The Tango: Its Origins and Meaning

Abstract

SOY el tango rnilongoiz nacido en 10s suburbios malevos y turbios . . . . . . un pensamito triste que se baila . . .The tango had its modest origins in the cities of Buenos Aires and Montevideo. Through cultural interaction it quickly became a major mode of popular expression in Western culture, particularly in the ballroom and through the mass media of the radio, phonograph and the movies. Artistic interpretations expressing the meaning of the tango can be described as camp, outlandish and sexy.However the tango has a deeper significance, one derived from the existential anguish of modern man. As a unique artistic manifestation of modern culture the tango provides us with a confluence within popular expression of a deepflowing sense of life.Through three hundred years of colonial history life on the pampa and the scruffy port settlements on the River Plate flowed to and from the rich silver mines of Upper Peru. It was the second half of the nineteenth century before Buenos Aires and ontevideo threw open wide their doors t o European immigration. The immigrants came not only from across the sea, b u t also from the hinterlands from which they marched in search of wealth in the burgeoning cities. By the eighteen eighties the flow of life was completely reversed, and all was concentrated on the commerce and industry of the ports. The small and inadequate colonial cities were soon engulfed by sprawling neighborhoods, many of them impoverished and marginal t o the urban center. These were the suburbios or arrabales, dominated and controlled by local hoods (compadritos) skilled in the use of the knife.In the case of native Americans they had given u p their beloved countryside, the wide-open spaces, their families. For foreigners the dislocation was even more of a shock. The subculture of the suburbios became one of disorientation, mistrust and alientation. Their work, when they found it, was dehumanizing. Human relations were tenuous and life was at best insecure. This is the atmos-