Customer Reviews

Tango: The Art History of Love

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1 star:		(3)

 

 

Robert Farris Thompson is a Yale art historian who here tackles not art but the artistically-defined world of tango, the dance of the past hundred years which evolved from 19th century European and even African origins to come to Hollywood. His isn't just a musical, dance or art expose: it embraces anthropology, religion, philosophy and more as it seeks an in-depth understanding of not just the dance but its cultural expression in TANGO: THE ART HISTORY OF LOVE. A gorgeous survey of a much-revealed form of expression.

As an argentino, that grew up listenning to the Beatles and CCR, I must say that this book was quite an enlightning experience.
It opened my curiosity with regards to the history of Africo-Argentino culture. It is not dead, thank you milonga.
I have a copy signed by Mr thompson and really didnt know what I'd gotten until I went home and read the book.
His theories, to my scrutiny, are sound.
You may not see 'blacks' in Argentina now a days but, an underlined racism still lingers.
I have had difficulty talking about this book with relatives and friends.
I think that Mr Thompson has done a great catharthic piece that will test the Argentine historians for years to come.
Although the lyrics could have been translated closer to the point, using a less literal method.
I believe that this book is 'heavy' more so than anything else out there.
It has more knowledge per page and hopefully will inspire a new generation of writers within the Argentino culture.
Thank you! Mr Thompson.

This book was recommended to me by a fellow Tango student. It seems to be one of the best out there for those whose dancing has lead to intellectual curiosity about the Argentine culture, politics, and music. This understanding contributes to how I dance Tango today. As I learn new dances, I hope to get beyond being mechanically competent, to dancing this Tango from some inner place. This is one of those books that is helping me get there.

There is a very good section on the "how-to" of the dance which will be helpful to dancers with some experience. Beginners will need a little floor time to recognize and absorb the instructions.

Although Thompson's book has a veneer of academic research, it is merely an attempt to promote the position advocated in his other books: Thompson alleges that much, if not most, of the elements of culture for which (mostly European) white societies are credited was "stolen" (that is, copied without credit) from black (in most cases, African) societies.

In "Tango", Thompson, a professor of African art (he has no qualifications either in dance or in Latin American culture) makes two arguments: a general, deductive one and a specific, inductive one.

His deductive argument is essentially "white men can't jump". That is, he reasons from effect and concludes that tango must have been stolen from blacks because it is improvised, and everyone knows that white people can't improvise. White people must have structure. That's why, Thompson says, just as classical music is "white" music and jazz is "black" music, ballroom and ballet are "white" dances, and tango is a "black" dance.

Thompson's inductive argument is based, in large part, on a list of people he has compiled, and who he claims are variously the world's greatest tango dancers, singers, composers and musicians. All of the people on Thompson's list are black. Thus, he alleges, he has "proved" that tango was co-opted from blacks.

Assuming that Thompson's list of the "greatest" has some validity, that would not prove that white people stole the tango from the individuals he selected, much less from any other blacks who didn't make his list.

If Thompson's argument were correct, that would also mean that golf was stolen by the Scottish from African-Americans, because Tiger Woods is black. (I suppose that's his next book.)

In addition to numerous factual inaccuracies, Thompson credits various performers with originating something, and then charges the famous Argentines who introduced and developed the moves with having merely copied them. There is no evidence supporting his allegations other than Thompson's argument by fiat. His proof consists of "because I said so".

Finally, some of Thompson's arguments are just plain fatuous. In interviews, he's stated that there is something called the "break" in tango. And, Thompson says, everybody knows who invented break dancing! In addition to the patent obtuseness of this remark, Thompson also misses the point that, since tango predates break dancing, he's really putting forth an argument that blacks stole break dancing from tango dancers.

Similarly, Thompson points out that tango dancers move counterclockwise around the dance floor. And everybody knows that in African culture, moving around counterclockwise is a way of obtaining a long life! Thompson ignores the fact that all ballroom dances move counterclockwise, including those he has labeled "white" (e.g., waltz and foxtrot).

Those of Thompson's arguments that aren't completely backwards or based on false statements are non sequiturs. As an example, he mentions that some Argentines tie red ribbons to the harnesses of their horses. Lo and behold, red is a color considered to have mystical properties in Africa. Therefore, there is an unacknowledged connection between African superstition and Argentine culture. And - here it comes - this is somehow taken as evidence that the tango was also stolen from Africa. Quod Erat Demonstrandum.

The fact that the Chinese consider red to have special powers, as do Jewish cabbalists, is ignored, as is the fact that, even if some aspect of African superstition had made its way to Argentina, this does not provide any evidence that any other aspect of Argentine culture, such as the tango, also came from Africa.

Unfortunately, Thompson's Yale affiliation has afforded him a soapbox and an unmerited presumption of accuracy in his work. If you want an accurate history of tango, you would do better to refer to one of the so-called "coffee table" books, such as the one by Collier. They may be glossy, but at least they tell the truth.

Thompson intends to popularize tango's African heritage, particularly its debt to culture in the Kingdom of Kongo. As a nonpareil scholar of that region, he's the man to trust when it comes to comparing language, body posture, dance forms, and musical structure in Old and New Worlds, finding convincing points of similarity. His enthusiasm for the topic lends to enjoyable, if sometimes over-detailed, prose.

However, amazing blind spots emerge when he examines tango as it is now danced in Argentina and Uruguay. Though he mentions his own fieldwork watching dancers at Buenos Aires dance halls, he seems more comfortable citing testimony from renowned stage performers and choreographers, such as Juan Carlos Copes. Perhaps this is why Thompson seems entirely oblivious about the difference between stage tango, and tango as it is danced by the majority of dancers. His investigation veers into irrelevance as he analyzes the symbolism and African origins of choreographed, only-for-show patterns such as sentadas and ganchos.

It's tantalizing to think what Thompson's brilliance could have brought to a discussion of social tango. Of course he examines the African-ness of tango's improvisational character, yet oddly spends several pages on the exhaustively rehearsed Tango Argentino. Another pleasure not delivered is his take on tango por export, tango as served up to gringos. Surely when he prepared his manuscript at the turn of the millennium he was not unaware of the red-hot tango tourism market in Argentina: many of his interview subjects are also participants in the globalized tango economy, as performers and master teachers.

In all, it's as frustrating as discovering that comely stranger you've accepted as partner can't dance a lick.

Tango as a song and dance popular genre can't be defined just by one of its constituting elements, the music, its lyrics or its choreography. And much less if the essential element is not the music because the music is the organizing and substantial element. Without the music the others can not exist. Without the music there is neither singing nor dancing. A dance step in itself, a verse alone, does not define anything, inasmuch as an isolated musical chord does not qualify as melody.

In Tango, The Art History of Love, the author's tactics seem to circumvent those concepts in a gratuitously attempt to inject the race card in an otherwise all inclusive popular cultural foreign manifestation. He looks at paintings and reads the painter's mind, he listens to a song and states the composer's intention, he watches a dancer and extrapolates a step or posture making up analogies and pulling hairs in a reckless way.

The least it can be expected from a history book is respect for time lines. Repeating irrelevant urban legends the author jumps all over time lines placing habanera dancing Cuban sailors in Buenos Aires about 60-70 years before Cuba's Armada was created.

On page 216 of Tango, The Art History of Love, the author writes, "(Osvaldo) Pugliese, of course, wrote three black-inspired gems in the 1940s - La yumba, Negracha and Malandraca - affirming the drive of Afro Argentine culture." Of course... of course what, why, how come? How can anyone possibly know what went through Osvaldo Pugliese's mind in 1946 (La yumba), and in 1948 (Negracha, Malandraca).

On page 200 Pugliese's daughter Beba is described as a little girl, racing up and down knocking on doors, her father lovingly calling her "my little rascal" (mi malandraca). Thus, the tango Malandraca could be assumed that it was named after the young Beba. The author, after defining it as a black-inspired gem, adds: "its boiler house intensity melts into yearning, and a factory like ardor, metallic and hard, turns into thought and nostalgia."

What????

The history of tango lyrics is very well documented and verifiable. Chapter 2 of the book is titled TANGO AS TEXT. On page 36 the author takes on Enrique Santos Discepolo (1901-51) in order to promote Celedonio Flores, a third generation mulato and proud Argentine native, as the standard bearer of the injustice done by white Argentines to the rightful owners of the tango, the mythical Afro-Argentines the author has invented in order to justify the claims of his book.

"El Negro Cele was the poet laureate of the people. Enrique Santos Discepolo is the darling of the intellectuals... Yet the true source of Discepolo's style is popular invention, particularly the writing
of (Celedonio) Flores. He does not copy Flores; in terms of Harold Bloom, he `imprisons' him, willfully misinterprets him, achieving a rueful innovation. In famous lines of the tango YIRA, YIRA (Hit the
streets, hit the streets, 1930), Discepolo turns a cold shoulder to a woman of the night, precisely where Flores would commiserate or melt."

Page after page of this irrelevant and dishonest history book, the author makes irresponsible claims and insists in implying that white folks stole tango from black folks adding another layer of racist pandering enlightenment.

- Flores = Black = Poet laureate of the people = Commiserates or melts by woman of the night.
- Discepolo = White = Darling of the intellectuals = Turn cold shoulder to woman of the night.

But here is the problem.

Tango YIRA, YIRA is not about a woman at all. There is no woman in YIRA, YIRA, a fact that anybody with basic high school Spanish could easily verify. The verses of Enrique Santos Discepolo at best reflect upon the inevitable end of our lives and the plight of those who live going around through life without ever finding a purpose. At worst, they are an indictment of the prevalent political and social climate just
after the Great Depression.

Discepolo begins...

"Cuando la suerte que es grela, (When luck that has feminine gender) fallando y fallando te largue parao' (letting you down, letting you down, leaves you standing by yourself)" ... clearly talking to a male listener, or maybe to himself, using the noun "parao," an uneducated variation of the passive
participle of the verb PARAR, `parado' which he uses to signify being abandoned on your own. PARADO's gender is masculine. A woman would be left PARADA. Right there and then everyone knows that the tango is not about a woman.

In YIRA, YIRA, Discepolo is not turning a cold shower to a woman of the night. A serious tango historian must know about the lunfardo verb YIRAR - the tour around all the police stations of the city by repeat thieves so they'd become known to all the officers. - Serious tango experts also must know that the noun YIRO , a derogatory word for prostitute. A culture vulture would listen to YIRA, YIRA and rightfully think of a prostitute.
The sources of most fairy tales in Thompson's book are generations of Argentines who qualify as ignorant culture vultures, and maybe some reassured him that YIRA, YIRA is about a woman. However ignorance is not a reliable source for a book heralded for having discovered in the Argentine tango a racist undertone that ignores African culture.

By accusing Discepolo, under false pretenses to prove his case, if not of outright copying Flores, "the black poet laureate of the people," but at least of willfully misinterpreting him, Thompson may
have inadvertently fit in the vision of Discepolo.

"Veras que todo es mentira (You'll see that it's all a lie) veras que nada es amor (you'll see that nothing is love) que al mundo nada le importa (that the world couldn't care less) Yira, yira! (go around every police station so they can take a good look at you)"

A total waste of precious resources and an unfortunate source of false pride for trusting blacks who fall in love with the tango.

I found the book wonderful. It is especially good on the influences of other cultures on the development of tango in Argentina -- Spain, Africa, Cuba -- all nicely fleshed out. A terrific read.

Peoples mind's are set until actual life experience give a wider perspective. The book has close to 30 pages of notes. Tango as dance, music or a way of life is an emotional subject. ,Robert Farris Thompson offers his findings and other person's actual life experience, covering social history, linguistics, evolution, why things changed with this reader even more interested in Tango and related subjects.While having considerable music and dance recordings, movies and books this was an extremely importanty addition. It will take you to many places, times, customs and languages. The book is in greater depth and apparent accuracy then anything else I have read. Result: greater enjoyment of Tango. In "The Tango" by Monica Gloria de le Compte, Published by Maizal Ediciones, 2000 her first paragraph is "Tango is a word of African origin. In some African dialects the word means closed meeting place. At the end of the XVIII century the slaves met to make music and dance." History is often revised but Robert Farris Thompson offers you a more complete and accurate outline.

I was so excited about reading the book... But even the first few pages brought nothing but disappointment... Writing manner is very heavy, in addition to overwhelming, almost encyclopedic compendium of facts. As the result - reading very quickly becomes boring. It seems the author is more concerned about telling the reader everything he knows on the subject, instead of creating an engaging narrative. I respect and admire Mr. Thompson's knowledge, but I can't bring myself to finish reading his book. Not such a great choice for a tango enthusiast, rather a specialist.

The book starts off by claiming that many aspects of Tango come from African roots. However, looking into all of the claims he made in this book and finding out much of the author says is incorrect you quickly start to judge the his creditabilty. That and the Author is a well known to be bias about everything African. I would not reccomend this book because all it will do is cause more confusion of the History of Tango.