It Takes Two To Tango Background Music Download
Maira Magwood
Even though present forms of tango developed in Argentina and Uruguay from the mid-19th century, there are records of 19th and early 20th-century tango styles in Cuba and Spain,[3] while there is a flamenco tango dance that may share a common ancestor in a minuet-style European dance.[4] All sources stress the influence of African communities and their rhythms, while the instruments and techniques brought in by European immigrants in the 20th century played a major role in the style's final definition, relating it to the salon music styles to which tango would contribute back at a later stage.
Early tango was played by European immigrants in Buenos Aires and Montevideo.[7][8][9] The first generation of tango players from Buenos Aires was called "Guardia Vieja" (the Old Guard). It took time to move into wider circles; in the early 20th century, it was the favorite music of thugs and gangsters who visited brothels,[10] in a city with 100,000 more men than women (in 1914). The complex dances that arose from such rich music reflect how the men would practice the dance in groups, demonstrating male sexuality and causing a blending of emotion and aggressiveness. The music was played on portable instruments: flute, guitar, and violin trios, with bandoneón arriving at the end of the 19th century. The organito, a portable player-organ, broadened the popularity of certain songs. Eduardo Arolas was the major driver of the bandoneón's popularization, with Vicente Greco soon standardizing the tango sextet as consisting of piano, double bass, two violins, and two bandoneóns.
Like many forms of popular music, tango was associated with the underclass, and attempts were made to restrict its influence[by whom?]. In spite of the scorn, some, like writer Ricardo Güiraldes, were fans. Güiraldes played a part in the international popularization of tango, which had conquered the world by the end of World War I; he wrote the poem "Tango", which describes the music as the "all-absorbing love of a tyrant, jealously guarding his dominion, over women who have surrendered submissively, like obedient beasts".[4]
Although the word "tango" to describe a music/dance style had been printed as early as 1823 in Havana, Cuba, the first Argentine written reference is from an 1866 newspaper that quotes the song "La Coqueta" (an Argentine tango).[15] In 1876, a tango-candombe called "El Merenguengué"[16][17] became very popular, after its success in the Afro-Argentines' carnival held in February of that year. It is played with harp, violin, and flute, in addition to the Afro-Argentine candombe drums ("Llamador" and "Repicador"). This has been seriously considered one of the strong points of departure for the birth and development of tango.[18]
The first recorded musical score is "La Canguela" (1889). The first copyrighted tango score is "El entrerriano", released in 1896 and printed in 1898 by Rosendo Mendizabal, an Afro-Argentine. As for the transition between the old "Tango criollo" (Milonga from the pampas, evolved with touches of Afro-Argentine candombe, and some Habanera), and the tango of the Old Guard, there are the following songs:
Tango soon gained popularity in Europe, beginning in France. Superstar Carlos Gardel soon became a sex symbol who brought tango to new audiences, especially in the United States, due to his sensual depictions of the dance in film. In the 1920s, tango moved out of the lower-class brothels and became a more respectable form of music and dance. Bandleaders like Roberto Firpo and Francisco Canaro dropped the flute and added a double bass in its place. Lyrics were still typically macho, blaming women for countless heartaches, and the dance moves were still sexual and aggressive.[citation needed]
Carlos Gardel became especially associated with the transition from a lower-class "gangster" music to a respectable middle-class dance. He helped develop tango-canción in the 1920s and became one of the most popular tango artists of all time. He was also one of the precursors of the "Golden Age of Tango".
The "Golden Age" of tango music and dance is generally agreed to have been the period from about 1935 to 1952,[citation needed] roughly contemporaneous with the big band era in the United States. Tango was performed by orquestas típicas, bands often including over a dozen performers.
The later age of tango has been dominated by Ástor Piazzolla, whose "Adiós nonino" became the most influential work of tango music since Carlos Gardel's "El día que me quieras" was released in 1935. During the 1950s, Piazzolla consciously tried to create a more academic form with new sounds breaking the classic forms of tango, drawing the derision of purists and old-time performers. The 1970s saw Buenos Aires developing a fusion of jazz and tango. Litto Nebbia and Siglo XX were especially popular within this movement. In the 1970s and 1980s, the vocal octet Buenos Aires 8 recorded classic tangos in elaborate arrangements, with complex harmonies and jazz influence, and also recorded an album with compositions by Piazzolla.
Tanghetto and Carlos Libedinsky are good examples of the subtle use of electronic elements. The music still has its tango feeling, the complex rhythmic and melodious entanglement that makes tango so unique. Gotan Project is a group that formed in 1999 in Paris, consisting of musicians Philippe Cohen Solal, Eduardo Makaroff, and Christoph H. Muller. Their releases include Vuelvo al Sur/El capitalismo foráneo (2000), La Revancha del Tango (2001), Inspiración Espiración (2004), and Lunático (2006). Their sound features electronic elements like samples, beats, and sounds on top of a tango groove. Some dancers enjoy dancing to this music, although many traditional dancers regard it as a definite break in style and tradition.
Bajofondo Tango Club is another example of electro-tango. Further examples can be found on the CDs Tango?, Hybrid Tango, Tangophobia Vol. 1, Tango Crash (with a major jazz influence), Latin Tango by Rodrigo Favela (featuring classic and modern elements), NuTango, Tango Fusion Club Vol. 1 by the creator of the milonga called "Tango Fusion Club" in Munich, Felino by the Norwegian group Electrocutango, and Electronic Tango, a compilation CD. In 2004, the music label World Music Network released a collection under the title The Rough Guide to Tango Nuevo.
Since then, tango has become part of the repertoire for great classical musicians like the baritone Jorge Chaminé with his Tangos, recorded with bandoneónist Olivier Manoury. Additionally, al Tango, Yo-Yo Ma, Martha Argerich, Daniel Barenboim, Gidon Kremer, Plácido Domingo, and Marcelo Álvarez have performed and recorded tangos.
Some classical composers have written tangos, such as Isaac Albéniz in España (1890), Erik Satie in Le Tango perpétuel (1914), and Igor Stravinsky in Histoire du Soldat (1918). Nikolai Myaskovsky composed an Argentinian death tango for the poem "War and Peace". Kurt Weill continued this style in The Threepenny Opera (1928) (Die Dreigroschenoper), with "Tango Ballade", or "Zuhälterballade", a fateful song about underworld life (a symphonic version commissioned by Otto Klemperer); a bit later, he composed "Youkali" (Tango-Habanera), with French lyrics. Also noteworthy was the accordionist John Serry Sr., who composed "Tango of Love" and "Petite Tango" for accordion quartet (1955).[45] The list of composers who wrote inspired by tango music also includes John Cage in "Perpetual Tango" (1984), John Harbison in "Tango Seen from Ground Level" (1991), and Milton Babbitt in "It Takes Twelve to Tango" (1984). The influence of Piazzolla has fallen on a number of contemporary composers. The "Tango Mortale" in Arcadiana by Thomas Adès is an example.
Tango, a distinctive tango dance and the corresponding musical style of tango music, began in the working-class port neighborhoods of Buenos Aires (Argentina) and Montevideo (Uruguay); on both sides of the Rio de la Plata.[1]
The Tango derives from the Cuban habanera, the Argentine milonga and Uruguayan candombe,[6] and is said to contain elements from the African community in Buenos Aires, influenced both by ancient African rhythms and the music from Europe. These African rhythms are thought to come from the candombe, which was characterized by energetic, "jerky" movements.[7] Conversely, the milonga was a fusion of the Spanish-Cuban habanera and the imported European polka.[7] The mazurka is another European element thought to have a hand in the tango's development.[7] It is thought that, over time, these elements intersected in the outer districts of Buenos Aires and developed into the Tango.[7]
In Argentina, the word Tango seems to have first been used in the 1890s. In 1902 the Teatro Opera started to include tango in their balls.[11] Initially tango was just one of the many dances practiced locally, but it soon became popular throughout society, as theatres and street barrel organs spread it from the suburbs to the working-class slums, which were packed with hundreds of thousands of European immigrants. The development of Tango had influences from the cultures of several peoples that came together in these melting pots of ethnicities. For this reason Tango is often referred to as the music of the immigrants to Argentina.[5]
By 1912, dancers and musicians from Buenos Aires travelled to Europe and the first European tango craze took place in Paris, soon followed by London, Berlin, and other capitals. Towards the end of 1913 it hit New York in the US, and Finland. These exported versions of Tango were modified to have less body contact ("Ballroom Tango"); however, the dance was still thought shocking by many, as had earlier been the case with dances such as the Waltz. In 1922 guidelines were first set for the "English" (international) style of ballroom tango, but it lost popularity in Europe to new dances including the Foxtrot and Samba, and as dancing as a whole declined due to the growth of cinema.
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