Amid all the tear-jerking lyrics of tangos, all the miniature tales of love and loss, of neglected old age, dead mothers, poverty, cruelty and loneliness, the songs that most move me personally are those in which tango itself is personified and, perhaps, most especially, those which link it with its country of origin, with a tango bien porteño, a symphony of the arrabal. This thing, Tango, larger than all of us, both universal and yet distinctly and importantly Argentine, does not exist of course. There is no such thing as Tango: there are only tango songs and tango musicians and tango dancers. And yet it is what unites us right now, reading this status from our computers in many different parts of the globe. Im writing to you from the heartland of tango, the centre of development and diversity for the dance, the place where it comes closest to its origins, where it is also most vibrant and alive. Its difficult to talk about the Argentineness of tango -- or the Rioplatense-ness of tango, if you prefer, since our neighbour Uruguayans also made some important contributions to the development of the genre. In real life, I come from a small, fiercely self-conscious European country-which-isnt-quite-a-country where we are proud and sometimes even chauvinistic about what we consider to be our national strengths. And, on the other hand, I believe that nationality is an accident. That we should be neither proud nor ashamed of the random workings of chance which, through no fault or merit of our own, led us to be born in a specific spot on the globe. I absolutely do not believe that you have to be Argentine to dance tango well. And I feel very uncomfortable when I read certain European accounts of tango which make the visiting tangueros sound like intrepid explorers in the jungle, anthropologists marvelling at the habits of noble savages, viewing the tango here through a distorting lens of idealisation and exoticism (Buenos Aires -- where people are more in touch with their emotions! where they still know how to touch each other! where men are real men and women real women!). Tango is the patrimony of all of humanity. You dont have to be Argentine yourself. But you do need to acknowledge the Argentine-ness of tango itself. The lyrics of the songs may express universal themes, but they are delivered with a porteño accent. The bandoneon evolved into the instrument it is today because of the demands and wishes of the Argentine buying public. The music is not simply what is written down on the page, but, to come alive, to have a distinctly tango sound, it has to be played using techniques, dynamics, phrasings which have developed over time and been transmitted orally through a distinctly Argentine musical tradition. And the same may be true of the dance: its not just bare steps and movements, but to really make it come alive requires an understanding of the tradition from which it developed, a love for the music and the dance in itself, not just as a tool we can use to cuddle or do nice movements or express something personal. It has its own history and identity. Its not just a question of mechanics, of technique, of aesthetics, of the positioning of legs and arms and torsos. It has a local habitation and a name. From midnight tonight, we will celebrating the Argentine Day of the Fatherland which, by a strange quirk of fate, also happens to be my real-life birthday. Go out and dance, my friends and honour the tango gods. They are everywhere. But they are most especially here.
Posted on: Sat, 24 May 2014 22:04:32 +0000
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