The tango, a typically Argentinian genre, belongs to the family of folk music forms mainly originating in urban underclasses from the late 19th and early 20th century onwards whose characteristic dances, originally considered too lewd for acceptance by polite society, have advanced to worldwide acceptance and popularity and whose songs tell of solitude and desperation – due to social and racial discrimination – frustrated love and longing. The group includes, in addition to the tango, the American blues, the Greek rebetiko, the Portuguese fado and the Spanish flamenco. Their historic roots are of course different but their inspiration has many similarities. Some extracts from Wikipedia give a brief account of their origins:
“Tango is a partner and social dance that originated in the 1880s along the Río de la Plata, the natural border between Argentina and Uruguay. The tango was born in the impoverished port areas of these countries from a combination of Argentine Milonga, Spanish-Cuban Habanera, and Uruguayan Candombe celebrations. It was frequently practised in the brothels and bars of ports, where business owners employed bands to entertain their patrons. It then spread to the rest of the world.”
“Blues is a music genre and musical form that originated among African Americans in the Deep South of the United States around the 1860s. Blues has incorporated spirituals, work songs, field hollers, shouts, chants, and rhymed simple narrative ballads from the African-American culture… Early blues frequently took the form of a loose narrative, often relating the racial segregation, discrimination, and other challenges experienced by African Americans.”
“Rebetiko can be described briefly as the urban popular song of the Greeks, especially the poorest, from the late 19th century to the 1950s… Like several other urban subcultural musical forms … rebetiko grew out of particular urban circumstances. Often its lyrics reflect the harsher realities of a marginalised subculture’s lifestyle. Thus one finds themes such as crime, drink, drugs, poverty, prostitution and violence, but also a multitude of themes of relevance to Greek people of any social stratum: death, eroticism, exile … disease, love, etc.”
“In popular belief, fado is a form of music characterised by mournful tunes and lyrics, often about the sea or the life of the poor, and infused with a sense of resignation, fate and melancholy. This is loosely captured by the Portuguese word saudade, or longing, symbolising a feeling of irreparable loss. [It is connected to] the music of a historic Portuguese urban and maritime proletariat (sailors, bohemians, dock workers, prostitutes, taverna frequenters, port traders, fishwives and other working-class people).”
The origins of flamenco lie much further in the past, but its identification with what were originally an underclass – the Roma or gypsies – remains the same: “The roots of flamenco, though somewhat mysterious, seem to lie in the Roma migration from Rajasthan (in northwest India) to Spain between the 9th and 14th centuries. These migrants brought with them musical instruments, such as tambourines, bells, and wooden castanets, and an extensive repertoire of songs and dances. In Spain they encountered the rich cultures of the Sephardic Jews and the Moors. Their centuries-long cultural intermingling produced the unique art form known as flamenco.” (Britannica.com)
Significantly, all of these musical forms, with the exception of the blues (possibly too diffuse and varied to be considered as a single art form) are included on the UNESCO Lists of Intangible Cultural Heritage.
The most famous tango
The song which typifies tango to the wider world, to the extent that it has made an appearance in a number of Hollywood films, is “Por una cabeza” (literally “by a head”), composed by Argentina’s most prolific tango composer, Carlos Gardel, who died in a plane crash in Colombia in 1938, and with lyrics by Alfredo Le Perla. It appears as a set piece in Scent of a Woman, where a retired Army lieutenant colonel (Al Pacino) who has been blinded by a prank involving grenades teaches the tango to an unsuspecting young woman (Gabrielle Anwar) in the ballroom of an upscale New York Hotel; and in the British film Easy Virtue, in which an Army major (Colin Firth) dances the tango with his son’s new American bride (Jessica Biel) at a party given by his stuffy wife in their English country house. In both scenes the possibilities of an improper sexual relationship hang over the scene
While the song is probably seen by many as the embodiment of romantic passion, the lyrics are in fact a sardonic diatribe against the twin evils of erotic obsession and compulsive gambling. “By a head” is a term from horse racing in which the winner is just a nose ahead of the second placer. The singer compares the situation at the race track, where he bets on a horse which starts promisingly but fades at the finish and loses by a head, with his romantic experiences in which the coquettish woman’s smiling declarations of love turn out to be false “making a bonfire of my desire”.
A successful event in an intimate venue
On Saturday 28th March, the Cretan virtuoso violinist Maria Manousaki and friends presented a programme entitled “The Heart of Tango” at the Mylos café on Kolymbari harbour. A prolific performer in several different musical styles, ranging from traditional Cretan to jazz and blues to Latin American genres including the tango, she was accompanied in this case by jazz guitarist Apostolos Leventopoulos and the Argentine musician Roman Gomez on piano and bandoneon – the accordion-like instrument whose mournful sounds are the quintessence of tango.
With Gomez leading the proceedings from the piano, sometimes singing and sometimes playing the bandoneon, the group played an assortment of pieces – several tangos, including one composed by Gomez himself, some Brazilian songs, one Greek song, a bossa nova which brought back memories of the Sixties, and for good measure a rendering of “Misty” – the jazz standard written and originally recorded in 1954 by pianist Erroll Garner, with words added later by Johnny Burke:
“Look at me, I’m as helpless as a kitten up a tree
And I feel like I’m clingin’ to a cloud
I can’t understand
I get misty, just holding your hand…”
Maria Manousaki plays violin, accompanied by jazz guitarist Apostolos Levendopoulos.
The event was organised by local resident Lydia Isola and the audience consisted entirely of her contacts, Maria Manousaki having declined to publicise the event widely (the group were playing the same programme in the evening at the café of the Archaeological Museum in Chania). As a result many of those present knew each other, which gave the event an intimate character to which the setting – in the upper room at the Mylos café – was ideally suited. Unlike most club venues which tend to be dark, crowded and noisy, the room was light (as the performance started at midday), the seating was grouped around tables with plenty of room for manoeuvre, and service of drinks and snacks was speedily provided by the accessible bar staff.
Consequently the audience were able to give the musicians their full attention and warmly applauded a performance which was full of energy and good humour. Altogether the event (as far as we know the first time a music group has performed at the Mylos) was a success, and one which we hope may be repeated.
