Some people see tango as primarily a dance – a connection between two people in a beautiful pas de deux. However most will say tango is the music, and the lyrics, and the dancers’ interpretation of that music, and the sentiments it expresses. Getting to know the music is part of learning tango. Learning both the general style and the individual compositions and recordings enables you to dance with much more confidence and enjoyment.

The classic tango orchestra or ‘orquesta típica’ is made up of bandoneons, violins, piano, and bass. The guitar is also a common instrument, especially accompanying singers, notably Carlos Gardel. Other instruments are added viola, cello, saxophone, lute, flute electric guitar, drums in various styles. The Bandoneon, perhaps the key to the tango sound, is a large and fiendishly complicated concertina, originally developed in Germany for churches that could not afford organs.

In the first years of the century the first tangos were written e.g. El Choclo(Angel Villoldo)’, Yo Soy La Morocha (Enrique Saborido, 1906), and were big hit and best sellers of piano scores. Recording came in in the 1910s and older songs, like La Cumparsita were arranged as tangos. Gardel recorded his first tango Mi Noche Triste in 1917, and became an enormous force in popularising tango.

As the music developed it became less rigidly rhythmic, more harmonic and melodic, and the hallmark tension and release was developed. The fraseo, phrasing, the soloist (or soli) bending the melody across the underlying rhythm, became a central part of tango. The ‘traditional’ orchestras played it simple and pleased the dancers. Composers and players, in the Decareano school such as Pugliese, Salgan and Piazzola were more interested in the music, and played for listening, and from the 1960s the dancing audience disappeared anyway.

In the 21st Century a new generation of musicians are mixing tango with contemporary music styles, re-imagining what tango music can be, and creating new arrangements of classics.

Different tango music tends to suggest different styles of dance when we hear it. Although many of the dance styles that were original danced when it was composed are now lost, with our mixed and reinvented tango we are able to interpret it. Some music suggests the use of cortes ‘cuts’ that reflect its strong rhythm, others are most flowing, while still others are full of tensions and accelerations.

In the end it is up to the couple how they dance, but it is important, and more interesting to really listen to the music, and not just dance the way same all the time.