An unauthorized translation from this book:
Benedetti, Héctor. 2017. Nueva historia del tango: De los orígenes al siglo XXI. Buenos Aires: Siglo Veintiuno Editores. p. 31-33.
Blogger’s note: See Chart 1 from Nueva historia del tango for a list of dances danced in Buenos Aires during this time. These included Polka, Schottische, Contra Dance, Mazurka, Habanera, Milonga, Malagueña, and Peringundín. Tango was not one of them. It is unclear what “Milonga” meant during this time period.
[Begin excerpt]
Ugly women and dirty windows: The popular dances of the mid-1880s
In the 1810s and 1820s, Porteño society saw the emergence, in different parts of the city (which was not yet very large) of some “dancing schools,” teaching establishments known as “academies.” The “quote-unquote” here is important, because barely twenty or thirty years later, “academy” would become a synonym for a private dance salon—with access by the public allowed and even regulated by the municipality—where no lessons were taught. These places were far from having good reputations: there were many reports of police action there in those days—although surely some were exaggerated—which indicated that these were places frequented by troublemakers, drunks, corruptors, and scandalous people of all sorts. Worse, it was often the case that one single person could be all of these things and on top of all this, a conjurer. These types of accusations were more than sufficient to raise calls for arrests and closures (which hardly ever actually happened).
It is interesting to note that during these years the academies were mostly populated by Blacks and Italians, although by about 1860 the first group had been largely excluded from the business.
The businesses are variously registered as “academy” and “peringundín” (or perengundín or piringundín) [which also refers to a style of dance]; but also, and with a similar meaning, in what seems to be a mere abuse of synonyms, “café” or “bordello.” Because of this, the first hurried conclusion of early historians, which has been reproduced in subsequent writings for a century, was that tango originated in brothels. In reality, the available references about music, although scarce, always indicate that other genres of music were popular at this time. Some of these genres developed into particular styles and regional substyles. The most notable of these various mentions show that there were clear musical antecedents, in terms of both rhythm and choreography, for what would later develop into tango.
In contrast to the dance school, the academy began a rapid process of acceptance by certain social strata, while at the same time suffering a loss in reputation in other circles. The atmosphere of the academies was often dark, and without a doubt the press of the time detected a certain air of clandestine activity which, in practice, did not actually exist. It is probable that musicians as well as other attendees, years later, when they were consulted, tended to exaggerate what happened behind closed doors in the academies. And it is probable that the first historians of tango picked up on these tales and concluded that, since tango was born in the academy, then the academy must be a synonym for a brothel, and that therefore tango was born in the brothels. As we have seen, academies and brothels were very different places, each with their specific regulations. Certain types of municipal infractions were to be expected in the academies: drunken brawls, expired permits, and stiffed musicians who retaliated with violence. By contrast, in the brothels, an important type of infraction resulted from the music itself: there, dancing was explicitly prohibited. Of course in any case, dancing was inevitable, but the lack of integration of the underground dancing happening in brothels with the more public dancing taking place in the academies leads one to conclude that there were few possibilities for a “brothel dance” to develop into tango, especially since we still do not see any mentions of tango at this time.
[End excerpt]
Note: The image of the mazurka is not from Nueva historia del tango.
Note: The “ugly women and dirty windows” are mentioned in a magazine article quoted in this book immediately after this passage, which is translated in a separate blog post, “A funny fracas.”