Tango music

Tango is a musical style in 2/4 or 4/4 time that emerged in Argentina and Uruguay during the late 1800s and early 1900s, brought together by European immigrants. Its cultural roots draw from Spanish, Italian, Gaucho, African, and French traditions. Performances can be purely instrumental or include a vocalist, and the music is typically played on a solo guitar, a guitar duo, or an ensemble called an orquesta típica. This ensemble usually features at least two violins, a flute, a piano, a double bass, and at least two bandoneóns, with guitars and a clarinet sometimes added. Tango has gained worldwide popularity in both music and dance.

The modern forms of tango developed in Argentina and Uruguay from the mid-1800s, though earlier tango styles existed in Cuba and Spain during the 1800s and early 1900s. A flamenco tango dance may share a common ancestor with a European minuet-style dance. All sources highlight the influence of African communities and their rhythms, while European immigrants brought instruments and techniques that helped define the final style, linking it to salon music that tango later influenced in return.

Ángel Villoldo’s 1903 tango “El Choclo” was first recorded no later than 1906 in Philadelphia. Villoldo himself recorded it in Paris around April 1908 with the Orchestre Tzigane du Restaurant du Rat Mort, since Argentina had no recording studios at the time. Early tango was played by European immigrants in Buenos Aires and Montevideo. The first generation of Buenos Aires tango players was called the “Guardia Vieja” (the Old Guard). In the early 1900s, tango was the favorite music of thugs and gangsters who visited brothels, in a city where men outnumbered women by 100,000 in 1914. The complex dances that arose from this music reflected how men practiced dancing in groups, displaying male sexuality and blending emotion with aggressiveness. The music was initially played on portable instruments like flute, guitar, and violin trios, with the bandoneón arriving at the end of the 1800s. The organito, a portable player-organ, helped popularize certain songs. Eduardo Arolas was key in popularizing the bandoneón, and Vicente Greco later standardized the tango sextet as piano, double bass, two violins, and two bandoneóns.

Like many popular music forms, tango was associated with the underclass, and efforts were made to restrict its influence. Despite this scorn, some figures like writer Ricardo Güiraldes were fans. Güiraldes helped popularize tango internationally, which had conquered the world by the end of World War I. He wrote the poem “Tango,” describing the music as the “all-absorbing love of a tyrant, jealously guarding his dominion, over women who have surrendered submissively, like obedient beasts.” One of the most widely known tango melodies, “La Cumparsita,” dates from this time. Its first two sections were composed as an instrumental march in 1916 by teenager Gerardo Matos Rodríguez of Uruguay.

Beyond global influences, early tango was locally shaped by Payada, the Milonga from the Argentine and Uruguayan pampas, and Uruguayan candombe. In Argentina, Milonga “from the country” existed since the mid-1700s. The first remembered “payador” is Santos Vega. Milonga’s origins seem to be in the pampa with strong African influences, especially through local candombe, which is related to its contemporary candombe in Buenos Aires and Montevideo. This candombe is believed to have existed in Argentina since the first slaves were brought there.

The word “tango” to describe a music or dance style appeared in print as early as 1823 in Havana, Cuba. The first Argentine written reference is from an 1866 newspaper quoting the song “La Coqueta” (an Argentine tango). In 1876, a tango-candombe called “El Merenguengué” became very popular after its success at the Afro-Argentines’ carnival in February of that year. It was played with harp, violin, and flute, plus Afro-Argentine candombe drums (“Llamador” and “Repicador”). This is considered a strong point of departure for the birth and development of tango. The first tango “group” consisted of two Afro-Argentines: “the black” Casimiro Alcorta on violin and “the mulatto” Sinforoso on clarinet. They played small concerts in Buenos Aires from the early 1870s to the early 1890s. Alcorta wrote “Entrada Prohibida,” sung by the brothers Teisseire, and is also credited with “Concha sucia,” later adapted by F. Canaro as “Cara sucia.”

Before 1900, several tangos were being played: “El queco” (anonymous, attributed to clarinetist Lino Galeano in 1885); “Señora casera” (anonymous, 1880); “Andate a la recoleta” (anonymous, 1880); “El Porteñito” (by Spaniard Gabriel Diez in 1880); “Tango Nº1” (Jose Machado, 1883); “Dame la lata” (Juan Perez, 1888); “Que polvo con tanto viento” (anonymous, 1890); “No me tires con la tapa de la olla” (A.A., 1893); and “El Talar” (Prudencio Aragon, 1895). One of the first women to write tango scores was Eloísa D’Herbil, who composed pieces like “Y a mí qué” and “Che no calotiés!” between 1872 and 1885. The first recorded musical score is “La Canguela” (1889). The first copyrighted tango score is “El entrerriano,” released in 1896 and printed in 1898 by Rosendo Mendizabal, an Afro-Argentine. This marks the transition from the old “Tango criollo” (Milonga from the pampas, evolved with touches of Afro-Argentine candombe and some Habanera) to the tango that followed.