the music, the dance, the passion, the... books?

[Steve Pastor]

We talked a bit about Robert Farris Thompson's "Tango" the Art History of Love" recently in another thread, but that was a tangent. And I would like to see thoughts and observations about the book continue to be shared.

Now, I see another tango book - Tango in Translation: Tanz zwischen Medien, Kulturen, Kunst und Politik By Gabriele Klein (Hg.).

It's listed as justification for this statement in Wikipedia.
"The term was used from the 1870s to mark a man who spent much of his time dancing tango of any style."

And the book lists Ruben "Milonga," Milonguero - Ex-Professor of the "Universidad del Tango de Buenos Aires" as the source.

Has anyone read the book or heard anything about it?
Personally, that seems like a pretty sketchy source for such a sweeping statement.

 

[LKSO]

You mean the word "tango" as the sweeping statement?

"Tango" sounds of African to me with the accent on the last syllable: tdon go'. I imagine that the music would be street music played on drums, woodwinds or violin, whichever is available. The music emphasizes rhythm with a melody over it.

 

[LKSO]

"The exact origins of tango—both the dance and the word itself—are lost in myth and an unrecorded history. The generally accepted theory is that in the mid-1800s, the African slaves who had been brought to Argentina or their descendants began to influence the local culture. The word "tango" may be straightforwardly African in origin, meaning "closed place" or "reserved ground." Or it may derive from Portuguese (and from the Latin verb tanguere, to touch) and was picked up by Africans on the slave ships. Whatever its origin, the word "tango" had acquired the standard meaning of the place where African slaves and free blacks gathered to dance by the time Argentina banned slavery in 1853."

http://www.tejastango.com/tango_history.html

I'm much more inclined to believe that "tango", meaning "closed place", is African and not Portuguese. The early dance form is very rhythmic which requires you to keep the legs bent and back hunched forward to lower your center of gravity. If you tried stamping to highly rhythmic music upright, over time, you'll naturally want to keep the legs bent and back hunched forward simply because this is the most efficient way to express the music. This form is still how many African cultures dance.

 

[Zoopsia59]

And the book lists Ruben "Milonga," Milonguero - Ex-Professor of the "Universidad del Tango de Buenos Aires" as the source..

I believe that they are referring to Ruben "Milonga" Terbalca:

http://www.rubenmilonga.com.ar/historia_en.html

I had workshops with him back when I was first starting. In fact, they were the first tango workshops (ie: special classes for a whole afternoon by a visiting teacher) I ever took.

 

[UKDancer]

This is quite interesting, and has an extensive bibliography:

http://api.ning.com/files/z33ppkhT-...L9EbScJ*dXczSz0-TLWwKsEKi2AUZEMDUzD/Tango.htm

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gerard_Béhague

 

[UKDancer]

Now, I see another tango book - Tango in Translation: Tanz zwischen Medien, Kulturen, Kunst und Politik By Gabriele Klein (Hg.). It's listed as justification for this statement in Wikipedia. "The term [Milonguero] was used from the 1870s to mark a man who spent much of his time dancing tango of any style."

The same article also offers the suggestion that:

Until the beginning of the 1980s milonguero also had a strong negative connotation, signaling a womanizer who typically had no job.

which amused me a bit.

 

[opendoor]

Now, I see another tango book - Tango in Translation: Tanz zwischen Medien, Kulturen, Kunst und Politik By Gabriele Klein (Hg.)

Thanks for spelling it out for me. Funny but sometimes it happens that you often dance with someone but you totally ignore his scientific work. On the other hand it makes it a bit difficult for me to speak unrestrainedly.



A great deal of this book is written in German, and I havn´t got the time to translate it for you. Also my english is horrible, yet.

This is the table of contents (translated to english):

-Gabriele Klein (editor) " Introduction"
-Gabriele Klein (author) "Bodies in translation - Tango as a form of cultural translation"
-Jochen and Silvana Dreher (authors) "Ritual transgression of cultural boundaries in Tango" p39
-Elia Petridou (author) "Experiencing tango as it goes global: Passion, ritual, play" p57
-Remi Hess (author) "The tango - A moment of interity" p77
-Melanie Haller (author) "Amalgamation: The bourgeois ideal of the perfect match" p89
-Paula-Irene Villa (author) "It feels so different - On the productive faillure in transferring aesthetic discourses to dancing praxis" p105
-Gabriele Klein & Melanie Haller "Body experience and religious believes. Strategies of subjectivation in tango" p123
-Jefrey Tobin "Models of machismo: The troublesome masculinity of argentine male tango-dancers" p139
-Ramsay Burt "Humour and the performance of masculinities. The example of two choreographed tangos." p171
-Dieter Reichardt "Tango and ideology: Gender models in tango lyrics and in contemporary argentine belletristics" p189
-Franco Anzaldi "The national peronistic discours in the tangography of the 60s" p209
-Marta Savigliano "Irreverent tangos: Dancing Love and the politics of parody" p243
-Erin Manning "Incipient action: The dance of the not-yet" p279


Only few pages are accessable. I tried to browse through and write down some keywords, but sorry, I totally lost interest on the third page:

body awareness, education-mediated transmission of culture, 80s tango revival, macro-micro-link, globalization, socialogical field methods, interviews, picture analysis, iconography, deconstructivism, third space of transformation and transgression, third body of intercorpuralism, narrative aspects of tango, imagery, symbols, gender, multiculty, bottom-up effect, migration, fusion, deterritorialization, the tango-nómade, communio vs. communititas, meaning of abrazo, confession, rituals, ..

 

[Steve Pastor]

I believe that they are referring to Ruben "Milonga" Terbalca

Yes, very impressive. I just wonder if the quote I mentioned wasn't a bad translation, misprint, mishearing of an off hand comment, etc. We're talking gaucho / compadrito / polka / mazuka / candombe era circa 1870.

I may be able to follow up on some of the articles in the Translation book, so thanks for posting that link to the bibliography!

Until the beginning of the 1980s milonguero also had a strong negative connotation, signaling a womanizer who typically had no job.

This is consistent with what Cacho Dante said in the interview JanTango posted, and most of what I have read.