THE HISTORY OF THE TANGO FROM ESTAMPAS PORTEÑAS TANGO COMPANY

The history of tango does not have an exact beginning, nor a clear origin. The music of the tango is the result of a fusion of musical rhythms such as mazurkas, poleas, habañeras, waltzes, and candombe. Tango came from many different places, including immigrants from Europe, Africa, and Central America who lived in the tenement houses of the Rio de la Plata around the middle of the 19th century. Other rhythms had Argentine Creole origin. Some researchers argue that the tango is of African origin.

The tango began as instrumental music made to accompany the dance. The tango melody came from the flute, violin, and guitar. In the final decades of the 19th

century the bandoneón (accordion), an instrument of German origin, came to the Rio de la Plata and replaced the flute. The first featured singers of tango, such as Angel Villoldo, appeared in the early 20th century.

Immigrants contributed by adding airs of nostalgia to the songs, and thus the tango continued to develop its unique flavor. Originally only danced by men, the tango began to be associated with brothels and slums, particularly in the barrios such as La Boca and San Telmo, where prostitutes provided the only female presence to the genre. This also led to a style of dancing the tango which was very physical and provocative for the era.

The dance steps were an essential element for the dissemination of the genre. Some were rhythmic and lively and others were sad and sentimental. Also of great importance were the lyrics, to which each singer gave his personal imprint. Among the most outstanding shone Carlos Gardel, or “El Zorzal Criollo” (The Creole Thrush), regarded as the greatest tango singer of his time. Gardel’s baritone voice and dramatic phrasing of his lyrics made miniature masterpieces of his hundreds of three-minute tango recordings. Together with lyricist and long-time collaborator Alfredo Le Pera, Gardel wrote several classic tangos.

The tango reached its peak popularity in the 1940s, the time of poetry and big orchestras. Radio and film contributed significantly to bring it to a period of splendor through the early 1950s.

THE GOLDEN ERA OF TANGO The period from 1940 to 1950 is considered the golden era of tango for several reasons. First, there were many interpreters of tango and musicians of great talent, and no other city in the world had as many active orchestras as Buenos Aires, which had over 200. Second, a great number of memorable, classic tango compositions were composed during this period. Poets gathered with musicians and were inspired to create prodigious compositions that were ahead of their time. Third, new dances proliferated, aided in part by the new forms of media communication—in 1942, there were 20 radio stations in the capital and 37 medium-range stations in the country that devoted their transmissions to the tango. Finally, the tango was a large part of all recorded music and was almost always at the center of musical themes in Argentinian films.

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