Tango and Montevideo
Chapter 1 of 6 · 1800–1899
Tango before tango
The word, the barrios and the Black communities of a walled port.
Ciudad Vieja · Barrio Sur
The word came early to Montevideo. A resolution of the Cabildo of 26 September 1807 was indexed in the Actas Capitulares under "tango", a word used there for gatherings where Black people danced.1
Slavery was definitively abolished in Uruguay in 1846.1 The Spanish article names Barrio Sur, Ciudad Vieja, La Mondiola and La Unión among the Montevideo barrios with a tango imprint.1 "Arrabal", the word for tango's outskirts, originally meant "outside the walls" in the walled city of Montevideo.1
Candombe was first practised by Africans and Afro-Uruguayans in special places called "tangós"; that word gave rise, in the 1800s, to "tango", though not yet with today's meaning.2 Writers have gone further: Borges, citing Rossi, held that tango was born in a Montevideo dance shed, the Academia de San Felipe, a claim the article reports as an argument, not as settled history.3
What happened, and where
No placed, sourced line for these years yet.