Re: re What is Jewish Music (and m

[Kame'a Media <media...>]

Tango came from the <arrabales> of  Buenos Aires c. 1880.
It owed much to the native Argentine dance called the <milonga> and the
Spanish-Cuban <habanera>, which  can be been traced to the Spanish
<contradanza> and the French <contredanse>, which took its name from the
"country-dance"
of seventeenth-century England.

Its major influence, however,  was the music and dance of the inner-city
districts of Buenos Aires populated by Blacks and (in the parlance of the
times) Mulattos.
Tango evolved in dancehalls and brothels, among the poor, marginal and
semicriminal.

By 1913, after it had became a European craze, Pope Pius X pronounced
against the dance as  immoral;  the emperors of Austria-Hungary and
Germany prohibited their soldiers to dance it when in uniform.

The tango's greatest star, singer-guitarist and composer, Argentina's
Carlos Gardel was of French ancestry.  He was propelled to international
fame by  Max Glucksmann  (possibly Jewish) who was in the Argentine
record and film business and promoted Gardel, with great success, in
Paris and brought the tango into high society.

The Jewish connection is probably less musical than sociological.
The 1880's coincided with an era of East European Jewish emigration to
Argentina.
Many Jewish women (often lured by false promises) worked as prostitutes
in the bordellos of Buenos Aires, some becoming successful and wealthy
madams of their own establishments.  Could a Jewish folk lament have
crept into tango lyrics of heartbreak and lost love?  Of course.

However, while Jewish music is indeed multi-faceted, it is lacking in
propulsive sexual rhythms.  The tango is all about seduction;  I cannot
see a specific Jewish component to the music itself.

Like the blues, jazz , rock'n roll and rap,  tango is very much, though
not entirely, Black music.  And like these aforementioned forms, tango
found many exponents among white performers.  One-- because white people
have always ripped off Black style and two,
because white people were considered to be more universally marketable
and thus achieved the prominence that a recording or film  company could
provide.  We should also not forget the racist policies of many hotels
and nightclubs where musicians sought employment.

 Of course, Jewish musicians in dance bands all over the Americas and
Europe embraced the  style.

Wolf Krakowski
www.kamea.com

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"Only the violence and duration of your hardened dream
can resist the hideous mechanical civilization that is your enemy" --
Salvador Dali
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Lucy Fisher wrote:

> Tango music also uses accordions - and Colombian cumbias.
>
> How Jewish is tango music, anyone?
>
> Lucy Fisher
>



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