zur Tangogeschichte - 2

Über die Tango-Geschichtsschreibung und eine Kritik an den Klischees rund um Tango:
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During the brief period of his interest in popular culture, Borges wrote an article on the history of the Tango. This article began with a refutation of the 'sentimental version' of that history, according to which the tango's origins lie in the working class neighbourhoods, and proposed instead - drawing on the writer's own personal recollections, and referring to the essentially 'lascivious' nature of the dance and to the titles of some tangos of an obviously obscene nature - the theory of the tango's origins in the brothels.

It's paradoxical that the Borgesian brothel theory has become transformed with time into a veritable axiom. The majority of articles written today, by those who have arrived rather late to study of the tango's history, and who only know it from the outside, start with this blueprint - which is in reality no more than the ruling class' image of the tango during the first decades of century. It is the theory of a social group that can see the working class neighbourhoods only as an immense brothel. It is symptomatic, for example that Blas Matamoro, one of the writers who adopt this theory uncritically, can write, on page 33 of his book La ciudad del tango: "... the middle class, poor like workers but decent like the rich. . . ." It is this kind of thinking, essentialist and ingenious, and absolutely ignorant of the complexity of the reality that has allowed the theory of the tango's brothel origins to triumph. It's interesting to note how this theory presupposes direct links between poverty and indeceny and between wealth and decency. It is the version of those who, at the turn of the century, shut the tango out of their lives.
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Arturo Penon, Bandonion: A Tango History