Polyrhythms, hemiolas and the flexibility of rhythm and metrics in tangos from the late 19th and early 20th centuries

Abstract

In tangos from the end of the 19^th century and the beginning of the 20^th century, we find a tendency to relax the rhythm and the metre through the use of vertical or consecutive hemiolas, syncopations and polyrhythms that are evidence of African descent and which we believe are worth analyzing for a proper reconstruction of the formative stage and “Guardia Vieja” of tango. We focus on atypical rhythmic behaviors of what the genre will later privilege, since we are dealing with tangos between 1880 and 1915, by recognizing features that are characteristic of a binarization process of African ternary rhythms in Latin America, following Pérez Fernández. We approach this study through a musicological analysis of written sources. In order to visualize the Afro elements and to make a suitable comparison, we will take into account contredanses, guarachas and nineteenth-century Cuban habaneras, which certainly are the ancestors of the habaneras that reached our country from Europe.