Tango: A Sad Thought That Can Be Danced 1 by Alfredo Minetti*

Transcription

1 Tango: A Sad Thought That Can Be Danced 1 by Alfredo Minetti* Imagine yourself arriving at the promised land after two miserable months in the sea, only to find out that most of your expectations were but figments of your imagination. You left behind the world as you knew it, and came divested of everything but the clothes on your back and a great deal of hope hope that you would make it big in this new world and that, at some point, you would be able to bring your family and provide a better future for your loved ones. A few of your fellow immigrants just could not take the cruel reality of the disillusion and went back, but the great majority, fueled with the inexplicable energy and will that immigrants often have, decided to stay and fight. You quickly realized and internalized deep down, though, that in this fight all the odds were against you; you feared it was a doomed battle from the start. This was the general sentiment of the huge mass of Europeans with Italians outnumbering all other nationalities whose journeys ended up in the Plate River harbors of Montevideo and Buenos Aires, the capitals of Uruguay and Argentina, in the late 19 th century and the first decades of the 20 th century. Resentment, nostalgia, and sadness were in the air and in the bodies; they became interwoven in the entire fabric of this emerging society. Before the turn of the century, those cities were small villages with dirt streets and gas lighting. Buenos Aires, however, was growing at a very fast pace, thanks to the grains and cattle that Argentina was producing and exporting. The country needed people, and so massive waves of immigrants started to arrive. Nevertheless, the opportunities they had been promised back in Europe did not materialize. Work was scarce and insufficient for most of the newcomers, both in the country and in the city, and people congregated in the outskirts of the cities, in overcrowded tenement-houses known as conventillos. In those cities, beginning in the 1870s, tango had its origins, as part of the same pan- American phenomenon that gave birth to the American Ragtime, the Cuban Danzón, the Brazilian Choro, and to other local musical traditions. This tango, practiced by the descendants of the first Spanish settlers, was very different from the tango we know today; it had a different feel, and tempo; drew upon different subjects; and had no lyrics. It was music for dance, not for reflection. It followed the binary pattern of dottedeighth/sixteenth/eighth/eighth figures, a very common rhythmic pattern around mid-19 th century throughout the Americas. This pattern was the basis for both the Tango and the Milonga. The Milonga, which was one of the main genres of music practiced in the pampas (plains) region of Argentina, appears to antecede the tango, and was played on the guitar 1 This article appeared originally (with illustrations) in the May 2005 edition of The Ryder magazine, Bloomington, IN. 1

2 in 2/4 time (the sixteenth figure described above would normally be connected to the following eighth). It was sung and played very slowly to the most common and simple Western harmonic progressions, and its main subject was always related to the solitary life in the pampas and to deep reflections over the meaning of life and human relations. It was the music of the gauchos, the cowboys of the Argentinean and Uruguayan plains. The main rhythmic difference between the milonga and tango was that the tango had no connection between the sixteenth figure and the following eighth, so you would feel the four notes driving the rhythm and it was played at a much faster tempo. A good sonorous image would be that of a happy habanera-type music in binary tempo full of staccatos. Violins, flutes, and guitars were then the typical instruments of the music groups, and their typical repertories consisted not only of tangos but also of waltzes and milongas, as well as other European styles brought by the early colonizers, still portraying very rural subjects. Nevertheless, this happy and jumpy binary tango of the 19 th century found itself in the midst of avalanches of people flocking into the cities, of immense urbanization projects, and of a multitude of disenfranchised human beings who had very little to celebrate at the end of their daily journeys. Amidst a changing social world, the tango began to change. Social classes became more defined: a diverse, huge mass of working class laborers, a relatively small petit bourgeoisie, and a very small but strong upper class formed by capitalists and land owners. It is in the realm of the working class world, of the outskirts and slums, and of the night, that the tango became italianized in the first decades of the 20 th century, became the tango that we know today: music for reflection, not necessarily for dance. Pessimism, fatalism, frustration, and melancholy were everywhere. For many Montevideans and Porteños (natives of Buenos Aires) the world seemed overwhelmingly unfair. Newcomers thought they had compromised too much for nothing and much of their world was suffused with nostalgia, an emotion that dominates the tango: nostalgia for what had been left behind, for the insurmountable distance from home and dignity, for a more feminine universe (with wives and families left behind, it was a heavily male-dominated population), for an idealized childhood and for a mystified past. And these together generated sadness concerning the present and future of the human condition, social injustices, and the impotence of the individual spirit. Bitterness, anguish, and solitude were in the mouths, blood, and souls. Solitude of the worst kind, the kind one experiences when surrounded by herds of people that Dantesque solitude that feels like overpowering cold in a minor key, which corrodes your innermost self at a very slow tempo. The music, literature, and dance of these emerging societies started to reflect and to examine their new existential dilemmas. The old tango was too fast for the expression of the social discontents, and from its binary tempo, 2/4 time-signature, it started to be played in quaternary tempo, usually 4/8 time signature. The main driving rhythm was 2

3 now comprised of four eighth rhythmic figures, and the tempo was dramatically slowed. The fast tempo at which the cities were changing contrasted with the slow tempo at which meaningful changes could happen for the individual, and this contrast found its way into the slow pace at which tango started to be played and the fast pace at which legs started to interlace. Similarly, the periods of economic instability and political upheaval with multiple coups and uprisings that plagued the region since the arrival of the first Europeans operated in combination with short intervals of stability to produce a kinetic energy that was quickly incorporated in the dynamic of the tango, in its music, lyrics, and dance. Tango is not easily susceptible to a rational and textual explanation of its essence one that does not sound over-simplistic and completely reductionist; one that does not sound plain ridiculous, precisely because, stripped of the music, lyrics, and dance, tango represents a very particular way to see and approach the world. Music, lyrics, and dance are perhaps but the epiphenomena of this worldview and its correspondent ethos. In other words, it is very easy to explain how the music and the rhythms go, or what the lyrics say, or even what the most common dance steps are, but that says necessarily nothing if there s a lack of deeper understanding of the tango universe; it only makes it sound like a very exotic cultural curio. Timing, tempo, pace, and beat, controlling the rhythm of our existence. Julio Mafud, in his Sociologia del Tango (Editorial Américalee: Buenos Aires, 1966), sees tango as a lifestyle, as an entire metaphysics and psychology sustained by a sum of Montevidean and Porteño characteristics. Everyone who embodies this metaphysics is a tanguero (be he or she a musician, lyricist, singer, dancer, or even none of these, as long as the person still identifies with its ethos.) Tanguiness, for Mafud, is much more than music, lyrics, and dance; it s an authentic cosmovision of the world. An interpretation of existence based on subjectivities, intuitions, and spontaneous and reflexive appreciations of reality. He provides us with a very interesting set of psychological characteristics of the so-called tango personality. He maintains that those individuals are usually very quiet, introspective and solitary, affectively unsatisfied, who give much importance to friendship and motherly love. They show street smarts and a good deal of social consciousness and awareness; they are often male chauvinists who communicate through the use of street slang (lunfardo), are very private about their lives, highly dependent on the advice of their friends, and are constantly worried not to be seen as stupid (gil). A consideration of the aesthetics of this universe is critical for its proper understanding. Tango developed in very specific locales and is associated with dark tones. It is the child of the night, of the outskirts, of the streets, of the thresholds the lyrics so pungently celebrate. It was raised in brothels, night clubs, bars, casinos, and cafes, and was not seen as morally acceptable for a good part of its history by either rich or poor families. It was viewed rather as the realm of perdition and dishonor, only embraced by those with low moral standards. It flourished in a world of distinctive aromas and peculiar tastes, which are embodied in its lyrics. 3

4 But when it comes to the aesthetics of this tango, sound plays a salient role. This overpowering invisible entity is the driving force behind the genre: the sounds of the expanding cities; of the screams, fights, and moans of the conventillos; the sound of a heart insisting on beating despite the brain relentlessly saying there is no reason to keep doing so; of loved and heated voices; and of the greatest voice of all: the legendary Uruguayan/Argentinean singer Carlos Gardel. And then, there is tempo; time is everything in life and music. Timing, pace, and beat, control the rhythm of our existence. Daytime versus nighttime; the fast tempo of progress versus the slow tempo of complacence; tango in two and tango in four; tango in four with a feeling of two. Chest to chest; the beat of two hearts coming together to better experience their existences alone; four legs in four, four legs in two. Fast fingers, slow fingers; syncopated phrases, syncopated lives. The new sound, timing, and aesthetics of the modern tango are reflected in the new instrumentation and orchestral arrangements. Tango is now in four and very syncopated; it is now the multilayered kinetic expression of violins, pianos, double-basses, guitars, cellos, and bandoneons. And it is this miraculous German instrument, the bandoneon, which came to be synonymous with tango and the incarnation of the aesthetics, metaphysics and ethos of the entire genre. It can be thought of as the equivalent of the electric guitar in the context of blues. The introduction of the bandoneon (a portable squeezebox of the family of the concertinas), with its plaintive sound, gave 20 th century tango groups the possibility to express much soberer and darker emotions, and to convey as never before the lamenting and nostalgia that ran throughout the social fabric. All the tango orchestras or ensembles after the 1920s incorporated the bandoneon, and the instrument came to be associated with the main figures in the history of the genre, such as Greco, Arolas, Maffia, Laurenz, Fresedo, Troilo, Federico, and Piazzolla, to name a few. Hence, those waves of European immigrants and their descendants appropriated the tango and gave it another ethos. Tango became a semi-religious phenomenon, an object for reflection, confession, and catharsis. The dance steps became more and more elaborate, and different styles were created, and lyrics were added to the songs. Lyricists such as Celedonio Flores, Henrique Santos Discépolo, Homero Manzi, and Horacio Ferrer addressed tango s main philosophical concerns in their songs. Tango, unlike other musical manifestations, however, is not collective; the catharsis in tango is absolutely individual. That s why we say it is, in essence, a solitary confessional act; a way to reflect about life. This reflection and the state of mind it requires is the key to understanding the essence of tango. When put together, all the musical layers, sentiments, and sensorial percepts generate what can be called the heart of tanguiness, a culturally specific emotion associated exclusively with the tango: the mufa. Mufa is a self-indulged, quasi-spiritual, depressive boredom that many Uruguayans and Argentineans take a morbid pleasure in entertaining as a means of restoring their souls. According to anthropologist Michelle Rosaldo: Emotions are thoughts somehow felt in flushes, pulses, movements of our 4

5 lives, minds, hearts, stomachs, skin. They are embodied thoughts, seeped with apprehension that I am involved. In tango, such embodiment and its sense of involvement find its synthesis in the mufa. It is this emotion that musicians, poets, and dancers try to articulate; and no one was able to put in words better than the greatest poet and lyricist of the genre, Enrique S. Discepolo, when he said that Tango is a sad thought that can be danced. *Alfredo Minetti pianist, composer, arranger, and accordionist is a native of Uruguay, lived in Argentina, and grew up in Brazil. He is currently a Ph.D. candidate in Anthropology at Indiana University-Bloomington, specializing in the anthropology of music. 5