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| Libertad Lamarque |
Tangos spoke of "poor spinsters" who had been left in the dust because women (unlike men) gave "everything" when they loved; of men who had been abandoned by their women; and, ultimately, of the burden of being a man. Pitched in the nasal, whining tones of Libertad Lamarque or Carlos Gardel, tangos were not exotic, like their exported image, but as homespun tangos originated in the 1890s as a lascivious dance in the brothels of Buenos Aires, in the dockside tenements teeming with new immigrants from Italy, Spain, and Eastern Europe. Of remote African origin, and in its original form a duel of sexuality and violence, domination and submission, it showed (as Borges put it) that "a fight could be a celebration." At first its lyrics were improvised and obscene, and then they began to tell rustic sentimental stories about gauchos and their women. Finally, the lonely, seamy side of the life and love became its main subject, tinged almost always with bitter recrimination.
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| Carlos Gardel |
A reflection of the "half breed" culture of Argentina, by the twenties the tango was popularized beyond the banks of the Boca by slick-haired idol Carlos Gardel, the illegitimate son of a French prostitute. He had begun his singing career in the house where his mother worked, where whores and hoodlums would bump and grind, thigh against pelvis, "cutting" or pausing suggestively; in the brothels men also danced with men, crossing the line between machismo and buggery, and women danced with women, to excite their clients but also because many prostitutes were, or became, lesbians. Just as the forbidden waltz at first caused a scandal in Johann Strauss's Vienna, so the lumpen tango, straight from the lower depths inhabited by harlots, thieves, and foreigners, was too lewd for polite criollo society, where it struck both a xenophobic and homophobic nerve. Many prostitutes were Jewish, sold into white slavery from Eastern Europe; the petty thieves or lunfardos were often Italian. After 1910 the National Council of Education (presided over by educator Ramos Mejía) "nationalized" the tango, or cleansed it of its associations with Jews and homosexuals. The tango was tied up in a nostalgia for its own past, not only for its former festivity but for "homosexual desire lost in the sanitization of a forbidden dance." Only after it was adopted by the sophisticated "gay Paris" of the "lost generation" between the wars did this racy rite of arousal gain legitimate cachet. But it lost something in translation, now refined into a stylized ballroom dance for the elegant international set; or, in Borges's words, "a devilish orgy had become a way of walking." For the lower-class provincials in Argentina, however, the sizzling lyrics of seduction and abandonment remained their language of love.
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| Carlos Gardel y Alfred LePera |
Gardel was an Argentine hero . . . a talented musician and a bisexual celebrity who necessarily cast a veil of discretion over his private life; a man of modest origins, known to be kind and generous, a true man of the people. Gardel not only sang but composed, and his lyricist was Alfred LePera . . . So as not to disillusion his fans all over South America and in Europe, it was never disclosed that Gardel and LePera were probably lovers. The duo died together, on tour, in a plane crash over Medellin, Colombia, in 1937; it was a national tragedy. Manuel [Puig] would one day write a musical in honor of this universally mourned Argentine tango star who lived a double life. Called Gardel, uma Lembrança (Remembering Gardel), it depicted the life of a man whose "universe is inhabited by defeated creatures, forgiven betrayals, and the idealism of one's first love. Resentments do not last in his world because he understands and empathizes with all people. He never looks down upon them but rather sees them as equals."
Many thanks to Peter E., who writes:
I'm surprised that you did not report that Rudolph Valentino introduced the tango to American audiences in 1921 in his movie, The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, from the Argentine novel [eponymous, authored by Vicente Blasco Ibáñez]. I have seen it. I recommend it.
