dance partners. But they could enthusiastically attend the exhibitions given by the new generation of professional dancers, chief among them Ovidio José Blanquet, known as âEl Cachafazâ, âthe Insolent Kidâ.
Tango was creeping across the border, or at least gaps had been opened that allowed some communication between the two worlds of the city. The marginal quarters remained, from a middle-class point of view, places of danger and forbidden pleasure. And the estimated 20â30,000 prostitutes in Buenos Aires confirmed both the availability and the variety of the erotic. Traffic was, of course, predominantly one-way. If the women of the middle class approached in the afternoon light, their husbands slipped into the port area under cover of darkness. But tangoâs best known artists now made increasingly frequent incursions into the gleaming halls of the city centre. And in the theatres (attended by and large by the middle class) the world of tango began to be referred to in the comic operas ( sainetes ) and musicals ( zarzuelas ) that were popular at the time. It is true that the theatrical representation of the immigrant at the turn of the century was still largely comic, grotesque and caricatured â but tango music too was played in the same theatres. Though it might be publicly derided and reproved by the bourgeoisie, their fascinated response to its seductions made that rejection hypocritical at best.
El Cachafaz.
Tango was making its way into the bourgeois world, albeit slowly and hesitantly. The rite of passage was largely completed during the first decade of the twentieth century. But it was a process fraught with contradictions. The numbers of immigrants had leapt once again in the 1890s, fuelling the anxieties of the middle classes. The growing working class was beginning to organize and forge the early trade unions, radical in their predominantly anarchist ideology and increasingly militant in their actions. The discontent at living and working conditions was rising, reaching a critical point in the 1907 rent strike in the conventillos , when, for the first time, the human beings pressed into the overcrowded shacks and shanties of the dock districts took on their landlords. It was commemorated in the sainete âLos inquilinosâ (The Tenants), which included a tango with the same title:
Señor intendente ,
los inquilinos
se encuentran muy mal
se encuentran muy mal
pues los propietarios
o los encargados
nos quieren ahogar .
Abajo la usura
y abajo el abuso ;
arriba el derecho
y arriba el derecho
del pobre también .
Mr Mayor / the tenants / are in a very bad way / in a very bad way / because the landlords / or their agents / are drowning us. / Down with usury / down with their abuses / long live justice / long live justice / and long live the rights / of poor people too. 8
The inclusion of these issues in the popular music of the day testifies to the way in which the newly emerging tango lyrics had moved from the simply provocative or plainly obscene to becoming a narrative of the life and experience of the barrios â its housing, its resistance, its desires and frustrations, and to a very limited extent, its experience of work. It remained the voice of the barrios, its streets and communal life. And it retained as its central character the isolated young man, living the life of the streets, whose strutting and preening in the dance conceals a deeper sense of continuing marginality and exclusion.
As he protects himself with a facade of steps that demonstrate perfect control [the male tanguero] contemplates his absolute lack of control in the face of history and destiny. 9
Women are very rarely heard in tangoâs early lyrics. There were some who made their name in this world despite their suppression â singers, dancers and madams. But it was always a dance led by men, danced with other men or women, but only very rarely by women with one another.
Tango was creeping across the border, or at least gaps had been opened that allowed some communication between the two worlds of the city. The marginal quarters remained, from a middle-class point of view, places of danger and forbidden pleasure. And the estimated 20â30,000 prostitutes in Buenos Aires confirmed both the availability and the variety of the erotic. Traffic was, of course, predominantly one-way. If the women of the middle class approached in the afternoon light, their husbands slipped into the port area under cover of darkness. But tangoâs best known artists now made increasingly frequent incursions into the gleaming halls of the city centre. And in the theatres (attended by and large by the middle class) the world of tango began to be referred to in the comic operas ( sainetes ) and musicals ( zarzuelas ) that were popular at the time. It is true that the theatrical representation of the immigrant at the turn of the century was still largely comic, grotesque and caricatured â but tango music too was played in the same theatres. Though it might be publicly derided and reproved by the bourgeoisie, their fascinated response to its seductions made that rejection hypocritical at best.
El Cachafaz.
Tango was making its way into the bourgeois world, albeit slowly and hesitantly. The rite of passage was largely completed during the first decade of the twentieth century. But it was a process fraught with contradictions. The numbers of immigrants had leapt once again in the 1890s, fuelling the anxieties of the middle classes. The growing working class was beginning to organize and forge the early trade unions, radical in their predominantly anarchist ideology and increasingly militant in their actions. The discontent at living and working conditions was rising, reaching a critical point in the 1907 rent strike in the conventillos , when, for the first time, the human beings pressed into the overcrowded shacks and shanties of the dock districts took on their landlords. It was commemorated in the sainete âLos inquilinosâ (The Tenants), which included a tango with the same title:
Señor intendente ,
los inquilinos
se encuentran muy mal
se encuentran muy mal
pues los propietarios
o los encargados
nos quieren ahogar .
Abajo la usura
y abajo el abuso ;
arriba el derecho
y arriba el derecho
del pobre también .
Mr Mayor / the tenants / are in a very bad way / in a very bad way / because the landlords / or their agents / are drowning us. / Down with usury / down with their abuses / long live justice / long live justice / and long live the rights / of poor people too. 8
The inclusion of these issues in the popular music of the day testifies to the way in which the newly emerging tango lyrics had moved from the simply provocative or plainly obscene to becoming a narrative of the life and experience of the barrios â its housing, its resistance, its desires and frustrations, and to a very limited extent, its experience of work. It remained the voice of the barrios, its streets and communal life. And it retained as its central character the isolated young man, living the life of the streets, whose strutting and preening in the dance conceals a deeper sense of continuing marginality and exclusion.
As he protects himself with a facade of steps that demonstrate perfect control [the male tanguero] contemplates his absolute lack of control in the face of history and destiny. 9
Women are very rarely heard in tangoâs early lyrics. There were some who made their name in this world despite their suppression â singers, dancers and madams. But it was always a dance led by men, danced with other men or women, but only very rarely by women with one another.
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