The Argentine Tango

by Kelly Boler

The tango is a sad thought that you can dance (Enrique Santos Discépolo) 

By its very nature, everything about the tango is mysterious, and that includes its history. As there are several versions of the origin of the dance, and many are disputed by rival mythmakers, this one, which shamelessly incorporates anecdotes from a variety of legends of varying trustworthiness, will do as well as any other.

Some 200 years ago, Argentina was host to immigrants from countries all over Europe and Russia who bombarded the southern continent of the Americas hoping to make their fortunes. Cross-pollinating this mish-mash of culture further was the language, song and dance of the African slave population who were forced to work the prosperous plantations, and whose dances were often performed to the beat of a drum they called a “tango.”

When tribal rhythms met the European waltz, polka and mazurka in working-class enclaves, they led to the evolution of the tango that we dance today. A major irony is that this most erotic of all social dances blossomed in spite of – in fact because of – a lack of women partners. The boom-town atmosphere of early nineteenth-century Argentina meant, as it usually will, that there just weren’t enough women to go around, making it all but impossible for a working man to meet a woman unless he paid for the privilege in one of the area’s prospering brothels. Even then, he faced a patience-testing wait. The madams who were canny businesswomen, not wanting to lose prospective customers, brought in musicians to entertain their overflow clientele, much as would happen decades later in New Orleans, leading directly to the birth of jazz.

Back in Argentina, the bordellos were filled with men who prided themselves on their dance skills as much as their machismo. Dancing was of paramount importance to these semi-toughs called compadritos: when they did get a chance to dance with a woman – be she a prostitute or one of the rare “nice” girls of the local population – they had one chance to get her attention and keep it. In an era predating recorded music, thrown together with live music, and lots of time on their hands (among other parts of their anatomy), the waiting men began to practice their moves with each other. By tradition, the man actually got three chances, three make-or-break dances, after which a break was understood, and after that a woman could find the same partner or a new one.

Not all of the men who danced with each other in brothels were low-life. Many were middle and working-class local boys who took their new-found tango skills home where they taught a sanitized version to their female relatives and friends. The fact that it was denounced by the socially better-placed as immoral did little to stop the tango from growing in popularity over the first and middle part of the nineteenth century. As the immigrants made money, they returned to Europe, taking the dance with them, as did well-to-do Argentine men making the Grand Tour on the continent. The tango became a runaway hit in the dance halls and tea rooms of Europe, peaking in popularity just before the First World War. An important fall-out from the dance’s new-found respectability abroad meant that at last it gained acceptance with Argentina’s upper-classes.

During the War, little dancing of any kind was done, but after, the tango was more sought after than ever, as young people kicked off the stodgy values of the previous century. It was the Roaring ‘20s and the Lost Generation, and the tango, embodying newer, looser attitudes about sex and music. Although it remained a ballroom staple in Europe and America up until the time it was dethroned by rock and roll in the 1950s, the road was not such smooth going in the tango’s home country.

Regimes rose and fell, and with each one, the tango, as a symbol of a certain kind of Argentine nationalism, rose and fell with it. Censored after a coup in the 1930s, it saw a revival under the nationalistic rule of Juan and Eva Perón, only to banished when the Peronistas fell from grace. It remained censored through the 1960s, although a few fearless locals kept the dance alive in a quiet way, until it caught the imagination of the producers of a show called Tango Argentina. It was a smash, playing in theaters all over the U.S. and Europe and introducing this dangerous and forbidden dance to a new generation. This led to a resurgence of interest in dance studios everywhere, where it is sought after as no other dance for the old-world elegance and eroticism we crave when the real world gets a little too electronic, fast, and overwhelming.