"... With the publication of Tango: The Art History of Love last autumn, [Robert Farris] Thompson gave that century-old, planet-wide phenomenon its black spring, detailing roots in Montevideo’s candombe rituals and black gaucho milongas out on the pampas. Kongo precedents prep the dance ground, then a knife pegged in the floorboards serves as razor pylon while 1930’s tanguero Cachafaz bests rival El Negro Santillán. Tango returns the drumless music formulated in South America’s whitest land to the hands of black innovators such as bassist Leopoldo Thompson, who fueled legendary orchestras led by Firpo, Canaro, and de Caro, and Horacio Salgán, whose hot sound spiced with arrastres — slurred low notes that incite the dance — spurred Ella Fitzgerald to initiate Salgán’s 1965 disc, Buenos Aires at 3 a.m. ...”
2014 April: Flash of the Spirit: African & Afro-American Art & Philosophy, 2017 February: Canons of the Cool, 2021 December: Robert Farris Thompson, ‘Guerrilla Scholar’ of African Art, Dies at 88
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