53. Recreating the sounds of Carlos Gardel, the tango icon of Buenos Aires, Argentina

By Filipe Morato Gomes	Where is Buenos Aires?
I travelled to Buenos Aires coming from Mendoza, a quick change from the taste of a good wine to the sounds of Argentinean tango. Wandering along the streets of San Telmo, a bohemian quarter in the heart of Buenos Aires, I noticed that tango - old and new - is everywhere in the capital of Argentina. After the classic sounds of Carlos Gardel, it's now the electro-tango that is conquering Buenos Aires.

The sound was everywhere. In the streets, on radio stations, inside the shops, in the cafes. Once you're in Buenos Aires there is no way to escape the poetry of an accordion. As a matter of fact, the tango has always been part of porteños' daily life - the inhabitants of Argentinean capital city. But something has changed recently. I was told that a lot of young people have rediscovered the pleasures of the tango. Dancing is not anymore something for the old people, eulogizing the past days. More than in a recent past, the tango nowadays belongs to everyone.

An old couple dancing tango on the streets of Buenos Aires

If it were possible to elect someone responsible for that approach of the young people to their cultural roots, a name would turn up almost unanimously: Gotan Project. The discography work which has conquered Argentina and the world, with an improbable marriage between tango and electronic music, has changed the face of the Argentinean tango.

Since then, countless bands had appeared in the porteña musical scene. Names like Bajafondo, Ultratango, and Otros Aires are now in the shop displays, can be heard in the streets and during milongas - the wonderful places where the people from Buenos Aires gather to have a drink, seduce and dance the tango. They follow the pioneer steps of Gotan Project, combining sounds that in theory are incompatible. They produce danceable and pleasant music, to which they add a multimedia component during the live shows. A mixture of traditional sounds, electronic beat, video and image, light and colour.

It was what I witnessed in a milonga where the live music was in charge of the Otros Aires, a brilliant name for one of the groups of this new musical tendency. The dancers who attended the show were mostly young people. They did not dress all in black. The sensuality was everywhere, although the dancing style was slightly different from the so-called traditional way of dancing tango. There were even tourists among the dancers. Evolution or outrage?

As one might expect, many people do not agree with this new tendency. “The older ones don't buy; and some of them think that electro-tango is an offence to the traditional sounds”, a sales assistant told me in a shop. They keep faithful to icons like Carlos Gardel and can't stand the way those groups of young people play - in musical terms - with the melodies of the great master of the tango. It does not surprise me. I can imagine what the most puritan Portuguese people would say if any brilliant creative recorded an imaginary Dofa Project, with great musical quality mixing electronic sounds and drum'n'bass to the Portuguese melancholy of the fado.

Personifying Carlos Gardel, San Telmo quarter, Buenos Aires

However, tango in Buenos Aires is much more than the new electro-tango. The sound of the eternal Gardel as well as those of other classical composers are also an assiduous presence in the cafes and streets of the city quarters, especially in one of them. Popular and bohemian, San Telmo is a traditional quarter of the labourers' class. Every Sunday, in Dorrego square - the heart of San Telmo -, and in the surrounding streets, young people and less young ones, show up before the passers-by who stream towards the antiquity fair which takes place in the square. They do it so as to see their hat filled with pesos or dollars. And they deserve them. They are not beggars, they are artists. People like the Indian, a brilliant entertainer and excellent dancer, resembling Joaquim Cortez, delight the audience of anonymous people sitting on the ground of Dorrego square. They present Gardel tangos and many others. And so, every Sunday the purest tango comes down to the streets, in San Telmo.

Dancing the tango is taken very seriously in Buenos Aires. There's a rumour that, for example, no porteño likes dancing with someone with an inferior level of knowledge about the art of dancing tango. Being seen dancing with an awful partner in a milonga is somehow embarrassing. As a consequence, and perhaps stimulated by the increase of the dancing population, a new job has been arising. They are the taxi-dancers, excellent dancers who charge by the hour to serve as partners to a lonely dancer in the parties of Buenos Aires.

La Boca quarter, Buenos Aires

Apart from the tango, during my stay in Buenos Aires, I visited some curious but somewhat tourist areas of the city. Like El camiñito, in La Boca quarter, with its foppish and varied colours just like a patchwork quilt. Or the famous Café Tortoni, an increaible piece of architectonic art, and another less common attraction. The travel guidebooks say that one of the most popular tourist attractions in all Buenos Aires is called Recoleta. A pompous and elegant place, reserved to the wealthiest, the most famous and influent people of Buenos Aires society. I was told that it was just in that space that the Argentinean elite rests and tourists from all over the world as well as people from Argentina flow in. Nothing strange with that, if the place wasn't the cemetery.

Curious for such a sinister attraction, I did not resist and went there. What I saw, besides the architectonical splendour of the vaults - some of them were really impressive works of art - was indeed something a bit strange. Recoleta is a cemetery. Period! Of wealthy people - it is true - but nothing more than a cemetery. Apart from the genuine interest in paying a last reverence to personalities like Evita, I could not understand why Recoleta Cemetery is a tourist attraction. I keep to the tango.

(originally written in Portuguese)

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