Astor Piazzolla and the Argument Tango Never Settled

Tango bandleaders once waited outside Buenos Aires radio stations to confront Astor Piazzolla about what he was doing to their music. He kept doing it, and the result was New Tango.

In Buenos Aires, tango bandleaders used to wait outside radio stations on the nights Astor Piazzolla played with his ensemble, ready to confront him. The objection was to his repertoire. Tango, by convention, existed to move dancers and then to soothe them, and he was rewriting it anyway. Piazzolla was born in Mar del Plata in 1921 and moved with his family to New York at four, settling in Greenwich Village. He was often home alone with his father’s tango records and the jazz coming through the walls. Before he was ten his father bought him a bandoneon, and a classical teacher had him playing Bach on it.

As a teenager he met Carlos Gardel, the central figure of tango, who invited him on his 1935 tour. His father refused, thinking him too young, and the plane carrying Gardel and his musicians crashed. Back in Buenos Aires he took