Tango and Buenos Aires
Chapter 1 of 6 · 1870–1899
Arrabal and port
The river port, its docks and its barrios, where the city met the people who came to it.
La Boca · San Telmo · Barracas
The roots of tango lie in the "tangos" and "candombes" of enslaved Africans; from colonial times, "tangos" was the name given to the musical gatherings of the Afro-Río de la Plata communities.1 When millions of migrants poured into the port cities, those communities opened more "academias", "milongas" and "canguelas" in the working-class barrios, as places to meet, dance and have fun.1 In Buenos Aires the main barrios where tango took shape were San Telmo, Balvanera, Monserrat, La Boca, Barracas, San Cristóbal and Palermo; legend gives the corner of Suárez and Necochea, in La Boca, as its birthplace.1
The police noticed early. In 1862 four men and two women from a tenement were arrested for "dancing and throwing cortes".1 In 1877 the restaurant Lo de Hansen opened in Palermo, the first of a series of restaurants, cabarets and beer halls where tango was danced and where young men of the upper classes also went.1 In 1890 an Italian immigrant, Bautista Fazio, opened the Bar Rivadavia in Balvanera, with precarious fittings and a dirt floor; it would become the Café de los Angelitos.2
By 1898 the first tango with a registered author was in print: "El entrerriano", by the Afro-porteño Rosendo Mendizábal.1
- Told in this chapter
- Open then
- Not open then
- Years unknown
What happened, and where
- 1870
- 1872
- 1879
- 1880
- 1890
- 1891
- 1892
- 1894
- 1898
- 1898
- 1898
- 1898