J'ai du bon tabac dans ma tabati`ere

[Carlos Lima <amilsolrac @YAHOO.COM>]

Christina Burtis <Cburtis @IFC.ORG> wrote:
>
(...) One can see why the Parisians took instantly to Argentine Tango when
they first saw it in the 20's - it was so similar to their Musette. (...)
<
This purported similarity does come as a jolt to me but, come to think of it,
it is no more far-fetched than any number of proposals made by Argentine and
non-Argentine ... historians of the tango ... over the decades. Let us just
hope that it will not spread like wild fire without some evidence to back it
up.

Now the real reason for this note. Parisians did not first see the tango in
the 1920's. It is quite likely that hundreds of Parisians were seeing the
tango before 1900, but by 1906-1908 it was quite a public and significant
viewing that they were getting. By the time WWI (World War Ai, in a famous
teleprompter reading by Teutonic-American show man Lawrence Welk) intruded,
Paris had been all the way through an unbelievable tango listening AND
dancing CRAZE, that spread from there to many other capitals of Europe, North
America, and then some. This dancing thing was ages (20+ years) before
anything comparable got under way in Argentina itself, a somewhat
embarrassing admission for our dear Portenno characters, and one of the top
motivations for much of the his&hers-tory of the tango that they have
concocted through the decades.

This late Belle E'poque tango was not just a passing fad. It put tango as a
musical genre and as a dance canon on the WORLD map. Tango has lived on this
bigger stage ever since. Tango ceased then, and for ever, to be an
exclusively local (parochial) phenomenon, though its roots and its most
refined creative impulses still came from the banks of the Rio de La Plata. I
do not know about Musette, you know, I have my teeny weeny doubts about that,
but the French were no mere bystanders in the history of Tango. Tango
continues to exist on a worldwide historical stage and, portennos please
relax, the most significant refinements and creative impulses, in the music
as well as in the dance, continue to come from down there. From Mecca. From
Jerusalem.

Cheers,




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