Tango Music: Between Heritage and Transnational Resources. The Geographies of Tango In or From Buenos Aires

Listed in 2009 as part of UNESCO’s Representative List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity by Uruguay and Argentina, tango is defined as “a genre that originally involved dance, music, poetry and singing”. However, tango music today appears more as the backdrop to a practice that is essentially expressed through dance, from milonga venues to the World Tango Festival or tourist tango shows. Our contribution thus questions the place of tango music in contrast to dance from the dual perspective of its geographies and its transformations, in connection with public policies for the development, recognition and preservation of this practice. The focus on dance and the stabilisation of the dance repertoire on the music of the Golden Age of tango, from the middle of the twentieth century, has marginalised live music. However, heritage policies with respect to tango music in Buenos Aires and Montevideo focus on musicians and their achievements through commemorative practices, museum collections or the establishment of institutions to ensure intergenerational transmission. The musicians themselves navigate between different musical scenes, with tourists or more specialised audiences, learn to dance to meet the expectations of practitioners and at the same time hybridise tango with other music genres. Musical choices and mobility strategies then make it possible to identify the trajectories and careers of the musicians within the worlds of tango marked by the pre-eminence of dance. This chapter is based on collective investigations carried out between 2016 and 2020 in several places (Buenos Aires, Montevideo, Paris and France) in order to better understand the effects of the mobility of tourists and practitioners on the heritage creation, development and recognition of tango.