The origins of Tango

How tango came to be is unknown. What we have is information about the history
leading up to the rise of Argentina as a state. From these facts, all we can do is
speculate about how tango came to be.
In 1805 and again in 1807, England tried to invade Buenos Aires, but was repealed
successfully by the population, not by the Spanish army, which abandon the city. This
paved the way for ideas of independence, which eventually led to the end of the
Colonial system and, after a war against Spain and a civil war, the Argentine Republic
unified during the decade of 1860. Most of the references related to tango point to
this time to signify its origins.

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The first Argentinean Presidents promoted the immigration of the European
workforce, defeated the indigenous people who had still claimed part of the Argentine
territory, favored an economic model of production and export of agricultural goods,
in accordance with British led ideas of international division of work, and invested in
the technology and infrastructure that made possible such model. A modern port was
constructed in the area of the Puerto Madero, and a railroad network that
transported the whole production of the entire country to this port. Buenos Aires
greatly benefitted from these changes and grew exponentially. Between 1871 and
1915, Argentina received 5 million immigrants, mostly Europeans. Almost all of them
stayed in Buenos Aires.
Buenos Aires, known at that time as “La Gran Aldea” (“The Great Village”), also
received other immigrants from the countryside who had been displaced. The
gauchos’ natural environment was the Pampas, which became private property of the
new landowners. Also, the “chinas”, who were indigenous women whose men were
killed in battle, defending their territory.
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All these new arrivals to Buenos Aires had few resources and were very poor. They
could only afford housing in the poorest neighborhoods, where the Afro-
Argentineans, descendants of the African slaves, had been populating since 1813's
abolition of slavery. They were the locals. If any newcomer wanted to know
something about Buenos Aires, they had to ask the Afro-Argentineans, who, before
this massive immigration, constituted one-third of the population.

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Between 1820 and 1850, before the Argentine Constitution was written and
immigration was promoted, Argentina was under the administration of Juan Manuel
de Rosas. During this time, the Afro-Argentineans enjoyed a period of greater
participation and freedom of expression.
Rosas was a landowner in the province of Buenos Aires with a very good resume.
When he was only thirteen, he fought heroically against the English invasions. Later
on, he proved to be a very efficient administrator of cattle ranches and a successful
businessman. Rosas created, financed and trained his own militia of gauchos, which
would go on to be integrated into the state as an official regiment. They soon earned a
reputation of being highly disciplined, and Rosas was able to establish order at the
border with the indigenous populations. In 1819, Rosas put this militia at the service
of the Governor of the province in order to quell an uprising against him. This is how
Rosas became known as “El Restaurador de las Leyes” (”The Restorer of Law’).

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He became the Governor of the province of Buenos Aires, and during 1835 and 1852
was the main leader of the Argentinean Confederation. This period of Argentina's
history is referred to as the “Era of Rosas.” He obtained the necessary support for his
administration from the poorer sectors of the population of the City of Buenos Aires
(integrated for a majority of Afro-Argentineans), and the gauchos of the countryside
close to the City (many of whom were also Afro-Argentinean.) During Rosas’ tenure,
he attended the “candombes” (celebrations) of the Afro-Argentineans as an honored
guest. Also, it was during this period that the carnivals began in Buenos Aires.

"Abuelita Dominga era muy vieja

y vivía en el barrio de los candombes.
Del carnaval de Rosas no se olvidaba
al cantar esta copla roja de amores:
Rosa morena,
de la estrella federal,
yo se que tu alma está llena
de un pasión que es mortal.
Rosa morena,
todos la vieron pasar,
en su garganta morena
sangraba un rojo collar.
Abuelita Dominga siempre lloraba
al recordar la historia de amor y sangre.
Y me dio esta guitarra para que un día,
la cante como nunca la cantó nadie.
Rosa morena,
muerta en los cercos en flor
la vio una noche serena
todo el Barrio del Tambor.
Rosa perdida
aún dice el viejo cantar
que le quitaron la vida
porque quiso traicionar."
“Rosa Morena (Abuelita Dominga)”, Héctor Blomberg and Enrique Maciel.

“Están de fiesta
en la calle Larga
los mazorqueros
de Monserrat.
Y entre las luces
de las antorchas,
bailan los negros
de La Piedad.
Se casa Pancho,
rey del candombe,
con la mulata
más federal,
que en los cuarteles
de la Recova,
soñó el mulato
sentimental.
Baila, mulata linda,
bajo la luna llena,
que al chi, qui, chi del chinesco,
canta el negro del tambor.
Baila, mulata linda,
de la divisa roja,
que están mirando los ojos
de nuestro Restaurador.
Ya esta servida
la mazamorra
y el chocolate
tradicional
y el favorito
plato de locro,
que ha preparado
un buen federal.
Y al son alegre
de tamboriles
los novios van
a la Concepción
y al paso brinda,
la mulateada,
por la más Santa
Federación.”
“La mulateada”, Julio Eduardo Del Puerto and Carlos Pesce.

Juan Manuel de Rosas’ regime affected all aspects of life in Buenos Aires and the
culture. After his fall in 1852, local actors who were popular under his regime were
dismissed, and the theaters of the City received foreign companies in their place. The
Spanish theater companies from Andalusia were the most popular at that time, with
the “sainete” being the main genre offered by these companies. This genre was
comprised of shorter pieces, including elements of humor, songs and dance. Soon,
the music and dance of tango could be seen on these stages.
Also, after Rosas was exiled, the candombes were prohibited in open spaces, so the
Afro-Argentineans had to continue them inside. This change of venue forced them to
dance closer to each other, shaping the choreographic elements of their dance which
eventually fit the embrace of tango. During this period, the word “tango” referred to
any dance performed by the Afro-Argentineans.
All the necessary elements for tango to appear were there: the Great City of Buenos
Aires, the Afro-Argentine culture, the criollo and the gaucho, the native “chinas”, the
massive immigration, the reconciliation with the Spanish heritage after the end of the
War of Independence, and the open door to the rest of the world through the port.
In our modern society, dancing is viewed as a specialized activity, such as a
profession or a hobby. For the people of the 1800s, dance was integrated into
everyday life. A person was not special because they danced, but they stood out if they
did not or could not dance.
The Renaissance was the beginning of dance as a modern social activity. Before the
Renaissance, dance was a purely ritual activity, with the aim of maintaining a
connection between the human realm and the Cosmos, which involved mythological
and religious connotations and rationales.
Then with the development of the modern city and its lifestyle, and the consequent
secularization of all aspects of life, dance assumed a role of facilitating social
interaction.
!
In the origins of social dances, we observe no physical contact between partners; then
they take each other hands, developing the “minuet” during the 1600s; which led to
dancing in each others arms, with the “waltz” in the 1700s. The direction of the
evolution of social partner dancing becomes evident: a closing of the distance
between the partners that culminates in the embrace of tango.
There are two explanations for why the embrace happened in tango, which are not
contradictory. The first is the eclectic origins of the dance, which combined
techniques of opposite tendencies, like the continuous movement in acceptance of the
inertia, characteristic of waltz, and the “figures”, detention of the movement opposing
the inertia, characteristic of the dances with separate partners or solo dancers,
performed, among others, in the Afro-Argentinean and Andalusian dances. The
greater communication made possible in the embrace produced a social partner
dance that could have both, the partners united in each others arms, and the figures
from the stops of the solo dancers. The other explanation is emotional: the
consolation that the embrace gave to all these humans left alone by displacement,
economic exile, destruction of their families, cultures and lifestyles.
Other characteristics of the new dance were that it was totally improvised, favoring
the skill and creativity of the dancers, their spontaneity, in contrast with the
repetition of choreographed formulas that the other dances demanded; and the
innovation that the woman walks backwards, which contradicted all previous
approaches to partner dancing. These elements are rooted in the body language of the
criollos, men and women, who were trained in the art of short knife fencing. Due to a
cultural demand and the historical realities of the time, it was considered necessary
to know how to fight, just as today it is considered necessary to read and write. In a
historical situation of rapid transformation of the government and institutions, there
was no reliable protection provided to the people, their families or their property.
Before the British, who were commissioned by the Argentinean government to
construct the railroad network, brought futbol (“football” in England, “soccer” in the
United States) to Argentina (effectively making it the most popular sport), the criollos
of Buenos Aires practiced “visteo.” Visteo is a variation of fencing using a wooden
stick burned in one end, or the index finger painted with grease or ashes, with the
purpose of marking the white shirt of the opponent. This is something which was
inherited from the gauchos. The popularity of this practice prepared the Porteños of
the 1800s with the necessary skills to create the dance of tango.
The characteristic elements of the dance of tango were referred as “cortes y
quebradas” (cuts and breaks).

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This dance technique soon became the characteristic dance of the poorest inhabitants
of Buenos Aires, Montevideo, Rosario, and the villages located south of Buenos Aires
in an area known as “Barracas al sur”, Avellaneda and Sarandí.
These women and men received respectively the names of “chinas” and
“compadritos.”
The massive immigration in Buenos Aires was intended to populate the countryside,
but a failure in the implementation of the necessary policies, corruption and the
“Panic of 1873” (the great financial crisis that triggered a worldwide economic
depression), conspired to detain almost the entire human wave in “The Great
Village.” The City was not prepared to receive this amount of people, and housing
quickly became one of the most urgent problems to solve.
!
The Andalusian style houses of the Southern side of Buenos Aires, San Telmo and La
Boca, were soon creatively transformed into rooms to rent.
This type of construction, typical of the Colonial time, constituted a string of rooms
aligned one after the other, with doors that opened to a patio or corridor connecting
them. Their owners simply made each room a separate apartment to rent.
The huge demand for rooms made them expensive, so sometimes more than one
family would rent one room and further divide it to make it affordable. This created a
very crowded living unit, which was called “conventillo.”
!
In 1871, Buenos Aires suffered a yellow fever epidemic that killed 8% of its
population, most of them living in these houses. The situation was so dire (with more
than 13,000 people dying in 4 months) that it was necessary to open a new cemetery
in the area of La Chacarita.
A great proportion of immigrants were male because they did not want to risk their
families in the adventures of a “new world.” This created the conditions for the rise of
prostitution as a very profitable business.
After the 1871 yellow fever epidemic, the authorities of Buenos Aires became more
concerned with public health. Among many public health measures, prostitution was
regulated. The unintended outcome of this was the differentiation between foreign
women and the locals. Foreign women, who did not understand the language and the
culture, were lured into being sex slaves by an international network of human
traffickers, and had to accept these regulations, fees and taxation. The locals, Afro-
Argentineans and native “chinas,” together with the Spanish and Italians, went into
hiding. This also satisfied the demand of two different sectors of the market, in
accordance with their purchase power, making the “loras” (“parrots”, due to the
language barrier) the better off, and the “chinas” (Quechua word for “woman”) the
less favored. The legal business, called “casas de tolerancia” (“houses of tolerance”)
were located downtown, in the area of Corrientes Street, San Nicolas, Palermo, San
Cristobal and Barracas. The clandestine ones were called “cuartos de chinas.”
The demand was always greater than the supply, meaning customers had to wait. The
owners of these houses soon realized that they needed to offer something to these
customers while they waited, to keep them from leaving and to entertain them. They
began to hire musicians as a form of entertainment. The most popular music at the
time was polka, habanera, milonga and a new kind of rhythm called… tango.
Sometimes the men who were waiting would dance, which led the owners to the
realization that perhaps the dance in itself could generate business.
The first “academias” began to open during the 1870s. These were places where men
could go and dance with a superb female dancer, improve their skills, and try some
new moves, all for a fixed price per song. These women shared the customer’s pay
with the owner of the hall. The better dancers were more in demand and would dance
nonstop for several hours, song after song, man after man. They did not need to be
pretty or possess any other quality outside of being great dancers. The academias
were located mainly in the area of Constitución and San Cristobal, and were also very
popular in the City of Rosario. The owners and managers of the academias were
mostly Afro-Argentineans.
Outside the circuit of academias, in 1857, the Spanish musician Santiago Ramos
provided a distinctive Andalusian contribution, which in turn recognized Afro-Cuban
and African roots. He composed one of the first tango flavored songs known as
"Tomá mate, che", a proto-tango with “Rioplatense" lyrics and Andalusian style
musical arrangements. It was part of the “sainete” “The Gaucho of Buenos Aires,”
which premiered at the Teatro de la Victoria. Also from that time came the proto-
tango "Bartolo tenia una flauta” or simply "Bartolo", derived from a classical XV
century Andalusian melody, and the Montevidean “candombe tangueado" "El
chicoba”.

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The first Andalusian tango to reach mass popularity was composed in Argentina in
1874. The title is "El queco" (slang for ‘brothel’, of Quechua origin), from the
Andalusian pianist Heloise de Silva, which makes open reference to the “cuartos de
chinas.” Also, a candombe called "tango" with the title "El merenguengué" became
very successful at carnivals organized by the Afro-Argentinean population in Buenos
Aires in February 1876. In 1877, the restaurant “Lo de Hansen”, located in Palermo,
was the first in a series of restaurants, cabarets and pubs where the youth of high
society would socialize and dance tango.
The year of 1880 is when some authors mark the transition between the gestation of
the tango and “La Guardia Vieja” (“Old Guard”.) There are some others who prefer to
wait for the further evolution of the genre and the appearance of the first scores. In
this decade, the tango and milonga are confused with one another, and both began to
impose their dominance over habanera. During this time is when tangos began to
multiply, “Señora casera" (Anonymous, 1880), “Andate a la Recoleta” (Anonymous,
1880), “Tango # 1” (José Machado, 1883), “Dame la lata” (Juan Pérez, 1883), “Qué
polvo con tanto viento” (Pedro M. Quijano, 1890.)
In 1884, the Afro-Argentinean Casimiro Alcorta composed the oldest famous tango,
"Concha sucia”, with openly pornographic lyrics referencing life in the brothels.
Three decades later, Francisco Canaro changed the lyrics and the title to “Cara
sucia” (“Dirty Face”), definitely making it the inaugural tango. Casimiro also
composed “La yapa" tango which was later recorded as “Entrada prohibida”, then
signed by the Teisseire brothers as the composers.
Around the same time, another Afro-Argentinean, the “payador" Gabino Ezeiza,
introduced the “contrapunto milongueado”, linking the milonga to candombe. He
told another payador, Nemesio Trejo, that “contrapunto milongueado” is
‘pueblera’ (‘of the city’) and a daughter of African Candombe, and while hitting his
fingers against the edge of the table began to hum "tunga ... tatunga ... tunga ..." to
demonstrate with an onomatopoeia the link between the milonga rhythm with the
Candombe (In an interview to Nemesio Trejo, made by Jaime Olombrada, published
in the newspaper "La Opinion" of Avellaneda (Province of Buenos Aires, Argentina)
on April 15, 1916).
At this time, the most common tango ensemble was guitar, violin and flute. In the
following years the guitar and the flute disappeared, and the piano and then the
bandoneón were integrated, which shaped the “Orquesta Típica.”

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In those years the “organito,” a portable player, had a major role in the initial spread
of the tango. It was made of tubes or flutes and a keyboard which is operated by the
cylinder, enabling the passage of air to produce the different notes. Air is generated
by bellows which are activated simultaneously with the cylinder by rotating a handle.
The “organito,” like the organ and the bandoneón, is a wind instrument. It is
important to differentiate the “organito” from the “organillo,” which is more common
in Spain and produced its sound from strings. The sound of the “organito” prepared
the ears of the Porteños for a natural transition to the bandoneón in tango, when it
finally arrived in 1880.
It is around these “organitos,” where men were seen dancing tango in the street,
practicing “cortes y quebradas.”

“Las ruedas embarradas del último organito

vendrán desde la tarde buscando el arrabal,
con un caballo flaco y un rengo y un monito
y un coro de muchachas vestidas de percal.
Con pasos apagados elegirá la esquina
donde se mezclan luces de luna y almacén
para que bailen valses detrás de la hornacina
la pálida marquesa y el pálido marqués.
El último organito irá de puerta en puerta
hasta encontrar la casa de la vecina muerta,
de la vecina aquella que se cansó de amar;
y allí molerá tangos para que llore el ciego,
el ciego inconsolable del verso de Carriego,
que fuma, fuma y fuma sentado en el umbral.
Tendrá una caja blanca el último organito
y el asma del otoño sacudirá su son,
y adornarán sus tablas cabezas de angelitos
y el eco de su piano será como un adiós.
Saludarán su ausencia las novias encerradas
abriendo las persianas detrás de su canción,
y el último organito se perderá en la nada
y el alma del suburbio se quedará sin voz.”
“El último organito”, Homero and Acho Manzi.

Read "History of Tango - Part 1:  Women and men of the Colony"

More... coming soon.

Bibliography:
◦ “Antología del tango rioplatense”, Jorge Novati, Irma Ruiz, Néstor Ceñal e Inés
Cuello. Instituto Nacional de Musicología “Carlos Vega”, 1980.
◦ “Crónica general del tango”, José Gobello, Editorial Fraterna, 1980.
◦ “El tango”, Horacio Salas, Editorial Aguilar, 1996.
◦ “Historia de tango - Sus orígenes”, Rubén Pesce, Oscar del Priore, Editorial
Corregidor 1977.
◦ “El tango, el gaucho y Buenos Aires”, Carlos Troncaro, Editorial Argenta,
2009.