Tango Music
After 1880 Argentine music was enriched by waves of immigrants. Their influence led to the emergence of the tango in the brothels and the working class districts on the outskirts of Buenos Aires.
At first the instruments for the tango were the violin, the guitar and the flute. But about 1900 thebandoneon replaced the flute. The bandoneon is the essence of tango music, and it has been said that bandoneon and tango are one and the same. When the bandoneon – a type of piano accordion introduced by German immigrants – was adopted by tango musicians, it created the characteristic sound of the tango. In its fusion of the melodic line with rhythm and harmony, the wailing tone of the bandoneon gave the tango its definitive form.
Its complexity would later be reinforced by substituting the piano for the guitar and by emphasising the tango’s percussive rhythm. In this way, the basic tango ensemble remained a trio, but consisting now of bandoneon, piano and violin.
These instruments were to be the basis of the typical tango orchestra, invented by Julio de Caro in the 1920s and generally formed by a sextet consisting of a piano, two bandoneons, two violins and a double bass. A later development, the full tango orchestra, adopted a similar pattern, but increased the number of bandoneons and added violas and cellos to the string section.
When the tango first emerged, it was as instrumental music intended only for dancing. Over the years, however, lyrics were added, almost always for solo singers but eventually also for duets, though without a chorus. A fairly clear distinction was always maintained between instrumental tangos and tangos with lyrics.
Musically, the tango has a binary form. Originally written in 4/8 time, its definitive form is in 2/4 time.
Tango Lyrics
Tango lyrics are based on a local urban slang known as lunfardo. They usually express the sadness, especially in matters of love, experienced by working class men and women.
The tango song, as established by the great singer Carlos Gardel, has a strong narrative element. Gardel chose to portray, through words and music, the urban world: the city’s characters, their emotions, their language, their urban environment, and, especially, their idiosyncratic outlook on life.
In their deployment of imagery and philosophical reflection, tango lyrics combine poetic sophistication with an enduring popular appeal, especially among the more humble strata of society.
The tango lyrics’ principal and most characteristic themes are disillusionment in love and the passing of time, but they also cover the city and its personalities, social and political problems, love in general, death, sport, and the tango itself.
Disillusionment in love as a central theme of the tango gives rise to contradictions. Men sing of their emotions and weep, in contrast with the traditional values of the hard, ‘macho’ male who suppresses his feelings. The words of the tango reveal the male’s inner emotions and deep suffering in a world where men are supposed neither to express their feelings nor to weep.
Reflection on the passing of time is another typical element of tango lyrics, perhaps even more so than disillusionment in love. Practically every tango contains an anguished glance at the destructive effects of time on human relationships, inanimate objects and life itself. The writer of tango lyrics manifests his impotence to halt the flow of time and expresses the ‘dolor de ya no ser’, ‘the pain of loss’.
Lunfardo
Lunfardo is the language of the slums and the poorer districts on the outskirts of the city. It is inseparable from the tango. Although tango lyrics may show a greater or lesser presence of lunfardo, it is lunfardo that helps to define the Argentine tango by creating an idiom based on popular usage.
Lunfardo is not merely a form of slang consisting of hundreds of words and expressions, but it also a form of speech which throughout the Spanish-speaking world identifies Argentinians from the River Plate region and Uruguayans.
Lunfardo, as used in the tango, reflects the waves of immigration that contributed to the formation of society in the River Plate region. It emerged in the Nineteenth Century mainly among Italian immigrants in the Palermo district of Buenos Aires, but it was subject to other influences. There are words from Aymara, Mapuche, Quechua and Guaraní (languages of the indigenous tribes of Argentina). There are African and European words: vocabulary from Sicilian, Spanish-gypsy, Galician, Polish, Portuguese, etc is intermingled in daily usage, with no awareness of its source.
Lunfardo was originally a secretive code and remains so today, based as it is on the language of a criminal sub-class, young people and the world of work.