SENSUALITY IN MUSIC
THE TANGO
“A Sad thought dancing” that migrated from the brothels of Buenos Aires to the European dance halls.
Several great writers have written tango songs, but the greatest and most profound lyricist is Enrique Santos Discepolo.
The man who defined the tango as “a sad thought dancing” , “a mixture of anger, pain, faith, and absence” sings of love, death and paradise lost in radically pessimistic poems that express the despair of the thirties, that “infamous decade” where hopes of democracy gave way to coups l’etat and electoral fraud.
Faced with stattered dreams, “All is a lie, nothing is love/the world buggers you about as it turns.” Love is always at punishment: “Why was I thought to love/If to love is to cast all your dreams into the sea”.
Painting
Kees Van Dongen [1877 – 1968]
Tango or Tango of the Archangel
1922 – 1935
