Tango Buenos Aires - can anyone tell me the history of tango in Buenos Aires?

Question

Tango Buenos Aires - can anyone tell me the history of tango in Buenos Aires?

Answer 1

you can probably go to wikipedia.org

and type tango.

Answer 2

Tango Buenos Aires: http://www.buenosairesstay.com

Buenos Aires Tango

There is much written about the origins of tango in Buenos Aires and the history of tango, but one thing is sure, ‘When you watch the tango, you watch the very essence of Buenos Aires.’  

We can be sure that “milonga” (dance establishments) and “the milonga” (a form of dance) predate tango. The word, tango, is most likely derived from the Spanish term, Andalusia Tango, used to describe music of the same period.  The word tango is less likely a homophone of the Spanish “tambor” meaning drum, also used by Spanish America to describe the hypnotic beat of South America’s slaves; although I have read compelling argument (far too technical for me) that seems to prove that African beats are most certainly embodied in the tango sound.

It seems a safe assumption that milongas and milonga dance are the starting points and a major influence on tango dance in Buenos Aires. Some argue that tango in Buenos Aires is simply explained as milonga evolving in the late XIX century and becoming more conservative and intertwined with European dance styles and musical influences.  Tango would later take Europe by storm in the late XIX and early XX centuries.

The tango of the early XX century is characterised by melancholy lyrics and smooth ballroom steps - the duple metre (2/4) into 4/4 and 4/8. This is the tango most of us know and I found cringe-worthy before my adventures in Buenos Aires.  I might add. I am a convert (zealot) and a fan of modern tango sounds, particularly the electronic tango.

The population mix when tango emerged in Buenos Aires supports a wide variety of ‘tango theocracies,’ but nobody really gets to the bottom of tango’s mysterious origins, rather many experts  point to a lack of documentary evidence, which makes tango’s exact origins too difficult to call.  

In the early and mid XIX century the population of Buenos Aires was heavily weighted in favour of men.  Buenos Aires is a port and therefore the main point of reception for sailors, traders and immigrants from all over Europe. This thriving port also included creoles (a mixture of European and native people), mulattos (a mixture of white and black or native and black peoples) and after 1843 African-South-Americans freed from slavery.

Surely, the late XIX and XX centuries tango music and tango dance in Buenos Aires are nothing like the wondrous and hypnotic beats and frenetic dances you can imagine emerging on the courtyards of San Telmo’s imposing Quintas crammed full of poor immigrant squatters or on the shantytown corners of La Boca?  The early dance forms and music from Buenos Aires’ conventillos must have been rich cultural collaborations, which later formalised and found their way to the bohemian dance establishments of Buenos Aires in the mid XIX century.

What are we told about the tango?  

“A ballroom dance, musical style, and song. The tango evolved about 1880 in dance halls and perhaps brothels in the lower-class districts of Buenos Aires, where the Spanish tango, a light-spirited variety of flamenco, merged with the milonga, a fast, sensual, and disreputable Argentine dance; it also shows possible influences from the Cuban habanera.”  

I am sure that all the above are true, but what do we already know? We have described Buenos Aires as a wonderful melting pot of cultures and people.  We know how wonderfully musical and talented in dance are the tribes of both Africa and South America.  A little known fact is that barrio de Monserrat was known as the Barrio of the Candoumbe Drum, because at one point this area of this city was inhabited by former black slaves and they brought their strangely rhythmic drum beats to the city of Buenos Aires. We can look at the later development of music and dance in North America and find similar African-American influence in popular music that also betray some tango beats.  We know Buenos Aires (South America?), is without doubt the home of modern coupled dance. We know Buenos Aires was a world apart from so-called civilised societies of the day and their musical and dance evolutions.  We can be almost certain that prostitution and homosexuality, as in most ports, were main sources of entertainment, but the latter was exacerbated by the lack of women and meant that Buenos Aires became a rather interesting mix of predominately male entertainment establishments.  We can find some accounts by visitors of the day that describe Buenos Aires as an ‘Inferno.’  Not because of the heat, but a Dante metaphor.

It is very easy to imagine Latin and African beats, and their exotic dance styles merging seamlessly in the Buenos Aires’ predominantly poor and masculine society; throw in heaps of testosterone and the origins of tango music in Buenos Aires and tango the dance in Buenos Aires no longer seem such a mystery to me.

There is much written about the origins of tango in Buenos Aires and the history of tango, but one thing is sure, ‘When you watch the tango, you watch the very essence of Buenos Aires.’  

  

Andrew Rae McCance,  [e-mail]