Post it on TangoMango

TangoMango’s homepage

If you live in the San Francisco Bay Area, you’re probably quite familiar with TangoMango, an extensive online community calendar that lists Argentine tango events. The site has grown to become the number one resource for tango dancers in California since it was launched over ten years ago. It’s also well known in a few other metropolitan areas, such as Los Angeles, Chicago, and Miami. But tango dancers in most other areas of the country are less likely to visit the site and may not even have heard about it. If, for example, you were to find yourself in Hamilton County, Nebraska, and wanted to discover local milongas, you’d probably end up browsing the web for the individual websites of local organizers and venues instead of searching on TangoMango, as you might have done in the Bay Area or the Los Angeles area.

An Argentine Tango Orchestra in Upstate New York

Orquesta Victória
Photo by Paula Abramovich

In the summer of 2015 I attended a concert in Berkeley, CA, given by a young and fairly unknown tango group from Buenos Aires, Orquesta Victoria. The music they performed that night at Berkeley’s well-known performance venue, Freight and Salvage, struck me as unusual and fascinating. It had a strong message and was delivered with the kind of verve that comes from deep down inside. It was not your usual Argentine tango music. There were a few performances by local professional dancers, but their dancing just underlined the message of the music and was almost a distraction from the band’s performance. The orchestra had just arrived from Argentina on their first tour in the USA to promote an album that they had recorded by San Francisco composer, Debora Simcovich.