Is the Afro-Argentine Candombe the Father of Tango?

 

 

As we have mentioned before the transformation of Candombe eventually led to an appearance of Tango. There are different arguments for its etymological origin, however, all point to a strong African root. Andrews explains

 

“The Brazilian anthropologist Artur Ramos is of the opinion that the word comes from a corruption of tambor, the Spanish word for drum. “Tocar tambor” means “to play the drum” and thus “vamos tocar tambor” (let's go play the drums) became “vamos tocá tambó” and eventually “vamos tocá tango” (let's play tango). Néstor Ortiz Oderigo argues for a more direct African descent, from such words as Shangó (the Yoruba god of thunder and storms), or from various African words for drum and dance, among which he mentions tanga, tamtamngo, tangana, and tangú.” (165)

 

As mentioned in the Afro-Uruguayan Candombe section tango was also used as a synonym for the Candombe gatherings of the African nations in the eighteenth and nineteenth century. Marilyn Grace Miller also proposes in Rise and Fall of the Cosmic Race that

 

“Both [Vicente] Rossi and [Oscar] Natale note the link between the word “tango” and the word “tambó” or “tambor”, African words for “drums” or “noisy gatherings” that were in common usage in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries in many areas of the African diaspora, including Brazil, Cuba, and the principal ports of South America. […] It is at this point [1892], according to Natale, that meeting of blacks came to be commonly known interchangeably as “tambos” and “tangos”, and both terms were also used to refer to the groups or clubs of blacks – concentrated in the Montserrat neighborhood of Buenos Aires – that convened to call for the manumission of their members who were still slaves.” (Miller 86)

 

This early association with African American culture and Tango as a black dance is strongly contradictory to Tango as an Argentine dance or rhythm as it is known today (85). It is assumed that the development of Tango came out of the transformation of Candombe into the Milonga. At the same time that blackface comparsa appeared in the Buenos Aires carnival, the compadrito appeared, a young man of European descent or gaucho who gradually replaced black dancers as the central figure in the bars and conventillos of San Telmo and Montserrat, two neighborhoods that traditionally had a large Afro-Argentine population. Candombe's and Tango's transformation 'from black to white' was therefore partly due to the absorption of black dance forms by the white population (93). The bars or dance halls were known as academias de baile. There the young compadritos would mockingly imitate the Afro-Argentine Candombe while dancing to Candombe music. This came to be known as the Milonga. Through the Milonga choreographic characteristics from Candombe were maintained (Andrews 166). For George Reid Andrews

 

“The steps of the tango form a kinetic memory of the candombe, a dance that has died but in dying gave birth to the dance that identifies Buenos Aires, a dance exported around the world.” (167)

 

The academias de baile were in neighborhoods that Kevin Mumford refers to as 'interzones', which are

 

“spaces that were simultaneously marginal and central, located in lower-class neighborhoods whose transient populations were black and white, areas that allowed for intense cultural, sexual, and social interchange (Interzones 30-31)” (Miller 88)

 

The transformation of the old Afro-Argentine dances, not only through the 'compadritos' mocking imitation, but also through the Afro-Porteño youth adopting European dances, led to a mixing of a local dance with international dance fashions at the turn of the century.

 

In the form that Tango appeared, with the obvious conjunction to its African roots, it was not accepted by the white middle- and upper-class. Only when Tango was danced in Paris' salons at the beginning of the twentieth century and returned in its 'pure' form as it is known today, did it become acceptable for the elites, who thought that it could pass for white and therefore reabsorbed it into local culture (89).

As shown above Tango's etymological and musical roots are at least partly, but therefore clearly, related to the Afro-Argentine Candombe. Tango's early history is marked by the contact between black and white. The absorption of black traditions seems so complete by now that is has lost all relation. It “has been refashioned as the elite signifier of white Argentinian ontology” (94). The transformation of Candombe into Tango and its further development is an extreme example of Argentina's efforts “to domesticate mestizaje and its cultural yield and to focus selectively on its European or Euro-American features” (81). But with the awakening notion that Tango is not as 'pure' as believed for a long time, it can be said that Tango has emerged as a product of transculturation between African rhythms and different cultures.