HISTORY OF ARGENTINE TANGO

Tango is the voice of the Streets of Buenos Aires. Tango was born at about 1880 in brothels on the back streets of Buenos Aires. At around the same time, a new instrument arrived from Germany, the Bandoneon. Its wailing sound caught the very feeling of the Tango. The lyrics of Tango were written in the language of the streets of Buenos Aires, Lunfardo, a mixture of Spanish, Italian, Native Creole and words strangely twisted. One recalls wasted lives, lost loves, but most of all, the love of Tango itself.

In 1910 Tango was introduced in Paris and took Europe by storm. It was so different from the dances of the time that it challenged the conventions of acceptable public behaviour.

Singer Carlos Gardel brought the tango to new audiences. In the 1920s, tango moved out of the lower-class brothels and became a more respectable form of music and dance. The “Golden Age” of tango music and dance is generally agreed to have been the period from about 1935 to 1952. Some of the many popular and influential orchestras included the orchestras of Juan D’Arienzo, Francisco Canaro & Anibal Troilo.  Beginning in the Golden Age and continuing afterwards, the orchestras of Osvaldo Pugliese & Carlos di Sarli made many recordings.

Tango is about connection, empathy between two people, the need to embrace, and be in the arms of another, to escape, albeit for just a brief moment of time, and in that moment, to live a life time. It is seduction or a private conversation, something to be quietly shared and cherished by the two dancers.

* from various Internet articles about History of Argentine Tango