely do any good dancers go to La Ideal. It more or less has turned into a tourist trap, which is not necessarily a bad thing.
And the heart and soul of tango are those old orchestras from the 'golden age of tango," the 30's, 40's, and 50's.
When those young people get tired of kicking between their partners legs and jumping onto their knees to electronic music, they will return to the close embrace and the profound and moving music of the traditional orchestras.
2 - Terence Clarke
Hello Cherie:
Thank you. I agree. The close embrace is the essence of the dance, and the innovations these days that I admire are those that recognize the long, sensuous traditions of tango.
I hope you'll take a look at another BC article I did last September, about Gustavo Naveira.
Best,
Terry Clarke