Who invented tango?

If you are looking for the origins of this popular dance and place a query at any of the most popular search engines, you may be directed to some sites that have just a little knowledge of it... or just none at all.

Certainly you will find many references to Argentina, but, amazingly, there’s a site that points at Brazil as part of its origins: a guy there insists that "...the first tango recorded in Latin America was not The Corn (El Choclo) in Argentina in 1890". Fine! The problem is that "El Choclo" is a tango performed for the first time in 1903... whose music was probably written in 1898. It is not very likely that it would have been recorded 9 years before.

The "researcher" (if we can call him this way) says tango is really neither from Argentina nor Brazil (aleluya! we can agree to that!) and explains about Habanera music and its journey to Spain and then back to Latin America where it was transformed into tango.

He should read Wikipedia... just for kidding! There is aportuguese version too.

Tomorrow, Argentinians may say that Samba was born in Buenos Aires and everything is OK... isn't it? But that is not the point.

The reasons exposed are very strange and the rest of that page does not worth to be read.

A samba dancer who is a pupil of one of the various tango teachers in Brazil, also gives his opinion: "Tango is very porteno (from Buenos Aires). It's like Maradona". Two errors: first, the right word is "porteño", not "porteno"; second, its meaning is "natural from a city which has a harbor" (from spanish "puerto"), so it is not from Buenos Aires only. Sorry, boy! You have to learn Spanish before trying to even write a word about Rio de la Plata's culture!

I abandoned that site very quickly, and moved to the next search result...

...where I found that tango "was influenced by the Habanera Tango". Well... that’s a little better approach. But reading just a few more lines ahead, I found words like "Tango andaluz" and "Tango flamenco", as if they did not know the correct English "Andalusian Tango" or "Flemish Tango". Whazzat? An English-language page with Spanish words?... Are they so "untranslatable"?

In that site, we can read that "...the true forms of Argentine Tango Dance that we see today originated in 1938 - 1940 with the short-lived Tango singer Carlos Gardel". Wow! It's incredible that the origins are dated 3 years after Carlos Gardel died! What kind of reference is that? Are they crazy? What happened before, say, since 1900 on?

But there is more!

"Today in Buenos Aires or Río de la Plata..." (Hey, man! Is Buenos Aires and Río de la Plata the same thing to this guy?) "there are three forms of Argentine Tango: Salón, Fantasía, and one for scenario (stage)". I'm shocked! He said three and then (ahead on the same page) explained two... by the way, the only two categories that exist in world championships are the only forms that we may talk about! Please, can somebody explain this "expert" a few minor details before he continues teaching tango in some lost town at the boundaries of the world?

Ok... let's go for the next! Snippets help us... to skip them!

This one may be better... let's read...

"Tango is a nocturnal butterfly ...

We women and men from the Rio de la Plata created the tango. It was a long time ago. Infected with melancholy, with nothing to cover ourselves, poor in solemnity, in the midst of a continent both poor and rich in deprivation. We invented the tango, the hallmark of our identity.

Now, those times are long gone... that nocturnal butterfly flutters over us. We reconstruct its flight. We guess its former vicissitudes at the shores of sea. We are tango when we cry and when we laugh, when we are driven out of our senses by our uncertainties, by the nostalgia of an improbable lost paradise, and the certainty that we are still as abandoned as before: exiled from Europe, strangers in the New World, castaways of history, mad in solitude."

Daniel Vidart (Uruguay)

Hey!... Did you notice?... "Uruguay"... Ha! Now you may start learning the true story!...

Uruguay

We know we are a little country...

We know the whole country is as small as a mid-sized town in any other country...

But we invented the tango too!

The origin of Tango, as we know it today, is Buenos Aires AND Montevideo... harbors at both sides of Río de la Plata. Two cities populated by immigrants... two very similar cities...

Cuban Habanera and African Tangó rythms were its parents, but Tango is part of Argentinian and Uruguayan culture.

Keep reading this "The good stuff from Uruguay" site... right now you might need a translator program. There are several out there... We recommend you start out from this page.