Habanera Rhythm in Tango – Where Did It Come from and Where Did It Go to?
As tango lovers we all know the habanera rhythm, don’t we - pamm padam pam, pamm padam pam: We know that it was prevalent in guardia vieja tango before 1920, but after that it can only be found in milonga and European tango. How could it just vanish from guardia nueva tango in just a few years? Well, it didn’t, it was transformed into something else. But before tracing Habanera’s footprints into guardia nueva , let’s go back to where it came from. The Origins As the name suggests, habanera has something to do with Havana and Cuba, but in Cuba, this music and dance style was called contradanza , not habanera. As a dance, contradanza was derived from English country dance and came to Cuba through France and Spain. The music, however, was based on rhythms from another continent. Atlantic slave trade meant a mass-scale deprivation of human rights, but it also turned the New World into a melting pot of cultures. Many traits o...