Tango Goes East

Juliette Bretan traces the musical adventure of the tango and its interwar explosion eastwards in colder climes like Warsaw. A rich, unexpected history, encountering some of those who have brought it back to life.

Tango was created by Argentina's immigrant communities in Buenos Aires & Montevideo to incite passion and musical obsession. But you could argue it got a compelling, if brief, makeover in the far less sunnier climes of Warsaw, Krakow, Berlin and Moscow. Immigrant music remade by a multi-ethnic community on the cusp of seismic change and unforeseen destruction.

With Poland’s independence after 1918, a wildly talented group of mostly Jewish Polish musicians and lyricists took the Tango and made it their own. They even created global hits with Oh Donna Clara, originally Tango Milonga & The Last Sunday, both still performed around the world. Tango's eastern journey took it to Odessa, Moscow, Kaunas, Riga & way beyond, but it was in Poland that it enjoyed it's most sustained creative dance - in less than two decades 1000s of ineffably Polish tangos were created. Polish/Jewish/Polish-a möbius strip of identity. But this was never one way traffic as Juliette discovers, tango's song & dance has moved between South & East since its earliest days.

With the voices of: Olga Avigail, Piotr Flatau, Beth Holmgren, Michael Lavocah, Marcin Masecki, Jan Emil Mlynarski, Dmitry Pruss, Amalia Ran, Noam Sylberberg, Bret Werb, Katarzyna Zimek

Producer: Mark Burman