“All the tango critics and the radio stations of Buenos Aires called me a clown, they said my music was ‘paranoiac.’ And they made me popular. “Traditional tango listeners hated me,” he recalled. In Luke’s Gospel, Jesus said, “Truly I tell you, no prophet is accepted in his hometown.” ( Maria de Buenos Aires is filled with Christian imagery.) Similarly, the composer Astor Piazzolla, like the tango itself, was at first rebuffed by Argentine society. The tango became part of the Argentine identity, which proved stifling for young composer Astor Piazzolla. In their place grew a fervid sense of national pride. It wasn’t until the 1920s when the tango moved into the Argentine mainstream that it left behind its edgier associations. ![]() Music of different origins combined – including African rhythms, the waltz, the polka, and the habanera – to become the cultural expression of prostitutes and knife fighters. With no opportunity, few women, and no means of escape, these communities became both a pressure cooker and melting pot. Looking for jobs that didn’t exist, countless souls became mired in vast dockside slums already crowded with cowboys, or “gauchos,” and a large population of freed African slaves. The tango’s origins reach back to the 19th century when male workers, mostly from Germany and Italy, streamed into the Río de la Plata basin. ![]() After all, Argentinians knew the tango better than anyone-it had come from their society’s most undesirable places. ![]() Only then, after it had become an international sensation, did it permeate Argentine society. Initially dismissed as vulgar and immoral (dancing in an embrace was considered indecent), the tango followed an unlikely journey, traveling from the slums of Buenos Aires to the clubs of Paris. Not unlike hip-hop in our own country, the tango was a product of communities in distress. Cast in the gauzy hues of surrealistic poetry, the show explores the social conditions that gave rise to the tango. Maria de Buenos Aires is a show about a forgotten music, a forgotten dance, and a forgotten people.
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