Music and Politics: The Argentine Tango's Cultural Roots

Introduction: Tango as Cultural and Political Expression

The tango is a form of dance that originates in Buenos Aires, Argentina. It is a popular dance form that has spread internationally since its inception in the early nineteenth century. As with all cultural forms, there is a distinctive history and style that accompanies this mode of expression. The very creation and performance of tango are political acts. The tango flourishes in South America and in Europe, and tango culture is also quite popular in North America and Asia. There are, for example, multiple tango festivals that occur in Turkey, a country that straddles both Asia and Europe. This paper discusses the cultural expression of tango — as both a form of music and dance — as well as the political circumstances under which it was created and the ones it continues to express.

The tango is performed mostly in pairs, typically one man and one woman. It originated in marginalized areas of social interaction beginning around the 1880s. Men who congregated in brothels and bars, socialized, gambled, and participated in other such related behaviors developed and practiced these dances together as a way to prepare for social interaction with women. When the tango style of dance and song first began, the lyrics were especially explicit and heavy with sexual connotations. As the dance gained in popularity — moving into mainstream and international tastes — the lyrics underwent massive change with regard to subject matter, choreography, and presentation.

Music is a form of art, and one of the many functions of art is to express experience. Some of the most celebrated forms of music are those that, at the time they were new, were considered radical, dangerous, or otherwise threatening, because those forms communicated the experience and creativity of often marginalized and disenfranchised groups. Music is an avenue by which people express their feelings, their experiences, and the situations that test their characters. In cultures that are authoritarian, conservative, or otherwise severely restrictive, forms of expression such as music may be the only space where oppressed individuals feel free.

The Universal Power of Music

Music is one of a rare few universal languages in the world, alongside love and laughter. One does not necessarily need to understand the words spoken or sung in a piece of music in order to enjoy it or be moved by it. Studies in acoustics, physics, and neuroscience demonstrate the many ways in which human and animal brains react to music. Music triggers memories; it stimulates pleasurable endorphins and other hormones in the brain. One method of treatment for stuttering is to sing words rather than speak them. Many children learn mathematics and physics with greater facility when they also play a musical instrument such as the piano, as there are many related concepts and patterns between music and these disciplines. An effective technique for retaining information is to set vital content to the tune of a familiar song — consider how many television theme songs, commercial jingles, and popular songs the average person can recall from memory.

When we consider how much of our memory is dedicated to music, we glimpse the power music holds over people. Studies have shown that animals such as elephants, dogs, and birds not only respond to music in ways similar to humans, but also appear to enjoy it, and some even produce it. Animal musicality has become a legitimate area of scientific inquiry. Music reaches us on both conscious and unconscious levels. For these reasons and more, musical forms such as the tango — which stem from social and political upheaval or tension — are so popular locally and internationally, and yet so threatening to the mainstream cultures that oppressed the originators of the music and directly contributed to their unjust conditions.

Tango's Origins in Argentine Marginality and Political Unrest

To people outside of Argentine culture, history, and political conditions, the experience and meaning of tango music and dance will differ greatly from the Argentine experience. In North America and Europe, for example, tango is often characterized as romantic, deliberate, and carefree. This is not the case for the Argentine people, who perform the dance and music with greater gravity and intention because of the form's deep roots in their history and its connection to their national identity:

"For Argentines, this dance is deadly serious. In the tango, as in their personal lives and their politics, they tend to dwell on real or imagined affronts. In response, they attempt to seek out and affirm self-definition. They resort to elaborately staged behavior as a way of confronting the result of their search — a self-definition whose very essence is doubt. The tango proclaims this doubt and reveals the intensity and depth of Argentine feelings of insecurity, but it also insists that an aggressive facade should betray no hint that it could have arisen from an anguished sense of vulnerability." (Taylor, Tango, 1982)

Tango music and dance is an expression of experience and freedom, yet within its execution there is a contradictory restraint that refers to the tension inherent in Argentine politics. Latin America has been a prominent presence in the political landscape of the Americas for many decades. For much of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries, Argentina has faced internal struggles over issues such as the privatization of water, particularly in poor, rural areas of the Andes Mountains. Tango expresses the tension felt by people who desire greater control over their lands and better representation in government, while also conveying a longing for unification as a people and a culture. Tango music embodies cultural longing and angst, and is itself a symbol of political strife and contemplation:

"Tango fans in particular pass time constructing complex personal philosophies of life, suffering, and love — philosophies that surprise outsiders who do not expect such elaborate abstractions as common themes of popular culture." (Taylor, Tango, 1982)

Tango music is a reflection and expression of changes in political conditions and climate in Argentina beginning in the later nineteenth century, persisting through the twentieth, and continuing to flourish in the twenty-first. The Argentines who originated this dance lived on the outskirts of society, outside the mainstream culture. There was resistance from the upper classes to tango music, dance, and culture in its early stages. Yet over time, as much of the world well knows, tango became synonymous with Argentina itself:

"Although tango originated among the low working-class sectors of Argentina's Río de la Plata region in the 1880s, it was only after it achieved fame in the world's cultural capitals in the twentieth century that it became popular throughout Argentina. Moreover, this reintroduction of tango also brought with it new ideas about the social and moral meanings of dancing…" (Reed, The Politics and Poetics of Dance, 1998)

Tango began on the outside of the mainstream as an expression of political unrest and dissatisfaction, then grew to become a symbol of the country in the world's imagination. When people think of Argentina, the tango is generally one of the first cultural artifacts that comes to mind.