In the histories of Rioplatense tango, perhaps no instrument better represents the tension between tradition and modernity than the guitar. While unquestionably central to the tango’s early development, the guitar gradually disappeared from mainstream tango ensembles, only to be reborn as a powerful semiotic symbol of nostalgia—a musical haunting of modern tango.
The transition from the old to new guards of tango begins in 1916, when Pascual Contursi composed lyrics for Samuel Castriota’s instrumental tango “Lita,” creating what we now call tango canción. Notably, these lyrics paint an evocative image of a forgotten guitar collecting dust in a wardrobe.
La guitarra en el ropero todavía está colgada
nadie en ella canta nada ni hace sus cuerdas vibrar
(The guitar in the wardrobe still hangs
No one in her sings nor vibrates her strings)
—Pascual Contursi, Mi noche triste
This shift towards poetic expression in tango marked the beginning of the guitar’s symbolic exile from the modernizing tango.
This moment coincides with the transition to what historians call la guardia nueva (the new guard) in tango. This “new guard” begins with a nostalgic reference to a forgotten guitar, establishing a pattern that would define tango’s relationship with its own history.
Nostalgia permeates Argentine culture, and tango exemplifies this tendency. As cultural theorist Svetlana Boym wrote, “nostalgia is a longing for a home that no longer exists or has never existed.” Furthermore, Boym identifies two forms of nostalgia that operate simultaneously. A “restorative nostalgia” that constructs the national identify through symbols, e.g., the gaucho, and a “reflective nostalgia” of personal and cultural memory. Both of these nostalgias operate in tango history.
The associations of tango and nostalgia are well-documented. José Torre Revelo and Federico Quintana described the tango as fundamentally nostalgic while Tulio Carella observed that “the theme of tango belongs to another era… It was reality. It is no longer reality.” Current scholarship continues to analyze the role of nostalgia in tango lyrics vis-à-vis a melancholic reflection of Argentina’s relationship with modernity.
During the first half of the 20th century, Argentine intellectuals engaged in fierce debates about cultural modernity, exemplified by the Florida and Boedo literary schools. As the country industrialized, cultural critics questioned tango’s place within national identity. Should tango modernize or preserve its “primitive” origins?
In her book, Primitive Modernities: Tango, Samba, and Nation, Florencia Garramuño describes the paradoxical manner in which modern Argentine identity incorporates elements once considered primitive or uncivilized. Idealized versions of these elements are discursively incorporated into the image of the modern nation. In the case of tango, the traditional trios of guitar, flute, and violin gave way to larger ensembles centered around the piano. As Garramuño notes, the piano served as “an ambassador for the tango in the more ‘decent’ circles of society,” enabling greater rhythmic sophistication while distancing tango from its rougher origins.
The guitar—with its strong associations to the gaucho tradition—became a symbol of the pre-modern past that modern Argentina was supposedly transcending.
Simultaneous to the fervent debates about cultural modernity and mainstream tango’s move towards piano-centric orchestration, a counter-movement emerged in the 1920s and 30s: what we might call “revival groups.” These ensembles deliberately preserved older instrumentation and performance styles, including the guitar. Groups with names referencing the past like Conjunto del año 90, Típica del 900, Quinteto Antaño, and La orquesta de la guardia vieja regularly appear on radio programming during this period, explicitly positioning themselves against the modernizing trend.
Like other forms of sonic conservatism, this revival emerged during a period of acute social and political crisis in Argentina. The democratic experiment under Radical governments faced constant challenges, exacerbated by the global Depression and culminating in the 1930 military coup that ushered in the “Infamous Decade.”
Beginning in the 1960s, well after the guitar had been exiled from modern tango ensembles, the echoes of its strings could still be heard in the left hand of pianists such as Pugliese, Goñi, Gosis, and Di Sarli. Composers and pianists developed techniques to evoke the guitar’s sound, particularly the bordoneo (imitation of guitar basslines).
[https://youtu.be/ax1A4t08lxw?si=pQSLBetlsQ5Cw0jo]
Emilio Balcarce’s composition La bordona (named after the guitar’s bass strings) is the most famous example of this compositional technique. Though written in the context of an orquesta with piano, the piece traces the outline of a basslines and arpeggio typical of solo guitar playing. Fittingly, it has since been adapted as a standard in the tango guitar repertoire despite being composed for piano and orquesta.
[https://youtu.be/HxJ-YqEeuTw?si=nEb1_2pNdXUZydCh]
Similarly, Eduardo Rovira’s “Preludio de la guitarra abandonada” (Prelude to the Abandoned Guitar) makes this connection even more explicit, using chromatic bordoneos and arpeggiated fills to evoke the abandoned guitar of tango lore and evoking the nostalgia for Contursi’s guitar hidden away in the wardrobe.
[https://youtu.be/HA6rAw6t2sE?si=gw7dThRbOA74ZvH7]
This treatment of the guitar reflects deeper patterns in how nations construct their histories. As Benedict Anderson observed, nations require a sense of both being “new” and simultaneously “historical”—products of time immemorial. Similarly, Eric Hobsbawm noted that “Nations without a past are contradictions in terms… It is a retrospective mythology.”
By relegating the guitar to the past, tango’s modernizers created a clean historical narrative: primitive tango with guitars gave way to sophisticated tango with pianos. This narrative conveniently paralleled Argentina’s desired trajectory from agrarian pampas to cosmopolitan industrialism.
By positioning the guitar as a symbol of tango’s past, the discourse of modern tango effectively banished it from contemporary practice. The guitar was left, as Contursi wrote, hanging in the wardrobe where no one sings anything, nor vibrates its strings. And yet, we hear its echoes in the modern orquestas which choose to use the bordona technique.
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