Tango by Mike Gonzalez

of the era, from blues to jazz. And it was clearly the youthful grandparent of the Charleston and Black Bottom of the 1920s.
    TANGO COMES HOME
    Many of the Argentines who had flocked to Paris, whether the gilded youth on their own version of the Grand Tour, or the working-class tango musicians and performers who had responded to the tangomania that took hold of the city on the eve of war, returned to Argentina at the start of the First World War.
    In fact, tango was becoming acceptable even before the exiles returned. The party organized by the Baron de Marchi, an Italian aristocrat living in Buenos Aires, in the Palais de Glace in late 1912 was a turning point, and he continued to organize ‘several aristocratic tango events (in private mansions, restaurants and clubs) to openly bring his high-life acquaintances into contact with skilful tangueros ’. 25 Those young bloods who had made the obligatory trip to Paris were prominent guests at these affairs, of course.
    In this time of transition, the tango orchestras too were changing in manner and style, as well as in their instrumental line-up. Those who had remained in Buenos Aires still used the underground pseudonyms that betrayed their origins in the slums and conventillos – El Tuerto (‘the One-eyed man’), El Chivo (‘the Goat’), El Rusito (‘the Little Russian’), and so on. And the life the early tangos celebrated was crowded with petty criminals and toughs, pimps and con men still. Most of them had learned their music by ear. And unlike the tango orchestras of Paris, the musicians of Buenos Aires in this first decade limited their ensembles to piano, bandoneon and violin (like Francisco Canaro’s trio), or the guitar, flute, bandoneon and violin of Juan Maglio’s band (formed in 1912). 26
    The proliferating cafés and cabarets of the city centre were evidence of how significant the European seal of approval was.The Café Royale and the Pigalle were among the most sought-after locales. Argentina’s gilded youth would spill out of Madame Jeanne’s high-class brothel into the Armenonville Cabaret. There they could dance to the music of the icons of what became known as La Guardia Vieja – ‘the Old Guard’ of tango musicians who still wore their origins on their sleeves, albeit sleeves that were increasingly well tailored to reflect the elegant surroundings in which the musicians were now placed. The orchestras were still playing for dancing; the emerging group of lyricists were still a minority and their songs basically interludes in the evening’s (and morning’s) dance.
    The bandleaders of the epoch also wrote ballads – Roberto Firpo produced ‘El compinche’ and ‘La chola’, Juan Maglio ‘El Zurdo’ and Vicente Greco’s output included ‘La infanta’ and ‘El Pibe’. And among the singers were a first generation of women whose heyday would come in the 1920s.
    The tango was changing – and so was the city of its birth. The immigrant’s song was about to become the ballad of the city. And within a short time, the expression of the nation itself.
    Foreign/superior recognition empowered the tango – which had been a locally denigrated cultural expression – and made it a competitive marker of national identity. 27
    It is profoundly ironic that the process of assimilation and acceptance that made the forging of a new national identity possible should have begun in Europe. In fact, as will become clear, it was a complex business. During and after the First World War, tango became an international phenomenon, a dance of local origins made universal. At the same time, within Argentina, it became a symbolic expression of a social process whereby the immigrants – physically and psychologically marginalized for nearly forty years – were absorbed into the mainstream of Argentina, or moreparticularly, Buenos Aires society. This