Argentina/Tango

Tango

Tango is a:

  • Dance

  • Instrumental type

  • Song form

Tango embodies passion

History/Background

  • From Buenos Aires, Argentina

  • Buenos Aires resettled by Spanish sailors in 1580

  • By 1880 important port city—economic and cultural center of Latin America

  • Developed in poor slum areas (brothels) on outskirts of Buenos Aires

  • Seedy subculture of taverns and bordellos

  • Knife fights and bar brawls over women were common—usually with drunken sailors

  • Tango reflects these possessive relationships—originally casting 2 men and 1 woman

Dance Characteristics

  • Straight upper body and forward tilt of spine (knife-fight stance)

  • Smooth intricate dance steps

Popularity

  • Originally spurned by aristocrats because of bad associations

  • Grew to be the most popular Argentine urban dance

  • Became internationally popular in the 1900’s (Paris 1907; London 1912)

  • By 1910 (1907) was exported to Paris – embraced by polite society

  • In London by 1912

  • Captured youthful passions of popular culture

  • Rudolph Valentino – made the tango even more popular in the movie “The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse” (1921)

Instruments and Musical Characteristics
The Bandoneon –

Typical Tango Orchestra

Bandoneons, violins, piano, bass, guitar (especially with vocals), cello (maybe), flute (maybe)

Musical Characteristics

Rhythms/Meters

  • Prevailing duple meter—bass line steady rhythmic patterns

  • Melody usually more ornamented and freely moving above the bass

  • Frequent Syncopations

  • Musically related to Cuba habañera and contradance (Listen to the famous Carmen—habanera – especially bass rhythms)

Harmony

  • Mostly minor

  • Some passages in major

  • Keeps the music unbalanced

Instrumental tangos

  • Keep feeling and rhythms of the dance

  • Has more complex instrumental parts

Tango Songs

  • Have song texts to melodies over tango rhythms – often accompanied by guitar

  • Carlos Gardel (1890-1935) – early movie star and composer and recording star of tango songs

international popularity – advanced the popularity of tango music

Tango’s Most Famous Song – La Cumparsita

  • Music by Gerardo Matos Rodriguez – a student from Montevideo, Uruguay

  • Gave the music to band leader Firpo (for 20 pesos)

  • Lyrics added later by Enrique Maroni and Pascual Contursi and renamed Si Supieras

  • Became a big hit in Buenos Aires and Paris – and then the world

  • Was the musical “face” of tango

  • Also recorded by Carlos Gardel (1928)

  • Has become synonymous with tango – the musical face of tango

Tango's Most Famous Song – La Cumparsita 

  • The cafe 'La Giralda' in Montevideo, Uruguay, occupies a special place in Tango history.

  • It was there in the year 1917 that a young Gerardo Matos Rodriguez gave (anonymously) the music score of a tango he had written to the orchestra of Roberto Firpo to play for the first time. Gerardo was then an adolescent (17 years old) who was barely making it as a student in the faculty of Architecture in Montevideo. Was it modesty? shyness? fear of ridicule? who knows why he wanted to remain anonymous?

  • Firpo only knew that the name of the young composer was Gerardo. It was only later that the full identity of the author was known. He was young, educated, well mannered and sensible. He was also a bit naive. He sold for 20 pesos his rights of authorship to the Breyer publishing house. After some moderate success the composition was forgotten.

  • Seven years later, in 1924, Gerardo was living in Paris and he met Francisco Canaro who had just arrived with his orchestra.

  • That's when he found out that La Cumparsita was a major hit.

  • The tango lyricists Enrique Maroni and Pascual Contursi had added words to the tango and renamed it 'Si Supieras'—If you knew.

  • All of Buenos Aires was hearing, dancing, and demanding to buy the score for the tango that was seemingly everywhere in shows, recordings, and broadcasts.

  • Shortly after, La Cumparsita arrived in Paris where, in the full grip of the roaring 20's, people danced charlestons, shimmys, one-steps, bostons, and when the crowd asked for a tango, they danced La Cumparsita.

  • From Paris La Cumparsita spread to the four corners of the world and has since and forever after become synonymous with Tango.