The word tango originally refers to the place where, from the late 18th century onwards, African slave traders parked their blacks before embarking for South America, thus fuelling the slave trade. This was the birthplace of the dance music which, little by little, copying the images of the waltz, created the “abrazo”, i.e. the way of holding one's partner and evolving thereafter, and which thus invaded the brothels of Buenos Aires and Montevideo, where sailors and exiles gradually adopted the music that was to become that of the tangos. This music was eventually defined by an instrument from Germany, the bandoneon by Heinrich Band, and was imported by migrants to Argentina as early as 1840. Tango then took root in Paris in the early 20th century, becoming the music and dance of the French capital's bad boys and wild young bourgeois. They were to illustrate Clemenceau's famous dictum: “We see figures who are bored and derrières who are having fun". From the 1920s onwards, tango took on a slower tempo and triumphed everywhere when a young singer named Charles Gardel, born in Toulouse to a family from the Tarn region, took the name Carlos Gardel in Buenos Aires, which UNESCO would later name “Argentine singer born in France”, and whose voice was declared “world heritage”. He established music worldwide as an art form distinct from dance movement. The breach was opened, and the music quickly established itself as essential, just as jazz did in the United States, where it became a genre in its own right. The Rio musicians were succeeded by new talents such as Juan José Mosalini (Juanjo's father), Gustavo Beytelmann and Enzo Giéco, who accompanied a certain Astor Piazzola, born in Argentina but who spent his childhood in New York, and who drew inspiration from his happy club-hopping days in Harlem by taking part in lively encounters with Gary Burton, Gerry Mulligan and Lalo Shiffrin. While exalting the seductive, nostalgic realm of Argentina's suburbs, he sets his imagination to work on what he creates in the form of tango nuevo, immediately reviled by the guardians of tradition. Never deviating from his musical ambition, Piazzola was considered by his time to be a “classical composer of the 20th century” for having further dissociated tango from dance, elevating it to the rank of “great music”, a notion still rejected by traditionalists, provoking endless quarrels, but thus consecrating a new generation exemplified by Tango Hoy, which broadened the notions of rhythm, articulation and form in the writing and very conception of the avant-garde of the new tango. “If you like our music, we like you. If you don't like our music, we love you too” These words can be signed today by Cuarteto Mosalini Teruggi, for it is the strong identity of their melodies that above all possesses a universal character, beneath the colors, accents, aggressive contrasts, rhythms and scathing virtuosity that distill throughout the enthusiasm of their repertoire, displaying the inexhaustible sources of their inspiration. They are the heirs of the great masters, the bearers of a dual culture that has brought us not only tango, but a whole new genre in one fell swoop.

René Koering

PROGRAM

In luna res Leonardo Teruggi
Obrigado Leonardo Teruggi
Febo Juanjo Mosalini
Hijos del canto Leonardo Teruggi
Tangueada Juan José Mosalini
Once Juanjo Mosalini
El yeite Juanjo Mosalini
Milonga del eco Leonardo Teruggi
Obsesivo Leonardo Teruggi
Amarrála Juanjo Mosalini
Procesión Leonardo Teruggi
Desconcierto Leonardo Teruggi
bis : En el aire Juanjo Mosalini