GUARANGO COMO GUITARRA EN TANGO [AWKWARD AS A GUITAR IN THE TANGO]:
THE RISE, FALL, AND REBIRTH OF THE GUITAR IN THE ARGENTINEAN TANGO
by Christopher Dorsey (DMA, ARIZONA STATE UNIVERSITY, May 2005)
Abstract of Doctoral Dissertation
The Spanish guitar, Argentina's national instrument, has a long history in its adopted homeland with roots in the Spanish conquest of the Río de la Plata (1516-1580). Included in this history is the role of the guitar in the tango. During the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, the guitar was a part of the gaucho image that symbolized Argentinidad [Argentineness], but the simple chords and habanera rhythms with which guitarists accompanied the first tangos were rapidly replaced by the more dynamic piano as the tango achieved success abroad. The tango moved first from the arrabales [slums] and bordellos to polite society of Paris, back to Buenos Aires, and finally to the rest of the "civilized" world. Not until the Nuevo Tango movement of the 1950s, influenced both by classical music and popular music styles of jazz, samba, and bossa nova, did la guitarra tanguera [the tango guitar] regain and even surpass its earlier prominence.
The passionate tango has drawn worldwide attention recently via Broadway shows, feature films such as Carlos Saura's Tango (1998) and Robert Duvall’s Assassination Tango (2002), social dancing, and commercial recordings. Argentinean composer Astor Piazzolla (1921-1992), for whom the tango was always "more for the ear rather than the feet," finally achieved international success only in his last years with his Nuevo Tango. However, within the world of the classical guitar—as well as in Western art music at large—very little is documented regarding history and performance practice of this urban-folk music style that has attained a place in the Western art tradition.
The maturation of the guitar in the Argentinean tango parallels the increasing interest in the tango as something "more for the ears than for the feet." Using Argentinean poet and historian Horacio Ferrer's classification of the epochs of the tango as a basis, I will detail the phenomenon of the guitar in the tango with regard to its history and specific performance practices from the earliest strums at the turn of the twentieth century to the most recent touches upon the strings, one hundred years later.
The passionate tango has drawn worldwide attention recently via Broadway shows, feature films such as Carlos Saura's Tango (1998) and Robert Duvall’s Assassination Tango (2002), social dancing, and commercial recordings. Argentinean composer Astor Piazzolla (1921-1992), for whom the tango was always "more for the ear rather than the feet," finally achieved international success only in his last years with his Nuevo Tango. However, within the world of the classical guitar—as well as in Western art music at large—very little is documented regarding history and performance practice of this urban-folk music style that has attained a place in the Western art tradition.
The maturation of the guitar in the Argentinean tango parallels the increasing interest in the tango as something "more for the ears than for the feet." Using Argentinean poet and historian Horacio Ferrer's classification of the epochs of the tango as a basis, I will detail the phenomenon of the guitar in the tango with regard to its history and specific performance practices from the earliest strums at the turn of the twentieth century to the most recent touches upon the strings, one hundred years later.