Historically, the tango (and its close cousin, the milonga) has been considered an example of world cultural property, i.e. something to be nurtured by the likes of UNESCO. It was born in the 1880s in back streets of Buenos Aires, Argentina and across the river in Montevideo, Uruguay. Considered a lewd, low-class form of entertainment, particularly due to its intimate couples dance moves, it, of course, became the favorite of the masses. Many a music producer has learned that lesson: don’t tell the masses what they should listen and dance to. By the early 20 th century France seemed to have a soft spot for the tango, as well as Hungary, Britain, Germany, and other European centers. Record production, cabaret shows and radio broadcasts from the 1920s onward served to introduce this seductive sound to an ever-wider audience. Why did the tango captivate the public far and wide? One could ask the same about reggae music, Cuban rhythms, rock and roll, and other musical trends em...
W here a human voice is heard in today’s program it’s often starkly different from what most Westerners might find pleasing and melodic. But I must remind my listeners that the West probably did not invent the concept of vocalizing as accompaniment to plucked/blown/percussed musical instruments. Why do we sing in the style that we do? I imagine there are knowledgeable tomes wrestling with that idea. I ’ve read that vocals were meant to imitate the sounds made by instruments...or vice versa? The chicken or the egg? I’m not here to answer that question, in spite of the college course I had taken of “Music Cultures of the World” decades ago. What I offer is the opportunity to pay attention to and digest musical expressions performed by people steeped in the traditional ways of their culture. T here is a geographic component to lumping together India, Nepal and Tibet as the Himalayas served to isolate and circumscribe the peoples of those northern regions. But here’s where I fud...