TANGO

Submitted by: Kenth G. Pagobo and Jayson P. Pagobo

Tango is a partner dance and social dance that originated in the 1880s along the Río de la Plata,
the natural border between Argentina and Uruguay. It was born in the impoverished port areas
of these countries, in neighborhoods which had predominantly African descendants. The tango
is the result of a combination of Rioplatense Candombe celebrations, Spanish-Cuban Habanera,
and Argentinean Milonga. The tango was frequently practiced in the brothels and bars of ports,
where business owners employed bands to entertain their patrons with music. The tango then
spread to the rest of the world. Many variations of this dance currently exist around the world.
On August 31, 2009, UNESCO approved a joint proposal by Argentina and Uruguay to include
the tango in the UNESCO Intangible Cultural Heritage Lists.
Tango is a dance that has influences from African, South American and European
culture.Dances from the candombe ceremonies of former African slave peoples helped shape
the modern day tango. The dance originated in lower-class districts of Buenos Aires and
Montevideo. The music derived from the fusion of various forms of music from Europe.The
words “tango” and “tambo” around the River Plate basin were initially used to refer to musical
gatherings of slaves, with written records of colonial authorities attempting to ban such
gatherings as early as 1789.

Initially, it was just one of the many dances, but it soon became popular throughout society, as
theatres and street barrel organs spread it from the suburbs to the working-class slums, which
were packed with hundreds of thousands of European immigrants.

When the tango began to spread internationally around 1900, cultural norms were generally
conservative, and so tango dancing was widely regarded as extremely sexual and inappropriate
for public display. This led to a phenomenon of culture shock. Additionally, the combination of
African, Native American and European cultural influences in tango was new and unusual to
most of the Western world.

Many neighborhoods of Buenos Aires have their particular tango histories: for example La Boca,
San Telmo and Boedo. At Boedo Avenue, Cátulo Castillo, Homero Manzi and other singers and
composers used to meet at the Japanese Café with the Boedo Group.
In the early years of the 20th century, dancers and orchestras from Buenos Aires travelled to
Europe, and the first European tango craze took place in Paris, soon followed by London, Berlin,
and other capitals. Tango historian Nardo Zalko, a native of Buenos Aires who lived most of his
life in Paris, investigated the mutual fertilization between the two cities in his work, Paris –
Buenos Aires, Un Siècle de Tango (“A Century of Tango”). Towards the end of 1913, it hit New
York City as well as Finland. In the U.S., around 1911, the word “tango” was often applied to
dances in a 2
4 or 4
4 rhythm such as the one-step. The term was fashionable and did not indicate that tango steps
would be used in the dance, although they might be. Tango music was sometimes played but at
a rather fast tempo. Instructors of the period would sometimes refer to this as a “North
American tango”, versus the so-called “Argentine tango”. The tango was controversial because
of its perceived sexual overtones and, by the end of 1913, the dance teachers who had
introduced the dance to Paris were banished from the city. By 1914, more authentic tango
stylings were soon developed,along with some variations like Albert Newman’s “Minuet” tango.