Tango

Abstract

Tango emerged in the late nineteenth century as a univocal fusion of music, poetry, and dance that still endures as a complex cultural system. Its origins are traced to the River Plate area that comprises Buenos Aires and Montevideo, respectively the capitals of Argentina and Uruguay. Buenos Aires, however, has been the hotbed of activities from tango’s beginnings to the present. Definitive theories of its origins, or agreement on some aspects of its history, however, remain speculative. The role that African descendants might have played in shaping this form of expressive culture, the presence or lack thereof of an Andalusian tango in its ancestry, and the demimonde of brothels fueling its conception are still the subject of heated controversy. Initially, tango was a style of dancing habaneras, tangos, or polkas with a straight arm and provocative figures; toward 1900, the dance called tango became associated exclusively with the musical genre of the same name, which by then had developed as an independent entity. The entire evolution of the dance hinged on that music. The lyrics were initially picaresque and betrayed the strong influence of Spanish poetry, but by the early 1900s the immigrant population had attached a particular melodramatic tinge to tango lyrics that was to remain a fixture of its style for decades in the future. Within the trilogy of music, poetry, and dance, music stands as the inalienable core of this univocal expression, but research on the texts and the dance as independent manifestations also has been pursued. During its long history, from the late-nineteenth and well into the twenty-first century, tango’s music has undergone substantive changes, clearly in response to local socioeconomic and cultural conditions. The musical anatomy of tango has not yet been fully studied, but significant advances have been made toward mastering the task. As instrumental music, tango displayed a vast range of possibilities, from its early small ensembles of self-taught musicians to the development of its own original and complex language, set to contrast with European norms at the beginning of the 1920s. The genre’s historical energy reached its peak in the 1940s, with brilliant innovations altering its parameters. Tango vocalists were turned into celebrities from the 1920s to the 1950s, and, more than a half century later, tango singing has retained its luster. The vanguard of the 1960s provided an additional creative impulse that is still lingering, mixed with more traditional trends. As dance, the protagonism of tango dominated the 1940s and 1950s, to wane and almost fall into oblivion in the 1960s and 1970s. However, tango dancing resurged locally and internationally in the 1980s, mostly through new choreographies that shared a cultural space with resilient traditions from the past. In Buenos Aires, there is an intense though reduced space for the practice of the revered tango. The appropriation of tango abroad has taken on a variety of shapes. Most importantly, these practices are strongly interconnected, converting tango into a cult-like passion for its performers and devoted followers. This article has been translated into English by Malena Kuss.