Tango, milonga and vals explained

A music of the Río de la Plata

In 2009 UNESCO added tango to its register of intangible cultural heritage, as a tradition shared by Argentina and Uruguay. It says tango was developed by the urban lower classes of Buenos Aires and Montevideo, out of European immigrants, the descendants of enslaved Africans and the region’s native criollos. UNESCO names three strands, music, dance and poetry, and a show like the one at Esquina Homero Manzi puts all three on one stage.

The beat

Wikipedia describes tango as a style of music in 2/4 or 4/4 time. In practice that means a steady pulse. You do not need training to find it: tap a foot, and you are on the beat.

The orchestra

The classic ensemble is the orquesta típica. Wikipedia says it includes at least two violins, flute, piano, double bass and at least two bandoneóns, and adds that later leaders dropped the flute and put a double bass in its place. The bandoneón is the instrument most closely associated with tango. A show with a small live group keeps the same family of instruments in fewer players.

The bandoneón

The bandoneón is a type of concertina, played by pulling and pushing air through bellows and pressing buttons, so that each button gives a different note depending on the direction of the bellows. Wikipedia says it was developed in Germany in the mid-1800s, that it reached Argentina around 1870 with emigrants and sailors, as is believed, and that by 1910 German makers were producing it expressly for the Argentine and Uruguayan markets. Its name comes from Heinrich Band.

Milonga

Milonga is a musical genre of the Río de la Plata, with cultural origins dating to the 19th century, and Wikipedia considers it a precursor of tango. It describes milonga as an excited habanera, with all four pulses strong, which gives it an almost waltz-like feel. In a programme it adds a change of rhythm. The word is also used for a dance gathering, but in a dinner show the music is what you hear.

Vals

The vals is the waltz of the Río de la Plata, and it moves in three. Wikipedia says that a special style of tango developed, adapted to the music of the vals criollo, which is characterised by triple metre. A listener can hear the change: the pulse moves in threes instead of twos or fours.

Song and words

A tango can be played by the orchestra alone or with a singer in front of it. Wikipedia says Carlos Gardel helped develop tango canción, the sung tango, in the 1920s, as the music moved from lower-class venues to a more respectable form. Lyricists like Homero Manzi then gave the music its literature: the words of Sur are among the best loved. A programme that draws on Manzi and Gardel draws on that sung tradition.

What a show adds

A stage show is not a social dance. Dancers perform for an audience rather than dancing with it. That makes the show a good first evening for a visitor who has never danced: you sit, eat if you chose dinner, and watch. If you later want to dance, search for a milonga, the gathering where people dance among themselves, which is a different evening from this one.

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