Origins of the Tango DanceTango is the renowned partner and social dance from South America. It originated in the Argentina and Uruguay regions, particularly in poor areas of port cities like Buenos Aires among African-descended residents. The following excerpt goes into the origins of tango and of the word 'tango.'
Title: Tango! The Dance, the Song, the Story Author: Simon Collier, Artemis Cooper, Ken Haas Excerpt: In many parts of the Spanish-American empire, the word 'tango', whatever its origin, acquired the standard meaning of a place where African slaves (or free blacks, of whom there were always more in the Spanish colonies than in the British empire) assembled for the purpose of dancing.
|
In Argentina, as elsewhere in the Spanish-speaking world, 'tango' also sometimes came to be applied, though at a later stage, to black dances in general. It was in this sense that the word eventually reached Spain, as a name for African-American or African-influenced dances of transatlantic provenance. The habanera itself was sometimes called a tango americano. (Isaac Albéniz's 'Tangos for Piano' are in fact habaneras.) A Spanish variation of the habanera was given the name tango andaluz (Andalusian tango), and this, too, became well-known in Argentina in the second half of the nineteenth century, though as a form of popular song rather than as a dance. In the 1880s and 1890s both the sung habanera and the tango andaluz (sometimes just called a 'tango') were popularized in Buenos Aires by visiting Spanish theater troupes. Many habanera-songs and tangos andaluces became hits, hummed and whistled all over the city, and domestic versions, often with local colour added, soon went the rounds.
It can be seen from this that the name 'tango' had been in use for a long time and was very familiar to the inhabitants of late-nineteenth-century Buenos Aires. It could easily be appropriated by - or attached to - a rising new music-and-dance tradition. And in due course it was.
Quite apart from its availability as a label, the word 'tango' in its earlier meaning - the place where blacks assembled to dance - also had a direct party to play in the spontaneous creation of the Argentine tango proper. The contribution of the Buenos Aires black community to the invention of the tango was indirect but nevertheless fundamental, in the sense that without it there would have been no tango at all. In the eighteenth century, Buenos Aires had been one of the ports of entry for the slave trade, and a sizeable number of its inhabitants had traditionally been black - around one-quarter of the population in the mid-nineteenth century. With the expansion of the city and with European immigration, the black community was now beginning to decline, or at any rate to become much less visible than it had been in the past. For the most part the African-Argentines had clustered in a number inner-city parishes; and their distinctive culture had been well-preserved by their communal organizations, not least in the form of enthusiasm for dance festivals. African-Argentine dances, needless to say, bore little resemblance either to those of the Argentine countryside or to the dances imported from Europe. The most prominent was the candombe, a local fusion of various African traditions. Its complicated choreography included a final section combining wild rhythms, freely improvised steps and energetic, semi-athletic movements.
- from "Tango! The Dance, the Song, the Story," by Simon Collier, Artemis Cooper, Ken Haas
It can be seen from this that the name 'tango' had been in use for a long time and was very familiar to the inhabitants of late-nineteenth-century Buenos Aires. It could easily be appropriated by - or attached to - a rising new music-and-dance tradition. And in due course it was.
Quite apart from its availability as a label, the word 'tango' in its earlier meaning - the place where blacks assembled to dance - also had a direct party to play in the spontaneous creation of the Argentine tango proper. The contribution of the Buenos Aires black community to the invention of the tango was indirect but nevertheless fundamental, in the sense that without it there would have been no tango at all. In the eighteenth century, Buenos Aires had been one of the ports of entry for the slave trade, and a sizeable number of its inhabitants had traditionally been black - around one-quarter of the population in the mid-nineteenth century. With the expansion of the city and with European immigration, the black community was now beginning to decline, or at any rate to become much less visible than it had been in the past. For the most part the African-Argentines had clustered in a number inner-city parishes; and their distinctive culture had been well-preserved by their communal organizations, not least in the form of enthusiasm for dance festivals. African-Argentine dances, needless to say, bore little resemblance either to those of the Argentine countryside or to the dances imported from Europe. The most prominent was the candombe, a local fusion of various African traditions. Its complicated choreography included a final section combining wild rhythms, freely improvised steps and energetic, semi-athletic movements.
- from "Tango! The Dance, the Song, the Story," by Simon Collier, Artemis Cooper, Ken Haas