4160  A criticism of the criticism of "TANGO: The Art History of Love" at the Times Online

Date: Tue, 25 Apr 2006 00:25:21 -0500
From: "Christopher L. Everett" <ceverett@CEVERETT.COM>
Subject: A criticism of the criticism of "TANGO: The Art History of Love" at the Times Online

Aron ECSEDY wrote:

>https://tls.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,25351-2141795,00.html
>

Mr. Aron links to a review of Robert Farris Thompson's superb
"Tango:the Art History of Love", in which Anthony Howell further
dulls his rusty hatchet.

In "Tango", Thompson carefully documents each key ingredient
of tango, whether African or European in origin and the how
tango came to be as they got stirred together in the melting
pot of Buenos Aires. Thompson advances the view that tango
as we know it required the admixture of African and European
culture that gave rise to something unprecedentedly new and
unique to the River Plate. The general process by which it
happened, "creolization", is widely recognized as an inevitable
consequence of having two or more differing cultures come into
daily contact.

Howell began his attack by confusing Thompson's cultural
process of "creolization" with the term "creole", meaning
"of mixed race", and in a stunning non sequitur further
confuses "creolization" with the Argentine Spanish word
"criollo" meaning "native", and then claims that Thompson
does not admit to making an equivalence between "criollo"
and "creole". Whatever.

To prove his thesis, Thompson must show the ongoing presence
of Kongo dance culture in Buenos Aires during the period
leading up to the emergence of tango. He does this in part
by finding examples as a picture of a black man standing
knock-kneed with his feet far apart (a Kongo gesture of
respect and/or reverence) in the presence of a statue of
the Virgin Mary during a public procession.

Howell's riposte, "Knocking the knees together may well be
African, but we also find it in the czardas of Russia, and,
as might be expected, in the Charleston – but did the Buenos
Aires manifestation of this come from the Congo or from
Finnish sailors who had stopped off in New Orleans?", again
shows how he misreads "Tango": Thompson never claims that
knocked-kneedness was contributed by blacks to tango. He
does note that some milongueros do crossing steps with knees
deeply bent outwards, (see both pictures on page 136) and
traces an origin for that from Kongo dance.

Of Horacio Salgan, Howell says, "If you’re born of a black
mother and a white father and you learn tango from sitting
under your father’s piano, why is this an indication of black
influence?" In the book, it is Salgan himself who identifies
the blackness in his music on page 197: "... it's not casual,
nor flagrant, but part of my origin ... my style, and my
truth."

Powell tells us about how Thompson "cites the stone faces
and silence that ceremonial African dance entailed, and notes
a similar absence of expression in the faces of tangueros",
but begs to differ: "Tangueros show stone faces and dance
in silence, not because it is African in origin but because
it is seriously difficult to do and they are concentrating!"

I agree, they do concentrate. But not on the execution of
their steps. Good dancers mostly use those steps they have
committed to muscle memory at milongas, and otherwise they
rely on inspiration. That's the point of practice, right?
Yet, we see leaders to continue with their deadpan faces,
even when they just walk the tango, without any figures at
all. Something else is certainly going on, and Thompson
quite accurately points to an internal focus.

As an aside, Finns emigrated to the Americas as a response
to the Russification of Finland ... I highly doubt they
knew or wanted to know anything about the Russian folk dance
Csardas, which in any case does not seem to have involved
bent knees. If such Finnish sailors having stopped off in
New Orleans had shown up in Buenos Aires, any contributions
to tango of knocked-kneedness would have come from seeing
the happenings at Congo Square in New Orleans, where blacks
gathered to drum, dance and trade in the 19th century. You
just can't escape that word Congo ...

Thomson observes a cultural tradition of naming dance moves
after sweets among blacks, and gives several examples. Howell
proceeds to set up a straw man by telling his readers that
Thompson "tells us that naming dances after sweets is black"
(implying exclusively black), quite a different thing than
what was actually written, and then takes a limp-wristed
whack at it by citing the Tchaikovsky's Dance of the Sugar
Plum Fairy in The Nutcraker, an adaptation of story written
by the German author E. T. A. Hoffman, which lies completely
outside any dance tradition living or dead.

Howell claims many omissions by Thompson of important films,
singers and orchestras:

"... fails to acknowledge band leaders of the calibre of Biagi".
But Thompson does mention Canaro, De Caro, Firpo, Di Sarli
Pugliese and Piazzola, all of whom had far more to do the
development of tango music than Biagi, who became much more
popular outside Argentina than inside.

"He pays scant attention to singers such as ..." In truth,
Thompson barely deals with singers at all. Outside of a
bassist and 2 guitarrists, he does not deal with pianists,
violinists, bandoeonistas or bassists per se, except as
bandleaders.

"except for Eladia Blásquez, he misses out female singers ...
Is it because they are white?" Eladia Blásquez is discussed
in a chapter on tango lyricists. The women he cites, Linda
Thelma, Dorita Davis, Tania, Nelly Omar, Adriana Varela and
Haydée Alba aren't particularly known as lyricists.

"omits electronic groups such as Gotan Project and Bajo Fondo
...". At the end of the last chapter, Thompson writes, "The
milongas of Buenos Aires and Montevideo, Paris and Berlin,
Tokyo and New York, provide us with fallout shelters against
the hegemonic takeover of anglophone pop. Together with
mambo and cumbia, reggeton and dance-hall ... They stave off
the horror of turning on the radio and finding only one kind
of music." With a context like that, I understand Thompson's
failure to mention electrotango groups ... they do veer in
the direction of "anglophone pop."

"And the habanera? ... yet nowhere does the author say that it
evolved from the French contredanse". On page 113, Thompson
cites a Spanish writer living in Cuba, Jose Garcia de Arboleya:
"The irresistible creole danza [is] a true Cuban specialty ...
it is the old Spanish contradanza modified by the voluptuous
climate of the tropics ..." Hey, he finally got something
right. Except he's wrong even when he's right.

"He makes no mention of Naked Tango ...": Thompson entitles
the chapter on film, "Tango in Hollywood". He discusses tango
on film in the context of its portrayal in North American film.
In that context, omitting the Argentinian film "Naked Tango"
is quite understandable.

I feel minor criticisms of the book are due. The last chapter
on tango as a dance, reads like filler; it would be impossible
for anyone to learn something about tango from it: you either
know exactly what he's talking about already, or you couldn't
possibly understand his descriptions of various steps well
enough to envision them. Also I hope that in a second edition
Thompson offers more insight into Waltz, Mazurka, Polka and
Contradance and their influences on tango.

But in general Howell saves any valid criticisms until the
very end of his attempted dissection, by which time he has
already discredited himself with knowledgeable readers.

To conclude, Howell's review is not worth the electrons to
read it by.

Date: Tue, 25 Apr 2006 17:50:47 -0600
From: Tom Stermitz <stermitz@tango.org>
Subject: Re: [Tango-L] A criticism of the criticism of "TANGO: The Art
History of Love...
To: tango-L@mit.edu

I read 3/4 of Thompson's book before giving up in frustration. Is he
a journalist, a protagonist or an independent semiotician?

That there is African influence in tango is without question. And,
many of Thompson's photos and documentation are very, very
interesting. But, in the end Thompson overdoes things. He heaps so
much information on us that everything just ends up in a pile.
Inevitably, some of his data is just wrong. If some is wrong, how do
I trust the rest of it?

I finally stopped reading in a section where he conflates musicians
and dancers from the 1910s, 1920s and 1940s in a way that doesn't
make sense (i.e. it was incorrect).

One other example of sloppy journalism: Thompson talks extensively
about Facundo & Kelly without ever mentioning Facundo's N. American
heritage (through his father). Why? Because it would be an
uncomfortable distraction from the African-Argentine-tango line?

And, truly, what does Dizzy Gillespie have to do with Tango. Are we
all groovin' together because we're musicians, because Jazz is
universal or because we're black? Or, possibly that was a time period
when the doors of Argentine nationalism were being opened to N.
American influences after being closed from the 30s to 55. (World
depression; Peronism; militiary coup...)

There was american jazz in Buenos Aires, specifically the New Orleans
traditional sound from the late 20s, but no big band swing. When I
visited in the mid-1990s the milongas would have sets of "jazz", no
sets of swing (lindy), and then sets of Elvis & Chuck Berry.
Following Thompson's stone soup recipe, I guess the Black influence
on Elvis leads somehow to validating African influences on
milongueros of the 1950s...

Huh??? I mean to me that is just false analogy.


Other examples of sloppy historical observations:

Thompson traces african postures used in tango via grainy drawings of
black-argentines. To deconstruct Thompson, how do we separate HIS
interpretation from the ARTIST's caricature and figure out what the
SUBJECTS were really doing.

Early in the book, the Thompson the semiotician traces moorish
influences in tile treatments. That is a example of a symbol that
carries through history, but just because you see diagonal squares in
walls doesn't prove the lineage. A , good researcher would need a
constellation of associated symbols to prove the point.

To be fair, one example that convinces me is the depiction of a
carnival parade, because in that case Thompson identifies a
combination of symbols characteristic of the parade and follows them
through a historical time-line.




On Apr 25, 2006, at 1:42 PM, Christopher L. Everett wrote:

> Bill King wrote:
>
>> I am sorry; I think many are missing the point or points.
>> 1. Thompson's book is good and enlightening, and not the least
>> thought
>> provoking, but he has a clear agenda,
>>
> I suppose you could also say he has a clear agenda, but he also an
> art historian specializing in the impact of African culture on Europe
> and the Americas, and he provides the referenced to back up his
> assertions. I'm not sure that he could have written the book any
> differently given his source materials.
>
>> and he has a tendency to overemphasis the
>> African contributions by under playing the local Argentine and
>> European
>> contributions.
>>

>
>> Because Dizzy
>> Gillespie plays in BsAs in 1956 doesn't, in my mind, equate to a
>> continued black
>> legacy of tango but rather that of a great musician from a
>> different musical
>> world crossing over to another compatible genre, like Getz and
>> the Samba.
>>
>>
> This is true insofar as it goes, the Dizzy/Fresedo collaboration is a
> major stretch, especially since tango was dying on the vine in '56
> under the triple threat onslaught of military governments, rock
> music and television.
>
>
> Christopher