Ferever Tango

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.