History of the tango

Tango, a distinctive tango dance and the corresponding musical style of tango music, began in the working-class port neighborhoods of Buenos Aires (Argentina) and Montevideo (Uruguay); spanning both sides of the Rio de la Plata.

There are numbers of theories about the origin of the word "tango". One of the more popular in recent years has been that it came from the Niger–Congo languages of Africa. Another theory is that the word "tango", already in common use in Andalusia to describe a style of music, lent its name to a completely different style of music in Argentina and Uruguay.

The Tango derives from the Cuban habanera, the Argentine milonga and Uruguayan candombe, and is said to contain elements from the African community in Buenos Aires, influenced both by ancient African rhythms and the music from Europe. These African rhythms are thought to come from Uruguayan candombe, which was characterized by energetic, "jerky" movements. Conversely, the milonga was a fusion of the Spanish-Cuban habanera and the imported European polka. The mazurka is another European element thought to have a hand in the tango's development. It is thought that, over time, these elements intersected in the outer districts of Buenos Aires and developed into the Tango.

Even though the present forms developed in Argentina and Uruguay from the mid 19th century, there are earlier written records of Tango dances in Cuba and Spain, while there is a flamenco Tangos dance that may share a common ancestor in a minuet-style European dance. All sources stress the influence of the African communities and their rhythms, while the instruments and techniques brought in by European immigrants played a major role in its final definition, relating it to the salon music styles to which Tango would contribute back at a later stage, when it became fashionable in early 20th century Paris.

In Argentina, the word Tango seems to have first been used in the 1890s. In 1902, the Teatro Opera started to include tango in their balls. Initially tango was just one of the many dances practiced locally, but it soon became popular throughout society, as theatres and street barrel organs spread it from the suburbs to the working-class slums, which were packed with hundreds of thousands of European immigrants. The development of Tango had influences from the cultures of several peoples that came together in these melting pots of ethnicities. For this reason, Tango is often referred to as the music of the immigrants to Argentina.

In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, Argentina experienced a significant wave of immigration that transformed its demographic composition. The immigration policy at the time was shaped by the Argentine elites’ desire to promote economic growth, their need to populate its vast territories, their aspiration to become a modern and civilized nation, as well as their racial and nationalist ideologies that sought to establish a homogenous and European-based population. To attract immigrants, the Argentine government implemented various measures, such as offering free land, providing financial incentives, and establishing immigration agencies in Europe.

However, this influx of diverse immigrants also led to social tensions and conflicts which engendered nationalist movements that sought to promote a “pure” Argentine identity aimed to exclude the more inferior immigrants. Under the Argentine government's efforts to Europeanize and modernize the country, those who did not fit the “pure” and civilized image of the Argentine identity were excluded from urban centers like Buenos Aires and gradually pushed to the arrabal, the suburbs between urban and rural areas. It was in these arrabales that different marginalized groups converged while expressing themselves in dances. They frequently met in “tangos” where whites and people of color played music and danced together.  Afro-Argentines and the other working-class populations were especially crucial in shaping the emergence of tango by combining the different influences, including the milonga, the condombe, and payada.

At the beginning of its history, tango was looked down upon by the Argentine elites for a number of reasons. First of all, tango's associations with marginalized groups, especially the immigrants and people of African descent, who were considered lower-class and uncivilized, made tango the dance form seem vulgar and immoral, thus unsuitable for respectable society. Additionally, tango was also closely associated with brothels and bars of Buenos Aires, which the elites also considered disreputable. Many of the early tango lyrics and moves were considered to be too sexually suggestive, exacerbating the elites’ disdain for the dance. These characteristics of tango significantly deviated from the Argentine elites’ nationalist agenda to promote an image of Argentine identity that emphasized European sophistication and refinement. Consequently, the elites saw tango as a threat to their cultural hegemony.