Monday, January 13, 2014

Graj, Skrzypku, Graj

The Washington Times had two articles on the tango in its January 13, 1914 edition.

The first, on the front page, reports that the tango would be allowed at a White House event:


Pass Christian is a city along the Gulf coast, in southern Mississippi, west of Biloxi.

Woodrow Wilson sent a nice letter to Pass Christian when he was invited back the following year, which the current mayor had framed and hung in the new city hall.

The second article, on an interior page, reports the American ambassador to Argentina at the time, John W. Garrett, as saying, upon arrival in New York, that the tango was unknown in Argentina:


According to Wikipedia, John W. Garrett's family was involved in the Baltimore & Ohio Railroad. The mansion that he retired to after his career in diplomacy later became a museum and library owned by Johns Hopkins University. 

I looked for tango dance videos on YouTube, and I ended up listening to this hauntingly beautiful song from 1930s Poland, called 'Graj, Skrzypku, Graj', which the uploader says means 'Play, Fiddler, Play', apparently sung by a singer named Marian Demar Mikuszewski, for which the Internet provides no readily available biographical information in English. 

I understand that tango music and tango dance are traditions that have a strong connection to one another, but do not precisely overlap. 

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