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Today, we're going to Buenos Aires, Argentina's capital and the mecca of dango.

You know, when I think about dango, I think of something very regal, a kind of couple that are you know, the man is in a sued the woman is in a silky dress with a super high split.

But what if I told you that tango wasn't always danced by elegant heterosexual couples.

Why don't you join us on this look at the little known and controversial roots of the ultimate Argentinian music genre, dango.

Our Story first aired in twenty twenty two from Fuduro media, It's Latino Usa, I'm Maria, no josaf and today all things dango.

Before it became the defining music of Argentina, tango was actually condemned by elites and the Catholic Church as well, which saw it as obscene and transgressive.

The dance's reign was also threatened by the worldwide phenomenon of rock and roll, and then all but buried by Argentina's Dirty War.

When dungo began its revival in the nineteen eighties and nineties, a new era of dango artists began challenging rigid norms established in the early half of the twentieth century, breaking from traditional gender roles and shining a light on the black history of dungo.

These artists aimed to invoke dango's past to make way for a more inclusive future.

In this episode, we're going to travel to Argentina and meet three women who are going to help us understand the controversial roots of dungo and how they're helping to give new life to a dance very much rooted in tradition.

Producer Jessica Bonds will lead us on that journey.

He sure Buenos Aires native entango dancer and instructor, has had a relationship with tango for as long as she can remember.

My memories are from my family, my very young years, because in the parties in the Christmas, in the New Year, or birthdays, the family was in the party to it and dance, So I danced on the feet of my father like a doll as part of the ceremony in the family.

It was the nineteen forties and fifties tango's golden age.

Back then, Shushu was just a little girl, but she remembers hearing music's building out of cafes and cabarets into the streets of Buenos Aires.

Every night it was danced in clubs, saloons and carnivals.

Tango became a reflection of Buenosidres' identity, a metropolis that did not sleep, and tango was its nocturnal news.

Then, during the sixties and seventies, rock and roll was introduced to the world.

This new sound, inspired by the sexual and political revolutions of the time, influenced a new generation across the globe.

Youth rejected everything that seemed old and antiquated.

For Argentines, tango fell into this category.

Shushu, who by then was well into her teenage years, remembers that time.

I don't want it to listen to tango for me worried, or I changed the radio because oh that.

Is music for old people.

I want rock and roll, and then all the music stopped.

Argentina's last military dictatorship ruled from nineteen seventy six to nineteen eighty three and was known for its human rights atrocities.

The regime also halted the evolution of art and culture through strict curfews and extreme censorship.

Shushu was in her early twenties at the time, even though she wasn't into the tango scene as much, she remembers how tango suffered during this period.

We so for many nine of different things, and one of that was the impossibility to connect with our identity, our roots.

Many tangos was censored and many plays to Dan's Tango was closed too, and the militars entered in one place and stop all the music, or ask you documents, or maybe you finish your night in the police office.

The dictatorship traumatized the country.

Tens of thousands were disappeared in those seven years.

Assassinations were carried out via mass shootings, and people were drugged and thrown from airplanes into the ocean.

Additionally, twelve thousand prisoners, many of whom did not have a fair trial, were detained in a network of secret concentration camps located throughout Argentina.

By the nineteen eighties, economic collapse, public discontent, and the disastrous handling of the Falcons War between Argentina and England resulted in the end of the military junta.

When democracy was finally restored in nineteen eighty three, Shushoo says people were eager for new ways of expression and they found it in tango.

Tango always wait for you.

Was there like a seed into very deep hole into the ground, waiting to the winter lifts, and in that moment start the spring of tango.

The tango start to develop again from sero.

The repression she and others her age experience during Argentina's Dirty War awoke Shushoo's childhood memories her family parties when she would dance tango on top of her dad's feet.

She too wanted to reclaim her identity, so at age twenty five read she began taking tango classes, but it wasn't enough.

She wanted to become a pro ad.

What I love is teach, So I needed to learn how to lead.

I needed to dominate both roles.

Traditionally, in tango, the leader role is assigned to the male partner and the follower role to the female.

So when she should try to learn both roles, she faced a lot of resistance.

In the old times, If you, for example, take a lesson, you say to the teacher, ah, I am here because I want to lead.

And the teacher say, no, you are a woman, but I pay you.

No, no, you are a woman.

You cannot lead, or the other women.

No, I don't want to dance with you.

I am here to embrace a man.

No embrace a woman.

I just feel that I was alone.

I am crazy, But she should wasn't.

While she was reconnecting with tango for herself in young adulthood, Mareno do Campo, as a teenager who came of age during the Dirty War, was finding tango for the first time.

At the end of the military process.

With the beginning of the democracy, these old milongios of the forties started to go out again to the clubs to dance.

A milongo is a person who dances tango in social settings.

The word comes from the term milonga, a derivative of Bundtu language, which made its way to Argentina through enslavement.

Milonga also refers to a tango dance event.

And the young people started to go to these class learning from these old milangiras.

Wanting more freedom and flexibility, young dancers started clashing with the old guard.

Madana didn't grow up with tango the way she shoot it because it wasn't around during her childhood.

Tango from Mariana was something new, almost foreign, but the exoticness of it quickly faded for her.

I started to take lessons in a place that called Elgachito.

The people that used to go there were very old people, and it was in a traditional place where the men lad and the woman followed.

Marina realized tengo's codes weren't lining up with the increasingly gender inclusive Buenos Aires society of the nineteen nineties.

While Argentina was moving away from rigid gender expectations, an entire generation of dango was still frozen in time.

I wanted to dance, and I didn't want to dance only with men.

I didn't want to wait for the men all the time, or the other thing was that they all the knowledge in the in the classes where it was given to the men.

The women helped the men to dance.

And also I started to see the old men always dancing with young women, and the old women needn't dance or wait all the night.

And I was ribellos against this.

The idea of reforming tango seemed like an impossible task for both Madiana and Shushu, but that didn't seem to stop them.

In the decades after, both of them worked tirelessly towards mantling their rigid, heteronormative and superficial elements of antiquated and unevolved tango.

Meanwhile, tango was infiltrating the foreign market, and by two thousand and four it reached Shilene Oliveda for the first time.

Silena was a Brazilian college student in Cuba.

She was only seventeen when a Bolivian roommate introduced her to the music and dance.

As a black woman, she Lena found it hard to connect with tango at first.

For me, it was really something really unthinkable because I had, as I guess everyone passed that image of tango, very European, very white, very chic.

But when she Lena started to study the lyrics, to really look closely at the music, she gained a completely new perspective on tango.

Stay with us, not yes, hey, we're back.

She'd Lene, a Brazilian woman, fell fast in love with dango.

She Juju and Marianna shared that connection to the music, and they had started teaching it to others too.

So let's get back to the story.

Now, we in Brazil are very like separated of the rest of America Latina.

We just don't talk of Spanish.

So when I started to heard it, I realized that the lyrics were very, very humans, very deep, and very close of me.

Sheilene, who was able to understand Spanish, fell hard for tango.

She wasn't a dancer, she wanted to sing.

As a young teenager, she'd been a singer in Brazil, and tango sparked her interest in music all over again.

In two thousand and eight, after finishing college, she Lena visited her roommate back in Bolivia.

That's where she met her roommate's mother, who was a tango dancer and singer.

She became she Lena's first mentor in tango.

She was really determinated to make me understand that I could sing, and she gave to me three different tangles to learn, and she give to me an appointment with a musician who was playing in the Casagentina there in la pace.

That place were descinated to Argentine tradiction, and I didn't have a lot of choice, so I go, I started to sing to learn.

She then realized that she could turn this new passion into an actual career.

But tragedy struck.

Her friend's mother became very ill and died.

Suddenly, my friends invite me to sing tango in her funeral.

She learned using gua a tango classic.

Nadasti free.

Elvient nextra la.

But as you.

In la sombra me androsa yes and to.

That were my de boots.

My first time officially singing tango done me.

In that moment she learned it finally connected with tango passion, overtook all those stereotypes, those rigid tropes, they didn't matter anymore.

All that mattered was the music.

Guba sol steplacet coassong, trancia sing.

The endo was really beautiful more than said was beautiful, and the whole family were very happy to give this last gift to her.

Sheilena's relationship to doango wouldn't always be this simple, though.

She decided to move to Buenos Aires to pursue her career, but she was still an outsider entering a world that was still largely stuck in the past when it came to matters of race, gender, and quote unquote tradition.

So Sheilina decided to fight for a more inclusive future for dango, a vision shared by Shushu, by Marianna, and by the next generation of performers pushing the boundaries of Argentina's quintessential dance.

Shushu and other performers and instructors like Mariana and Sheilene want to open dango to everyone.

For Shushu, that means closing your eyes literally, but it's ok.

After twenty five years in a ango scene, today she she was a well regarded instructor in Buenos Aires and she's not.

For a pretty unique lesson plan, she blindfolds her students while they dance, a technique she thought would help dispenser stereotypes.

They cannot see if you are fat or you are short, or if you are at all, or you are black or you are white.

It's not important if you have a nice dress to be invited to dance, or if you look very good you're on that, or how you move with no no, no, you cannot see, so all the things that you judge to the person through your eyes are.

Not there, so as much more that you can get without your eyes.

She s even went an extra mile to teach the visually impaired.

She says she learns from them.

I started to experiment with the lightbeople was very emotional.

People feel something absolutely new and they was very happy because they can dance together, move in one space with other persons.

That is something very strong.

Similarly, for Marianna, contributing to the evolution of tangle meant breaking down gender and racial stereotypes.

When I came to her own practice and teaching, Marina focused on really finding traditional roles in tango.

I studied to teach in a lesbian place called like Assael and Guentro, and the men who were forbidden men could not enter the For me, my idea was teaching tangle to everybody and exchange roles.

For Mariana queer tango was an act of female empowerment.

The queer tango is it's difficult to define when I started.

I won't need to separate the role from the sender.

End.

It has to do with the feminist position.

Madanna began teaching tango to queer Argentines and later in two thousand and five, she founded Tango Queer, a weekly party where women dance with women and men with men freely.

Approach might seem a bit radical to some hardline tango traditionalists, but a dive into the history of dango reveals its origins were quite flexible when it came to gender roles.

We'll be right back.

Hey, we're back.

Let's continue with the unknown history of tango.

The queer tangle exists from the beginning of the history of the tango, men dancing with men and women with women from the very beginning, and you can see that in the photos that you can find very easy in Internet.

What's believed to be the first published photo of tango dancers did it back to nineteen oh three depicts two men made embrace.

They're wearing loose fitted pants, blazers, hats, and boots.

One of them has its pants tucked into his boots, sort of like a gaucho the Argentine cowboy.

The history tells that the men before entering in the brathons, they did dance two together to practice the steps.

But also there are also photographs of women dancing together, especially foreign European prostitutes.

All these environments were very queer.

In one way, it was not so strict.

The tango was very amoral.

Then tango became famous in Paris in nineteen.

Ten, primarily danced by workers and sailors.

Both Argentine and European.

Tango crossed the Atlantic Ocean at the start of the twentieth century and entered the cabarets and brothels of France.

The dance was eventually embraced by the upper class, becoming a sensation in Paris.

Then when they come to Buenos Aires, in this on it was taken by the high class and then started all the morality around the tango.

But before it was very andmoral and it was not necessarily that they were lesbians or gays.

They just exchanged roles.

Mariana says that those very defined gender roles a man leading a woman following, do have a basis in tango's history, but only with respect to the nineteen forties and fifties.

In the goldern Nags, the clubs were full of people of middle class and in this moment the mora was very strong.

And what we receive indy, this was this tango, not the tango of the origins.

That's why when we started with the queer tango and people say, oh, the tango is men and women, our argument was, but the tango started queer.

But tango's origins aren't just queer.

Seen as a predominantly white dance, tango in fact has black roots.

That Telenderiano considered the first tango in history.

It was composed in eighteen ninety seven by the Afro Argentine musician Rosendo men Disabal.

He was known as one of the greatest local pianists at the time and was a regular and many venues where tango was becoming popular.

Understanding tango's past is Kidra building its future Mariano, and so does she Lenez.

After moving from her native Brasil to Buenos Aires in twenty twelve, she Lena began exploring the history of tango.

She discovered its African influences and that opened a new dimension and tango for her.

In the beginning of the centuries, half a part of people here was black.

Here in Buenos Aires, specifically places with marginal people, they are also doing things to have fun, to create something to escape of the sadness to be in this condition of slavery.

Sperandos spiral after to discovery the Black African origin of the style of this music more and more and it's like, okay, this is like a lot of music styles, like somebody, this is like funk jazz.

And the beginning was really like, oh, I have to learn it's so outside of my culture, which is true, but not that much.

Lavina sona milong i guess bylanus Via Solan.

Tango evolved from a drum heavy music style that came from free slaves in South America.

It later fused with other immigrant music before becoming milonga and finally tango.

The word tango itself was used to describe the place where former slaves gathered to dance.

Black musicians put tango on the map.

Composers such as Mendi Saba Kaas, Kishimo Barvieri, Juaquin Mora, and more recently Oraso Salagan were instrumental in creating the dango we know today.

Their contributions to dango, however, have been hidden over time, much like Argentina's historical black population.

Even though Afri descendants accounted for thirty percent of the country's population at the start of the eighteenth century, Argentina strove to present itself to the world as a homogeneously white nation of European descent.

In the late nineteenth century, war and diseases decimated Argentina's black population.

Serving in the army and living in segregated neighborhoods were diseases such as yellow fever and cholera spread.

It was in until twenty ten that Argentina's national census began counting people of African descent for the first time.

Afri descendants currently make less than one percent of the forty one million people living in Argentina.

She Lenna says she often faces resistance and judgment for being a black woman and Buenos Aires, and especially for being a black tango singer.

I guess it's always going to be some kind of surprise to people who doesn't want to recognizing how the city try to hide the black culture here.

I have a lot of memories and phrases of people who's very surprising to see me just because I'm black.

She Lena says.

These interactions range from mild and easy to dismiss to threatening or demoralizing.

It's part of the job.

She says, I was invited to sing in very undergrounds.

Mi long as I was there in the middle of the place, without Sonido, without Mike, just with the voice listening gas si vic.

Now they econ sol.

And me auflicks you.

And uh.

Some men just said, okay, now you're gonna start the dance samba.

Ha ha.

He saw me as a black woman there and the first thing that he can connected is with the sambo and dancing.

And I just said, I came here to sing tango today.

She Lena uses her platform as a tango singer to educate people about the African roots of tango.

She performs music by black composers and explains the audiences how her performances tie back to their black roots.

Mil Nis Venus swear people in Sara monte pasional tangetra.

When I do tango, I put that real part of this history in the table, because I guess it's some kind of interchange.

The tango gives so much to me.

I am a different singer now, I am a different artist.

Now I travel singing tango.

People who knows me singing tango knows how how much I care about it.

So it's some kind of part of give back what tango gives to me, recognizing those beginnings or the birth or la jasies.

It's a very large relationship and we are happy to get them in the tango.

Yes, tango is slowly changing, much like its birthplace.

After living in Buenos Aires for ten years, Chilene has started to feel more accepted.

Two weeks ago, I sink here in Congresso Plaza.

When I finished the thing, some kind of old men past and said, oh you you really has a good voice, really have a good voice.

You are on the way, very Argentinian, very old men, dacsional Covin Okay.

When I lost she was not surprising with my look, the fact that I'm black, and that was something that makes me feel really happy.

Contributing to Mariennas and others efforts to make dango more relatable for everybody, Buenos aireist's society has also become more inclusive.

Clara happened at the same time of different political events for the LGTV community and the women also, for example, the equal Mattunioitario equal marriage identity law.

It was a period more than about fifteen years where we did have a lot of improvement in these kind of laws, but would change in the end of the nineties beginning of the two thousand.

What is the position and the visivility and the political conscience.

We took what was our rights, and one of these rights we were dancing with the person with whom you wanted to dance.

Mariana is also very optimistic about the future.

It's time there are more women than sintango, more men following, less problems with the queers, and the society is each time more open.

Trail Plazers like Mariana she Lene and she should live by that.

Mandra Tango and the society they live in should be open for all.

It's not important what is your relation, what is your ideology.

Political ideology, what is your right?

What is your age?

You can dunstable and we don't need to discuss.

Because when you doance, you need to make silence to listen to your heart.

So no discussions, don't fight More, Rice Less, wark Less, Hate.

Oh, Suicain Cobo, record a photos and co the bus.

There is your Money Go.

That's it for today.

Our story first aired in twenty twenty two.

It was produced by Jessica Bones and Alejandra Salasad.

It was edited by Andrea Lopez Cruzado, and it was mixed by Stephanie Lebau and Julia Caruso.

Fact Checking for this episode by Elisa Baena and Andrew vignanis Special thanks to Schidlene Oliveira and Finisterere Dango for sharing their music with us for this episode.

The Latino USA team also includes Roxana Guire, Jessica Ellis, Rebecca Bara, Renando Lanos, Junior, Luis Luna Rimad Marquez, Julieta Martimelli, Monica Morales, Garcia, j J.

Grubin, Adriana Rodriguez and Nancy Trujillo.

Fernando Echavari is our managing editor.

Penni Leiramirez and I are executive producers.

I'm Your Host Maria j Josa.

Latino USA is part of Iheart's Mike podcast Network.

Executive producers at iHeart are Leo Gomez and Arlene Santana.

Join us again on our next episode.

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