3242  Indians in Argentina & Tango

Date: Mon, 21 Feb 2005 11:49:08 -0300
From: Alberto Gesualdi <clambat2001@YAHOO.COM.AR>
Subject: Indians in Argentina & Tango

Well , concerning indians in Argentina and tango .......

Tanturi have his famous orchestra "Indios de Tanturi" but this was an adopted name borrowed from a local polo team .

Concerning indians and their music ......

- A narrow minded approach considers indian music as ethnic music and not folk music. To be considered folk music with this criteria, needs some extra backup, such as being played widely and not within a geographical area, to have been transmitted orally from several generations.
In this conception , also tango is not considered a folk music , so there is a kind of "union of the outcast" indian music and tango.

- An open minded approach considers folklore music ,as it was conceived the word folk : wisdom of the people of a nation . In this understanding,. folklore music of Argentina will include all the outcome from past generations living in this country, with the actual generations, and the generations to come. Therefore indian music is included into this concept. Indians that are still alive with their ethnic cultures , music instruments and languages, are

Guaranm family (includes languages chiriguano, mbya & guaranm), Guaycurz family (includes languages toba, mocovm & pilaga),
Mataguaya family (includes languages wichm, nivacli & chorote),
Quichua family ( quichua language ) & Chon family (tehuelche language).


It is difficult to know wether indian culture meet tango culture. When the tango begun their local development in XX century , indians were almost barred from their original lands . The last expedition to the desert was around 1908 , the so called "the conquer of the desert" , that push out the indians , or killed them , below paralel 42 , more or less. The Patagonia area however keep without colonization , and is still an inhabited area , considering the rest of the country.There was a project, between 1880 to 1920, to create a country and to put people into that country . The indians were not considered into the project, so they were chased, reassigned to agricultural works, killed, etc.etc..



I keep thinking on indians playing tango , but could not remember anyone. Domingo Santa Cruz , the composer of Union Civica, was a pardo , a mixed blood black & white.

Maybe..... well, this is a kind of a time line and mixture of cultures. There is Dino Saluzzi, from an italian family but living in Salta province, a huge craddle for folklore music groups. Saluzzi played bandoneon with his father at bordellos , and later went to Buenos Aires, where he met tango people and also jazz people . I listened to some recordings from Saluzzi, and he plays a very open music repertoire with his bandoneon , altogether with his brothers. He is living in Europe but comes to Argentina from time to time.

And then we have a young man that plays accordion ( not bandoneon, accordion, the one that has piano keys alike and is simple tone, opening or closing the bellow pushed sound the same ).
The name of this young man is Spasiuk ( known as the "Chango Spasiuk") , he cames from an ukrainian family , so he is white and with long blonde hairs. But he plays all the native music from his area , the Misiones province , where a local folk/ethnic music called Chamame is widely known, usually with Guarani language scripts..

The chamami music is often misunderstood as a simply happy music. It is essentialy a heart broking music played within a joyful arrangement. This music recollect all the sufferings and losts from the people of the area , through many suffering and exploit, first with the forest companies that take out the woods, and then with the yerba mate seed seeding , harvesting and processing. And a special chapter for the War ot the Triple Alliance, that cost Paraguay neighbour countriy ( also guaranm language area) , the loss of 1.000.000 lifes, almost all the male population of the country. So when this suffering people, gathered for marriages birthdays or family parties, this music recollect their feelings and the music was an expression of their want of freedom.

Now, I am not saying chamami is tango, but I say that this native music bears the isolation and suffering that tango music also bears.

Chango Spasiuk has played as invited artist with tango groups such as La Chicana, that is trying to put into stage not only tango music but other native music .


Conclusion:: there is a kind of "evolution" within local argentine artists, to try to meet together to play ,and to leave behind past differences concerning what is folklore music, ethnic music, tango music . In the end, everything is music .

warm regards
alberto

He plays also polkas and austrian waltzes, also folk music from Ukraine. And some tango music.

He won the 2005 BBC prize for revelation artist -music of the world


Derik Rawson <rawsonweb@YAHOO.COM> wrote:
Dear Clint, Thank you for the interesting information
on the Indians in the US. Glad to know that they are
coming back slowly. I wonder if the Indians in
Argentina contributed something to tango? Derik
--- TANGO-L@MITVMA.MIT.EDU
wrote:

> Hi Derik,
>
> > PS- I think the few Indians which are left in the

US

> > are mostly in Alaska and places where there were

no

> > Indian wars.
>
> The American Indian population in the 1400s was

approximately 1 million.

> Then disease and war took affect and the population

began dropping steadily.

> As you stated, after the US Civil War the government

set out to remove

> American Indians once and for all.. at 1900 the

population was at an all

> time low of about 270,000. It has risen every decade

since then to the 4.5

> million mark today. So, the American Indian

population has actually

> increased.. but of course without all the bloodshed

and anti-Indian policies

> of the government one would assume that the

population would be much much

> larger than 4.5 million at this point.
>
> One interesting not though.. is that they used to

possess (land ownership

> did not exist) 100% of the land in this country..

now they possess only

> about 2% of the land. If all legal treaties with

American Indian nations

> were honored then probably 20 to 30% of US soil

would have to be returned.

> But in the late 1800's, Congress repelled all

treaties with American Indian

> Nations.
>
> Clint
>

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