TodoTango - Where You Can Find Everything Tango
With more than 100 years of history, Argentine tango has undeniably garnered a following that continues to thrive even in the modern age.
Those who have just been acquainted with tango tend to find themselves with a whole world of knowledge to learn, while those who have been practicing tango for years will never run out of new things to discover. Tango has also produced a host of talented singers, composers, and dancers who have made their mark as masters of their craft.
While tango dancers and dance techniques are often the first things that come to mind when discussing this world-renowned phenomenon, tango also has an amazing kaleidoscope of music and songs that have given tango its unique identity.
However, because tango has remained, in large part, a dance that is taught and spread by word-of-mouth, it can be difficult to find a repository of information that has compiled all pertinent aspects of tango in one place. This is especially true when it comes to the songs or orchestras used for dancing. While it may be a little easier for natives of Buenos Aires to find information about tango — seeing as it’s a part of their national culture — much of the Western world appears to only have scattered information about the lives and works of tango singers, composers, and dancers.
In that respect, one such website stands out, and it may be considered one of the most comprehensive spaces on the internet to provide well-researched information and even first-hand interviews involving tango personalities.
The site is called TodoTango, which is dedicated to all things tango, from its compendium of tango songs to its compilation of tango-related articles that provide information that might not normally be found in other blogs.
The Beginnings of TodoTango
Like many blogs and websites that have now garnered a huge following on the internet, TodoTango began as a rather simple but innovative idea at the time it was conceptualized.
In its 15th anniversary video, Ricardo García Blaya, founder and director of TodoTango, explains how the website came to be:
“The website was born out of an idea we had when we were doing a radio show on the National Radio. We were collectors who played music that was different from the tango programs on the radio. And we wondered how many people the radio was reaching? That was the time when they were selling web pages for millions of pesos. There was an expansion of something new and, we thought: the tango and the internet, that's like oil and water. But why not? Why not make an attempt?
“And we met with Néstor Pinsón. I said, I have an idea of how the website must be. And that's how we started.”
Néstor Pinsón, the site’s advisor to the director, also referenced this meeting with Ricardo in his post, “An eighteen-year friendship:”
“Ricardo García Blaya accepted a space in my radio program Siempre el Tango and, months later, one evening, when we were walking along Avenida Mayo, he exclaimed: ‘I feel like having an Internet site, will you join me?’ I agreed and he added: ‘We may meet here!’ We were passing by the bar of the Hotel Castelar.”
At the time, which was around 1999, websites were not as accessible or easy to make from the ground up. The internet was just gaining traction, with personal computers being more accessible to households. As Ricardo García Blaya himself mentioned, web pages were being sold for millions of pesos. At the turn of the 21st century, making a website required massive work and resources. Today, of course, it’s much easier to make websites, seeing as there are a variety of services that offer drag-and-drop website creation features that can be used even by those who have no knowledge of coding or those who do not have a large capital for building a website.
However, despite these challenges, Ricardo García Blaya and Néstor Pinsón pushed through with the creation of TodoTango.
In developing the website, Ricardo decided that the best way to build their information was to start with the most important names first, such as Francisco Canaro, Aníbal Troilo, and Carlos Gardel. Gardel — who is arguably the most popular tango singer and perhaps the most revered among all other tango personalities — even has his own dedicated section in the website.
“Gardel is so important that we're going to give him a special chapter,” Ricardo said. One can easily spot the Carlos Gardel tab in the TodoTango website.
From there, TodoTango added more names to their ever-growing repository of tango-related knowledge. Currently, it lists 4,740 artists in The Artists tab, whose names are arranged alphabetically based on their surnames. There’s even a functional search bar where visitors of the site can easily find who they are looking for. The site’s footer features an easy search function where visitors can simply click on links leading to tango musicians, poets, artists, singers, female singers, and composers. Tango lyrics, scores, and songs also have individual links that visitors can click on.
What’s more, TodoTango has listed 103 interviews to date, from the confessions of Ángel D’Agostino to virtual chats with Gustavo Naveira and Giselle Anne, along with many other articles, documents, reflections, and chronicles relating to tango not just in Buenos Aires but around the world.
The Challenges of Building the TodoTango Website
Although TodoTango’s website content began from personal collections, Ricardo García Blaya and the site’s staff soon discovered that there were many people willing to contribute their own knowledge and collections that may help the website further spread the word about tango, its history, personalities, and significant events.
In their 15th anniversary video, Federico García Blaya — the website’s research and content coordinator — notes:
“We have a lot of sources contributing information, sheet music, recordings, some bibliographies that we use, rather unusual sources of information for internet searches. For example, information from the civil registries, old registries of recordings, archives, old magazines—all those types of information.
“What we do is verify, edit, correct—be it a set of lyrics, a text, or the information about a recording. And we have a lot of people who send us texts: collectors, specialists in various subjects... Then we edit and decide what to publish.”
However, with such a wealth of information on their hands, it was inevitable that the TodoTango website soon found itself facing new challenges apart from simply building the website itself.
TodoTango needed to adapt to the swiftly changing times to grow and upgrade. With the globalization of information taking place thanks to the internet, TodoTango knew they needed the right people for the job.
Néstor Pinsón succinctly describes the kind of setup they have for TodoTango in his post, “An eighteen-year friendship:”
“Ricardo, for some needs of the moment, relied on his nephew Federico, the sheriff’s horse, who patiently found secret places of much help and so was becoming the living brain of the site. [Some] time later, [Jorge] Vilas quit and then came the little dilly, Felipe [Van Cauwelaert] — the one with the Belgian surname — in charge of the deep difficulties of the Internet.
“[Julio] Nudler, who was a contributor up to that time, later with his articles, recommended the one who was missing: [a] translator. He warned us: ‘He’s quite a character, if he becomes uneasy, you offer him a glass of wine or some food and everything will be OK, but he’s one of the best.’ And if Julio said so, we had no doubts and so Laureano Fernández turned up.”
With their small but dedicated “musketeers” — as Ricardo calls them — in place, the TodoTango website was ready to ride the tidal wave of changes that the early 2000s and the internet offered, but they were about to face another obstacle that came as a result of web development at the time.
In their 15th anniversary video, Felipe Van Cauwelaert — the website’s chief technology officer — explains the kind of shifting landscape TodoTango had to face:
“So the initial challenge was to connect this huge amount of data with that website that was just emerging, being born, and to unite it so that we could go on developing it while incorporating all that information efficiently.
“As we made advances, the technologies changed, programming, servers, social networks... Everything changed. And the website we had been making on our own kept growing in its way, but it got to a point where the reality around us had changed and we had to be able to bring it to update, but we didn't have the resources.”
A Community Effort
As the “musketeers” continued to diligently maintain and update the TodoTango website despite the challenges, it eventually gained a following among many tango enthusiasts and specialists.
Word spread about the website, and those who wanted to learn more about tango, its history, personalities, music, and stories soon flocked to the website and gave their own insights, opinions, and tango-related anecdotes. Many friendships even formed between the website’s visitors, which led to the creation of TodoTango’s community forum, the Café Table. With the Café Table, many of the site’s visitors found like-minded individuals that shared the same passion for tango, which even led to meet-ups and dinners organized by the participants of the forum.
The popularity that TodoTango gained would soon become the avenue that opened up an opportunity for the website to receive the aid it needed to continue. In their 15th anniversary video, Ricardo calls this instance the “miracle:”
“And then the miracle appeared: The Argentine Tango Society, which liked the website, which had been following it already for some time, was willing to give us a hand. And then formed a miraculous alliance, because not only did we remake the website, but also, we now have a fantastic machine for continuing our research because this [TodoTango] is a website of research and consultation.”
The Argentine Tango Society — which was founded in 2000 — is a non-profit entity that is dedicated to promoting tango and its different expressions.
During their 15th year and with the help of The Argentine Tango Society, TodoTango was able to change the design of the website — in terms of both aesthetics and functionality. The search function was further improved, and visitors are also presented with cross-referenced posts that can lead them to other posts that may not be related to their original search but can still capture their attention. From the thousand guests and participants of the website, Ricardo states that the community also grew at the time to five thousand, and it’ll be no surprise if it gains a lot more over the years.
Currently, TodoTango also has 300 listed contributors, each one offering their own articles, insights, and reflections about tango. Many of these articles were written by Ricardo García Blaya and Néstor Pinsón, whose friendship and collaborative efforts formed the foundation of what TodoTango is today.
A Continuing Beacon of Knowledge
Having overcome the challenges of creating their own website and eventually forging a strong community of tango enthusiasts on the internet,
TodoTango remains a beacon of knowledge that can help anyone find the information they need about tango and so much more.
While Ricardo García Blaya passed away on August 3, 2017, the TodoTango website remains in operation and continues to be visited by people both old and new to the tango scene. For many, it has become a place of learning and camaraderie, and it is likely to continue that way for many years to come.