TANGO—A RUSTIC BEGINNING

This is my translation of Chapter 2 of La Orilla Oriental del Tango: Historia del Tango Uruguayo (“Tango’s Eastern Shore: A History of Uruguayan Tango”) by Juan Carlos Legido ( Montevideo: Ediciones de la Plaza, 1994). Legido (1923-2011) was an Uruguayan dramatist and Professor of Literature and Art History. In Chapter 2 the author relates an oral history recounting the first tango danced in Uruguay—or anywhere for that matter, because the date given, Sunday, December 2, 1866, predates any account that has yet come to light concerning the origin of the tango dance we know today. Legido himself makes no claim for the veracity of this account; he is skeptical of the protagonists portrayed because they seem too iconic, too neatly symbolic. Nevertheless, those facts and circumstances of this very detailed account that can be verified do, in fact, check out. December 2, 1866 was, indeed, a Sunday (https://www.timeanddate.com/calendar/?year=1866&country=59). Likewise, as annotated below, the setting is historically accurate, and other circumstantial factors such as the role of habanera, a musical genre popular at the time, and the inputs from Afro-South American culture on the Río Plata, all have the ring of truth. 
            For those of us who live in the fast-moving, rapidly-changing, footloose world of the advanced capitalist economies, where anything that occurred 25 years ago is ancient history, it seems incredible that such a story of events occurring more than 125 years ago could be passed down as oral history with any degree of accuracy. But for one who has traveled widely in Latin America, where communities are more stable and often seemingly timeless, it is not at all incredible. There, in the words of William Faulkner, “The past is never dead. It's not even past.” In Managua, Nicaragua I was once given directions from the orientation point of a famous tree that had been gone for 50 years! Those accustomed to adding the descriptor “Argentine” to tango may balk at the possibility that it might have been the Argentines’ “eastern” neighbors who first danced the dance. But as Legido emphasizes, regardless of whether or not this story is entirely factual, neither country can claim all the credit. Tango has citizenship in two countries, but it emerged from a single culture, the culture born of a great river that both divides and unites them, the Río de la Plata. 

It is important to keep in mind the distinction between tango the dance and tango the music. First came the dance; there is no question about that. As the dance gained in popularity and became established the musicians adapted and improvised on the earlier musical genres until the unique tango dance had a music of its own. 
All footnotes are mine.

Karlos Bermann

                                     

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L

et’s not get bogged down in the question of when tango made its appearance on the Río de la Plata, or specifically in Montevideo.  All the researches that have been done agree that the same geographic, anthropologic, social, cultural, spiritual, and musical conditions were found in both Río Plata capitals; it’s easy to imagine, given different historical and political conditions, the two urban centers belonging to the same nation—two port cities on the same estuary with sailors of diverse nationalities on their docks along with an enormous contingent of immigrants, particularly Italians, but in the same proportion Spaniards also, who obviously were no longer arriving as the masters of these regions. Also, in their own arrabales[1] were another type of immigrant—internal  immigrants—the gauchos displaced from the “limitless” countryside whose limits were continually shrinking through the fencing off of the great estates, which  were ceasing to be open range as the result of technification linked to nascent industrialization. They had ceased to be gauchos, having been converted into day laborers or compadritos.[2] But they brought with them their guitars and their milongas. And all these men, who came from such different places, who were such different types and different races—white, black, and to a lesser extent Indian, as well as their intermixes—all contributed their share and so, almost without it being noticed, gave form and life to the tango.

                If, as most scholars affirm, the slow emergence of tango took place between 1880 and the end of the century, let’s first look at Montevideo during those final days of the military governments of Lorenzo Latorre and Máximo Santos, the bitterly remembered “military years,” of the transition to General Tajes’s presidency and the contested civilian governments of Julio Herrera y Obes and Juan Idiarte Borda, the last cut short by the attempt on his life.[3]

                Expansion of the capital city had remained on hold during the devastating Great War (1839-1851), during which it had to suffer through a nearly decade-long siege. But following the peace treaty of October 8, 1851, it resumed the promising rhythm it had achieved during the first two constitutional presidencies of Rivera and Oribe.[4] These were the years in which the great immigration began, particularly by the French. By the 1880s the first telephone lines were being installed. In 1886 the first municipal lighting illuminated the Plaza Constitución and the Plazas Independencia and Cagancha as well as the Calle Sarandí and the 18 de Julio. In terms of urbanization, the General Artigas ring road was begun, pointing to a very ambitious urban expansion plan, of which we can see the proof today; the planning of the Nuestra Señora de los Pocitos village, which less than a century later had become the most vigorous, prosperous, and cosmopolitan—as well as one of the most attractive—neighborhoods of the capital with a population of 300,000; the working-class and “tanguero” barrios Reus al Norte and Reus al Sur, along with the Barrio Palermo, the unquestionable home of Black candombe, which the scholars tell us played its part in the evolution of tango. This was also the era when the first plane trees were planted, years later to give the city its poetic depiction as “green Montevideo”—the capital tree-lined in spite of the municipality having removed the trees from the 18^th of July Avenue during the last military dictatorship and the obstacle to human circulation that they continue to be today—for nationals and foreign visitors alike. In regard to building construction, this was the era of eclectic architecture that truly gave our capital its European air, architecture to be found in nearly all of Ciudad Vieja, in part of El Centro and El Cordón, and in the del Prado residential neighborhood. These were the years in which the Palacio Santos was built, today the seat of the Chancellery; the School of Arts and Crafts—today the University of Handicrafts—whose Gateway of the Citadel was moved from there to be relocated where it ought to have been in the first place—in the Plaza Independencia; the Stella d’Italia Theater; the Montevideo Athenaeum, a beacon for the culture of a generation that rightfully called itself the “Athenaeum Generation”; the Italian Hospital, of true Italian Renaissance lineage; the Hotel Nacional at the far end of the peninsula next to the bay, which survived only briefly as a hotel and years later served as the seat of the Humanities Faculty; and finally two magnificent structures by Luis Andreoni, who together with Juan Alberto Capurro represented the pinnacle of architectural achievement during the last century; the Club Uruguay in the Plaza Constitución and the Central Railroad Station.

                But very important for the tango geography of Montevideo was the port zone, which in those years did not yet have the facilities it has today. Those were begun in 1901 and took nearly a decade to complete, which is understandable if we consider that, given the resources of the nation, it was a monumental task, the most important undertaken in its history. But be that as it may, even with its primitive wooden pier dating from 1796, to which others had been added in 1821 and 1841, and its old customs house, which burned down in 1921, the port was Montevideo’s raison d’etre. Montevideo was founded by the Spaniards to serve as a naval base and fortress two centuries later than other Latin American capitals and cities. On the other hand, as is usual in areas surrounding the ports, the latter had given rise to a peripheral zone at its margins, a meeting and mixing place for sailors from many parts of the world, persons displaced from the urban zone, transients, and women who serviced the sexual needs of the male population—all with the natural sauce of music and dancing that would become the cultural ecosystem for tango.        

                In regard to cultural matters, two cafés came into existence that would encompass the intellectual and artistic life of that epoch: the Polo Bamba and the Tupi Namba, the latter keeping its place until the middle of the next century. And 1886 brought the appearance of the daily newspaper El Día of José Batlle y Ordóñez, which would have so much influence in the history of modern Uruguay. It was also the era of Eduardo Acevedo Díaz, the father of the novel in our country and of the romantic poet Juan Zorillo de San Martín, of the “national” painter Juan Manuel Blanes and of the musicians Tomás Giribaldi and Luís Sambucetti.

An Oral History Version of the Birth of Tango in Montevideo

                Despite the fact that the sources for the event we are going to relate are not strictly documentary, that is, they lack written—not to mention certifiable—documentation, I find this version of the birth of tango interesting. Or more precisely, let’s say, the origin of the word “tango” as applied to the music and dance that would evolve as such. It comes from Leonardo Durante, an Argentine living in Montevideo, resident, moreover, at 1620 Calle Libres, where for more than thirty years he owned a barber shop.

                According to this version, which was passed down from father to son, e che si non é vero é ben trovata,[5] tango was born, or better said, reborn, on Sunday, December 2, 1866 in the Barrio Goes, at what today is number 1477 Calle Isidoro de María. At that location there was a rancho, really a sort of large stall, with sides of some stuff and a makeshift roof; the structure had disappeared by 1900. It faced the Plaza de las Carretas,[6] known also as the Plaza Sarandí and somewhat later as the Plaza General Flores—a plaza that occupied the place where the faculties of Medicine, Chemistry, and Pharmacy are found today. A road called “A la Figurita” crossed this plaza, lined with a double row of paradise trees.

"Oxcart" by Pedro Figari

The structure in question was known for its singular atmosphere, “in which a half-dozen oil lamps served to illuminate the nocturnal gatherings. Its floor was of tamped-down earth covered with a layer of sand, and it was one of many such structures that surrounded the plaza and were used to hold the fruits and vegetables brought there in the farmers’ oxcarts,” notes Leonardo Durante.

                So much for the geography. In reference to the actors, there was no doing without the magic number three: the three friends (“Three friends we always were in those days of youth,” run the lyrics of a tango that would appear long after these supposed events)—the three faithful representatives of the origin of the Montevideanos: El Tano (the son of Italians, or perhaps an Italian himself), El Gallego (the son of Spaniards, or from Spain himself), and El Negro (the son or grandson of black slaves). All three between 20 and 25 years of age. One a greengrocer, another a fisherman, the other a laborer at odd jobs. The three came to know each other there amid the constant hustle and bustle of the Plaza de las Carretas.

                On Sundays, a market day but also a day of diversion, the stall was emptied and the floor cleaned to serve as a dance floor. Meanwhile, released from their respective labors, the three friends crossed the plaza to what is today the corner of Yatay and General Flores where there was a tavern (by 1873 it was known as “The Gaucho,” for the terracotta representation of a  gaucho holding a glass that served as its advertisement). There the three friends partook of well-earned libations after their work at the market, while minstrels or troubadours of the neighborhood or from the interior improvised verses to the music of their guitars. After a while the tavern patrons idling at the bar with their glasses of rum, gin, or wine heard from the nearby market stall the notes of a waltz, a mazurka, a polka, or a habanera played by a small ensemble composed of a violin, a flute, and guitar.

                And it was precisely on that 2^nd of December that one of the three friends, the Tano, on hearing a polka, felt his pulse quickening and invited the Gallego to return with him to the rancho and join in the dancing. He did not include the Negro because he knew that on Sundays the latter had a nearly religious appointment at the sala[7], that is, the “salon of candombe” that the “benguelas”[8] maintained at Ibicuy Street between Durazno and Maldonado in the Barrio Sur. But on this occasion the inclination of the Negro was in the other direction.

                “Today I’m going with you,” he told them. “I’m sure my people are going to fall under the ban, like what happened to us in the time of the kings.” He was referring to a prohibition that had befallen the Blacks under colonial rule, when in 1806 the residents presented Governor Elio with a complaint “in regard to the tangos of the blacks,”[9] –not the only complaint received in Montevideo or Buenos Aires on earlier or later dates—because “these produced such shouting and ruckus that the complaints were justified,” asserted Hector and Luís Bates in “La Historia del Tango” (Buenos Aires, 1936).

                But to continue with Leonardo Durante’s account: Once inside the “salon,” which was brightly lit and in which there were no tables or chairs, only couples dancing, the Tano headed for one of the walls where women were waiting for someone to ask them to dance, and that is what he did, with a so-called Chola,[10] just as a waltz had finished. The Tano, now a bit heated by the rum drunk in the tavern, shouted “Play a habanera!” This they did, and on that occasion, instead of lightly placing his right hand on his companion’s waist, the Tano embraced her passionately about the waist and they began to dance. The novelty of this manner of dancing caused the other dancers to fall off and form a circle around them. When the dance ended everyone applauded, calling for another habanera, at which the other couples began to dance as the Tano and the Chola had done. During the break the guitarist approached the group where the three friends and their partners were and said, “Tell me, what’s that called?” Looking at the Negro, the Gallego replied, “Call it tango.” “Yes,” the Tano added, “Call it tango.” And looking at the Negro he added in a cheerful voice, “Let’s see if they ban this one the same as yours.” And thus the word tango was “reborn,” since it had been used as above during the colonial era. And at the same time a new dance was also born.

                Three weeks later, December 23, 1866, there was a public invitation to “dance tangos” under the pretext that the “a la Figurita” road was to be renamed the “Camino de Goes.” The orchestra of three was expanded with two additional musicians who played the clarinet and the harp (In regard to the clarinet and harp, the Bates brothers, in the aforementioned book on the history of tango, affirm that the first [tango] orchestras were composed of a flute or clarinet, a violin, an accordion, and a harp).

                If we can credit Leonardo Durante’s account, the tango, then, first appeared in Montevideo and more specifically in the Barrio Goes some months ahead of Buenos Aires. According to a note appearing in the [Argentine] daily La Prensa in its photogravure supplement of August 28, 1967 titled “The Tango is 100 Years Old,” signed by Francisco García Jiménez, the tango had its “birth” May 24, 1867. This referred to the appearance of the tango “El Chicoba” that Vicente Rossi in his oft-consulted book Cosas de Negros affirmed was also disseminated in Montevideo sometime in 1866-1867. Horacio Jorge Becco, however, in “Vicente Rossi and His Río de la Plata Work,” which served as a preface to one of the editions of Rossi’s book, asserted that it was not a tango but a candombe.[11]

                In any event, whether or not these dates, and even these events, are historically accurate, we don’t think it makes sense to seek an advantage of a few months more or less in favor of Buenos Aires, Rosario de Santa Fe or Montevideo, Argentina or Uruguay, when the tango is a phenomenon of the entire Río Plata and arose from the depths of its idiosyncrasies. And the fact that both Durante’s  version and that of García Jiménez point to dates so close together tells us that the musical, rhythmic, choreographic, psychological, and sociological determinants were now maturing in a single cultural area, where even a river as wide as a sea could not separate the two peoples. Because there were Blacks in Buenos Aires and in Montevideo when both cities belonged to the Spanish crown; ships anchored in both ports where their crews introduced the Andalusian tango[12] and the habanera; the two capitals were surrounded by rural hinterlands with their gauchos and troubadours who circulated with their country milongas[13]; they were likewise surrounded by peripheral zones—arrabales, suburbios, or bajos.[14] It was there that the gauchos displaced from the great estates would end up; or the militiamen whose employment had ended now with the end of the wars beyond the country’s borders (such as the Paraguayan War, the last and most cruel); or the Blacks who had been freed long since but still did not have a definite place in society[15]; the mulattos without fixed occupation; the sailors who had been left behind by their ships and waited on land; or the immigrants, especially Italians and Spanish, who came in clusters, but weren’t able to “make it in America” the way they had planned when they boarded the ships, and who now remained on the periphery of the city unable to conquer it. All these conditions dictated that the tango would emerge at the same time on both banks of the Río Plata.  

Human, Geographical, and Musical Influences in the Emergence of Tango

                At any rate, this oral history tradition places the ostensible birth of tango in an epoch slightly earlier than the commonly accepted time frame between 1880 and the end of the century. That means that this history, if not strictly factual at least has verisimilitude (and we assume that the reader is well able to distinguish between truth and verisimilitude). It possesses verisimilitude because the elements in play—the people, the setting,[16] the music—are fundamental aspects with which the scholars are in agreement when they seek to explain the rough beginnings of tango.

                Let’s begin with the human material. It’s not about these actors appearing as a representation of the country’s population mix—the Gallego, the Italian, and the Black. We know the role of Spanish and Italian immigration not only in the makeup of our populace, but also in what their heritage, as well as that of other European countries, naturally, meant for our culture. The next generation of Italians would even be fundamental at a later period, when tango would reach the printed page in the form of sheet music. And as for the last of the three, the Negro, we have him in our territory because, through the shame of universal proportions that allowed slavery, he was brought by force from the opposite shore of the Atlantic, from the coast of Africa. And of the Blacks we know very well, through documents duly recorded in the nation’s General Archive, that there existed “the tangos of the blacks” that disturbed the citizenry because of the noise and disturbance they occasioned. Such was the sense of the attitude of the Spanish Governor Elío when he obtained an ordinance from the municipality according to which “tangos and dances of the blacks that are for all reasons prejudicial, are absolutely prohibited inside and outside the city.”  

                Clearly, the reference to “the tangos of the blacks,” has nothing to do with the tangos that would come later, the tango we know, Río Plata tango to name it unequivocally. But it is certainly that prohibition from the colonial epoch, as well as others that came afterward in the early years of the nation, that the Negro had in mind when, contrary to his custom, he didn’t go to the sala that Sunday because he feared that the ban would again fall on his people.

                To complete the picture of these individuals, we can add their respective employments: a fruit and vegetable vendor, a fisherman, and a man doing odd jobs, in other words humble people who represented a broad “habitat”: the produce vendor who came from the small farms that surrounded the capital, the fisherman who as part of the maritime sector was transient and might stay in any of the marginal areas. None of the three represented the “establishment” made up of state functionaries, merchants, import-exporters, saladeristas,[17] and professionals who would come to tango later, well into the 20^th Century, especially after Paris gave its benediction and ultimately its definitive endorsement.

                Let us turn now to the setting. A rancho situated in what in 1866 was a peripheral area, in a plaza where carts converged and which served as a market, crossed by a road to “La Figurita,” which years later would come to be one of the barrios of the city. The rancho, similar to others around the plaza, with a dirt floor and oil-burning lanterns, was the scene of dances where a strata of the people would end up, a strata of which the vegetable vendor, the fisherman, the Black day laborer, and the Chola were scarcely representative, a numerous layer that did not meet the social standards established by the bourgeoisie. These naturally would not solely be working people like the protagonists of our story, but also the outcasts and low-lifes: prostitutes and their pimps, gauchos for whom there was no longer need and who were becoming urbanized, adventurers, petty criminals, and so on. 

                And now for the for the musical side. According to Leonardo Durante’s narrative, in the rancho they played waltzes, mazurkas, polkas, and habaneras—danceable musical genres that were perfectly in keeping with this epoch and even endured for many years afterward. All were of European origin,[18] brought by the crews of ships that anchored here, by travelers, and through imported sheet music sold here just as imported books were. The instruments mentioned are also those that the specialists and scholars associate with the beginnings of tango: violin, guitar, and flute. In our story it is also recorded that given the success of the dance on December 2, it was repeated three weeks later, at which time the public was invited “to dance tangos,” the trio being expanded with the addition of a clarinet and harp, instruments also accepted by the historians. Here there is no mention whatsoever of the bandoneón or the piano, which would come later. And in regard to the habanera, which served as the stimulant for the new choreography from the one of the three friends who danced with the Chola, it is almost unavoidable that that music, with its rhythm in the 2/4 time signature, would serve as the catalyst for tango. As for the emphasis on the manner of that dancing on December 2, 1866, today there can be little doubt that the choreography was fundamental in the creation of tango; at its beginning the dance was an end in itself, “and improvisation was the rule,” comments Tulio Carella, when as a general rule the other dances of the period were a pretext for social intercourse realized through a fixed choreography.

                In regard to the music, it seems opportune to reproduce the opinions expressed by José Wainer and Juan José Iturriberry in the entry “El Tango” (No. 43 of La Enciclopedia Uruguaya, Editorial Arca, 1969): “. . . in its most concise versions, its music held to the common themes of the dances originating in Western Europe. From them it took the major and minor keys in use since the 18^th Century.  Its form retained and preserved the binary and ternary forms, subdivided variably into phrases of 8 and 16 measures. In the beginning it was interpreted by violin, guitar, and flute, and sometimes clarinet or harmonium; plus later the piano and that unique identifier the bandoneón . . . In the tango a series of ingredients mixed: tango ándaluz, habanera, and milonga  . . .  At dances in far-flung abodes guitar players, singers, and troubadours were setting the genre on a course that would later come back around in compositions such as those of the Uruguayan Manuel Arozteguí and even later in those of Augustín Bardi or Eduardo Pereira.”

                To this approximation that these two authors make it seems to me I must add the contribution of the obvious “brown” root, in other words what tango received from the Blacks and candombe: “the twist at the waist, shoulders forward, the head raised, moving the pelvis to the beat, crossing the feet and advancing in a zig-zag with stops that respond to the music, the step as though indecisive,” comments Vincente Rossi. “This was to be the great Black contribution to tango,” notes Fernando Assunçao in El Tango y Su Circunstancia  (Buenos Aires: Editorial El Ateneo, 1984), linking the description to Pedro Figari and his paintings of Blacks and the candombes so much frequented by the great Uruguayan painter.[19] Making a synthesis of this debated and apparently endless subject of the beginnings of tango, let’s continue citing Fernando Assunçao, who I believe to be one of the authors who delved most deeply into this subject so dear to musicologists, historians, and even newspaper columnists.

"Candombe" by Pedro Figari

                “There is a basic line coming from the dislocated, urbanized gauchos and the dances of the freed Blacks, both groups now transferred to the corrosive milieu of the courtyards of their lodging places and the no less corrosive surroundings of the wenches and the neighborhood brothels. Influences of old mazurkas and polkas, candombes or tangos of the Blacks mixed with the new cadence of the habanera [Regido’s emphasis], as alluring and sensual as a steamy bordello. There, as part of that lineage, were paridas milongas, milongas partidas and milongones, or milongas de reñidero. [20] The first two, from the guitars of the payadores, traveled deep into the interior or established themselves as a song form on the stage or in the circus. Very characteristic, so much so, in my judgment, that it is these that best identify our traditional balladeer, the popular figure of the eastern provinces. The last two, like the crack of a whip—provocative, the sure prelude to other even darker and more passionate embraces between the brute and primal male and the female, no less brute but experienced in ‘the ways of love’—came to dominate the village dances as an essentially musical-choreographic form; they are neither more nor less than the central core, the very trunk of tango in its primordial stages and above all of the tango dance.”[21]

Academies, milongas or country dances, lodging houses, and brothels

                The two greatest national chroniclers of Montevideo in regard to the pre-history and beginnings of tango are Alberto Alonso and Vincente Rossi, to whom the journalist César Gallardo must be added for his contributions on the early years of the 20^th Century. They tell us of “unholy”[22] establishments where this music and dance were gestating and becoming established.

                The “academies,” needless to say, had nothing to do with the Greek “Akademos,” nor with the more refined versions that arose here later, in the next century, to teach the tango dance. At the end of the 19^th Century they were salons for dance and amusement found in various places in the capital, especially in the zones that would become prominently “tanguero,” such as El Bajo, el Barrio Palermo, La Aguada, and El Cordón. Clearly, during the period in question, tango properly speaking, was not being danced, because tango was still in its infancy and did not yet have an official certificate of baptism. There they danced the rhythms in fashion coming from outside the country, those mentioned earlier in this chapter—polkas, waltzes, mazurkas, habaneras, the schotisch (which despite its name came from Madrid), and now a framework very much our own, the milonga. The instruments the musicians uncased for this were commonly the guitar, accordion, flute, and clarinet. The best of these venues, remembered since it was immortalized in the now legendary Cosas de Negros, is the San Felipe: “The most typical and spacious, the most important and famous, the creator of the corte and the quebrada,[23] the most classy and the most commodious, since it offered the public a range of dance floor surfaces, high and low. Located in the south, in the aforementioned El Bajo barrio of Montevideo, at its front the insensate waves of the riverbank crowd milled about, while at its rear the waves of the Río Plata alternately caressed or pounded with fury.  In the back was a structure of wood and zinc set on low walls. Vincente Rossi affirms that the following instruments were played here: “three violins, a harp, a flute, a metal bass, and a classical three-octave harmonium played by the director, Lorenzo, a creole who could not read music, but who could play ably with one hand. Here, as well, they composed milongas especially for the barrio. The demand for these was continuous and it increased the fame and prosperity of the salon.  Only the San Felipe sported the title ‘academy of dance’; it became widely known and served as a beacon for the neighborhood. Streamers with paper flowers crossed in all directions. It was illuminated by kerosene.”

                There were other establishment of this type that distinguished themselves during their existence in our capital: “Solis y Gloria,” “La Trufa ” at Calle Uruguay and Caiguá (today Eduardo Acevedo), “La Piedra,” facing what today is “La Caja de Jubilaciones,” and “La Pícaflor” at Mercedes and Rondeau, but in contrast to the renown of the San Felipe, these are merely names with a vague reference to where they were situated; at present I have found no description or concrete information in regard to these supposed “academies.” On the other hand, many names of what were commonly called milongas or bailongos appeared for the fiestas and gatherings of the Blacks that were later applied by extension to those of El Bajo and, extending into the new century, to the suburbs generally in the neighborhood of dwelling places.  Among the oldest, on Calle Recinto in the zone along the river, the epicenter of the bailongos, brothels, and café-taverns with their crank-up player pianos, was “La Yeta” belonging to “Juancito el Picao.” It was a sort of cabaret where the young men from the center[24] liked to go because Prudencio Aragón, a pianist of Argentine origin played there, and later the North American Black Harold Phillips, as well as many Old Guard[25] trios and quartets. On Bartolomé Mitre between Camacuá and Maldonado one found “Gordo” Cánepa’s “El Talar,” while on Calle Maciel on the other side of Reconquista toward the river was “La Enramada,” festooned with garlands and little lamps and presided over by the moreno “Pachín.”[26] At Yerbal 598, near J.C. Gómez, was the famous and long-standing “Plus Ultra,” where musical soirees lasted until dawn while vocalists and musical improvisers, some unknown but others famous, paraded across its stage. At the “Zunino” bar, which survived until construction of the La Mañana building and El Diario, many renowned musicians played on a stage the full width of the salon. In the rear they ran a sort of academy of cortes and quebradas where experts taught youths the manly ways of tango dancing. It is interesting to record that, as there were no women, they had some known homosexuals who served as partners.

                But leaving El Bajo, at La Unión was the “Puerto Rico,” a rancho with a packed dirt floor and zinc roof that survived for a long time (we’ll talk about it more in another chapter), “Los Farolitos” on Calle Plata (today Lucas Moreno), the celebrated “Fusco” on the same street at the corner of Lindoro Forteza, “La Alegria” on  Molinos de Raffo, “La Estrella del Norte” on Calle Burgues, “La Paloma” on Camino Cibils, “El Aeroplano” on La Teja, “Selecto” on El Cerro, “El Farol Rojo” and “El Repollo” at the Mercado Agrícola de Goes, the “Agrícola” on Propios near 8 de Octubre, which survived into the 1940s and therefore served as the setting for the Uruguayan orquestas típicas of those later “golden years” of tango. But to return to the central zone, one of the most famous and popular venues was “Los Rosales” on Lavalleja (today José E. Rodó) and Jackson. And that’s not even the complete list.[27]

                In regard to the milonga—in this instance the music, not the dance venues—(how close it would be to the tango!), it is worthwhile to cite an excerpt from the book by Pintín Castellanos, Entre Cortes y Quebradas (Montevideo: Emprenta Colombino, 1948), referring back to the old "academies": “From the academies sprang noteworthy milongas that were later lost and forgotten because they weren’t written down. The virtuoso performers were constantly composing on a range of motifs, though they were absolutely lacking in musical education. Those danceable melodies had extraordinary success, many of them achieving real popularity in those locales, being sung by all who were in attendance, and who added very colorful and topical lyrics to those milongones. Some of the titles from that famous milonguero epoch are still remembered: “Cara Peleada,” “La Canaria,” “Piantá Piojito Que Te Agarra el Peine,”  “La Pata del Catre,” “Pejerrey Con Papas,” “Señor Comisario,” “Largate Si Te Gusta,” “Estás Mamao,” and so on.

                The “academies,” which seem to have disappeared with the new century, were replaced by the pensiones, where the patrons danced with women employed by the establishment or brought women with them. These had a mixed clientele: on the one hand the neighborhood toughs, on the other middle- and upper-class youths who went to become men in a setting far removed from papa and mama. On that account dustups were frequent enough, and not necessarily the result of class conflict. Generally these venues were administered by “veterans of the life” who were sufficiently intelligent not to end up like “La Rubia Mireya” in the tango by Francisco Canaro and Manuel Romero,[28] but to “scrape together some mangos.” Horacio A. Ferrer, in his ever consulted Book of the Tango names some of these establishments: that of “La Camargo” on Soriano near Convención; that of “Erminda” on San José between Arapey (Río Branco) and Daymán (Julio Herrera y Obes); that of “La Pampa” on Yaguarón and Canelones; that of “La Pinota” facing the Central Market, which had three different concurrent dance milieus; that of “Amelia” on the Isla de Flores (today Carlos Gardel); and that of “Sarita Davis” on the upper floor of the La Noche Café at Ciudadela and Rincón. Emilio Vaccotti Núñez told me of others such as, for example, that of “Juana Ramírez” (or “La Maragata”) at Florida 1276, where Enrique Delfino came to play;[29] that of “María López,” perhaps the most luxurious of the Montevideo “pensiones,” at Rincón 747 (where the Ministry of Industry and Energy is today); “La Miramar” at Florida 1619 and Cerro Largo; “Ema’s” on Durazno 868 close to Andes, where Alberto Alonso performed;[30] “La Madrileña” at Durazno and Río Negro; the “Jaula de Oro”[31] on Ibicuy past Canalones and on this same street, No. 1516, almost to Vázquez, “Aída’s” or “La Pirula”[32] where Eduardo Arolas frequently stopped off.[33] There were many more: in El Centro, La Aguada, El Cordón, even extending to the villages of El Prado such as the so-called “El Cristo” on Doctor Pena Street where the pianist Fioravanti Di Cicco, brother of Minoto, tickled the keys. It’s worth mentioning that artistes lodged in some of these, such as in “Madame Gaby’s” at Andes 1365 or “La Napolitana” at Florida and Paysandú. Carlos Gardel sometimes stayed at “La Paris Hotel” at Rincón 718, and the turn-of-the-century chanteuse Pepita Avellaneda lorded it over a “pensión” at Florida and Paysandú.

                These “pensiones” were a living piece of tango history in our environs during the heyday of the “Old Guard”; nearly all the musicians from the first years of the new century passed through them: the great Eduardo Arolas, Enrique Delfino, Juan “Firpito” Bauer, Alberto Alonso, Orlando Romanelli, Roberto Zerrillo, Prudencio Aragón, Francisco De Caro, Arturo Senez, Carlos Warren, Alfonso Fogaza, and Raúl Courau among others. But that period will be the theme of the next chapter.

                Finally, we will briefly mention the brothels—briefly because the information we have is general and sketchy—since they too played their part for tango. Such places, called quilombos in this part of the Río Plata during the period we are discussing, were distinct from those known some years later, where the client waited patiently to be attended by the prostitute, as though he were in a doctor’s waiting room, where there was no music, dance, or entertainment beforehand. But in the epoch we are discussing, the primordial function to be carried out was complemented with music, and the interpreters tended to be guitarists or accordionists; at times it was a duo or trio in the classical form of violin, flute, and clarinet which, according to the testimony of Assunçao, were sometimes substituted by a small organ or pianola. Among those places the quilombo of the mulata Flora, on the very naughty Calle Yerbal, shone with a brilliance all its own. This Flora seems to have distinguished herself by the order she kept in her establishment, in contrast to that of another mulata, Deolinda. The latter was preeminent during the earlier era of the “academies,” more specifically in the time of Máximo Santos.[34] Apolinario Gayoso, the Montevideo Police Chief, acting in a manner as peremptory as that of his president, arrested and deported her following an incident involving knives and fists in which she had been the protagonist. All the same, by reputation, according to the accounts, Deolinda was a distinguished dancer.                                                                                                                                                                         

"Tango 32" by Pedro Figari

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                

Footnotes

[1] Arrabal. A poor neighborhood or shantytown on the outskirts of a city. 
[2] "Compadrito is a term for a common suburban social figure appearing in the second half of the 19^th Century in the cities of the Río de la Plata region and its zone of influence, principally Buenos Aires, Montevideo, and Rosario, as part of the process of urbanization begun in the second half of the 19^th Century . . . a young man of modest social condition living at the outskirts of the city . . . associated with tango because he was one of the protagonists in the creation of the genre . . . As a result of social prejudice, the term passed into everyday language derogatively to denote a man who is a provocative rowdy and braggart . . . In the Río de la Plata . . .  the term became synonymous with the poor native [criollo] resident of the arrabales.” (https://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Compadrito).
[3] Lorenzo Latorre, military president of Uruguay 1876-1880; Máximo Santos, military president of Uruguay 1882-1886; General Máximo Tajes, president of Uruguay 1886-1890; Julio Herrera y Obes, civilian president of Uruguay, 1890-1894; Juan Idiarte Borda, civilian president of Uruguay 1894-1897 (assassinated). This was a series of strongmen, all from the same political party. Although they headed repressive regimes, for the most part they observed the constitutional limit of one 4-year term. They also presided over a period of strong capitalist growth. (Source: Wikipedia, ES & EN).

[4] General José Fructuoso Rivera, president of Uruguay 1830-1834; General Manuel Rivera, president of Uruguay 1835-1838 (Wikipedia, ES & EN).

[5] Italian. “And if it is not true it is well told.”

[6] The Plaza of Carts (a market square where farmers brought their carts of produce to sell). See note 16 below.

[7] The salas were Afro-Uruguayan self-help organizations. One of their principal activities was to organize candombe dances. (Afro-Uruguay: A Brief History, https://blackpast.org/perspectives/afro-uruguay-brief-history).

[8] Benguela is an Atlantic seaport in Angola. Because many of the slaves brought to the Americas passed through Benguela, Afro-Uruguayans were sometimes called “benguelas” (tubabel.com). 
[9] Considerable evidence supports the contention that “tangos” as used here did not refer to a style of dance, but to events. “Tango” is believed to derive from the term “tan-gó,” from one of the West African languages, meaning a gathering place. And where these gatherings occurred there would be music, in the form of drumming, and dancing, probably candombe or some West African precursor (Araca La Barca: Tres Siglos de Tango (Documentary), Buenos Aires: RAO Films, 2005).
[10] Chola in this context seems to mean that she was of mixed race, a mestiza, that is, a European-indigenous mix.
[11] “El Chicoba” is in 2/4 time, as is tango, but it is a habanera, not a candombe, although perhaps influenced by the latter. The definition of the music is largely irrelevant, however, because tango emerged first as a distinct dance style; tango as a musical form developed in tandem with the new dance, probably as a variation on or adaptation of habanera to the emerging style of dancing.
[12] “Andalusian Tango, or Tango Andaluz.” Use of the word tango, or tan-gó, was recorded in both the Río Plata and in Cuba at around the same time—the first decade of the 19^th Century—undoubtedly, as above, to refer to an event rather than a dance style. It is believed that Spanish sailors brought it back to Spain from Cuba where it may have been applied to some Afro-Cuban influenced variant of flamenco. (Araca La Barca: Tres Siglos de Tango; Carlos Vega, Danzas y Canciones Argentinas, Buenos Aires: Ricordi, 1936, pp 231-274, and Karen Woodley & Martin Sotelano, An Approach to Tango Therapy, Cardiff, Wales, UK: Tango Creations Publishers, 2009), p. T13.
[13] A reference to the milonga as a musical form as opposed to a dance style or event.

[14] Bajo: a poor quarter; slum. Suburbio: whereas in English the word “suburb” generally connotes a middle-class area, in Latin America it is the opposite—a slum or shantytown that springs up at the outskirts of a city. 

[15] In Uruguay slavery had been partially abolished in 1825, completely abolished in 1842. (Afro-Uruguay: A Brief History).
[16] As to the setting, the Plaza de las Carretas, also known as the Plaza Sarandí, came into being earlier that same year (1866), its construction ordered by Gen. Venancio Flores Barrios, “Provisional Governor” of Uruguay between 1865 and 1868, as a central locale for the exchange of agricultural products. “The four sides of the plaza were surrounded by a double row of ancient paradise trees . . . In the luxuriant shade of these trees the oxen and horses would rest and the old carts were protected from the sun. Around the initial quadrilateral were soon erected rudimentary but indispensable structures to meet the needs of the plaza, market stalls to safeguard the fruits of the country from inclement weather—water and wind—as well as thieves . . . refreshment stalls and lodgings with bed and board for the stockmen and carters. Corrals for the protection of oxen and horses, especially in winter.” (Juan Carlos Patrón, “La Plaza de las Carretas,” https://targoesurbal3.wordpress.com; “Venancio Flores,” Wikipedia Es & En).
[17] Saladeristas (literally “salters”) were the first industrialists of Argentina and Uruguay. They were landowners and cattlemen who preserved beef by salting and drying. They would become richest and most powerful men in their respective countries. (Richard W. Slatta, Gauchos and the Vanishing Frontier, Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1983, pp 94-95).
[18] Habanera, evolved in Cuba from the Spanish contradanza, is considered the first European music to incorporate African rhythm patterns. (“Contradanza,” Wikipedia EN).

[19] Born in Uruguay in 1861 to Italian immigrants, Pedro Figari showed an interest in drawing and painting at an early age, but only took it up seriously at age 60 after his retirement from a career as a lawyer, legislator, and educator. He developed a unique style which he used to paint scenes remembered from his youth, some of which he had recorded contemporaneously in sketches or watercolors, and is considered one of the pioneers of modernist painting in Latin America. He died in 1939. (Wikipedia and pedrofigari.com) 
[20] A milongón was an Uruguayan country dance to a crude form of folk music usually sung or shouted and often accompanied only by a guitar. Milongas de reñidero (“fighting” milongas), a form of duel between two payadores (guitar-playing gaucho minstrels) who would try to outdo each other in making up verses extemporaneously, were a popular form of entertainment.
[21] In other words, a dance-pantomime of sexual courtship or foreplay.
[22] “non sanctos.”
[23] A corte, or cut, is an interruption of the caminata, the traveling of the couple in a circular pattern around the dance floor. The purpose of the corte is to permit the couple to dance figures or adornments. A quebrada (break), is a breaking or bending of the fundamental tango posture of very straight axes in which the partners lean toward each other (carpa). In the quebrada, perhaps the first and undoubtedly most notorious of the tango adornments, the couple bend at the waist—the man forward, the woman backward—so they make almost total body contact. Quebradas were considered indecent by genteel society and at times banned or even criminalized. Today they are largely confined to tango shows and rarely seen in social tango. Both the corte and the quebrada were imported from the candombe of the Afro-Argentine and Afro–Uruguayan populations. [see https://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corte_(tango) and https://es.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quebrada_(tango)].

[24] Middle or upper class youths, as the center of the city was where these classes lived.

[25] Guardia Vieja, or Old Guard refers to the tango roughly between 1900 and the mid-1920s. 
[26] Moreno literally means “brown,” but in Uruguay and Argentina it is sometimes applied to Blacks, sometimes to people of mixed race, or sometimes to anyone who is dark-complected.

[27] Here the author places a note crediting “Emilio Vaccotti Núñez, who made an in-depth study of this theme—and many others connected with tango in Uruguay” together with Victor Soliño and Don Emilio Sisa López, “a tireless journalist and investigator” for the information concerning  bailongos and milongas in Montevideo. 
[28] In the tango “Tiempos Viejos” the singer reminisces about the old days and a lovely blonde named Mireya, a beautiful dancer that everyone gathered around to watch dance, but now, having fallen to depths we are left to imagine, the singer passes her in the street, a beggar in rags who turns her face from him. 
[29] Enrique Delfino. A well-known Argentine composer, piano virtuoso, and personality, closely linked to the evolution of the tango song. 
[30] Alberto Alonso. A well-known Uruguayan pianist, composer, and orchestra director. 
[31] "Golden Birdcage." 
[32] "The Waif." 
[33] Eduardo Arolas. A bandoneonist, composer, and orchestra leader born in Argentina of French parents.

[34] See footnote 3.