The Music

Robert Farris Thompson in his monumental history, Tango: The Art History of Love, emphasizes the need to understand the culture of tango as poetry and music, as well as dance.

Why Golden-Age Recordings Dominate Most Playlists

from "Playing Music for Milongas -- The DJ's Role" by Stephen Brown Tango de Argentino de Tejas http://www.tejastango.com/milongas_djsrole.html Accessed Nov. 18, 2015.

At most milongas, recordings from the golden age of tango dominate the playlist. For the first half of the 20th century, Argentine tango music and social dancing evolved together. The ways of moving the body and the feet in Argentine tango were expressions of the music. From the mid-1950s through the mid-1980s, however, Argentine tango music and social dancing evolved independently of each other. After the golden age, tango dancing was pushed into small neighborhood clubs and private homes where it did not evolve much and recordings from the golden age continued to be played. At the same time, the tango orchestras shifted toward a concert sound that did not accommodate dancing.

With renewed interest in dancing tango socially, dancers rediscovered the older recordings that were still in use by those who had been dancing tango in clubs and at home. The recording companies accommodated the renewed interest in tango by reissuing many of the classics on CD. Consequently, music from the golden age still dominates milongas—some 50-70 years after it was recorded.

New recordings are emerging, however. If the tango dancing remains sufficiently popular to support new recordings, the music will continue to evolve, and gradually some of the golden-age recordings will be supplanted by newer material. Music has timeless qualities, however, and many of the recordings from the golden age will prove just too good to take off playlists.