The birth of tango — the Río de la Plata

How tango came to be, told in nine pictures: the river, the ships, the tenement, the drums, songs from the countryside, the street dandies, three instruments, a name, and the crossing of the river.

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1. 

   1A river like the sea

   Buenos Aires and Montevideo: two port cities facing each other across an estuary as wide as the sea.

   Tango was born in the waterfront neighbourhoods of this estuary. It is not the music of one city but of both shores.

   In 2009, tango was inscribed on UNESCO's list of Intangible Cultural Heritage, on a joint nomination by Argentina and Uruguay.

   Río de la PlataThe River Plate. The name means river of silver.

2. 

   2The ships arrive

   In the 1880s, ships carrying immigrants from Europe reached the port one after another.

   From Italy, from Spain, in search of work and land. People who spoke different languages stepped onto the same pier.

   More than six in ten people in Buenos Aires have Italian roots because of those ships.

   inmigranteImmigrant. Argentina is a country built by immigrants.

3. 

   3The courtyard of the tenement

   The immigrants lived in tenement houses called conventillos.

   Many families shared a single courtyard, a well and a washing place. At night, music drifted across the yard.

   Here the songs of Italy, of Spain and of this land met.

   conventilloTenement house. The shared dwelling of the immigrants.

4. 

   4The sound of the drums

   The port also had descendants of people brought from Africa.

   Candombe: drums beaten while walking through the streets. It survives today on both shores of the Río de la Plata.

   One of tango's pulses lies in these drums.

   candombeCandombe. The drum rhythm of the Afro-descendant communities.

5. 

   5Songs from the countryside

   From the plains came the milonga, descended from the gaucho's sung verses to the guitar.

   From across the sea came the habanera, born in Cuba.

   Two beats to the bar met in the taverns of the port. Tango's rhythmic foundation was laid here.

   milongaMilonga. A 2/4 genre faster than tango; today also the word for a tango dance gathering.

6. 

   6The dandies at the edge of town

   In the taverns and courtyards of the outskirts, men competed with their dance steps.

   They were the compadritos, the swaggering dandies of the poor neighbourhoods.

   The close embrace of the dance was polished here.

   compadritoCompadrito. The street dandy of Buenos Aires around 1900.

7. 

   7Three instruments

   The first ensembles were small: flute, guitar and violin.

   There was no written music yet; the players learned by ear.

   Then a German-born instrument, the bandoneón, arrived at the port, and it would come to define the sound of tango.

   bandoneónBandoneón. A button-key bellows instrument.

8. 

   8It gets a name

   At some point, this music came to be called tango.

   Where the word comes from is unsettled: some trace it to African languages, others to old Spanish.

   The music came before the name.

   tangoTango. The origin of the word is disputed.

9. 

   9Across the river

   The music of the poor neighbourhoods moved to the city centre, and then across the ocean to Paris.

   Carrying the pride of the porteños, the people of the port.

   The next story is the instrument that gave tango its voice: the bandoneón.

   porteñoPorteño. A person from Buenos Aires; literally of the port.

The pictures are linocut-style illustrations made for this story