Learning tango, whether as a dance or as a genre of music, becomes more meaningful when you understand the tango lyrics you’re dancing or listening to.
Many dancers believe that knowing the words to tango songs allows them to deeply feel the music.
But did you know that tango songs have a fascinating history, and tango lyrics have evolved dramatically over the years?
Some take tango lyrics seriously, while others see tango songs as merely a way to provide some background music for the tango dance.
But regardless of your opinion on tango music, it’s helpful to understand how tango evolution has occurred over time.
The Birth of Tango Music
Argentine tango has its roots in the 19th century when tango music was first created. Immigrants from Europe and Africa experimented with different music genres, and it quickly became popular throughout Argentina.
Initially played in brothels, tango songs were predominantly instrumental, and the lyrics weren’t as important as the music.
The genre was also called the music of the people because it was a way for the lower-class immigrants to express themselves.
According to MasterClass in “Guide to Tango Music: A Brief History of Argentine Tango,” the seven characteristics of traditional tango music include the following:
“1. A 2/4 or 4/4 time signature
Heavy use of the tango rhythm— a 4/4 measure comprised of two dotted quarter notes followed by a quarter note, similar to the first half of a 3:2 clave bell pattern in son Cubano and rumba styles
An angular, staccato rhythmic emphasis
Strong influence of European classical dance music, including minuet, flamenco, polka, mazurka, and contradanza
Additional influence from Argentine folk music, including the payada and milonga styles, and Uruguayan folk music such as pampas
Spanish-language lyrics (although instrumental tango music is common)
Often performed by a tango orquesta típica, featuring instruments like bandoneon (a cousin of the accordion), violin, and guitar.”
The traditional tango instruments included the double bass, guitar, bandoneon, violin, flute and clarinet, and piano. Vocals were often used as well.
When Tango Became a Song
It was singer Carlos Gardel who made singing tango popular.
In 1917, he released “Mi Noche Triste” and ushered in the golden age of tango
According to Tango Allegria, in ARGENTINE SINGERS | The song in the Tango, the Tango-cancion,” the most famous tango singers besides Carlos Gardel were the following:
Ignazio Corsini
Hugo del Carril
Enrique Campos
Alberto Castillo
Raúl Berón
Roberto Rufino
Roberto Goyeneche
Our article “FEMALE ARGENTINE TANGO SINGERS YOU MUST KNOW” lists Azucena Maizani, Ada Falcon, and Tita Merello as the most famous female tango singers of their time.
The tangos of these artists had a slightly different flavor than the tango music that precedes them.
Early Years of Tango Lyrics
Now let’s take a look at tango evolution.
In the early years, tango music had simple lyrics about politics as it was primarily instrumental.
The instruments did the talking, making the people feel the tango music. The lyrics were mostly about everyday life.
“Infiltrations, squeals … and dances. In Buenos Aires’ outskirts, though perhaps also in the countryside, there was a kind of milonga that was probably not very solemn, but rather danceable and instrumental. Sometimes it had mischievous or lewd lyrics that reproduced street speech (urban or rural) and/or could include expressions like quevachache (que vas a hacer, literally “what are you gonna do,” but also “we do not have any other choice” ), or slang terms [lunfardismos] like mina cabrera [angry/fighting woman], turra [whore], afanar [to steal], and so on.”
For example,
“Don Juan,” written around 1900, sang about the character describing himself as a great dancer.
He also points out how good-looking he is, with men cowering in his presence. Interestingly, these tango lyrics weren’t acceptable in the middle class.
The tango lyrics differed from song to song as long as people could dance to them.
Eventually,
tango lyrics shifted from talking about everyday life to being passionate, romantic ballads.
Pablo Aslan in “A BRIEF HISTORY OF TANGO” said:
“When the tango became formalized, writers started adapting lyrics to the songs of the time and by the late 1910’s a new form of song had emerged.
Again, the creation of tango-song was a collective effort. The cultural mix of Buenos Aires provided many elements for its conception, such as gaucho literature, Spanish and Italian singing styles, local language, and a rich theater tradition. Another important element in the evolution of the tango at the time was the emerging media.”
From 1917 Onwards
In 1917, many of the finest poets in Argentina and Uruguay started to write tango lyrics. Pablo Aslan also said:
“Alongside the development of the tango as an instrumental form, the tango-song form started gaining popularity in the mid-1920’s.
Many of the first tangos with lyrics were included in the popular theater form known as sainete.
Singers, both male and female, adopted these new songs into their repertoire. They were mostly accompanied by guitars.”
For example, tangos like “La Cumparsita,” written in 1916, were tangos with more developed lyrics.
These tangos had a passionate, romantic feel that was very different from tangos written before them.
By the 1930s,
tango lyrics had become more about love and romance.
After Carlos Gardel died in 1935,
tango lyrics shifted even more to the romantic realm.
Unfortunately, as said by AnahÍ Viladrich in “Neither Virgins nor Whores: Tango Lyrics and Gender Representations in the Tango World”:
“At the same time, female artists began struggling against traditional roles by pursuing tango careers that mostly targeted and conquered a female tango audience.
The tango’s tough characters were then replaced by romantic male heroes longing for love and companionship, more in tune with the changing class and gender relationships taking place in an emergent modern Argentina (Archetti, Masculinities; Savigliano, ‘‘Whiny,’’ Tango; Ulloa).”
The tango lyrics of the 1930s and 1940s shifted to become more emotional, melodic, and subtle. These tangos focused on love, loss, and loneliness. This shift is still present today, with tango lyrics being some of the world’s most emotional, passionate, and romantic.
The Birth of Tango Stars
Perhaps the most crucial point in tango evolution is the birth of tango stars.
These tango singers have shaped tango lyrics and the tango world in ways never seen before. Their tango lyrics have moved tango forward and made it the beloved dance and music genre it is today. El Mundo Del Tango Academy stated in “Tango History”:
“The development of tango in this period reflects its emergence from the small venues, where sex and machismo were the everyday, to become a mass entertainment, danced by thousands of respectable citizens of prospering cities: Argentina was now one of the richest countries in the world.
The dance was refined to the slick and elegant ‘salon’ style, the lyrics of the songs slowly moved from lamenting the poverty and loneliness of the immigrant men, to more generic love songs for the mass market.
However,
many lyrics played on nostalgia for the “good old days” before the neighborhoods were cleaned up.
Stars were made, singers, notably Gardel, and many other musicians, dancers, lyricists and composers. They were not only famous in Argentina and Uruguay, but traveled the world.”
Not everyone appreciated tango stars. While their rise helped tango to become mainstream,
tango purists argue that tango music lost some of its rough edges and became diluted.
The different styles of every singer influenced tango as a dance. Christine Denniston said in “The Birth of Tango Lyrics”:
“As the music adapted to accommodate the needs of the star singers, it began to be less attractive to dancers, and between the mid 1920s and the mid 1930s in Buenos Aires the dance became less popular.
There were still great orchestras, notably the orchestra of Julio de Caro , who brought classical training and sensibilities to the Tango. But it was not until the explosion onto the Tango scene of the ruthlessly populist orchestra of Juan D’Arienzo that the dance was swept back up from the doldrums and returned to the height of popularity.”
Moreover, the struggle women tango artists faced before became even more difficult.
Tango lyrics became more focused on machismo, leaving out women’s voices and stories.
Despite this, tango has still managed to be a powerful tool of expression. AnahÍ Viladrich stated:
“From then on, the tango’s male lover would become a ‘‘tormented fellow,’’ not able to release himself from the painful experience of frustrated (and betrayed) love.
Undoubtedly, the gender stereotypes that accompanied this transition were partly the result of the expansion of the tango’s class audience encouraged by an Argentine elite, which, reluctantly at the beginning, little by little welcomed the tango into its salons. As Guy (Sex and Danger) argues, the wide acceptance of the tango themes developed in the late 1910s—based on frustrated love, women’s abandonment, and sublimation of sexual desire was supported by the anxieties and fears that crossed class lines. In the following decades, the unambiguous association between women and prostitution typical of the Old Guard would be replaced by a criollo (Creole) version of the femme fatale whom good men could not resist.”
Tango and Women
It’s impossible not to mention the struggles of women when talking about tango evolution.
Many think of a “romantic tango song” as just a song that makes listeners and dancers swoon. However, tango lyrics have had a deep history of oppression against women.
Two of the famous women tango singers we mentioned in our article were tango pioneers. They faced many difficulties in their music career, mainly because they were women. AnahÍ Viladrich expressed:
“In real life, many of these tango singers paralleled the milonguita’s social career by seeking a better life in the Buenos Aires’s nightlife.
This has been exemplified in this article through Tita Merello’s life, an artist who has been considered as the tango’s countermyth, and who made a myth of herself (Dos Santos, Las Cantantes).
Tita’s humorous interpretations nourished a cultural imaginary of social critique by relying on comic parodies of class and gender relationships that defied the milonguita’s expected decline and opened new opportunities for women in the tango world.
Azucena Maizani, on the other hand, became the symbol of the tango’s Golden Era (the first and the most popular cancionista), as the one who chose a male-dominated repertoire and masculine attire for her presentations.
Nevertheless, she also performed and wrote tangos that preached just the opposite of what her male characters would utter.
While on the one hand, she recommended women to be good, reserved, and submissive, on the other hand, she created and interpreted tunes in which she conveyed her own experiences as a self-reliant woman aware of men’s frailties.”
Poetry and performance have always been women’s tools to express their deepest, conflicting emotions. Tango songs reflected the many struggles, love, and pain tango dancers and singers have felt. As tango lyrics evolved, so did influential female tango singers who dared challenge traditional tango lyrics.
Tango songs reflected the many struggles, love, and pain tango dancers and singers have felt.
Tango Is Everyone’s
It has been a long journey for tango. It has undergone many changes and has been embraced by different types of people from all walks of life.
This is probably tango’s greatest triumph: it has transcended its status as a “working-class” dance and evolved into something for everyone.
Trista Brophy in “The Many Histories of Argentine Tango,” said:
“For tango dancers, it is about understanding the social conflicts that took place, ultimately influencing the lyrics and the music that we are so inspired and moved by. For Argentineans, it is about validating their own sense of pride and sense of nationalism.
To pinpoint tango evolution to Argentina’s internal struggles is to provide nationals something to be proud of.”
Tango songs can be about the passion for tango, but they can also tell stories. They can talk about tango dancers’ innermost emotions and experiences or maybe even the simplest of moments in life. Whatever tango lyrics mean to a person, they all express feelings that bring tango closer to everyone. Tango is for and about everyone!
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