1. El Tango Photo by Roman Donadio

2. La Historia del Tango • Tango is a style of dance and music that originated in Buenos Aires, Argentina. www.findtravel.com.ar/english/index.php www.sergiopessolano.com

3. Fotos de Buenos Aires Roman Donadio

4. Like much of Latin America, Buenos Aires is an eclectic mix of old and new. www.snapshotphotojournal.com www.snapshotphotojournal.com

5. The dream of a successful new life in a new world lured an ever increasing number of immigrants to the ports of the River Plate after 1870 (Scobie, 1964). • A principal motivation for this wave of newcomers was the hope of owning land. These newcomers were mostly of European descent. • For a number of reasons, however, it was nearly impossible by the 1890's for small cultivators to obtain land.

6. Disillusioned by this state of affairs, many new arrivals tended to accumulate around the port city. • Here they mixed with other elements of the giant labor force congregating on the outskirts, the arrabal or orillas, of Buenos Aires (Scobie, 1964). • There was a very large population of underclass men working in the meat packing industry. Men outnumbered women by more than 100,000 by 1914 and B.A. quickly became the epicenter of Argentine prostitution. Photo by Alex Waterhouse-Hayward

7. The Tango that developed in the outskirts of Buenos Aires was highly influenced by African rhythms and dance. • It was also influenced by the socioeconomic culture of the time. Poverty, prostitution, and the sense that one did not belong to greater society are all themes that initially influenced the Tango.

8. The prominent Argentine upper-class for many years despised the Tango, attributing it to the music and dance of the lower class. • The Tango began to develop a following amongst the European middle-class and this helped to spread and establish the popularity of the dance. • Today the Tango is globally renowned as being the spectacular national dance of Argentina.

9. El Baile

10. La Música del Tango

11. Works Cited • Works Cited APA