Between tangos

'I really like the twiddly bits...'

Hmm. Well, I've written about why I don't, but perhaps in negative terms. To try and say something positive for a change: a little earlier I'd been watching a couple dance, marveling at the smooth energy of two people moving, totally  involved with the energy of the music, two individuals totally absorbed like one with the music. There's something really heart-felt in that. Nothing elaborate, nothing to disrupt the energy and flow of it, even in the confined space of the dance floor. It was entirely personal, without the slightest element of display. I try to dance tango because when that connection happens it leaves me really fulfilled, like almost nothing else.

Of course it's not what you do, it's the way you do it. Learning to dance like that takes time and devotion, but spending time learning to walk well and to stand well is time well spent. Dance like that shows how seriously people have taken it; if you put that much into it, you get so much out of it. Dance like that is really beautiful to watch -- and there are a few dancers in London who can dance like that, mostly people who've been to Buenos Aires, listened to what they've been told, watched, and managed to bring it back with them. But only a few.

That simple elegance of doing something really well, with energy and without the slightest ostentation, took my breath away. Needless to say, it was pretty much a twiddly bit-free zone. At worst, twiddly bits are vanity and a distraction, a displacement activity, perhaps a way of doing something other than opening your heart to your partner and the music. It's hard to dance like that if you have to carry vanity with you. 

(PS: Tango Addiction's musings on Legwrap Land, also published today.)

Bienvenido a Mónica Paz!

Excellent news that Mónica Paz is to visit the UK early next month. She's been a regular visitor teaching in Europe and the US for quite a while now, so a visit to London is long overdue. 

There's a long list of Buenos Aires women who have danced in the milongas for many years and have learned their tango in the arms of the older dancers whose tango goes back to the end of the Golden Age, Muma and Myriam Pincen with Ricardo Vidort, Silvia Ceriani with Tete, Susanna Miller with Cacho Dante, María Plazaola with Gavito (these are the partners they are most associated with, but their dancing goes much wider). Then of course, Ana María Schapira, Alicia Pons... There are many more, and all are teaching, many, like Mónica Paz, sessions before milongas. I say 'sessions' rather than classes, because 'tango classes' have come to suggest learning tango steps rather than learning to dance tango. 

Women who go out regularly to dance always have an interest in men who dance well, and thus an interest in getting men to dance better. Nothing new here: a good many of the veteran tangueros recall being taught by their mothers and aunts, even before they practiced with their friends.

These pre-milonga sessions in Buenos Aires typically focus first on posture, the walk and the embrace. Mónica, like Susanna, María and Alicia, usually works with several 'assistentes', so men and women both get a chance to work with experienced dancers on getting the best posture, embrace and walk. When these have been practiced there will probably be a sequence of some kind, and practice in extending it in different ways, but these are classes in dancing, not classes in tango steps, and they are useful. Mónica's take on this, the 'practilonga', is to bring a bit of the formality of the Buenos Aires milonga into the practica, which is helpful to visitors who want to get the most out of their time there. 

Mónica currently seems to have just two dates in the UK, Tango West in Bristol on September 7, and Corrientes in London on September 13. I hope more can be arranged: here is someone who can convey the feel of the tango of the milongas of Buenos Aires, and the way people dance there. 

Her website is here, and this is her YouTube channel. All her interviews with the older dancers are on her Practimilongueros YouTube channel.

Finally, here she is dancing with a great dancer and a regular partner, Chiche Ruberto: lively stuff, and great energy. He's one of her interviewees on the Practimilongueros YouTube channel.

Between tangos

'This milonga is so dark. Don't you find it dark in here?'

I do.

'It shouldn't be so dark, should it? The organisers encourage us to use cabeceo, but they keep the lighting so low it's difficult to see people clearly. & we're supposed to be aware of other dancers on the floor, and be courteous to them, but even on the floor the lighting is poor.'

It definitely is.

'& it's not only you and me. Everyone I've asked says it would be better if the lighting was improved. It's really poor.'

Poor lighting makes an evening of dance more difficult: at least, that's what I think, and I'm not alone. Our organisers struggle around with lights and ladders and colour filters with the aim of giving us a better evening out – and much of it may be wasted effort. It's normal enough in Buenos Aires just to turn on the lights and play some music to get the milonga going. A few venues have some areas where lighting isn't good, but it's rarely at a seriously low level. It's normal to use the existing lighting, just as it is. Club Sunderland, also used as a basketball court, has bright, possibly mercury vapour overhead lights. In some venues, the lighting might be subdued, but it's never at a low level. 

One of the best London milongas is an afternoon milonga in daylight, and I've never felt that it's inferior to a dimly-lit evening milonga in any way: the dancing is usually better, there's no loss of intimacy, it's more comfortable. It's an old-fashioned idea that we can't enjoy an evening dancing unless the lights are dim. It's really not practical to run a milonga in semi darkness.

Los Anarquistas

While rooting around for early tango recordings I came across Socrates Figoli, the 'payador anarquista', the anarchist folksinger, a recording said to be from 1906. It didn't strike me at the time that it was extraordinary that his voice ever made it onto disc. I'm not sure when recording started in Argentina, but his must have been one of the very first Argentine recordings, and indeed one of the very first recordings ever, if the date is correct, as mass-produced recording anywhere hardly went back ten years then. & he was presumably a political and social outsider.

I also came across a modern recording of a 'tango anarquista', 'Guerra a la Burguesía', written in 1901. It didn't sound much like a tango to me, and I assumed 'tango' might also be used in a Spanish (flamenco) sense, as a kind of song. If you search YouTube for 'tango 1909' you come across several versions of the opus 165 n° 2, Tango, by the Spanish composer Albéniz (1860-1909), who had been encouraged by his teacher to draw on Spanish folk and dance music. There's also a 'tango' written by Joaquín Durán, a close contemporary of Albéniz. I've read that there's not much connection between the flamenco tango and Argentine tango – but I'm not sure that holds if you go back to around 1900.

Anyway, a 'tango anarquista' written in 1901. Perhaps it's no surprise that there were 'anarquistas' in Argentina: they were fleeing Russia, eastern Europe and the rest of Europe too, and where else for refugees, political or otherwise to go than to Argentina? It was an idealist movement: maybe in the new world workers could establish ideal societies. The recent recording of the tango anarquista on YouTube is illustrated by some fine black-and-white drawings by an Italian anarquista refugee of the time. There are a number of studies on the internet of the anarchist movement in Argentina, in Spanish. It's plausible that the barrios from which tango emerged were those where the anarquistas had settled. It's also plausible that 'tango' was less clearly defined at the end of the 19^th century. 1903, and the first performance of an arrangement of El Choclo by a society orquesta in Buenos Aires seems to mark the emergence of tango into wider society, where its growth was pushed along by the development of the recording industry.

& I remembered I'd read about another 'anarquista' recently: Andrés Cepeda (1869-1910). It's here – scroll down to 'The divine poet of the jailhouse'. A fascinating story of a petty criminal, anarchist and poet who wrote most of his poems in jail, songs which were set to music and recorded by his friends Gardel and his accompanist, José Razzano. 'Of the first fourteen recordings made by Gardel in 1912, five were authored by Cepeda.' But his songs are love songs rather than political, and in Cepeda's case this might be a complicated story.

Ángel Villoldo, Paris and early tango

Tango is full of legends and stories, so it's it's fascinating to have access to actual artefacts, especially old shellac discs and old photos and drawings. I've been scouring YouTube for the earliest tango material.

The oldest recording of a tango I've come across is the first recording of El Choclo, which is dated to 1908, recorded in Paris by a (probably French) band called the Orquestra Tzigan de la Restaurant du Rat Mort, the 'Gypsy Orquestra of Dead Rat Restaurant'. Great name! ('Dated 1908': but I have to rely on the information given by whoever uploaded the tracks, as the actual disc label isn't shown. I can only assume they've got it right. & the fact that this is the oldest recording on YouTube doesn't mean that it's the oldest recording -- although it's not far off!)

El Choclo, the tango, was so successful that the date and place of its first performance in Buenos Aires is known: November 1903 at the upmarket restaurant El Americano, Cangallo 966 (today Teniente General Perón 966), by the orchestra led by José Luis Roncallo. Roncallo could not announce El Choclo as a tango because the proprietor of the Americano forbad tango in his establishment, but the tune caught on and the band continued to play it because it was requested.

Not long after its Buenos Aires premiere, El Choclo was sung onstage at the Parisien Varitè Show, and subsequently recorded in Paris by the Orquestra Tzigan de la Restaurant du Rat Mort.

El Choclo was written in 1903 by Ángel Villoldo (1861 – 1919). 

He's been described as part Hemingway and part Bob Dylan: curiously, he played guitar and harmonica and so invented a harness that would allow him to play both together. In 1903 Villodo also wrote El Porteñito, and in 1905 La Morocha, as well as a number of other tangos. La Morocha became very widely-known, and is said to have begun the European fascination with tango.

The April 1908 recording of El Choclo by the orquestra Tzigan de la Restaurant du Rat Mort doesn't really sound like any tango group I've heard. It sounds closer to a string quartet than a tango band: the violinist could be a classical musician moonlighting as a gypsy musician. But it's certainly very lively for its 110 years.

There are two other early recordings of Villodo tangos. This may be Villoldo himself singing and playing his song El Negro Alegre: the Victor discography lists the recording Villoldo made, 'Male vocal solo, with guitar', of the song on 12/26/1907. The laughter indeed sounds like Dylan... 1907, so it's actually a year before the recording of El Choclo, but I'm not sure if El Negro Alegre is really a tango, although it seems to be about dancing.

Finally, there's a recording of Ángel Villoldo's El esquinazo recorded in March the following year. Like the two other recordings it sounds incredibly sharp, clear and lively. A milonga from 1910. Three of the earliest tango recordings, three amazing recordings.

The Victor discography lists several recordings of El porteñito and El Choclo in  1906, and a variety of other recordings by Villoldo and by other orquestas of his music from 1906 onwards.

Since tango became so popular in Paris, Villodo travelled there, as did other Argentine musicians of the time. He was there in 1912, working with Alfredo Gobbi's parents, 'Los Gobbis', who were a hit in Paris: Flora de Gobbi had sung on some of the earlier recordings of Villoldo's music. Gobbi himself was born in Paris in 1912, and Villodo was his godfather. This was recorded by Gobbi 'père' in 1912, so presumably in Paris.

Along the way I came across another early gem, not a tango but a 'canción Proletaria', from Socrates Figoli, a 1906 recording. He's described as 'Payador Anarquista', a singer who traded verses with other singers in competition, which was widely popular in South America. Presumably Figoli and others expressed extreme political views in their verses. I like the melody with its strange move from major to minor: it sounds like a modal scale. Very melodic. 

There's a slideshow of photos of tango embrace around 1900. One of the sources for this is El Tango en la sociedad porteña 1880 – 1920, the book by Hugo Lamas and Enrique Binda on early tango, which attempts a history based on contemporary sources (rather than on later embellishments), but the source of this particular photo (and its dating 'before 1900') isn't made clear in the slideshow. 

It's often said that close embrace dance grew up because the confiterias and dance floors in the city centre were small and crowded, but this photo suggests close embrace much earlier, on a dance floor that isn't at all crowded, and with a prosperous-looking clientele in an elegant dance-hall, people apparently enjoying the music much as we do today, perhaps 114 years ago.

I also came across this film of a dance dating from 1902. It's called 'Tango Apache' but probably has little to do with tango and certainly nothing at all to do with Native Americans. 'Apache' was the word journalists used to describe a brawl in the Paris slums, meaning 'savage', and the name was adopted by Paris street-gangs, who celebrated the brawl with a dance. Visually and dramatically it's lively stuff, but too extreme for a social dance, so this is a performance from 1902, while the rest of society went off to dance tango. Or that's the story. This dance may be an authentic Parisian 'Apache' dance, but the film is from an an American studio, with American performers: perhaps it was a deliberate travesty of the tango of the time.

After 1910, tango recordings proliferate. Here's Vincente Greco y su Orquesta Tipica Criolla playing Hotel Victoria in 1911. Another recording artist was Juan Maglio 'Pacho', here in a recording from 1912. The photo of Maglio and his orquesta show well-dressed and well-presented musicians, an image suggesting good professional status, ready to perform for well-off patrons. & finally, here's the first disc a young singer called Carlos Gardel recorded in 1912. 

Legends say that tango was marginalised, but it seems clear from the volume of surviving recordings, and from these images, that there was enough interest from people who could afford to buy a 'Victrola' and records to support the involvement of the music industry. Tango doesn't seem to have been hidden away in impoverished barrios.

Silvia Ceriani in London

 













Silvia Ceriani was the late 'Tete' Rusconi's dancing and teaching partner
for 15 years. Watch them here.

She is a regular DJ at Salon Canning and at La Catedral in Buenos Aires, and has taught and performed as DJ very widely in Europe and the USA. Her UK timetable is:

Friday 4 July, 8-12pm. DJ Silvia at Carablanca milonga, Conway Hall, Red Lion Square, London WC1R 4RL.

Monday 7 July evening: private class.

Wednesday 9 July: Tango West, Redland Club, Burlington Road, Redland, Bristol BS6 6TN. Programme:

7.30-8.00pm The expressive musicality of the legendary Tete: illustrated talk and film clips, including rare clips of Tete dancing with Pina Bausch.

8.00-9.00pm Musicality workshop with Silvia: dancing tango with expression and musicality.

9.00-11.00pm Practica with international DJ Silvia.

Thursday 10 July: Tangoynadamas, Morganstown Village Hall, Morganstown, Cardiff CF15 8LE. Programme is similar to Bristol.

Sunday 13 July: DJ Silvia at Juntos milonga, London. Talk and workshop, 11.15 - 1.15. Milonga with DJ Silvia, 1.30 - 5.30. 

For more info, and if you are interested in organising additional events,
please contact this blog.

Geraldine and Gerardo

Four years ago I wrote something about this video. A number of videos of this show, Marisa Galindo's La Milonga in 1991, had been released, and this was one of many videos. Recently I re-discovered it.

When I first watched it I was struck by the complete seriousness of Portalea's attitude to his young partner. There's nothing in the least bit patronising in it: he takes her as seriously as his wife or any other partner he dances with. I found that level of respect very beautiful, and I believe it's typical of Argentine tango culture. Watching it again, I'm struck by how clearly this clip shows that basic, simple tango technique, done well, is very beautiful in itself. I watch the way they both move, change weight, step; the emphatic way they have of stepping and the energy that results, and the energy that comes from the swift act of 'collecting': moreover, it reassures your partner, it says 'this is where I am, my centre'. In a way it's a very simple dance, very basic, but the energy put into it makes it very striking. It's slow and unhurried, there's nothing at all elaborate, but it's not lacking in energy. There's a lot to be learned from this.

I showed it to a friend who saw Portalea many times over the years, and the reply came: '...he didn’t change one bit – either in his look or his dancing. Muy elegante!' As for Geraldine: 'However did she manage to 'get it' at 8 years of age, when so many don’t at many times that? I think this should be required viewing. How about when someone signs on for a beginners class, they have to sit in a corner and watch it first before they are taught anything at all? I met Gustavo Naveira at about that time, and Portalea, the dancer who hardly seemed to dance more than four steps, amazed him.'

As to how Geraldine 'got it' at eight, well, perhaps not surprising, considering her background. & considering that children can learn fast, and that you can drill them: they can't escape! They can't go off to another parent who gives them an easier time. If teachers start drilling adults and pulling them up every time they get careless, their students might seek out more compliant teachers, and never develop good habits. Adults will be impatient to dance something more elaborate – and consequently may never dance with this kind of intensity. Besides, 'Dance? It's about having fun, isn't it?' 'Playing at tango' is fun for many people, but there's more to it. Dance always seems the most relaxed art, but it has to be the most disciplined, too. We tend to be impatient of discipline, but the dance of Geraldine and Portalea is very disciplined. It's simple, beautiful to watch, and I'm sure it was beautiful for them too.

As to this video being required viewing... of course! What a great suggestion! Not just once, but many many times. Our bodies learn movement by watching, which is how we can mimic, whether it's Chaplin's walk, or a Madonna strut. We hardly need to practice or learn these things: we just watch and absorb. Who better to mimic than Geraldine and Portalea? I must put it on a loop! Once you can move like this you are already dancing great tango.

(HELP! I can no longer embed video. The embed code simply prints out in the blog, it doesn't link to the video. If anyone knows how to deal with this I'd be glad of help!)

El último aplauso

I really enjoyed El último aplauso (2009 dir. German Kral). It's in Spanish without subtitles, but subtitles don't matter so much as a lot of the film is music. It looks great throughout. Really a pity I didn't come across it earlier.

Bar El Chino in the Pompeya barrio of Buenos Aires was started by El Chino Garcia's father, an immigrant from Spain, as a bar and grocery. El Chino grew up passionate about tango, and a singer, so under his direction the groceries disappeared, and the bar became known as a restaurant bar, with music several nights a week. Kral began filming there in the late 1990s. El Chino died in 2001, but his vivacious, gregarious, open-hearted personality lives on in the early footage, included in the film. The first 25 minutes is the old footage from El Chino's day. Then it jumps to 2003 with the visit of one of the singers, Cristina De Los Angeles, to El Chino's grave in Chacarita. Recollections of El Chino follow. In the economic meltdown of 2001-2 the property owners needed to sell the bar, and the singers and musicians who had performed regularly alongside El Chino no longer had a place there: we see two of them busking in Calle Florida. Then Christina visits La Ideal and meets the young tango Orquesta Tipica Imperial. Rehearsals of the orquesta with the four surviving singers follow, and the film concludes with their performance together in the Bar El Chino. Some of the most memorable scenes for me are when the older performers meet up with the young musicians of the orquesta and start rehearsing, start putting their musical experience together. It's interesting: singers accustomed to sing with a guitar suddenly have an orquesta behind them – and they relish it! For one last evening, people come to the Bar El Chino to eat and drink and enjoy the music.

It seems that the bar was later gutted and relaunched as a tango theme bar. How is it that people can make such totally wrong decisions? 

The film shows another side of tango. It's not the tango of dance halls and recording studios, the tango we hear at milongas, the product of highly trained arrangers, band leaders and musicians, tango controlled by the music industry. This is live music made by a couple of performers for an audience, tango sung to a guitar – which I think is how most tangos began, as a guitar or piano score with lyrics. In a particularly magical scene, one of the singers sings with a guitar and violin while the others clap the beat, and it's astonishing how tango can suddenly sound Andalucian, although something similar could probably be found in Italian folk music, and in non-European folk music too. It's like seeing the folk roots of tango, but the songs are the same old favourites you hear in the milongas, Naranja en Flor, Por una cabeza, Cambalache, Ventarrón, Malena, Barrio de Tango, Romance de Barrio...

This isn't tango for dance halls, but it's tango at its most popular level since the music has always been more widely popular than the dance. When the dance lost popularity and the orquestas were no longer financially viable, I assume people still sang these songs, listened to them with a singer and guitar, whistled them in the streets. The dance, and to a lesser extent the music, has achieved world-wide popularity, but what I hear in this film is the basis of the music, outside the star system of singers and musicians.

Several of the performers passed away during the decade or so of filming, and subsequently. These were people who were around when the recordings were still new, when the songs we dance to were first heard, people who have sung them all their lives. It's wonderful that this film gives us the opportunity to share their enthusiasm and experience. It's a remarkably sympathetic and respectful presentation of this world, and of tango. Much credit and thanks to the director, German Kral, who was born in Buenos Aires in 1968, studied film in Germany and has worked both in Europe and Argentina: his Tango Berlin (1997) was made with Wim Wenders. The entire film is currently available on YouTube but without subtitles. There might be a German version on DVD, and it's really a pity it hasn't appeared on DVD with English subtitles. It would be great one day to watch it with the words of the songs in English for those of us who aren't fluent in Spanish. 

El último aplauso is not to be confused with Bar El Chino (2003, dir. Daniel Burek), which also has footage from the bar and of El Chino and the other performers, but sadly just as a background to a tedious story of film-makers meeting, falling in and out of love, all the while rushing around trying to complete a film about the bar against a background of the economic crisis... Something of a self-parody, and the music hardly gets a look in. It's also on YouTube, and well worth avoiding. 

This is a general background piece about the bar and El Chino.

Gricel: un amor en tiempo de tango

Three films I've recently come across: this one is Argentine, with one Argentine and one German/Argentine to follow.

Contursi is a big name in tango lyrics: it was Pascual Contursi who met up with a young singer called Carlos Gardel in Violettas in 1917 in Buenos Aires, and sang him his latest song, Mi Noche Triste. Gardel recorded it, and it made him famous. It's regarded as as the first tango song. (These days you might not be allowed into Violettas with a guitar, and almost certainly you wouldn't be welcome to work through your latest song with a friend, but you can get the best chocolate mousse in town and a pot of green tea to go with it. & you can enjoy a wonderful Art Deco interior.)

Pascual Contursi's son, José María Contursi, was a prolific tango lyricist who wrote the song called Gricel. The lyrics and a translation are here, and this is probably the best-known version, Troilo with Fiorentino. It's a tortured song: the poet has seduced a woman, regrets it and can't forget her. According to his daughter and friends, Contursi always maintained that Gricel was a fictional character, and the story behind the song was imagined. But after his wife's death in the early 1960s Contursi asked his daughter's permission to bring someone into his house... and it was Gricel. The song quite definitely was not a fiction. Contursi had met Gricel when he was in his mid-twenties and she was a beautiful 16-year old on a visit to Buenos Aires, around 1936. There is a photo of them from around this time. She returned home to the hills around Córdoba, and he returned to his wife, but they kept in touch, and he visited Córdoba a few times. Then in 1942 he sent her the song, Gricel. It's a sad outpouring of love and regret, and as he titled it with the name of the woman herself it was personal, and also a message. She married in 1949 and had a daughter, but her husband abandoned her. In 1962 Contursi's wife passed away, and in 1967 he and Gricel married. He died just five years later.

The trailer for Gricel: un amor en tiempo de tango (2012: dir. Jorge Leandro Colás) is on YouTube, and it includes extracts from interviews with Contursi's daughter and with one of his friends. However, instead of being just a remarkable documentary of an era of tango history, the film uses a framing device: Pablo Basualdo, a lead singer with the Teatro Colon company, wants to make an opera around the story of Gricel, a story which might well have inspired a Puccini or a Busoni. The film follows him as he researches the story and interviews people who knew Contursi, and as he sings extracts of the opera. He's a great singer, but the music doesn't come from a tango background which I thought is a pity, as a tango opera on the story of Gricel could be a really interesting project. Perhaps the entire opera is in the full film: it's impossible to tell from the trailer. However, the cast list on IMDb  shows that a lot of people talked to camera, so I hope the film is more documentary than opera, and I certainly look forward to seeing it. It doesn't appear to have a DVD release yet.

Gricel herself passed away in 1994. This must be a photo of her late in life, as it's said the dog survived her.

(Information and photos from Todotango.)

Message...

... to someone who occasionally emails me from @orange.net: my reply to your email got bounced back with a message that this is a permanent error and that the domain has no valid mail exchangers. 

Nocturno a mi Barrio

I came across another pre-golden era tango to add to the above (below, actually) list: it's here, and dated 1920.  I was curious who the Orquesta Típica Select might be – and it turns out to be led by a bandoneonista called Osvaldo Fresedo, who must have been about 23. The regular, repetitive habanera rhythm of the two earlier recordings is being replaced by a kind of syncopation: it's just three years after the first recordings of jazz, and it sounds as if Fresedo had already heard this recently recorded North American music and is working hard to incorporate syncopation into tango.

I also came across a TV performance by Troilo from the 1960s, which I find very poignant. By this time, the great Troilo of the golden era can no longer afford to perform with an orquesta: it's the time of the quartet. It's also the era when his recording company destroys all the masters of his great recordings to free up space for the new music: tango is just an outdated product. So here he is in a carefully staged TV performance, a cultural relic performing an old music, surrounded by solemn young faces who listen sympathetically to a song about an era that has long gone, their parents' background, not theirs. This is their cultural heritage and is treated with respect: perhaps they are briefly moved, but it's not their world and they are probably looking forward to an evening of rock and roll. Then Troilo snaps shut his bandoneon and stands up, towering over them. Troilo himself wrote these words and music in the mid-1950s when tango was already in decline. The tango of the golden age was often nostalgic, but Nocturno a mi Barrio is doubly so: that era when the radio was always tuned to tango, when dancing was a family activity and everyone's social life, is largely over. I can't help wondering if any of those young faces now sit at milongas, thinking 'Yes, I saw Troilo perform once'.

There's an excellent page in English in Todotango about the song and its creation. The words of the song are still in Spanish: thanks to Ozan Bulut for pointing out that much of the song is translated in the text. 'It's said that I left my barrio... When? But... when? I'm constantly returning'.

These five clips effectively bookend the tango of the golden age.

P.S. Enrique Binda, an engineer and tango researcher, has suggested that early '78s' were almost certainly not recorded at 78rpm. Early recordings were made at between 70 and 80 rpm, and the versions we hear these days may well be played too fast. Interesting to think that the jaunty, upbeat feel of some of these early recordings may be an illusion based on a technical error. The music may well have sounded more melancholic. His essay, At what speed were 78s recorded? is here.

Tango Negro

So what is this music Ricardo Suarez enjoys dancing to? It's certainly not a 'golden age' milonga like those of D'Agostino, Laurenz or Troilo. It sounds like a milonga that's arrived from a different direction, from common ground with Latin music further north, perhaps from Uruguay or Brazil. The milonga beat is in there, but there's more going on. The lyrics are on Todotango here.

Tango Negro is called a candombe rather than a milonga. The music, lyrics, vocals and piano are by Juan Carlos Cáceres, and it's dated Paris 2003. (There's also another Tango Negro, a milonga by Vicente Demarco dating back to 1940, but of course it's different.) Cáceres is an exact contemporary of film maker and politican, Fernando Solanas, and like him spent years in exile in Paris. More accurately, Cáceres left Buenos Aires for Paris in 1968, and still lives there. A musician and painter who lectures on art history and on the history of the music of the Rio Plata area, he's founded and recorded with a number of groups in Paris. Tocá Tangó is another of his tracks that gets played in milongas. 

Like Robert Farris Thompson (Tango: The Art History of Love) Cáceres argues for the black roots of tango, suggesting that tango has distanced itself from any African heritage. The music never uses percussion – although the instruments are played percussively. (I've heard a couple of Fresedo tracks with percussion, but it just sounds wrong.) Thompson suggests the dance ironed out any African background, adopting (and adapting) the upright stance of European ballroom in the 1920s and 30s. Childhood friends Rudolfo Cieri and Manolo were unfashionable in growing up dancing crouched (as in canyengue) rather than upright, as in tango: a crouching dance with bent knees was thought to be of African origin. 

I really enjoyed Thompson's book, but I wonder if he overstates the case. His arguments aren't always convincing: he draws attention to words similar to 'tango' in central African languages but I'm sure there are words similar to 'tango' in most languages. A 'tango' in Spanish is also a particular kind of flamenco song. I doubt anyone would disagree that there's African influence in tango dance and the music, but there's a great deal that's European too: the vals, polka and mazurka were popular dances in the largely immigrant population. To be fair, Thompson is in no doubt about the influence of these dances in Argentina.

As to the music, here are four recordings, 1911 to 1927, from YouTube:

Hotel Victoria (1911) Vicente Greco y su Orquesta Tipica Criolla

Mi Noche Triste (1917) - Carlos Gardel/Jose Ricardo (guitarra) 

Aromas (1923) Orquesta Osvaldo Fresedo
Coquetta (1929)Orquesta Tipica Victor

A simple over-view of pre-golden age tango: European roots seem broader than African. Perhaps it's a matter of semantics: a 'root' suggests a definitive source. There are African influences in tango music and dance, although the influences of European society and music might seem stronger. ('Criolla' meant locally born of Spanish origin. People of mixed-race origin could not be Criolla.)

Simba tango posted on the recent film, Tango Negro (2013: dir. Dom Pedro): I discovered a couple of days ago that it was shown in London at the end of March. I didn't see any notice of it on the TangoUK noticeboard or I would have gone over to Camberwell to see it.

& 'Tango Negro' is described as a candombe. Candombe is still the great street music of Uruguay. I filmed this prominent Uruguayan Candombe group in Buenos Aires for a festival a few years ago. (There are plenty of other candombe clips on YouTube.) This kind of candombe (I assume there could be others) is a very complex music: three types of drum playing three separate rhythms, against each other. It's very powerful, but I don't think it resembles tango – or even 'Tango Negro'.