/ARTS & ENTERTAINMENT/MUSIC-ARGENTINA: Tapping the Export Potential of Tango

By Marcela Valente Reprint | | Print |

Marcela Valente

BUENOS AIRES, Aug 28 2001 (IPS) - Argentina plans to tap the potential of tango, this Southern Cone nation’s most popular music and dance genre, as an export product and a source of foreign currency and tourists.

A study by a global management and technology consulting firm, Booz Allen & Hamilton, points to a huge market for tango. The consultancy found that 60 percent of tango-lovers lived outside Argentina and neighbouring Uruguay – where the genre was born – mainly in the United States, Germany, France, Italy and Japan.

The study estimates that the tango business moved around two billion dollars a year worldwide, in bars and restaurants, dance halls and classes, and music festivals – not to mention merchandise with a tango theme.

Argentine exports of tango-related products, which stand at around 180 million dollars today, could rise to 400 million by 2005, according to Booz Allen & Hamilton.

The genre, which emerged in the late 19th and early 20th centuries in the seedy bars and dance halls of the port areas of the capitals of Argentina and Uruguay, enjoys especially strong prospects for growth in Buenos Aires, a city of 12.6 million that draws around 1.7 million tourists a year, according to local government statistics.

“We have to learn to sell the country through tango,” over the Internet, for example, one local producer of tango shows, Juan Fabbri, told IPS.

Stars like Robert Duvall and Madonna have been lured to Argentina by the sexy rhythm of tango. So have many foreigners who have come to this Southern Cone country to learn to dance tango, or even to teach it.

Outside the country, Argentina is identified first and foremost with tango, and secondly with football legend Diego Maradona, according to a study carried out by the Chamber of Commerce’s Superior Institute in the late 1990s.

Third comes football as a sport, before beef, “mate” – an herbal tea typical of Argentina as well as Uruguay, southern Brazil and Paraguay – and legendary tango singer Carlos Gardel – all of which are symbols that can be used to market and sell Argentine products abroad, the Chamber of Commerce study pointed out.

But tourists often have a hard time even finding dance halls and tango shows in Buenos Aires, for which they end up searching as if they were hidden treasures. In fact, tour packages feature few tango shows.

The study by Booz Allen & Hamilton indicates that while 98 percent of foreign tourists coming to Buenos Aires are interested in taking in a tango show or trying their hand at the dance themselves, only 16 percent actually end up doing so.

By comparison, tourists travelling to the U.S. city of New Orleans spend an average of 500 dollars per visit on jazz shows and jazz-related merchandise.

Some 15,000 tango students from dance academies in Berlin and Paris visit Buenos Aires every year to receive advanced training.

In Japan, around 3,000 people are learning to dance tango, a tango TV channel has two million subscribers, and the first edition of an album recorded by Argentine tango diva Susana Rinaldi with a 40-piece orchestra from Finland sold out, said Fabbri.

Hundreds of young Argentine tango dancers, vocalists and musicians have set out to conquer the world. Luciana Garrido left her work as a sociologist and teacher of corporal expression when her dance instructor invited her to accompany him on an international tour.

“It’s just for a little while, I don’t know how long…I just can’t keep up this pace,” Garrido told IPS, explaining that she lives half of the year in Argentina and spends the other half touring the United States to teach dance in social clubs and dance halls.

“In the United States, there is a strong tradition of ballroom dancing, and many people are excited to recuperate that custom by learning tango,” said Garrido – who is already part of the new export movement.