It takes two to tango. That’s the point.

by Dr. Jeffrey Lant
Author’s Note: To get the most out of this article, go to any search engine. Search for arguably the most popular tango ever written, “La cumparsita” (1916) by Uruguayan musician Gerardo Matos Rodriguez. You will be in the mood at once, right from its famous opening lyric, “The masked parade of endless miseries….”
A dance for men and women.
When a boy insists upon dressing up in coat and tie to dance with a girl, his girl by holding her firmly and gazing intensely into her eyes. When he is ready to lead, to command, he is no longer a boy but a man, and he’s ready for tango.
When a girl insists upon wearing a provocative dress that’s starkly cut and skin tight, slashed to her waist. When she wants to be held by a man, her man and relish the power of submission, she is no longer a girl but a woman, and she’s ready for tango. . This is an article for adult men and women. No “hanging out”, texting adolescents with wild gyrations need apply. What follows here is not for you…. yet. When you read it you will want to grow up too fast and grasp your fate, whatever it is. That is your first sharp longing for tango. There will be many others, right up to the last day you tango which will be the last day of your life.
The waltz is a dance… the fox trot is a dance… the samba is a dance. But tango is destiny; your most intimate, revealing, convulsive feelings set to a music that seizes you and never lets you go.
Call tango a dance at your peril, for it is so much more. It is the most important moment in the lives of those who walk its steps, expecting to reveal nothing to their partner, then swept away unaccountably revealing everything, however abashing, destructive.
Tango is life itself. It is never just about its various positions; those are the least important things. Tango is about passion… power… the control of a woman by a man who discovers too late that woman controls him.
Tango is endless variations and manifestations of jealousy, betrayal, revenge. And always variations of love, in all its aspects, from its soaring prospects to its squalid conclusions. Tango, you see, is not danced; it is lived. And when you are dancing it… you are, perhaps for the first time, alive… You can hardly believe that once upon a time you attempted life without it. Now it haunts you… and you would never have it any other way.
Some history.
Tango originated in lower-class districts of Buenos Aires and Montevideo. There life was cheap, short, glorious for an instant, ending abruptly, a legacy of sorrow, pain, regret, remorse. The word itself can be dated to the 1890s when it was applied to a fusion of music from the candombe ceremonies of former slave peoples mixed with European dances. It was always, right from the start, a combustible, volatile sound, with violence and mayhem lingering just below the surface, always ready to erupt.
Tango burst like a grenade upon the blase sophisticates of pre-World War I Europe; sheltered, pampered, rich they craved the unpredictability and eroticism of tango. It was liberating… dangerous… exciting. They couldn’t get enough.
In the middle of that great war (1916 or 1917, authorities differ), tango’s most famous music was born. It seemed oddly fitting. In a world now maddened by unimaginable destruction and early death, tango’s dancers craved release… and at the cafe “La Giralda” in Montevideo Gerardo Matos Rodriquez gave it to them (albeit anonymously).
The orchestra of Roberto Firpo was the first to present the composition, then without words, to a world which grabbed at it as if to a lifeline out of the inferno of the “war to end all wars”. People danced with abandon; their total focus on the dance, its steps, and the partner they held tight, eyes locked together… as if that night, that dance might be their last on earth. For many it was. Tango was the music of the doomed…
The lyrics.
The first lyrics to “La cumparsita” were written in 1924 by Argentine Pascual Contursi. There have been many other lyrics since but Contursi’s are the most apt. They signify a group of people that attends the carnival festivals dressed in a similar fashion (usually but not exclusively, wearing masks.)
Here are his words:
The masked parade of endless miseries promenades around that sick being that soon will die of sorrow.
That’s why in its bed cries mournfully remembering the past that makes it suffer.
These were words of death, of pain, of a haunted, fretful past and a future of despair, alienation, loneliness.
Immortality for sale, 20 pesos.
No history of tango and its most famous song would be complete without a few more words about Matos Rodriquez. He was just 18 when he wrote “La cumparsita”… young, educated, well mannered, naive. He sold his rights for the pittance of 20 pesos to the Breyer publishing house. It would hardly be a tango tale if he didn’t live to profoundly regret his rash, ill-considered act. Of course he did — deeply, bitterly, never endingly…. a legacy of draining, expensive law suits shadowed his life. At last a legal loophole gave him vindication, solace, and cash. The court ruled that as a minor he was unable to sell the rights. They were his again.
There were, in the best tradition of tango, other lawsuits, too. Who had the right to sing it? Who was entitled to the lyric royalties? It was all hashed out in court, in one hard-fought action after another.
In the end legendary tango composer and band leader Francisco Canaro (president of the Argentine Society of Authors and Composers) was asked to arbitrate. He ruled that tango lyricists Enrique Maroni and Pascual Contursi were entitled to royalties, too. They had given “La cumparsita” its first lyrics and a new name, too, “Si Supieras” — if you knew. It didn’t stick.
Through the endless series of charges, countercharges, claims, lies and law suits people worldwide danced tango… unconcerned about rights and wrongs. They had something more important on their minds. It was the compelling, entrancing, primitive, rough and graceful dance…
… the dance of one man and one woman.
The dance where total strangers, through the mad alchemy of tango, become intimate, enraptured, engrossed in each other, no one else in their world, and none wanted.
These two people, tormented by the intoxicating proximity, exist for each other only, body to body, eyes to eyes, walking rhythmically to a destination where anything might happen. They fear it. They want it. They tango.
Now it is time for you to tango, too, for you have waited far too long. It beckons. It knows you cannot resist, for you are but human… and tango is divine.

They have this dance for the rest of their lives.

Author’s program note.
Remember your first crush? The heat! The intensity! The euphoric ups and despondent downs? Of course you do… because while it lasted, we all felt vital! Alive! Complete…. for all that the parents told us, over and over again, that this was nothing but “puppy love” and wouldn’t last. But it did last, didn’t it, in your mind and heart… to the point where you must find this well remembered person and see how they turned out and whether they still remember you, too, and the special song that was your signature and which even today causes reverie and the sharp, bittersweet pangs of remembrance and a bad case of the “what ifs”…
And so, for the fortieth time, you sit down at the keyboard and search the ‘net and its social networks for intelligence… intelligence that will enable you to rediscover your lost love, your youth, and the life you might have had if only… if only…
“Goodnight, sweetheart”.
To put yourself in the mood, go to any search engine and find “Goodnight, sweetheart” written by Calvin Carter and James “Pookie” Hudson in 1953. I recommend the original version by The Spaniels (1954). It was bubble-gum music, a tune that signalled you’d better snuggle up fast and close since your evening and its possibilities were about to end…. Whatever you planned to do needed to be done and done now… You know its lyrics so well… you know just how much time you’ve got left… and you’ve got something important to say and do.
“Goodnight, sweetheart, well, it’s time to go…. I hate to leave you, I really must say, Oh Goodnight, sweet heart, goodnight.”
This is a moment that determines fate… for in this moment the ultimate words of destiny pour out… hot, fast, insistent…. every word of consequence, every word packed with meaning… words of love… desire…. commitment… eternity. You cannot say where these words originate; you didn’t even know they were in you… but they are present now, urgent, eloquent, raw, powerful motivating words delivered in a powerful motivating way.
“Mother oh and your father, Might hear if I stay here too long, One kiss and we’ll part, And I’ll be going You know I hate to go.”
And so, at last, reluctantly, you did part… only to hurry home and call the object of your affections … who might be someone entirely different …thereby continuing the night, its emotions, its possibilities.
It was all a game, an enticing, exhilarating marvel… and you loved every difficult, contorted, thwarted moment of it.
No one more than Doyle Taylor.
In 1955 and for many years to come, Doyle Taylor was a recognized “catch”. Cute, funny, charismatic, Doyle played the dating game with the same manic intensity he brought to the football game. His manifest personal advantages brought him followers, an entourage particularly of the female variety. He liked girls… girls liked him… and these two facts made for exciting, explosive, entirely thrilling times.
Doyle delighted in the messy contortions of his young life; scheduling multiple dates with multiple people; testing his skills, his powers of persuasion and of escape; seeing how far he could push the envelope. Being Doyle, he could always push it just a little bit more…. then a little bit more again. Life was good! Packed with possibilities that caused him to jump up of a brilliant California morning, glad to be alive.
Then he saw Casey… and he knows in the way one does (even if one has never known it before) that this is the person who offers you more in one complete, captivating package than all the others put together, no matter how attractive. And all of a sudden you experience a flood of emotions that weren’t there yesterday: tenderness, compassion, wonder… and in an instant this confusing life becomes more confusing still, more confusing and infinitely more important. Life is no longer just about you and what you can get; life is now about what you can give. And Casey was a girl you wanted to give to… without asking for anything but her love in return.
Blocked by Dad.
But as every novel reader knows, the path of true love is never smooth. And so it was with Casey, whose father was strict and knew the insinuating ways of boys. Doyle was not welcome in his house… and so school with all its limitations became the only place they could meet. Little did they suspect that its very restrictions were precisely what their love needed to flourish; from obstruction grew determination… enhanced at the Friday sock hops they never missed… and which ended with their anthem “Goodnight, sweetheart.”
But this wouldn’t be much of a story if it ended here, two young people captivated by each other who decide to venture forever together. What makes this story a tale worth the telling is what happened next… and what happened after that. Like millions of starry-eyed couples, they split up in high school and went their very separate ways…
… ways that led them to marry others, have children and lives which would only have been dislocated had they connected too early. And so these one-time fierce lovers grew old, apart, and lonely… existing, not living, without love or its magic. And this, too, is the fate of millions. And it might have been their fate, too… but for the fact that out of loneliness they began to think of each other and what had each, so long ago, been for the other. Thus, apart, they began the process of rediscovering each other, beholden to a fate benevolent to them.
One day Casey’s computer crashed; all her personal data obliterated. She called a friend to begin the recovery process and asked if this friend remembered Doyle and possibly knew how to find him. The friend did…. and within minutes Casey with excitement and trepidation had emailed Doyle… who answered her at once… and so two once kindred spirits connected… and found that the excitement they had shared so long ago existed still… this time forever.
They met, as so many long ago lovers have met, compliments of the Internet… and at once, in the very first moment, they knew their long ago destiny was at last to be fulfilled.
And so it was. Two people, now married, forever young in the eyes of their beloved, committed to just one thing: loving each other, everything else insignificant and insubstantial. No more “Goodnight, sweetheart” and separation, but “Could I have this dance for the rest of my life?” No need to ask…they know the answer only too well, and gladly.
To put this touching tune sung by Anne Murray in 1980 to work for you, go to any search engine. As you listen to what Wayland Holyfield and Bob House wrote, think… for isn’t there a very special person you’d like to dance with for the rest of your life? Go ahead… ask them now, before another day is lost forever.