TANGUEROS

Tangueros, like jazz fans, are passionate about their tastes. With every development in the music, battle lines are quickly drawn and sides taken.

After more than three decades, many have yet to accept the "new tango" of Astor Piazzolla. Some never will. Tango was born in the 1880s, a Creole blend of black and European traditions. It grew up in the muddy fringes of Buenos Aires, in brothels, in a world of orilleros, as the men from the outskirts were called; men of fast knives and half-smoked cigarettes permanently dangling from a corner of their mouths; men wearing white silk scarves and funyis, the narrow-brimmed fedora hat, set at a precise 45-degree angle.

Tango became a funhouse-mirror reflection of a country of immigrants. It was passionate, vigorous, fearless. It flaunted its sexuality with a sinful but wide-eyed innocence. It was generous and hard-headed. It both welcomed and fought the new blood, it was suspicious of the strange tongues and curious, eager to learn them. It dismissed the German-made bandoneón, a cousin of the accordion with a darker harmonium-like sound, after a glance. "Cosa 'e gringos", (a thing of foreigners) the tangueros said. Yet, in a few years, the bandoneón became the soul of tango. It was the shame of a Buenos Aires that looked to Europe for approval. It was also the forbidden fruit. Inevitably, tango slowly gained acceptance in respectable circles. It traveled. Stylized and tuxedoed, it became the toast of Paris in the 1910s. Soon after, it was embraced by Hollywood. It endured orchestras costumed in absurd gaucho clothes, sequined dance steps and self-styled Latin lovers with red roses between their teeth. It survived. In Buenos Aires tango was reaching an everwidening audience. It was also changing. Again. The dancing was becoming secondary as the words grew in importance. In the 1930s, dark years in Argentina's history, tango lyrics told the plight of the disenfranchised. It became a staple on the radio and at the ballroom, peaking with the golden era of radio. Then it was forgotten. No one had time to learn the steps anymore and Elvis and the Beatles had changed music forever, anyway.

Along the way, tango had turned sepia-colored and brittle and Piazzolla became a one-man avant garde. He stretched old song-form conventions and eventually dismissed them entirely. He retained tango's romanticism while rejecting its tendencies to nostalgia and bouts of morbid self-pity. He revised the harmonic language to include Ravel and Messiaen and Schoenberg and Bartok - and then he added a walking bass. He incorporated three-part fugues and jazz-style improvisation and powered it all with an improbable blend of traditional tango pulse and Stravinskian rhythms.

He outraged the tango world.

An Argentine pianist recently told a story that illustrates the depth of the passions "new tango" aroused. "My father was a bandoneón tuner and as a kid used to hang out at his shop. One night Piazzolla's (1955) orchestra came on live on the radio and played 'Tres Minutos Con La Realidad'. There were a bunch of musicians at the shop at the time and all of a sudden there was silence. This was unlike anything we'd heard before", he recalled. "The minute it was over an argument erupted; while that was going on, the phone rang and my father answered. He listened, barely saying a word, then hung up and said: 'So-and-so (a famous band leader at the time) is going to the radio to wait for Piazzolla and beat him up".

Piazzolla might now be one of Argentina's cultural heroes, but there were many hard years. Tango was part music, part religion and there was no room for heretics. Worst of all, from his detractor's point of view, Piazzolla had impeccable credentials as a tanguero. Born in Mar del Plata, a summer resort south of Buenos Aires, in 1921, Piazzolla grew up in New York City where he lived from 1924 to 1936. He settled in Buenos Aires in 1938, played with some of the big names of the day and made a reputation for himself as a bandoneón player and arranger with Anibal Troilo's orquesta tipica.
Troilo, composer of some of the classics of the genre and a superb bandoneón player and arranger, is a key figure in the history of tango. His orchestra, arguably the most popular of the time, nurtured the talent of many singers and musicians who went on to become major figures in tango.
Piazzolla left Troilo in 1944 and soon after formed his own orchestra along traditional lines. Meanwhile, he continued his classical studies and in 1954, one of his symphonic works won him a scholarship to study with the fabled Nadia Boulanger in Paris. He returned to Buenos Aires and moved steadily farther away from traditional formats and styles. There was first a large ensemble, then the "Octeto Buenos Aires" and finally, by 1968, his seminal "Quinteto Nuevo Tango". Through the years he would use other vehicles, most notably a brilliant nonet in the early '70s, but Piazzolla would always return to the quintet format. But this music knows many dialects. And listens. There are no lines drawn and no sides to defend. This is new tango.

Fernando Gonzalez (columnist for "The Boston Globe")

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