VivirLatino

Raíces is a VL Friday feature saluting Latino music icons of days gone by.

Tango isn’t necessarily the most popular music among Americans in my age group. I think I’m one of the few people I know who realizes that tango isn’t just a dance involving a lot of fishnet stockings and sultry gazes. Tango is poetry, and in my opinion is the musical genre that comes closest to being more literature than entertainment. Its lyrics speak of the culture of which it was born — that of the arrabales of Buenos Aires — mysterious to the rest of us and beloved by its sons and daughters for their beautiful grimness and for embodying the porteño spirit in a code that only a native son can truly understand.

Tango has had many, many incredible poets — alas, too many to name. But one that has to come to mind when talking about the spirit of the arrabal; of the poverty that shapes art, the despair that begets the sublime, is Eladia Blásquez.

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