Sprung from the barrios and arrabales of the cities and settlements along the banks of South America’s Río de la Plata, a melting pot of Spanish, Italian, African, and Indigenous cultures, tango’s rich history is like no other. One doesn’t merely dance tango, it embraces you, it inhabits you, you succumb to its spell! © 2022 Karlos Bermann In the late 19th Century, for the first three decades of tango, there was no printed sheet music. Sound recording didn’t yet exist. Itinerant musicians—duos or trios, usually—guitar, flute, violin—spread the music they learned and played by ear for the most part. In 1866, in fact, the first tangos were danced to habanera , a musical genre from Cuba, with roots in Spain, West Africa, and France. Perhaps you never heard of habanera, but in the 19th Century it was popular throughout the Spanish-speaking world. Listen to the aria “Habanera” from Georges Bizet’s 1871 opera Carmen . You may recognize the tune. You can easily hear its similarities to tango...
¡La Vida Es Un Tango!