How is born

The Tango arises in the suburbs of Buenos Aires city by the end of the XIX century, in the middle of an environment where the city was changing into an large city, due to the immigration and progress. The mixture of immigrants, the black and the gauchos who arrived at Buenos Aires after being left without a job in the army, has made the tango a unique cultural product in the world and able to emphasize in it all the characteristics of Buenos Aires inhabitants.
In 1887 the population of Buenos Aires was in its foreign majority due to massive immigration. The housing happened to be one of the most serious problems, over a total of 33,804 houses existed 2,835 "conventillos", that had been until 1870 of an absolute domination of the Río de la Plata´s black. In the patio of the "conventillo" the cradle of the Tango was built.
The racial mixture made of the tango a music of the low class where the characteristics of the diverse population are differenced. The popular taste bent in a progressive way over those rhythms, sounds and compositions that were more pleasing and familiar. With an African origin from the black, it has contributions of the Candombe, a dance with torsions and rhythms of the compass of the drum. In the structure of the milonga, it assimilated the slow and binary cadence of the Cuban Habanera. Finally, it was influenced with the combination of the festive dances of the Spanish inheritance.

First Name

Following the names of the tangos and locating them chronological it is possible to delimit the different stages or social times, because the authors, by their interval, were the expression of the sociological environment they lived in.
It began with names related to brothels and of certain typical events of this surroundings like "Cobrate" ("Charge yourself") and "Dame el Vuelto" ("Give me the change"). It corresponds to the period in which the tango found in the tenancies, brothels and poor worker´s environments, its refuge and its temporary environment. To it, the jargon or the lunfardo from prison was added, because many of the contenders of those environments, spent jailed seasons.

Propagation

By the end of the XIX century the little organs were quite spread in Buenos Aires. They offered varied music including tangos, still with its structure not finished like such. Hunging from the neck, inserted in carts with wheels, pushed by men who played it, or mounted in cars thrown with horses, they had like main scenario the streets of the city. Another element propagator of tango´s sounds was the bugles of the street cars, which announced its way with brief pieces of the most popular tangos.
Several musicians earned a living playing music in conventillos, peringundines, brothels or parks. They had in common to be guitar players, violinists or flute players. They managed to gather the minimum money to playing in several places each evening or night and soon they gathered tips passing the plate or the hat.

First Orchestras

In fact, the musical groups formed by the end of the XIX century and initial years of the XX century were bands, whose model was the military bands and like in them, the wind instruments, clothes to the Hungarian or german style predominated, lacked of the stringed instruments almost completely. This characteristic was due to change when the bandoneón and the piano was introduced. At the same time it was possible to form joint musical sets that approached progressively the formation defined as orchestra.
It is for that reason that in the sets or musical groupings takes place the displacement or replacement of instruments. Thus, the arpa and the acordeón gave place to the guitar and bandoneón. Also, a similar case happened with some musicians who, looking for greater loudness, incorporated the guitar of nine cords and of which Aspiazu left good memory of, in the time of its performance in Hansen.
This did not mean the disappearance of trios or pairs, on the cont rary, it fortified them, because when improving the musical quality of its members, better music could be offered to the public to listen and to dance.

Writing and dancing

The first testimonies of tangos from the Río de la Plata with its own and differentiated characteristics date from the ´80s decade. Initially rejected by the upper-middle origin classes, the tango was executed and danced between men who waited for their turn in the brothel. Therefore its first letters were of a vulgar and grotesque content. Later, the woman was incorporated to the dance as a symbol of sensuality. The stuck bodies of the dancers were not well seen by the society from Buenos Aires and the church of that time, which reached the bound of being prohibited by the Police for urging scandals.
The tango was introduced in the circles of the middle-class towards the 1900´s. A market appeared that requested music to be interpreted in its houses or social meetings, like birthdays, baptisms, marriages, national celebrations, mixed with other rhythms of very diverse origins. As many of the instinctive musicians did not know how to take pentagrams notes of their creation, they had to delegate the task on friends.

Europe and Argentina

It is supposed that the first tangueras scores traveled around the world on board of the Sarmiento frigate in 1905. As well, the tango arrives at a particular moment of Europe in general and France in particular, the years from 1890 to 1914, called the "belle époque". The European high class distinguished by the high standard of life and an almost wild rate of selfish satisfactions. The Argentine rich class, made visiting or living in Paris the obligation, to reach beauty, culture, refinement and distinction.
At that time, 1902, there were in Paris many academies to teach how to dance the tango - approximately a 100 - with their respective dancers who perform like teachers. For the Parisians, the tango cadence, had the enchantment of the exotic.
At the same time in Buenos Aires, riots, to amuse themselves at night, began to take it away from the suburb and introduced it gradually in the urbanized districts from the outskirts to the center.

Changes in the Rhythm

The bandoneón as the main instrument or as conductor of the tango music was, in a progressive way, taken from it. Therefore, irreversible, the accelerated rhythm derivated from the milonga, according to the opinion of some. Others maintain the opinion that the progressive incorporation of the singer was the factor that took to that slowness.
Also it influenced, and not in a little measure, the necessary time for the musicians of the end of the last century who were musically illiterate, to learn the necessary digitation or tried to study in conservatories or academies. That essential time, also influenced in lessening the danceable rhythm and when the capable and efficient digitation was acquired, it was used in improving the musicality, and not printing speed.
That learning benefited the neophytes because it allowed them to be able to learn better the elementary steps and thus to concur to the tracks or halls and not to play a snubbed role.

Disks

The first national owner of disk producers was Jose B. Tagini. With him many artists recorded our pop music, payadores and recitators as well as tango musicians. Moreover, Alfredo A-mén-dola was the owner of the Atlanta seal. World War I did not deter the brand Tele-Phone from being registered, in which from Canaro to Juan Maglio recorded.
The commercial houses that sold disks and reproductive apparatuses multiplied from the center to the districts. New discographic companies settled in the country each time with better apparatuses to reproduce disks.
The mechanical system subsisted until 1926 in which the technical innovation took place to record by the electrical system that introduced the use of the microphone. The first electrical recording made in Buenos Aires is calculated on November 8th , 1926 with the Odeón seal. From that moment onwards, the recording seals have been multiplied at the same rate the registries of interpretations have with the improveme nt in the quality and fidelity of the voices and music, when improved the technology used.

Personalities

There are two personalities who have left their prints on the tango. The first one is Carlos Gardel. It is not really clear his birthplace. It is said that he was born in Tolouse, in the south of France, others describe him as native of the town as Tacuarembó, in the geographic center of Uruguay. The date of birth is on December 11th 1887. At present, this date is celebrated as "The Tango Date". At the beginning of his professional career, Gardel dedicated to sing songs "criollas" until 1917 when he recorded "My Sad Night", the first Tango Song in the history of the tango. Since then, the singer followed by the way of success and glory, filling the most prestigious scenarios of Europe, mainly Paris in which he met Alfredo Le Pera, with whom he composed unforgettable tangos as "Volver" (Come back), "El Día que me Quieras" (The Day You Love Me), "Por una Cabeza" (For One Head) and "Cuando tú no Estás" (When you are not). Already famous around the world, its next step w as becoming an actor for the Paramount Pictures in the U.S.A. He also stood out in this roll until his tragic death in Medellín, on June 24th 1935 when its airplane hit another one in the airport of that Colombian city. Since then the figure of Carlos Gardel has been a symbol of the Tango and of the city of Buenos Aires, immortalizing himself in the heart of the people from Buenos Aires like "the one that every day sings better".

Radio and Tango

In August 1920 the first initial step is taken in the matter of radio when transmitting from the Coliseo theater of Buenos Aires the Parsifal opera. A year passed until the foundation of the first radio station. Already in 1929 there are around thirty stations.
The radio and the tango, in the decade of the 20, were in a process of expansion and popular consolidation, since both were in the heat of ascent and social consolidation, agreeing with a good standard of life. The permanence of Gardel was constant in the radios porteñas until its last performance in Argentine radios, fulfilled in the simultaneous emission between the NBC of New York and LR4 Splendid Radio, of Buenos Aires.
The radial emissions of that initial time were not restricted to the musical aspect, for they propelled spoken theater, works of radio-theater which did rage, programs dedicated to sports, cinema, fashions childhood and adolescence, like to politic with national and foreign news.

Mute Cinema

The so call Seventh Art represented for the tango two slopes of convergence. One was the intervention in the films filmed without sound and the other, was to take part in the rooms of cinema, to animate musically the scenes that were projected dumb and for that reason, caused boredom and fatigue in the spectator by the almost always vertiginous succession of images in black and white.
The first shooting made in the Argentina...

Sound Cinema

The first Argentine sonorous film, shot in 1932, called Tango, represented a selling success and the launching of some of its interpreters to a career to fame. Their feminine protagonists were Tita Merello, Libertad Lamarque, Mercedes Simone, standing out in the masculine papers Luis Sandrini, Pepe Arias and Alberto Gómez.

The last generation

The orchestras were replaced by electronic means even in bars and dancing places. The best repertoires of orchestras, soloists and vocalists have been reedited. With the method of remakes and thanks to paste disks owned by collectors, many recordings were rescued which otherwise would have disappeared by rupture or lost. Something similar has happened with respect to the scores conserved in hands of particular collectors or the ones integrating the collection of the Buenos Aires Academy of the Lunfardo and the National Academy of the Tango.
A new generation is taking its first steps trying to save the tradition and incursionating in a new modernism that recognizes the influence of Piazzola. Moreover, music is separating laying on the new sensitivity according to the globalize world of this generation.

Street Tango

The traditional neighborhoods for tango are San Telmo and La Boca. There it is packed with bars, restaurants and shops where you can have anything you would like related to the tango. In the afternoon, the very owners can be appreciated dancing a set of tangos while serving the tables with customers. On the street, couples showing their abilities with the tango are found.
You can not miss La Boca neighborhood with its traditional circuit by "Caminito". A fair been made and is extremely pleasant to get to know the district of colored houses. For the tourists sake, there is always a couple of dancers outstanding in the arts of the tango.
Sundays in San Telmo are a classic. Restaurants with historical stories or legends, of the time of the Virreinato and the fair of antiques where old grannie´s staff comes come out to day light. In a strike of luck, you may find some invented celebration which turns into a great party with a many people.