The Tango

2 Pages 391 Words

The Tango

Throughout the late 1800’s, many people migrated to Argentina from Spain, Africa, Italia, and the Ukraine. This mixture of people from their homes to a new land left them feeling like a stranger in their new environment. Many of these people had left their homes and ended up in the slums and brothels of Buenos Aires in search for companionship and comfort. The tango was formed from these brothels being the dance to describe their loneliness, pain, and feeling of hopelessness in their new surroundings.
Because of the great amount of immigrants coming from Europe and Africa, the people to form the tango brought with them elements from their cultures. The word “tango” is supposedly derived from the Latin word “tangere” which means to touch. This would have well described the dance because the tango was a very passionate dance with usually entailed dancing without separation of the two bodies. It is possible that the religion candombe of the Africans that were brought to Argentina influenced the tango with its steady beat of the drums. The mestizo mixture of Spanish and Indian music from the pampas combined the Spanish and Indian music called the milonga. The implementation of an accordion-like instrument was also imported from the German immigrants.
The dance was said to have been the imitation of the relationship between a pimp and his prostitute. It could also have been a representation of a dueling between men in competition for a woman. The dance rose from being exclusive to the brothels as the upper class men and women started dancing it. However, many of the moves were too sexual that the women wore garments to protect themselves from common too close to the male. This also entailed a taming of the tango as it grew up into parts of Europe.
The tango has survived an entire century becoming extremely popular in most of the Western World. It has won awards and made its way to the stages o...