The Rough Guide to Tango Revival

While you are listening if not dancing to this great sequence of tangos, you might ponder the reasons as to why tango has stayed the main Argentinian music of the 20th century and is now thriving in the 21st. This sexy, complex dance has a vast amount of fabulous music composed for it, yet its gender relations remain largely unreconstructed as it remains a dance in which the woman must do exactly as the man directs and in which if she anticipates him, he may wrong-foot her.

Innovation comes in the music and dazzling arrangements, as this sterling compilation of today’s key bands illustrates. Played by young contemporary orchestras from an international tango scene covering Buenos Aires, Romania, Hungary and Germany, the album kicks off with the Selección Nacional de Tango’s version of classic ‘La Cumparsita’. There’s much to enjoy here, including the sultry voice of Romania’s Oana Catalina Chitu on ‘Zaraza’ and the contemporary take of Roberto Alvarez’s Orquesta Color Tango. The most arresting vocal contributions are from poet-vocalist Sergio Gobo who continues a long tradition of tongue-in-cheek tango observation on everyday life that makes Berlin’s 6 Australes a group to seek out. The tanguero poet Daniel Melingo remains the most innovative, enmeshed in the street culture and language of today’s Buenos Aires. With a bonus CD of classic Gardél tangos thrown in, this is a great compilation.