Tango time; the Latin American song and dance that swept the world onto its feet

UNESCO Courier, March, 1986 by Luis Bocaz

Tango Time

One of the tango's many mysteries is its mixed cultural parentage. To explain plain its origins, its chroniclers have had to investigate the aftermath of slavery in a region of old Spanish colonies. Vicente Rossi, for example, suggests that the tango was born in the African communities of Montevideo, a view not always enthusiastically shared on the western bank of the estuary of the Rio de la Plata.

Apart from the inevitable wranglings over paternity, there is no disagreement about the influence of the candombe on this dance in its early years, or about the contribution to its development made by the two Rio de la Plata capitals, Buenos Aires and Montevideo. The sprawling Argentine metropolis was, in the end, to monopolize the sobriquet "City of the Tango", but in both ports (La Cumparsita, one of the best known tangos, is Uruguayan) the intermingling of its African and mestizo ancestors, together with other local and European strains, gave birth, in the space of a few decades, to one of the most distinctive cultural creations of the American continent.

Where did the name come from? In writings and lectures on the subject, Jorge Luis Borges pokes fun at those who bend over backwards in their attempts to trace its origins to a Latin root. The distinguished writer's amusement is provoked by the lowliness of its earliest surroundings, the suburbs, and by the creature's undeniable connections with disreputable establishments

In Buenos Aires, the scale of th suburban fringe was a consequence of spectacular urban growth. This unpretentious colonial town, founded twice in the sixteenth century, was chosen in 1880 as the federal capital, and rapidly became a thriving port. Thereafter, it absorved wave upon wave of immigrants, who disembarked with their cargo of dreams and solitude and, on the so-called orillas, established a sort of frontier way of life. People were washed up here by the tides of fortune, as they were on the Pacific coast, in San Francisco of the Gold Rush, or Valparaiso, with their nostalgic atmosphere of turn-of-the-century sailing ships.

In this murky urban quarter, lone men fought one another over fortunes and brief affairs of the heart. So it is not difficult to understand how this branch of humanity found in the cortes and quebradas (literally "cuts and slashes") of the tango a means of escape from the teeming solitude of the tenements.

Those heroic times have left us with the stereotyped image of the original dancing couple. She, with her tight-fitting dress, split skirt and scarcely concealed hint of erotic aggressiveness; he, perched on high heels and wearing a narrow-brimmed hat. Even today, magazines and shows continue to reproduce this vignette of a bygone age. One thing is undeniable: in the last ten years of the nineteenth century, the music to which they danced was held in high esteem in musical circles, and, at the turn of the century, a whole galaxy of distinguished composers ushered it out of the suburds and into the city centre.

By the time the Republic celebrated its centenary, definite rules had taken shape governing the instruments on which it was played. Flutes and guitars had been banished, making way for the ensemble that would henceforth be known as the orquesta tipica, consisting of piano, violins, double bass and a little-known instrument called the bandoneon. This emigrant accordeon from Central Europe came to symbolize the essence of the tango. Why did it became so prominent as a popular art form? After all, as musicologists point out, it was very difficult to play. There is no convincing answer to this question, but the fact remains that from the legendary Ramos Mejia to Astor Piazzolla in our own time, the roll of honour of those who played it includes such glamorous names in tango history as Eduardo Arolas and Anibal Troilo.

On a wave of popular creativity, this suburban adolescent rose irresistibly to fame. Before the First World War, Paris (Tangoville, some historians would claim) had given her the keys to Europe. From London to Moscow, the great cities were held spellbound by the mysterious creature. Her triumph heralded that of jazz, another child of miscegenation in the landfall cities of America. The tango craze spread through the ballrooms and fashionable watering places. Handbooks on how to dance it appeared by the dozen, and a certain shade of orange came to be called "tango". In February 1914, an engraving in the French magazine L'Illustration showed the Pope thoughtfully watching the circlings of a dancing couple. The Holy See found itself obliged to make a pronouncement, having heard voices raised in condemnation of the morals of this Latin-American upstart. Its concern was justified. Some of the vituperation came from Argentine circles. The poet Leopoldo Lugones called the tango a "reptile from the brothel", and more than one diplomat showed distaste for the disconcerting way in which this ignoble compatriot had won general acceptance.