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I was told by the taxi driver, a taxi driver who I later realised had succeeded in charging me double the going rate for the trip, that Boedo, the barrio where I was staying was the ‘barrio de tango’. I didn’t realise it, but his remark at the start of a flying visit to Buenos Aires presaged a quest to discover whether tango, a slightly anachronistic seeming rhythm in a world of beats and salsa, was more than just a museum piece. Driving down 25 de Mayo, the city’s main artery, with all its billboards and its grandeur, it seemed hard to imagine that this was still a city of immigrants, nostalgic for the motherland, singing sad, lilting songs of loss. A meal in an authentic Italian restaurant, with homemade pasta and pictures of the 2006 Italian world cup winning team on the wall offered a hint that it was out there somewhere, and the next day, the girlfriend and I set off on a haphazard exploration of the city, with the unwitting ambition of discovering if tango was alive and well.
We had started in appropriate fashion. By arguing for most of the night. Finally sleeping near dawn and waking after 11. Sun dappling the windows of our hotel room, suggesting that no matter what the grief might be, it would still be worth our while heading out. If tango is a dance of lazy passion, an understated hysteria denoted by the flick of a leg or a sudden shift of rhythm, then it makes sense that we began the quest in a woozy, desiccated state of mind. Fortified by café au lait and finger sized croissants, we headed out into the back streets with hope in our hearts.
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To begin with we drifted through the leafy streets of Boedo which, save for the odd mural, offered precious little in the way of tango. Admittedly it was far too early for any kind of serious tango activity. (It’s only down in San Telmo they dance for the tourists all day long). After a while, the leafy ‘barrio of tango’ began to give way to a seedier vibe, as we moved from Boedo into Once, which is all warehouses and shops. Our route took us across the train lines into the commercial zone. Suddenly, tranquillity gave way to a feverish shopping street.
In common with every American city, Buenos Aires is a city of immigrants. The majority of Portenos, as the citizens are known, have either Spanish or Italian descendency. But there are also large communities of Germans, Eastern Europeans, Russians etc. The only Porteno I know in London has red hair and the surname Rattagan, his ancestors having come from Ireland. Tango emerged in the early twentieth century on both sides of the Rio Plata, in part as an expression of nostalgia for the motherland. However, the mass influx of Europeans ended over fifty years ago. Their descendents are all Argentines now. Nostalgia for a lost paradise is more of a symbolic than an actual phenomenon. Which is where the bustling activity of Once took on an extra dimension. Because the shoppers and the shopkeepers are all, by and large immigrants. The new immigrants – Bolivians, Ecuadorians, Peruvians, as well as Chinese and even Nigerians, are economic migrants, hoping that the biggest city in the South of the continent will offer a higher standard of living. They have taken over Once, with streets full of Andean restaurants, money changers, any commercial opportunity. Perhaps here is where the modern day tango is most likely to be found. Except for the irony that the Argentines resent these modern day immigrants. They don’t want to integrate them into their culture. Instead, like immigrant communities the world over, they are blamed for rising crime and other social ills. The spirit of tango might exist in Once, but its not a song that’s getting heard.
So we left Once, crossing Avenida Corrientes, heading into Abasto. In a matter of minutes the streets were cobbled and the houses, theatres, garages and pizzerias painted with vivid, floral designs. This seemed more like the traditional image of Buenos Aires, and it came as no surprise to stumble across the home of the greatest tango singer of them all, Carlos Gardel. In his day, before his untimely death in a plane crash in Colombia in 1935, Gardel’s fame took him far from his Rio Plata roots. He was an international superstar, big in Europe and Hollywood. His modest house displays a quote which says that a homemade stew cooked with care tastes better than the finest meal in the finest restaurant in the world. A clip from one of his films shows him waking up in his New York penthouse, with four platinum blondes lying around to whom he promptly croons an appreciative ditty. His house has become an unpretentious shrine, and the spirit of tango flickers throughout Abasto’s pleasant, low-key streets, where some of the houses are painted with lyrics and notes from Gardel’s greatest hits, as well as a stream of Gardel murals on seemingly every corner. (Warhol Gardel; Lichtenstein Gardel, Impressionist Gardel etc.)
However, for all the murals and street art, there’s something of the heritage industry about this veneration of Gardel, who died over sixty years ago. If anything, it seems to imply that the phenomenon has atrophied. A short stroll towards the historic centre of Buenos Aires takes you to the Plaza del Congreso where the offices of the Madres de La Plaza de Mayo are located. The offices of the Madres, which continues to function as an NGO, are open to visitors. On the walls are photos of those who remain disappeared, a quarter century after the fall of the dictatorships and the return to democracy. Rows of faces, captured in the aspic of their seventies haircuts, are testament to a time when, along with its human rights abuses, the nation suffered a period of cultural devastation, its musicians and artists banned or forced into exile. Argentina, along with the other Latin American nations which suffered political repression in the latter half of the twentieth century, has moved on, but the walls are a constant reminder of the lasting scars.
In the Plaza de Mayo itself, there are more reminders, with a demonstration by veterans of the Malvinas. One banner says ‘No more fake veterans’. However, the demonstrators share the square with a christian rock band, and the mood is relaxed. We decide to cut short the expedition and head back to the pension. The search by day was always likely to be fruitless. A hunt for the real spirit of tango has to take place by night.
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A few hours later we made our way to La Boca to see El Fulgor Argentino. The show recounts a hundred years of Argentina’s history, in its own theatre, the Galpon de Catalinas. El Fulgor Argentino has been running for 13 years, with the ending constantly being rewritten. There’s a cast of approximately a hundred – it varies from night to night – made up entirely of local residents from La Boca. This is their theatre. Outside, vast grills serve up chorizo sandwiches, beer and cake. All of which can be taken into the theatre. The audience is a mix of the well-heeled, venturing into the badlands of La Boca, and locals. The theatre’s full and the audience’s enthusiasm grows as the tale unfolds, a mix of satire and music, including comedy tanks and generals, the rich and the poor, culminating in a hundred people on stage singing a rousing finale.
Obviously a show dealing with a hundred years of Argentina’s popular music has to include tango, and there’s one wonderful scene where a series of actors dance with giant puppets, whispering sweet nothings as they do so. But the show also demonstrates how tango would appear to have been displaced, by salsa, rock, pop, you name it. As each new dance craze hits the stage, a lone couple continue to steadfastly dance tango, resisting the tide. If anything El Fulgor Argentino would seem to confirm the fact that tango is nothing more than a museum piece, in a society which now looks both to Europe and the rest of Latin America for its cultural infuences.
It’s midnight by the time the show finishes. There’s one last stop to be made. We flag down a taxi and head back towards the centre. Our destination is La Catedral.
La Catedral is a vast hanger. You climb some stairs and enter a cavernous space, with a bar at the far end. The lighting is subdued. As, at first, seems the atmosphere. It’s gone one in the morning and people are dancing but there are no beats, no flashing lights. Gradually the mesmeric rhythm of the tango starts to get under your skin. On the dance floor, a dozen couples are weaving their way around, lazily changing pace as the music picks up and recedes.
Tables surround the dance floor. They are occupied by a mix of age groups and demographics. Sixty year olds dance with twenty somethings. Domination of the dance moves provides the democratic key to participation. On the sidelines, there’s no pressure to join in. A milonga is an opportunity to observe the dancers’ talent, with no need to make a fool of yourself trying to emulate them. Unless you feel like it.
If one were to say that an atmosphere can be dream-like, then La Catedral would embody this atmosphere. No-one is in a hurry. No-one makes too much noise. The environment is both resolutely contemporary and absolutely timeless. The dancers could have been there for decades, centuries, picking out steps, lurching against one another in a parody of desire, staggering or skipping, graceful swans then, by turns, clumsy swans, all at a time. Here is the pulse of tango, alive and well in Buenos Aires.
Later a singer comes on, a small, fiery woman with a low-key band of four. She sings tangos which the audience knows and tangos which they don’t. The most confident couples join her on the dancefloor, cutting through the space like lasers.
The very word ‘tango’ in English is a strange, almost comical one, an alien sound for an alien dance. This is the music of old Europe, displaced, distorted, disturbed, remade anew for a new continent. In La Catedral, of a night, that time when the dawn is still distant but the night is already old, it’s possible to glean what tango feels like, what tango was and is and always shall be.
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