From Buenos Aires to Finland and Japan : The tango's unusual migration

• In Finland, thousands of miles away from Buenos Aires, people crowd the dance floors of restaurants and dance halls nightly to dance to tango music, while the tango has also caught the heart of the people on the other side of the world in Japan. The popularity of the tango in both Finland and Japan, however, is not very well known to the outside world.Though some scholars have stated that the tango reflects the personality, mentality and identity of the Finnish and Japanese people, this may only be partially true. Moreover, it is difficult to generalize what the Finnish or Japanese personality is. I argue that the tango's success in these two countries also has significant connections to historical and social factors. As being a dancer myself, I also believe that the 'liminality' (originally a term borrowed from Arnold van Gennep's formulation of rites de passage) of tango dancing plays an important role in these two nations that went through difficult struggles to recover from the damage caused by the war. “The liminal phase is considered sacred, anomalous, abnormal and dangerous, while the  pre- and post-liminal phases are normal and a profane state of being (Selänniemi 1996) and “the regular occurrence of sacred-profane alternations mark important periods of social life or even provide the measure of the passage of time itself”(Leach 1961).In this paper, I will discuss motives and paths of how a culture travels, settles and shapes into a new form, using the tango as an example.

Subject headings

HUMANIORA  -- Annan humaniora -- Kulturstudier (hsv//swe)

HUMANITIES  -- Other Humanities -- Cultural Studies (hsv//eng)

Keyword

Tango

Finland

Japan

Liminality

Interkulturella studier

Intercultural Studies

Publication and Content Type

ref (subject category)

kon (subject category)