See discussions, stats, and author profiles for this publication at: https://www.researchgate.

net/publication/327209698

History of Tango-Part 2: The origins of Tango

Article  in  Archivos de oftalmología de Buenos Aires · August 2018

CITATIONS READS
0 765

1 author:

Marcelo Solis
Buenos Aires Ciudad
1 PUBLICATION   0 CITATIONS   

SEE PROFILE

Some of the authors of this publication are also working on these related projects:

History of Argentine Tango View project

All content following this page was uploaded by Marcelo Solis on 24 August 2018.

The user has requested enhancement of the downloaded file.

History of Tango – Part 2:
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repealed successfully by the population, not by the Spanish army, which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.

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.

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.
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’).
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 his
tenure, Rosas 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).

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.”

“Milonga del tiempo guapo, milongón de rompe y raja,


la bulla del empedrado va marcando tu canción;

soy porteño del 80 y al compás de tu canyengue

desfilan por mi memoria los recuerdos en montón.

Te conocí en los fortines


que cuidaban la frontera

reclamando los amores

de una china cuartelera.

Animando las retretas

del Parque de Artillería

y en la barriada bravía

de las Barracas del Sur.

Milonga del tiempo guapo, milongón de los milicos,


de “kepises” requintados y bombachas de carmín;

con tu música sencilla fuiste ley de los porteños,

grito de los cuarteadores y alma del piringundín.

Te conocí en los corrales


de los viejos Mataderos,

hecha jerga en los quillangos

del recao de un forastero.

tu canto fue la corneta

del cochero del tranvía

y el Palermo de avería

tu escuela sentimental.”

“Del tiempo guapo”, Vicente Fiorentino and Marcelo De La Ferrere.

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”.

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.

Casimiro Alcorta was also a celebrated tango dancer, together with his
companion “La Paulina”, of Italian origin.

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.”
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 also

• History of Tango – Part 1

• History of Tango – Part 3
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 del tango – Sus orígenes”, Rubén Pesce, Oscar del Priore,
Editorial Corregidor 1977.
• “El tango, el gaucho y Buenos Aires”, Carlos Troncaro, Editorial
Argenta, 2009.
• http://www.todotango.com/english/

View publication stats