by Alba Balboni
Is it fashionable? Is it fascinating? May be…
The truth is that it has been around for at
least 120 years. Many people had tried to
define it, to capture its mystery in a few
words with different degrees of success. It
remains elusive, escaping language and its
limitations, because it is a language itself,
it is a music, it is a dance, it is a way of
assuming life and its consequences.
Many still cast shadows over the origin of
the name, reluctant to admit the proud
African roots of the name Tango, even
when Spanish Dictionaries as early as 1802
were using the name and defining it as a
house where slaves would meet to celebrate
reunions and dances, with permission
of their masters. Racism is still obscurely
hiding in the local culture somehow, where
even local politicians or prestigious newspapers
resort to the use of racial slurs when
tempers get somehow out of control. From
the names of dances associated with tango,
like candombe and milonga to the rhythm
it will be hard not to admit the African
roots of the tango as it is today. It represents
therefore the largest and longer lasting gift
of the African people to the people of South
America. The 1853 Constitution facilitated
the coming of immigrants to the region
and set the rules for the definite abolition of
slavery, corroborated years later by laws that
declared free all slaves coming to the country
and acquired by masters under foreign laws.
Millions of immigrants were coming to
the area with very little baggage, but with
heads full of dreams, languages, knowledge,
habits, pains and vices. Locally, the
wounds of the genocide perpetrated by the
government on the indigenous people of the
region were still open, the stigma of racism
and slavery was lingering above the region
like a toxic cloud, the measureless pain of
the tragic and devastating Paraguayan war,
where the blind ambition of the politicians
of the country’s neighbors, Argentina, Brazil
and Uruguay, did not have any objections to
the killing of most of the adult and adolescent
male population of Paraguay in pursuit
of a shameful victory of sorts. Tango came
about in that kind of Historical landscape.
A ritual dance was born that night
From the infinite confrontation
Between man and his destiny,
Pain, anguish, rebelliousness, dreams.
Somebody call it tango,
Nobody knows why or when.
May be it was God who decided it
In that latitude and that time.
As beautifully described by Ridardo Ostundi
in his poem, Tango was born simultaneously,
on both banks of the Rio de la Plata, the
wide unruly brown flow of water that fills the
wide gash to the heart of South America, on
the days when communication was difficult
and slow, perhaps like a divine inspiration or
an answer to prayers, coming strictly from
the heaven above the mystic river. It was a
time of change, perhaps a time of sorrow
for many, of complex emotions and feelings.
Nobody has been able to explain how or
why this combination of rhythms, echoes,
memories, thoughts, frustrations, nostalgia,
loneliness, hopes and hopelessness, longing
and pain gave birth to this music. It had “a
butterfly effect” in the chaotic world of the
beginning of the twenty century.
These flattering of wings started in the
poorest outskirts of the town somehow have
managed to have universal significance.
The simple songs of the beginning evolved
into richer and more complex songs. Original
tunes where enriched by poetic and metaphorical
lyrics, singers step into the picture
to lend presence and originality to all performances.
The original precarious movements
gave way to a complicated dialogue between
two people dancing with the heart and the
soul as well as the body. Wildly condemned
at the beginning by the local aristocrats and
the clergy, as an almost pornographic dance,
was finally accepted after Europe received it
with enthusiastic open arms.
Tango made the trip to the Old Continent
hidden among the few belongings of the
Fragata Sarmiento’s crew members and
reached Europe at a very special time. Waltz
had been accepted as a couple’s dance at the
beginning of the XVIII Century. During
the industrial revolution there was a true
social struggle trying to establish a public
place for the couple and the waltz came to
publicly acknowledge and accept the couple
as a social unit. According to the French
researcher Remi Hess this dance came after
many centuries of group dances and ferocious
prosecution, even public burning of
people daring to dance in couples, because
according to the moral rules of the time “the
devil will be in between two people dancing
together”. Waltz was a joyous, festive, enthusiastic
and positive encounter between two
people. Tango came to Europe with all its
subtle complexities and deep meanings. It
came to Europe when the continent was
starting to open up to the mysterious and
complicated world of psychoanalysis, and
its wild search within the exclusive territory
of the mind and the soul. It took Europe by
surprise, offering this unabashed encounter
between two real people, in the shivering
flesh of their complexities.
The music and the dance have continued
their evolution; they have been transported
and translated to every corner of the world.
It seems to have its own way of reaching
out and grabbing people’s heart. It seems
to breath, beat and pulse in every corner
of Buenos Aires. People come from all over
the world to search for hidden clues of its
magic.
In the complex world of today, where people
compulsively grab ear phones and electronic
devices to escape reality it offers a different,
exhilarating challenge. The meeting of two
vulnerable, fragile, delicate human beings
willing to surrender to the mystery of the
moment, to the enchantment of an embrace,
defying differences, distances, ages, color of
the skin or unsurpassable different ways of
looking at reality.
