49 Fun Facts About Tango

Tango grew up in Buenos Aires and Montevideo, cities on opposite shores of which river?

Río de la Plata. In the poor districts of both cities, European immigrants, people of African descent and local criollos merged their music and dances, and tango was the result.

In its early years, tango was frequently danced in which venues?

Brothels and bars of the ports. Buenos Aires then had far more men than women, so men often practised the steps with each other before trying them in public.

In 2009 UNESCO added tango to which of its lists, on a joint proposal by Argentina and Uruguay?

Intangible Cultural Heritage, the list for living traditions rather than monuments: UNESCO praised tango for embodying and encouraging diversity and cultural dialogue.

One theory derives 'tango' from shangó, god of thunder in which West African religion?

Yoruba. Tradition makes Shango a king of the Oyo Empire who was deified after his death; dictionaries say only that 'tango' is possibly of Niger-Congo origin.

In colonial Buenos Aires the words 'tango' and 'tambo' were used as synonyms for what?

Slave dance gatherings. Many researchers trace features of the later couple dance back to those meetings, where enslaved Africans came together to sing and dance.

Which city caught Europe's first tango craze in the early 1910s, before the dance swept the continent's other capitals?

Paris. Dancers and orchestras had travelled over from Buenos Aires to launch it, and by the end of 1913 the craze had reached New York and Finland.

Under which Argentine leader's first government did tango become a matter of national pride in the late 1940s?

Juan Perón. Tango had slumped after the 1930 coup and the Depression, became a national symbol again under his first government, then declined once more after his fall in 1955.

When Argentina's military rulers banned public gatherings in the late 1950s, which imported music gained at tango's expense?

Rock and roll. Tango dancers learned through years of practice in groups, which the bans made impossible, while the new music needed no such gatherings.

Which tango style, born on crowded downtown Buenos Aires dance floors, is danced chest to chest with small, syncopated steps?

Milonguero. Teacher Susana Miller coined the name in the 1990s for the way veterans danced in the packed clubs of the city centre, where there was no room for long strides.

Which French-based trio's 2001 album La Revancha del Tango set tango to electronic beats?

Gotan Project. The name is 'tango' with its syllables swapped, a wordplay from Buenos Aires slang, and the 2004 film Shall We Dance? put the trio's music on its soundtrack.

Which silent-film star's tango in The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse (1921) set off a tango craze in America?

Rudolph Valentino. The film turned the little-known actor, a former nightclub taxi dancer, into a superstar, and it also started a fad for gaucho trousers.

Which hallmark of ballroom tango is completely foreign to the Argentine original?

Sharp head snaps. They belong to the international competition style, whose abrupt changes of tempo and quick turns of the head give it a fiercer look than the social dance of Buenos Aires.

Finnish tango is distinctive for being performed almost exclusively in what?

Minor keys. The sombre sound suits lyrics about love, sorrow and longing for a distant land of happiness, and tango became one of Finland's most popular kinds of music for decades.

In Take the Lead (2006), which actor plays a ballroom teacher who wins over a detention class with a tango?

Antonio Banderas. He plays Pierre Dulaine, a real New York dance teacher who founded Dancing Classrooms, a programme that takes ballroom lessons into the city's schools.

The maxixe, nicknamed the 'Brazilian tango', helped give rise to which famous dance?

Samba. The first recorded sambas followed the maxixe so closely that scholars call them samba-maxixe; composer Ernesto Nazareth preferred to label his own pieces Brazilian tangos.

Which Colombian city became a tango capital and was where Carlos Gardel died?

Medellín. Gardel's death there in 1935 tied the city to tango for good: it keeps a house museum in his honour, the Casa Gardeliana, and holds a tango festival every year.

For which tournament did Adidas introduce its ball named 'Tango', likely as a tribute to the hosts?

1978 FIFA World Cup. Argentina hosted it, and the ball's 'triads', curved shapes that give the illusion of twelve circles, came back four years later on the 1982 ball, Tango España.

A tango movement's first festival, held in Hamburg in 2001, challenged which convention?

The man leads, by tradition; queer tango lets anyone lead or follow and swap roles, which echoes tango's early days, when men commonly practised the dance with each other.

On the tango dance floor, what is a gancho?

Hooking a leg round the partner's. Ballroom tango, whose steps stay close to the floor, has no such move, and on a crowded social floor etiquette rules out expansive moves that might hit another couple.

What is the tango dancer's frame or hold called in Spanish?

Abrazo, Spanish for 'embrace'. In Argentine tango the partners touch at the chest and keep their legs free, the reverse of ballroom tango, where contact is at the hips and thighs.

Which instrument, a type of concertina, is the signature sound of tango ensembles?

Bandoneon. It was designed in Germany for religious and popular music, is thought to have reached Argentina around 1870 with emigrants and sailors, and found its true home in tango.

Which German instrument dealer gave his name to tango's signature squeezebox?

Heinrich Band, a music teacher and dealer in Krefeld, developed his instrument from the concertina in the 1840s; he died in 1860, about a decade before it is thought to have reached Argentina.

Which Cuban dance rhythm, also heard in a famous aria from Bizet's Carmen, is one of tango's musical roots?

Habanera. Bizet based Carmen's aria on a habanera by the Spanish composer Sebastián Yradier, which he had taken for a folk song.

A traditional tango ensemble is known as what?

Orquesta típica. Bandleader Roberto Firpo reshaped the line-up, making the piano a fixture and swapping the flute for a double bass, and by tango's heyday such bands had a dozen players or more.

The first generation of tango players in Buenos Aires is known by what name?

Guardia Vieja means 'Old Guard'. Its players worked in small groups with portable instruments such as flute, guitar and violin, and many of their tunes were instrumentals that only later gained lyrics.

The 1952 American chart-topper 'Kiss of Fire' borrowed the melody of which early tango, whose title means 'the corn cob'?

El Choclo. At its 1903 premiere in an elegant Buenos Aires restaurant, the orchestra's leader passed it off as a 'danza criolla', a creole dance, because the owner disliked tangos.

Tango's Golden Age coincided with which era of American popular music?

The big band era. From the mid-1930s into the 1950s orchestras of a dozen or more players packed Buenos Aires dance halls; afterwards tango retreated to small venues until its 1980s revival.

Which bandleader was called 'Rey del compás', the King of the Beat, for his driving rhythm?

Juan d'Arienzo. In 1935, with pianist Rodolfo Biagi, he went back to the brisk two-four beat of the earliest tangos, which gave tango back to the dancers' feet and won over the young.

Which brightly painted street in Buenos Aires's La Boca district shares its name with a famous 1926 tango?

Caminito. The alley was a disused railway route until the 1950s, when the painter Benito Quinquela Martín, a friend of the tango's composer, turned its walls into his canvas.

What does the title 'La cumparsita' mean?

The little parade. Uruguayan student Gerardo Matos Rodríguez wrote the tune as a march, and bandleader Roberto Firpo turned it into a tango for its first performance.

French birth and baptism records place the birth of Carlos Gardel, tango's most famous singer, in which city?

Toulouse. His unmarried mother, a laundress, took him to Buenos Aires when he was about two; a rival theory that he was born in South America still has its backers.

Carlos Gardel's nickname 'El Zorzal' compares him to which bird?

The song thrush, zorzal in Spanish. Fans called him 'El Zorzal Criollo' for his voice, and Argentines still say of him that he sings better every day.

How did Carlos Gardel die in June 1935, at the height of his fame?

In a runway plane collision: his aircraft struck another while taking off, killing most of those on board, and all Latin America mourned him as a tragic hero.

Which lyricist wrote the words to Carlos Gardel's 1930s film songs, such as 'El día que me quieras'?

Alfredo Le Pera, a Brazilian-born journalist, was paired with Gardel by the Paramount studio in 1932 and wrote the scripts of his films as well as the words of their songs.

At Carlos Gardel's tomb in Buenos Aires, what do visitors traditionally place in his statue's hand?

Lit cigarette. Fans light one for the bronze Gardel at La Chacarita cemetery, where he was buried after crowds turned out for his coffin in New York and Rio on its long way home.

What name is given to the style Astor Piazzolla created by blending tango with jazz and classical music?

Nuevo tango. Piazzolla's 1955 Octeto Buenos Aires broke the mould with an electric guitar, no singer and jazz-style improvisation, overturning everything tango had been until then.

In which Argentine city was Astor Piazzolla born in 1921?

Mar del Plata. He grew up mostly in New York, where as a boy he landed a bit part as a newspaper seller in one of Carlos Gardel's films.

Which French teacher told Astor Piazzolla in 1954 that his future lay in tango, not classical music?

Nadia Boulanger. He had hidden his tangos from her, sure that his destiny was classical music; she persuaded him to build his art on what was most his own.

Astor Piazzolla wrote his 1959 piece Adiós Nonino in memory of whom?

His father, Vicente, whom the family called Nonino. News of his death reached Piazzolla on tour in Puerto Rico, and back in New York he wrote the piece in his memory.

As a teenager newly arrived in Buenos Aires, Astor Piazzolla joined which bandleader's orchestra?

Aníbal Troilo took him on to cover for a sick player and kept him as arranger, then reined in his boldest ideas for fear they would put off the dancers.

In which 1992 film does Al Pacino, as a blind colonel, dance a tango in a New York hotel ballroom?

Scent of a Woman. After four losing nominations for Best Actor, Pacino finally won the Oscar for his blind, tango-loving Lieutenant Colonel Frank Slade.

In which 1993 sequel do Raul Julia and Anjelica Huston tango until the champagne corks pop?

Addams Family Values. Gomez and Morticia tango at the restaurant where they have joined shy Uncle Fester on a double date with Debbie, the nanny who plans to marry him and then kill him.

Which 2001 musical film features 'El Tango de Roxanne'?

Moulin Rouge! fused The Police's 'Roxanne' with 'Tanguera' by the Argentine composer Mariano Mores; fittingly, the 1978 original owes its rhythm to drummer Stewart Copeland's idea of playing it as a tango.

'Cell Block Tango', in which six jailed women insist 'he had it coming', is a number from which musical?

Chicago. The show grew out of real 1924 murder trials that the reporter Maurine Dallas Watkins covered for the Chicago Tribune and then turned into a play.

Grace Jones's 1981 hit 'I've Seen That Face Before' is built on which Astor Piazzolla piece?

Libertango. Piazzolla made the title from libertad, Spanish for 'liberty', to mark his break with traditional tango when he recorded the piece in Milan in 1974.

Carlos Gardel's 1917 recording of 'Mi noche triste' is credited with creating which form?

The tango-canción, or tango song. Poet Pascual Contursi had put heartbroken words to an instrumental called 'Lita', and Gardel's record made the sung tango a genre of its own.

Which Carlos Gardel tango, heard as Arnold Schwarzenegger dances in True Lies, takes its title from horse racing?

Por una cabeza means 'by a head', the margin of a narrow win: its narrator is a compulsive racetrack gambler who likens his weakness for horses to his weakness for women.

Which cellist's album Soul of the Tango, devoted to the music of Astor Piazzolla, won a Grammy?

Yo-Yo Ma. Recorded with Argentine musicians, the album includes Le Grand Tango, which Piazzolla had dedicated to another cellist, Mstislav Rostropovich, who let years pass before he first performed it.

Which 1983 stage show starring Juan Carlos Copes and María Nieves sparked tango's revival around the world?

Tango Argentino. Its creators could find no Argentine backers, yet after opening at a French autumn festival the show reached Broadway in 1985 and toured the world.