Paintings, Tango, and the Study of Lives All in One Place: What Could Be Better

Last Friday evening, I attended a special event at The National Arts Club at 15 Gramercy Park South. A large enthusiastic group of people gathered. They listened to talks about a new social science publication, heard marvelous tango music, and watched wonderful examples of tango dancing by a pair of stunning dancers. They also got to do some tangoing of their own at the end of the evening. All of this activity went on within walls chock full of contemporary paintings. So many different elements that one wouldn't normally think to mix together. But it worked.

The event was a celebration of the publication of More than Two to Tango: Argentine Tango Immigrants in New York City by Professor Anahi Viladrich, a faculty member in the Departments of Sociology and Anthropology at Queens College, and in the Doctor of Public Health program at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York.

Professor Viladrich studies the causes of health and social disparities. Her primary research focus is on immigrants' health and human rights.

She writes a special book on tango. It is not just about wonderfully appealing dancing, fancy clothes, and the extraordinarily popular milonga (tango salon) scene in New York. Professor Viladrich understands tango as a complicated set of phenomena that involve immigration, history, globalization, race, ethnicity, and national identity. For example, she shows us how tango provides a special social niche for Argentinian tango performers and instructors. This is a niche that enables some (but not all) Argentine immigrants to resolve many of the formidable challenges of transition to their new land.

Her data come from her involvement in the tango communities of New York and the extensive interviews she has done with tango performers and teachers. Her book is filled with the stories of the trajectories of their lives.

The event on Friday began with comments by two of Professor Viladrich's research and teaching colleagues from Queens College who praised the scholarly merits of the book. Then, Professor Viladrich herself took us on a journey through her research. She was accompanied by an amazing trio of tango musicians, a famous bandoneon player, Tito Castro, a violinist, and bass player.

Tito, shown at left, is very well known in New York and that was demonstrated at the event. He had many, many fans in the audience.

The trio played a wonderful selection of tango pieces. Many of them were danced to by the stunning dancers pictured above on the book cover.

The tango pieces were from different time periods, presented in an almost chronological order. I was captivated through the entire program. I love this music. I was most intrigued, however, by the very first piece of music in the program that came from a recording. It was a delightfully peppy and playful arrangement that included drums. It was a very early piece from the late 19th century when tango was still a dance of Black and Creole people. Professor Viladrich explained that this link between tango and Black and Creole communities ended early in tango's history. It ended when the Europeans who came to Argentina decided that tango would be theirs. They made it white, we lost the drums, and I would expect much more.