Submitted by Tom Stermitz on Fri, 02/06/2009 - 18:29
The Roots of Argentine Tango.
Argentine Tango as a dance and musical form developed in Buenos Aires at the end of the 19th Century, and arrived in Europe and then the US in the first decades of the 1900s. This is the model of dance that evolved into Ballroom tango, familiar to us from Rudy Valentino in the classic anti-war silent movie "The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse".
The roots of tango came from urban folkloric dances of the poorer neighborhoods, a mixture of Spanish, Criollo (Gaucho/Native from the countryside) and certainly African elements. In the great immigrant flow of the early 20th century, tango became the culture of Buenos Aires of neighborhoods, bars, nightclubs, and popular theater.
