Mick Hartley

Since my earlier earlier tango posts a while back, I’ve occasionally browsed YouTube for new material, but haven’t found that much. There seem to be two kinds of tango videos: either poorly shot footage from a small club or milonga, or something from one of the sleek tango shows that do the rounds occasionally (here in London it’ll usually be the Peacock or Sadler’s Wells). This is a good example of the former: I like it because they’re dancing to one of my favourites, Tango Negro, by Caceres (though the sound’s terrible – here’s a nifty version of the song with two guitars if you like that kind of thing), and because it’s good to see an old guy moving around like that, and because it’s supposedly from, um, Sunderland. And here’s the other kind: showbiz tango, well danced but far too cute.

Then I started listening to some Russian and Polish tango. Old stuff, from the Thirties. No dancing: just the music.

I won’t pretend to have a ready explanation for why tango resonated so well with Poles and Russians – and Finns. Let’s just say it’s the melancholy and leave it at that.

Here’s To ostatnia niedziela, “Our Last Sunday”, from 1936. It’s about the final meeting of former lovers, and, according to Wikipedia, it became known as Suicide Tango, “regarded as the perfect background music for shooting oneself in the head”. This is a Russian version:

Here’s a Polish version.

Melancholy certainly – and beautiful. Somehow the glimpse into the lost world of pre-war Europe adds to the poignancy. According to the YouTube poster, “During World War II In the concentrations camps it was often played while Jewish prisoners were led to the gas chambers and ovens, to be executed”. It’s a detail not mentioned in Wikipedia, and frankly it sounds unlikely to me, but really I don’t know.

[Billie Holiday’s “Gloomy Sunday” was also supposed to have inspired hundreds of suicides, but though there may well be a connection, it’s not the same song.]

Here’s another lovely Russian tango, “‘Sleep quietly, my poor heart!”, from 1932. And again, “Mother’s Heart”, from 1934, with “photos from family album”, from the same poster. And finally, Russian diva Alla Bayanova, (Wikipedia) singing about the Volga, accompanied by some beautiful pre-revolutionary postcards of the river.