Anna Boyar

Ileana Rodrguez-Silva
Honors 394 B
29 Nov. 2015
Tango
I could listen to Mirta Wymerszberg sing, talk about the history of Tango, and play the
flute forever. On October 24th I attended the second in a five part workshop on Argentinian
Tango music at Casa Latina in the central district. The class was taught by Wymerszberg, who is
a classically trained musician from Argentina. Somehow, probably because of a combination of
not reading the description carefully enough and being too ignorant of Latin American culture to
realize that tango doesnt just refer to a type of dance, it also refers to an entire genre of music.
So going into the workshop I thought it was going to be a dance class, and when I learned
that in fact it was a music class I was nervous, as I am less than musically proficient. However I
should not have worried, as Mirta has an extremely kind and welcoming teaching style that made
the material she was teaching both accessible and fun.
Mirta started the class with a short history of tango. She explained that it has its roots
with enslaved people from the Congo. Two types of music and dance, the Candombe and
Milonga, went into the formation of Tango.
Then we started learning the songs. Since starting college this fall, Ive been so excited to
try new things. By the time I graduated high school, I was so ready to leave and go to college.
What I had forgotten and that this workshop reminded me is that one of my favorite things in my
high school Spanish class was singing songs in Spanish.
Mirta has the most beautiful voice. It is clear, rich and powerful. In one of the songs
Mirta played the flute, which was equally as soul wrenchingly beautiful as her singing. Many of
the other attendees were talented musicians. They were playing guitar, drums, and even a
trombone. The guitarist and the trombone player were able to follow along and learn the songs
right there as Mirta and her assistant played them for the first time.
We ended the class by learning some basic drum rhythms, accompanying the singing.
A week or two later I attended a movie screening of the movie Tango Negro: The African
Roots of Tango. This film provided more background and insight into the genre of music I had
gotten to enjoy the week before.
What I learned from the film, and in a talk that Mirta gave after, is that Tango is
Argentinian music with some background in Uruguay and with strong African roots. However,
Argentina is a mostly white country, and the existence of black people in Argentina and in the
history of Tango is largely denied. Mirta explained that her education occurred during the
dictatorship, and she was taught in school that there are no black or native people in Argentina.
Around 40,000 to 50,000 African people were brought to Argentina as slaves, and they were
quarantined and most of their culture was denied and looked down on. What they were able to
hang on to were their drumming rhythms, which are the basis of Tango music.
In the film, someone said that the spirit of Tango has three parts. The first is the
immigrants sadness, the second is the Gauchos (the people who live in the country side)
sadness. The third is the blacks sadness.
Learning about the history contextualized the music in a really poignant way. There is an
irony inherent in the beauty of Tango music. The music is a beautiful and human thing that came
out of what were impossibly hard and inhuman circumstances.