The tango is an almost universal music and dance style. It is an authentic and lively expression of everyday experiences and feelings. The famous tango composer Enrique Santos Disceplos described the authentic, graceful and expressive tango as "a sad thought, which can be danced"; another author described it as "two serious faces and four funny legs". The tango was born on the outskirts of Buenos Aires, in poor neighbourhoods where the families of European immigrants settled down in the later part of the nineteenth century. Its emergence as a distinct style is often dated back to the 1880s, but as early as 1867 a form of tango had been performed on stage. In its early days, the tango was primarily instrumental music featuring the guitar, the flute and the bandoneon as prime instruments and a couple dance performed by the "canfinfleros" (pimps) who hung around the dance clubs or bordellos of the Argentinian capital, and who, in order to dispel any suspicion of homosexuality, would exaggerate and caricaturize their movements. Because of this "disrespectable" background, the tango was shunned for many decades by Argentinian society. In the 1920s, however, the fate of this music changed completely when it was exported to France, where it became the latest dance craze. From then on, its popularity, which was facilitated by the emergence of mass media such as cinema, radio and records, spread to other parts of Europe and the world. At the same time, the genre developed further and acquired its letter of nobility: it moved from the brothels to the theatres, where female singers made a greater contribution to it. Most significantly, lyrics were incorporated to the genre and sung in the tragic and nostalgic style which was made famous by one of its greater exponents, Carlos Gardel, and which thrived until the 1940s, when a more aggressive style developed. The tango went through a period of decline in the 1950s, but its eventful history did not end there. Since the 1980s a renewed interest in the national Argentine musical tradition has triggered a revival of the genre.
