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The milonga is the most integral manifestation of the spirit of the Río de la Plata. Its origins can be traced back to Sub-Saharan Africa, to the lands of the Bantu language. There, the word milonga took on various meanings:
We would be gravely oversimplifying if we defined the milonga as merely a musical style or a local dance. The milonga is a profound cultural confluence from which much of the region's musical landscape has emerged.
Historical accounts suggest that the rhythmic pattern of the milonga, known in the jargon as 3-3-2, was first located and documented on the western coasts of the African continent in the 16th century. From there, ships of the infamous South Sea Company departed, laden with Africans who would later be sold in the slave market of El Retiro (now Plaza San Martín).
This rhythmic pattern is also recorded in the music of southern Spain in the mid-17th century, particularly in Andalusia, where the cultural interaction between Gypsies, Muslims, Christians, and Sephardic Jews resulted in the robust firmness of flamenco. The bulerías nurtured the instrument that would capture those impetuous sounds within its box: the Spanish guitar.
Shortly thereafter, in the Balkans of Eastern Europe, likely spread by nomadic Gypsies, the 3-3-2 pattern was already clearly heard in some passages of klezmer music. Here, Jewish itinerant musicians (klezmorim) interacted with non-Jewish communities and absorbed elements of local music such as Slavic, Balkan, and Gypsy music. In one of the most popular Jewish songs, "Hava Nagila," the famous 3-3-2 pattern can be clearly recognized.
Many of those ships that came from Africa and Spain made a stop at the port of Havana. Just as the milonga was born from these mixtures in the Río de la Plata, in Havana its quintessential sister genre was born: the habanera.
Much later, in the city of Montevideo, Uruguayan editor and journalist Vicente Rossi was the first to indicate in his book Cosas de negros (1926) the predominantly African origin of the milonga and tango in the Río de la Plata. This should not surprise us, considering the etymology of these words. It has been mentioned, a posteriori, the notable change in accentuation that these words probably had:
Let's imagine the nascent Buenos Aires of the 18th century: a monotonous village steeped in colonial lethargy, with its contraband port, churches, and town hall. The first gathering place for African slaves was in the worship of Saint Baltazar (one of the Three Wise Men present at the birth of Jesus). Far from the solemnity of Christian liturgy, devotion to the saint was expressed through music and dance. This scandalized the parish priest and churchgoers, leading them to lodge complaints with the town hall.
Over time, the slaves began to form social organizations known as "sitios de nación," "candombes," or "tangos." They met in the squares or open spaces of the southern neighborhoods: San Telmo, Montserrat, Constitución, San Cristóbal, and Barracas, also known as the "Barrios del Tambor" [Drum neighbourhoods] or "Barrios del Mondongo" [Tripe Neighborhoods], to reproduce the distant echoes of their continent with their candombes. Something similar was happening on the eastern coast of the Río de la Plata, in the then walled city of Montevideo.
One of the best descriptions of these everyday scenes is that of José Manuel Estrada in his 1862 article "Los tambores" [The Drums]:
With this scenario in mind, we can sketch a first hypothesis: the milonga arises primarily as a result of the combination of the rhythmic matrix of those candombes and the harmonic/melodic matrix brought by the ships coming from Spain via Havana.
The great Uruguayan singer and composer Alfredo Zitarrosa, in a recording from his unpublished archives, states: "The milonga is a daughter of the candombe, just as the tango is a son of the milonga."
Martín Fierro mató a un negro
y es casi como si hubiera
matado a todos. Sé de uno
que murió por la bandera.
De tarde en tarde en el Sur
me mira un rostro moreno,
trabajado por los años
y a la vez triste y sereno.
¿A qué cielo de tambores
y siestas largas se han ido?
Se los ha llevado el tiempo,
el tiempo, que es el olvido.
[Martín Fierro killed a black man
and it's almost as if he had
killed them all. I know one
who died for the flag.
From time to time in the South
a dark face looks at me,
worn by the years
and at the same time sad and serene.
To what sky of drums
and long siestas have they gone?
Time has taken them away,
time, which is oblivion]
- Jorge Luis Borges
The first documented anecdote about the milonga as a consolidated musical style takes place in the Santos Lugares prison in the district of San Martín, Buenos Aires Province. According to historian Hugo Corradi, the Rosist Mazorca soldiers who had been defeated by Urquiza's Great Army at the Battle of Caseros (1852) were singing milongas or guajiras (a Cuban style) in their cells, mocking the Brazilian soldiers who couldn't understand their wordplay.
Later, the renowned musicologist Violeta Hemsy de Gainza noted the oldest recorded milonga, anticipating the arrival of Urquiza's army in Buenos Aires, known as the "Rosist Milonga," which goes like this: "Dicen que viene del norte / las tropas del general; con mucho galón dorado / que a Rosas quieren voltear" ["They say the general's troops / are coming from the north; / With plenty of gold braid, they want to overthrow Rosas".]
By 1870, milonga singers were multiplying throughout the province of Buenos Aires.
But it is important to note this point: the milonga was not born and flourished solely as a musical style. The milonga was, first and foremost, a significant occasion; the consecration of an identity matrix forged in the suburbs, on the Borgean shores, in the blurred boundaries between the countryside and the city. A kind of spirit that makes its appearance at certain times and places and that, upon fulfilling its mission, retreats. This characteristic is reflected in the titles and lyrics of some songs: "Te vas, Milonga" [You're Leaving, Milonga], “Cuando llora la Milonga” "When the Milonga Weeps], “La Milonga y yo” [The Milonga and Me].
It served as a gravitational center where the most relevant qualities of the nascent Argentine soul were manifested: mischief, drama, spontaneity, courage. It could be evoked in old taverns, where the guitar and the voice of the payador were the heart of the gathering, or in the deepest solitude of the Pampa, where man found comfort singing to the rhythm of a bordoneo. This is reflected in these verses:
Toda la noche he cantado
Con el alma estremecida,
Que el canto es la abierta herida
De un sentimiento sagrado,
A naides tengo a mi lado
Porque no busco piedad,
Desprecio la caridad
Por la vergüenza que encierra;
Soy como el león de las sierras,
Vivo y muero en soledad.
[I've sung all night
with a trembling soul,
for song is the open wound
of a sacred feeling,
I have no one by my side
because I don't seek pity,
I scorn charity
for the shame it holds;
I'm like the lion of the mountains,
I live and die in solitude]
- Atahualpa Yupanqui
Milonga, mi compañera que me comprendes
Que me proteges
Que me abrigas.
Frazada del pobre hombre que siente frío,
Y no se queja..
Ya no se queja.
[Milonga, my companion who understands me,
who protects me,
who warms me.
Blanket of the poor man who feels cold,
and doesn't complain...
no longer complains.]
- Alfredo Zitarrosa
Until the mid-1870s, the milonga and the payada (improvised rhyming recitation accompanied by a guitar) had not yet crossed paths. It was the Afro-Argentine Gabino Ezeiza who managed to combine these two cultural expressions, solidifying the milonga as the most popular genre in the region and consecrating a key figure of the time: the porteño payador.
"In 1884 I had my first encounter with Gabino Ezeiza, the most famous of Argentine bards.That payada served to set a precedent. At that time, they used to sing for money, but Gabino introduced the milonga on that occasion in the key of C major. (...) It's a folk song (from the urban environment), since it's a daughter of the African candombe, and tapping his index fingers on the edge of the table he began to hum 'tunga...tatunga...tunga...' to demonstrate, phonetically, the connection of this rhythm with the candombe".
Nemesio Trejo
By the 20th century, the milonga had become part of the porteño DNA. Unlike the songs of solitude of the Pampa and gaucho poetry, the milonga in the city was nourished by other ingredients, moving away from its solemn character and accentuating the mischief, the bravado of the compadrito, and a certain casualness typical of the suburbs. With the massive arrival of European immigrants, the first sketches of the tango began to be drawn, the genre that would later conquer Europe at the hands of Carlos Gardel.
If we dare to sketch a brief ontological analysis, the milonga could be a cultural manifestation of a feminine nature. The tango is engendered within the milonga and is of a masculine nature (initially it was danced between men). The pronouns specific to each word attest to this. In turn, in the consolidation of the urban milonga, women have played a fundamental role, despite the machismo of the time. We can mention the great Tita Merello, Rosita Quiroga, Nelly Omar, Libertad Lamarque, Ada Falcón, etc.
Edmundo Rivero says something like this says when he sings to Buenos Aires:
Sos cadenera flor sin berretines
que currás a los cuores con tu rango,
pero el choma que aceita tus patines
es canchero y varón, se llama Tango.
You're a labouring flower without whims
that works on hearts,
but the one who oils your tracks
is haughty and masculine, and his name is Tango.
As we said at the beginning, the milonga served as a great tributary in whose mud the most representative attributes of a people who were still constructing their identity traits matured. It is no coincidence that the first milongas are recorded in the context of the Battle of Caseros (1852), a fundamental episode from which the national destiny would end up being configured.
It also played a fundamental role in the integration between the countryside and the city. After years of civil war between Buenos Aires and the provinces, it was vital for Argentines to find a place of communion in the suburbs of the city, both physical and spiritual. That is why the milonga is both a musical style and a meeting place.
The names of the first tangos of the 20th century attest to this symbiosis between rural and urban culture, and reveal a romantic halo with respect to gaucho culture, already being a fundamental part of the national literary canon, José Hernández's El gaucho Martín Fierro: “Adiós, Pampa mía” ["Farewell, my Pampa"], “Expresión campera” ["Rural expression"] “Delirio gaucho” ["Gaucho frenzy"].
In the suburban streets of Buenos Aires, the children of Italians, Spaniards, Basques, Poles, Germans, English, and a long etcetera had to learn to coexist (not without conflicts) with this tradition inherited from the Creoles and Afro-Argentines. It is at that cultural intersection that the tango, rooted in the old milonga, took its first roots with artists such as Ángel Villoldo, Rosendo Mendizábal (Afro-Argentine), Enrique Ponzio, and many more. The milonga, as a musical style, would later be overshadowed by the resounding success of the tango. Throughout the 20th century, there were great artists who revisited and refined its sound in different keys, both in Argentina and Uruguay, but by the 21st century its trace became increasingly diffuse.
However, the milonga still casts its shadow over the Río de la Plata basin and the Pampean plain. Every so often, the echoes of that remote African grumble, of that ancient Andalusian resonance, reverberate. Embodying the solemn and eternal solitude of the Pampa, the bravado and nonchalance of the city's underbelly, and the sensual and melancholic spirit of this people.
Like Silvio Astier, I follow that trail, like someone sniffing a familiar scent. I try to cling to that ancient shadow and, although I already live crossed and decimated by the emanations of the electric and digital fence of our era, I believe I have glimpsed in some moments of creative ecstasy the elusive trail of the spirit of the milonga.
The rocker Ricardo Iorio once told a story about meeting Facundo Cabral at the Sadaic offices. While chatting, Cabral asked him if he liked the milonga.
— No fucking way! — Iorio replied.
Cabral, with his dark glasses and leaning on his cane, like a 20th-century Homer, smiled and responded:
— Don't worry, pibe. La milonga is waiting for you.
Francisco Miguel is an Argentine musician, educator, and cultural promoter. Under the artist name Silvio Astier he develops his musical project, which blends electronic music with Argentine folk.
