When two people tango, a sultry rhythm between them seems like their bodies are in conversation. Tango is a language of sound and dance with a magnetic pulse.
And that pulse is all of us.
Argentina has a long history of white-washing its roots . It’s often considered one of the least Black countries in Latin America. But tango, a mainstay of Argentinian culture, is one of the Blackest things ever invented.
Professor and author of ‘The Art History of Love,’ Robert Farris Thompson considers tango: “the fabulous dance of the past hundred years that started life as a creole. “...The Kongo grind, caught in a waltz-like embrace,”
Thompson believes that although tango was born along Buenos Aires’ La Plata River, it was heavily influenced by Congo and created in the country by Argentina’s more than 200,000 enslaved people.
Tango moves like “quebradas,” a hip twist, and “sentadas,” when the woman sits on the man’s thigh, are closely related to Congo’s “bumbakana” style of dance, which means to dance face-to-face, bumping into each other.
Anti-Blackness has tried hard to wipe Argentina free of our influence, but you can’t erase the blueprint.
When we know the truth about our history, nobody can rewrite it or try to tell us who we are. The truth is, much of the world they built wouldn’t be what it is without our genius.