【探戈的歷史】

07-26

The history of the tango

探戈舞的歷史

A sense of where you were

伴你走天涯

Tango, that 「reptile from the brothels」, is making a comeback

「源自情人旅館」的探戈舞，正捲土重來

Dec 20th 2001 | BUENOS AIRES | from the print edition of The Economist

譯者：John.Wayne

TAXI-DRIVERS in Beijing have Mao Zedong as their talisman. In Buenos Aires, Jorge Malcinas has hanging from his rear-view mirror a picture of the late Osvaldo Pugliese, the great bandleader of tango. Indeed, the driver has dozens of pictures of Pugliese to bring him good luck: about the cab, his person and his house. He needs them more than most mortals do, he explains, for he lives a stone"s throw from the house of Carlos Menem, Argentina"s ex-president, who is widely reckoned to bring 「the curse」 to anyone with whom he comes into contact. Mr Menem used to be banned from attending matches of both his favourite football team, River Plate, and the national side, because of the perceived ill effects he brings.

北京的司機師傅們用毛澤東作為他們的護身符。在布宜諾斯艾利斯，喬治.馬爾希納斯則把已故的偉大的探戈舞樂隊指揮奧斯瓦爾多-普格列斯照片掛在他後視鏡上。當然，他有許多能夠帶來好運的普格列斯照片：有關計程車的，他個人的以及住房的。喬治.馬爾希納斯解釋說，他比正常人更需要這些照片，因為他住在前阿根廷總統卡洛斯.梅能住所丟棄的一塊石頭附近，而該總統被公認為是誰和他打交道，他就帶給誰霉運那種人。梅能先生過去過去常常被禁止參加他最愛的足球隊比賽，即阿根廷河床隊以及其他國家隊，因為他那顯而易見的「霉氣」。

Mr Menem himself might usefully seek to have some of Pugliese"s powers rub off on him. That is what Juan Domingo Peron, Argentina"s flawed if charismatic leader, did. When he returned to power in 1973, Peron begged Pugliese to forgive him for his past mistreatment of him. Pugliese used to wear his pyjamas under his tuxedo in anticipation of arrest, for—perhaps because he was a staunch communist—he liked his creature comforts in jail. Whenever he was in prison, his band would place a red carnation in a bottle on top of his unmanned piano.

梅能先生自己或許也曾裨益地找尋過一些奧斯瓦爾多-普格列斯靈氣來驅除自己身上的霉氣。那是Juan Domingo Peron（一個存在缺陷但魅力仍在的阿根廷領袖）所做過的。Juan Domingo Peron在1973年重新掌權後，他祈求奧斯瓦爾多-普格列斯原諒他過去對其的虐待。奧斯瓦爾多-普格列斯習慣穿著他那無尾半正式晚禮服套著的睡衣來面對監禁，也許是因為他是一個堅強的共產主義者，他」樂衷「於那副模樣蹲監獄。無論他入獄與否，他的樂隊總會在他閑置的鋼琴上放置一束瓶裝紅色康乃馨。

On any day of the week, lovers of tango can dance to Pugliese"s classic, 「La yumba」, in Buenos Aires, Montevideo, New York, London, Madrid, Paris, Amsterdam, Helsinki or Tokyo. Dozens of other cities, including Beijing, hold milongas, get-togethers at which both tangos and milongas are danced, at least once or twice a week. At these, there is always an itinerant or two—a banker in town to work on some deal, an exchange student, an actor, a mother visiting her daughter—whose passion for tango has led them, perhaps through the Internet, to this spot. No one needs, or wants, to press people on their background. At a milonga, it is enough to share this madness for tango.

在布宜諾斯艾利斯，蒙特維多，紐約，倫敦，馬德里，巴黎，阿姆斯特丹，赫爾辛基或東京，每個星期的周末，探戈舞愛好者們跳著普格列斯的經典之作—「La yumba」。其他許多的城市，包括北京在內，米隆加（探戈舞的一種）與其他與米隆加混合類探戈舞，至少一周會有一到兩次活動。這些活動中，總有一兩位過客，如在小鎮上辦公事的銀行家，一個交換生，一位演員，一位母親正看望她的閨女...他們對探戈舞的激情（也許是通過網路）使他們走到了聚光燈下。沒有人需要，或者想去對人們的身世背景施加壓力。在米隆加探戈舞現場，能夠充分地享受對探戈舞的熱念。

What is tango? 「A sad thought you can dance」, say some

探戈是什麼？有人這麼說，那是「一種能夠跳出來的哀傷」

But what is tango? The commonest description—the vertical expression of a horizontal desire—is the least adequate: that applies to nearly all dances. 「A sad thought you can dance」, a comment on the wall of the National Academy of Tango in Buenos Aires, is closer to the mark, though tango was not always a sad or even a nostalgic music, and can certainly be a joyful one. Besides, though Luis Alposta, a poet of tango, is surely right when he says that the tango is 「the most beautiful dance in the world for couples」, he is quick to point out that tango has three elements: music and song as well as dance.

但是，到底什麼是探戈呢？最普遍的描述最不恰當：縱向的（身體動作）表現你橫向的渴望。這種描述幾乎適用於所有舞種。「能跳舞的悲傷思緒」，這一句來自布宜諾斯艾利斯探戈舞民族學會牆壁的評價，更符合邏輯。雖然探戈舞不總是悲傷或者懷舊的音樂，也可以是歡快的調子。除此之外，儘管探戈詩人Luis Alposta對探戈的說法毋庸置疑，即「世上夫婦們最美麗的舞蹈」，他很快指出，音樂、歌曲和舞蹈是探戈的三要素。

The lyrics of tango, based on copious use of lunfardo, the port-city"s hoodlum slang, have grown over the decades to create a vast, chaotic tableau of Buenos Aires life, in a language that is still topical and accessible. The music has a life of its own, too. Ever since Astor Piazzolla, the genius of Argentine music, demanded in the 1950s that people listen rather than dance, plenty of talented musicians have disdained dancers and even singers. Nestor Marconi, perhaps the finest bandoneon (concertina) player of the post-Piazzolla generation, says that before Piazzolla, 「tango was a music in service to the dance; now it"s a music in itself.」

探戈舞歌曲的歌詞是以」lunfardo「即港口城市小混混們的口頭禪為基礎的，幾十年來逐漸地擴大發展，通過一種仍流行且易接受的語言，造就了布宜諾斯艾利斯生活的一個遼闊而又吵雜生動的場面。探戈音樂同樣地有著自己的生命。自從阿根廷天才音樂家Astor Piazzolla在50年代提倡人們只聽別跳，許多有才能的音樂家們蔑視舞者甚至歌手。內斯特-馬可尼，也許算是在皮亞佐拉那代以後小六角手風琴拉得最了得的演奏家了，他指出，在皮亞佐拉時代以前，探戈舞僅是為了舞蹈而服務的音樂，而如今其確是返璞歸真了。

And the elements of the music? One recent afternoon in Buenos Aires, Emilio Balcarse, once one of Pugliese"s chief arrangers, is putting a young tango orchestra through 「La yumba」. Afterwards, he describes the composition as: 「A rhythmic force that develops strikingly to the point where it dissolves into something much more soft. First, a strong sense of rhythm; then everything is much sweeter, more intimate; finally, it"s back to the main theme, but with a solo, in this case the violin, inside the rhythmic structure.」 That"s as good a summing-up of a tango as you can get. Since Piazzolla, however, the classical harmony and counterpoint on which tango was built have been stretched to the limits, with new rhythms and instruments added to the brew.

那探戈的音樂呢？布宜諾斯艾利斯最近的一個下午，一位曾任普格列斯首席指揮家的人，Emilio Balcarse正組織著一隻年輕的探戈舞管弦樂隊練習「La yumba」名曲。隨後，他對這部作品的撰寫作出了這樣的評價：「嘈嘈切切錯雜彈，大珠小珠落玉盤。間關鶯語花底滑，幽咽流泉水下灘。」剛開始，旋律動感十足，隨後旋律變得更加悅耳親近。最後，回到了主旋律但又有一曲獨奏，小提琴琴曲揉入了旋律當中。那是你能理解探戈舞的很好的一種綜述。然而，從皮亞佐拉一代以來，探戈所衍生的和諧調調以及重複旋律逐漸走到了極限，新旋律和新樂器開始醞量起來。

Unravelling the secret

解開其中的秘密

Half a century ago, Argentina"s greatest writer, Jorge Luis Borges, put his finger on the problem of tango:

半個世紀前，阿根廷偉大作家Jorge Luis Borges對探戈作出了自己的見解：

The tango can be debated, and we have debates over it, but it still guards, as does all that is truthful, a secret. Dictionaries of music record its short, adequate definition, approved by all: ...[it] promises no difficulties, but the French or Spanish composer who then follows it and correctly 『crafts" a tango is shocked to discover he has constructed something that our ears do not recognise, that our memory does not harbour, and that our bodies reject.

探戈可以被討論，我們已經討論的夠多了，但是探戈仍保守著，似乎所做一切符合現實這樣一個秘密。樂典中記錄著其簡短且恰如其分的定義，被大眾所接受：【探戈】給人以無阻難的希望，但是某法國人或西班牙撰作家隨後延續其風格並且正確地精製一曲探戈，震驚地發現他構造出了一種我們耳朵無法識辨，我們的記憶無法停留，我們的身軀無法抗拒的東西。

Borges had another insight, which he appears to have borrowed from Oscar Wilde:

Borges有過其它的見解，似乎是從奧斯卡王爾德那裡引用過來的：

Music reveals a personal past which, until then, each of us was unaware of, moving us to lament misfortunes we never suffered and wrongs we did not commit. For myself, I confess that I cannot hear 『El marne" or 『Don Juan" [two tangos] without remembering in detail an apocryphal past, simultaneously stoic and orgiastic, in which I have challenged and fought, in the end to fall silently in an obscure knife-fight. Perhaps this is the tango"s mission: to give Argentines the belief in a brave past, in having met the demands of honour and bravery.

音樂襯出了一個人的過去，那時候我們每個人沒有意識到，這種音樂感動著我們，使我們悲嘆從未經受的不幸和我們未曾犯的過錯。對我自己來說，我承認我不能聆聽『El marne" 或『Don Juan" （兩種探戈）而不去想起過去那不足憑信的過去，那時的恬淡寡慾與放蕩不羈。那時的我也曾抗戰過，最終靜靜地淪為了一場不公開的持刀搏鬥。也許這就是探戈的使命：旨在給對勇敢的過去以信仰，滿足榮譽與勇氣的需要。

No two people agree about the origins of tango. The only thing about the tango that can be stated with conviction, Borges says, is that it was born in the brothels. Hence the lascivious movements, the suggestive titles—「El choclo」 (the corn-cob), 「El fierrazo」 (the iron rod), and the way pairs of men would dance the tango on street corners, since the women of the neighbourhood were repelled by its debauchery. But Ricardo Garcia Blaya, a contemporary writer on tango, says of the brothel theory that 「nothing is more absurd and incorrect.」 Tango, he insists, was born in the dance halls; there, polkas and waltzes also had suggestive names.

沒有兩人對探戈的起源看法一致。Borges說，唯一能夠對探戈令人信服的說法是，她來自情人館。因為一些挑動情慾的舉動，影射性的標題—「El choclo」（玉米棒棒），「El fierrazo」（鐵杆桿），以及男人們在街角跳著探戈，被鄰家少婦厭惡了其的放蕩不羈。但是，探戈的同一時代作家Ricardo Garcia Blaya說，沒有什麼比「情人館理論」更加的荒誕和錯誤的了。他強調，探戈出自舞廳；在那裡，波爾卡舞與華爾滋同樣有影射性的名號。

One dominant camp says that the tango was accepted by the upper classes of Buenos Aires only after the dance had been taken up with passion, just before the first world war, in Paris, and that the Vatican lifted a ban on the dance only after Pius X himself had been treated to a demonstration. Complete fabrications, say several modern historians. As for the word itself, some say 「tango」 comes from an African word, tambo, meaning a gathering place for slaves and freed blacks to dance; others say it comes from the Spanish fandango; yet others have entirely different explanations.

一個佔優勢的陣營方提道，探戈直到該舞蹈點燃激情後才被布宜諾斯艾利斯上層社會所接納，就在第一次世界大戰前，在巴黎，羅馬教廷頒布了對探戈的禁令，直到庇護十世他自己遭到了遊行示威。一些現代歷史學家指出，這是一派胡言。至於對探戈這個名詞的本身，有人說「探戈」來自非洲語「tambo」（路邊酒館），意思是一個奴隸們和解放的黑人們聚會跳舞的地方；其他人則說它來自西班牙「fandango」（一種西班牙舞）；還有一些人則給出了完全不同的解釋。

Since everyone has a claim to know the origins of tango, The Economist will not be left out. In 1880, Buenos Aires had a population of 210,000. By 1910 that number had nearly sextupled, to 1.2m. It was to Buenos Aires that new railroads brought livestock off the vast pampas, to be slaughtered and refrigerated in the (mainly English) meat-packing plants, and then shipped out around the world. These boom-days brought European immigrants—chiefly Italians, Spaniards, French and Germans—in droves to settle on the edge of the city. (The history of Buenos Aires, Bruce Chatwin once said, lies in its telephone directory.) The fencing off of the pampas, and the mechanisation of livestock transport, brought displaced gauchos, or cowboys, to the same urban fringes. The immigrants, uprooted from their home continent, and the gauchos, uprooted in their own country, met and blended in a new town they soon embraced as their own. The music they made together managed to sing at once of a sense of loss and of a deep attachment. Nostalgia and sentimentality: two strands of tango.

鑒於每個人對探戈的起源各有說辭，TE雜誌也不會排除在外。在1880年，布宜諾斯艾利斯擁有210，000人口。到了1910年，人口數量達到了接近六倍的水平，約120萬正是布宜諾斯艾利斯的新鐵路帶離了廣闊的彭巴斯草原牲畜，它們在肉類包裝廠被屠殺和冷藏（主要是英國廠），然後被船裝運到世界各地。這種急速發展的歲月帶來了歐洲移民，主要是義大利人，西班牙人，法國人以及德國人，成群結隊地定居在城市的周遭。（Bruce Chatwin曾說，布宜諾斯艾利斯的歷史記錄在了其的電話名錄上。）彭巴斯草原被柵欄隔開著，牲畜們被機械化運輸工具運輸著，導致了牧人們以及牛仔們同樣地陷入了城市危機中。那些在他們家園被連根拔起的移民們，那些在他們祖國被連根拔起的牧人們，他們相遇並混居在一個他們隨即皈依的新鎮。他們一起創作了探戈音樂，歌唱了他們曾一度的失落感，以及深深的依戀。鄉愁與傷感：探戈的組合神經

Cowboys, blacks and payadores

牛仔們，黑人們和payadores

The gauchos brought with them their guitars and their musica criolla of essentially Spanish origin: haba?eras, fandangos, milongas, vidalitas and cifras. The new immigrants brought their ability to read and write music, a broader array of instruments, and Italian opera traditions. At some stage the bandoneon arrived, an impossible instrument (「a chaos」, says Mr Balcarse), with four registers and little order to its buttons. Yet, somehow, this German instrument for playing hymns was subverted into something diabolically expressive. 「You can play tango without the bandoneon,」 says Leopoldo Federico, one of the surviving great musicians of tango"s golden era in the 1940s and 1950s, 「but the history, roots and direction of tango are inconceivable without it.」

牧人們帶著他們的吉他和他那有原西班牙特徵的克里奧爾人：健康與美麗的好幫手？探戈舞蹈中的Eras, fandangos, milongas, vidalitas and cifras.新移民們帶來了他們品閱和撰寫音樂的才能，一系列更加廣泛的樂器以及義大利人的傳統歌劇。在其中的某一階段，bandoneon（小六角手風琴）被引進來，這是一種不可思議的樂器（Balcarse 先生稱它為「一片混亂」），它只有四個音域且音琴按鍵雜亂無章。然而，不知怎麼地這款演奏宗教讚美詩的德國版樂器顛覆性地變成了一種魔鬼般表現力的樂器。當今倖存的探戈黃金時代（1940-1950）偉大音樂家Leopoldo Federico指出：「你們可以不用bandoneon（小六角手風琴）演奏探戈舞曲，但是探戈的歷史、根源以及前進方向沒有它是不可想像的。」

Today, tango is reviving again

今天，探戈重新復興起來

Argentine blacks may also have thrown their influence into the mix with the candombe—the only Rio Plata dance that clearly has African, and even Indian, rhythms—and the milonga, a jaunty, 2/4 music which to this day is danced to add variety to a languid stream of tangos. But the black influence is hard to gauge, for few remain in the city today. Many were sent to fight in the genocidal campaigns against the Indians, in the Paraguayan war of the late 1860s and in the civil war of a decade later; others left for Montevideo, in Uruguay. Chatwin was not entirely right: today, Buenos Aires is a whiter city than almost any in Europe.

阿根廷黑人們也許已經把他們的影響力融入了candombe（一種明顯擁有非洲甚至印度風格的里奧Plata舞蹈），也融入了米隆加（探戈舞的一種，2/4拍子，當今用來增加探戈舞蹈的「慵懶無力」的潮流）。但是，由於很少保留到了今天的都市，黑人對探戈的影響很難估算。很多黑人被派遣去反抗印度人滅族運動的活動中，1860年代末期的巴拉圭戰爭以及十年後的內戰；其他人則到了烏拉圭的蒙特維多居住。Chatwin（英國旅行小說家）寫的並不是完全正確：今天，布宜諾斯艾利斯這個城市比大多數其他歐洲城市的白人都要多。

Gradually the tango spread from the urban fringes, through the suburbs, to the centre of Buenos Aires. It was helped on its way by payadores—itinerant singers with barrel-organs, whose shocking notes must have wafted through the windows of more respectable, but grateful, homes—by the dance halls that sprang up, and, for those who insist, perhaps by the brothels. At the start of the first world war, tango was on its way to pushing out other popular styles of dance. Between 1903 and 1910, over 1,000 records were released in Buenos Aires, a third of them tangos. In the next decade, 5,500 records were issued, half of them tangos.

漸漸地，探戈舞曲從城市邊緣蔓延開來，穿過城郊到達布宜諾斯艾利斯市中心。得到了payadores（那些帶著手搖風琴，拿著雷人手記的巡迴演唱者們）的幫助，探戈舞在舞廳風行起來，對於那些堅守者們大概會認為探戈來自情人館裡。第一次世界大戰伊始，探戈開始擠出了其他流行風格的舞種。到了1903-1910年間，超過1,000張唱片在布宜諾斯艾利斯發行，其中三分之一來自探戈。其後的十年里，發行的5,500張唱片中探戈佔了一半。

Today, tango is reviving again. 「Throughout its history you hear that tango is finished,」 says Daniel Melingo, one of a younger generation of tango musicians. 「People talk as if it"s their own youth that"s over.」 And that attitude, he says, is what feeds tango"s nostalgia, which in turn generates new expressions of dance, music and song.

今天，探戈捲土重來一位年輕的當代探戈音樂家Daniel Melingo的說：「縱觀歷史你聽到的是探戈沉淪的聲音，人們聊著屬於他們的純真年代已不復存在，但是這種心態滋養了探戈舞曲的懷舊之情，反而激起了探戈其舞蹈，其音調以及歌曲的新鮮表達。

Adriana Varela, a powerful female vocalist of tango, says that Buenos Aires is a city that too often turns its back on the vast Rio Plata. 「But whenever it turns round to face the river that shaped it, the city rediscovers everything that touches the people of Buenos Aires. My job is to take what the great poets of Buenos Aires have wrought, and to convey the landscape to which I belong.」 Tango is a sense of place more than it is a set of musical rules. As Borges put it long ago:

探戈聲樂界赫赫有名的Adriana Varela女士說，布宜諾斯艾利斯這個城市總是迷戀著那廣闊的拉普拉塔河。「但是，無論何時回望那成形的拉普拉塔河，這個城市再次發覺布宜諾斯艾利斯的人們與之相濡以沫。我的工作在於採集布宜諾斯艾利斯偉大的詩人們曾寫的作品，用來表達屬於我的願景。」探戈是一種地方歸屬感，勝過了一套音樂的規則正如很久之前Borges說的那樣：

We might say that without the evenings and nights of Buenos Aires, a tango cannot be made, and that in heaven there awaits us Argentines the Platonic idea of the tango, its universal form.

我們可能會說，沒有布宜諾斯艾利斯的白晝與黑夜，就沒有探戈的存在，在天堂那端等待著我們阿根廷人的，是探戈的理想信念，她平凡的一面。

from the print edition | Christmas Specials

譯註：

1.concertina [,k?ns?"ti:n?]

n.六角形手風琴

2.criollan. 在通用西班牙語的拉美國家出生的歐裔(尤指西班牙裔)女人(或女孩)

3.fandango（方丹戈舞(西班牙或拉丁美洲的一種輕快三步舞)

a provocative Spanish courtship dance in triple time; performed by a man and a woman playing castanets）

4.tableaun. 畫面；活人畫；戲劇性局面；生動的場面（複數tableaux）

5.tuxedo[美國英語]

[亦作 dinner jacket](男子的)無尾晚禮服，無尾禮服，小禮服

(男子的)夜小禮服