63 images Created 12 Oct 2009
Argentina-tango
THE SOUL OF TANGO
A story about the real tango, that it's not the celebrated Tango-Export, as the porteños call the glamorous tango shows for tourists in Buenos Aires, or the couples of dancers in the streets of San Telmo or La Boca. The dance and music that would become the tango, declared in 2009 part of the World's Cultural Heritage by the United Nations, has been created by European immigrants, mainly Italian and Spanish, freed African slaves and gauchos in Buenos Aires around the 1880s. In dirty places where sometimes tango's deep soul still lives for aficionados, old cafès like Tango bar Lo de Roberto where dusty bottles and worn lyric sheets line the walls, where tango is not a dance, is poetry and songs played by traditional guitarists and tango singers. Or Bar del Chino in Pompeya, a popular district where tango was born, one of the wew still existing places in the world where tango is sung as it was 60 years ago. Here a group of remarkable veteran artists, unknown to the general public, express the real essence of tango, a particular way of seeing and enjoying life, without commercial tricks. Tango in Buenos Aires is a not only world of artists but also of skilled craftsmen especialised in making shoes and dresses exported in many countries, or Radio Ciudad FM 92.7, a radio broadcasting 24 hours every day about tango. Old-fashioned milongas like the Confiteria Ideal, a magic setting for films like The Tango Lesson and Evita that brings back to the beginning of last century, dances are held every day and every night. Since the beginning of the 1990s, the tango culture in Buenos Aires has undergone dynamic development, and today one can choose from between fifteen and thirty different milongas every day.
A story about the real tango, that it's not the celebrated Tango-Export, as the porteños call the glamorous tango shows for tourists in Buenos Aires, or the couples of dancers in the streets of San Telmo or La Boca. The dance and music that would become the tango, declared in 2009 part of the World's Cultural Heritage by the United Nations, has been created by European immigrants, mainly Italian and Spanish, freed African slaves and gauchos in Buenos Aires around the 1880s. In dirty places where sometimes tango's deep soul still lives for aficionados, old cafès like Tango bar Lo de Roberto where dusty bottles and worn lyric sheets line the walls, where tango is not a dance, is poetry and songs played by traditional guitarists and tango singers. Or Bar del Chino in Pompeya, a popular district where tango was born, one of the wew still existing places in the world where tango is sung as it was 60 years ago. Here a group of remarkable veteran artists, unknown to the general public, express the real essence of tango, a particular way of seeing and enjoying life, without commercial tricks. Tango in Buenos Aires is a not only world of artists but also of skilled craftsmen especialised in making shoes and dresses exported in many countries, or Radio Ciudad FM 92.7, a radio broadcasting 24 hours every day about tango. Old-fashioned milongas like the Confiteria Ideal, a magic setting for films like The Tango Lesson and Evita that brings back to the beginning of last century, dances are held every day and every night. Since the beginning of the 1990s, the tango culture in Buenos Aires has undergone dynamic development, and today one can choose from between fifteen and thirty different milongas every day.