Yiddish Tango Is Irresistible Musical Hybrid
A Rhythmic Melting Pot From Buenos Aires to Vilna
JTA) — The music that packs the Skirball Cultural Center’s stately courtyard – Yiddish tango – is a musical hybrid twice over.
On the tango side, it is a blend of African-born rhythms and a potpourri of European music styles. On the Yiddish side, it combines mournful liturgical melodies with folk songs.
Tango, too, is famous for its sensual dance, while Yiddish music is rooted in the festive freylekhs of traditional wedding bands.
In combination, the two prove irresistible, as the concert crowd stands and sways to the tangled rhythms.
For Gustavo Bulgach, 47, band leader of Yiddish Tango Club — the star attraction at the Skirball on Aug. 21 — the music is also a reminder of his childhood in Buenos Aires in the 1970s and ’80s. Born to a family of Russian Jewish immigrants, Bulgach grew up in Argentina learning Jewish folk music at the feet of his grandfather, a passionate music lover, and in the synagogue founded by his grandfather.
At the same time, he says, “Tango is more than the music you hear in Buenos Aires, it’s something you breathe.”
Bulgach is far from the first to combine Jewish music and tango in a heady combination. Tango music was born in late 19th-century Argentina in communities of newly arrived European immigrants, many of them Jews.
As Jewish musicians learned to play in the increasingly popular style, they added their own musical and linguistic flourishes — not only joining major tango orchestras, but also composing new tangos in Yiddish. Max Zalkind , for one, composed both in Yiddish (“Odesa Mama”) and Spanish (“Mi Quinta in Castelar”).