There are no camels in the Koran 
Jorge Luis Borges

Frankly, i can’t tell if the Nepali excellent performance comes from the isolated initiative of a lost argentine salesman or rather they really couldn’t wait any longer for the Alberto Castillo’s ascension to Katmandu. Anyways, i believe we may take the Tibetan datum as a further confirmation of the medium-term and long-term expectations of the T-Business’ growth that i had advanced in due time from The Starving Artist’s hopeful pages. According to my predictions, Tango has in fact achieved several new and considerable markets in the last five years, thanks to the Gross Domestic Product’s extraordinary increase and to the concomitant package deal that was able to reroute its inflationary tendencies towards the neighbouring countries at first, and then to overseas. In this sense, we must admit the Government has intervened timely: the decree that has abrogated the obsolete myth of Antheus, which was in use since antiquity and was still regulating the physical decline of those who are uprooted from their environment, has successfully protected the numberless argentine citizens who are ready for export. The Government’s measures have also reasserted the common good’s supremacy over the profit sharing: even disguised as The Buenos Aires Festival, the allocation of the whole Public Tango’s stock-portfolio straight in the heart of the major european financial centers, is indeed a peak in kiosk-management.
On the other hand, as far as the integrated T-economy is concerned, we point out that if some deliberations on the public-private field, such as for instance the Tango Law, the petition to the United Nations Organization, the simplification of the commodity style index, the trademarks’ retroactive legitimation, the copyright crimes’ decriminalization among dancers, the didactic division’s deregulation and the concessional conversion from Tango-pair into joint-venture, should take the credit for having shown us where we have to steer for, it is also certainly true that without the indomitable argentine laboriousness, namely without the tricks, we hardly could have succeded in making the monkey dance. It’s time to shout it from the housefloors: the Unknown Soldier’s enterprise is not a stranger to the worldwide success of Tango. We applaud that simple and helpful Carlitos Cricrì who, although he was scarcely attending a two-years course at the evening school for milongueros and he’s still dancing like a dunce, gets himself the diploma in marketing and opens – without anybody’s help, and lacking in demand! – his own valiant branch office in Europe. The services he is disposed here to render are all indisputably authentic since they are not contaminated by any technical knowledge that would ruin his undamaged style and repel the customers. The brains he puts in forging his resumè, his door-to-door advertising, his majestic use of dumping and his unilateral loyalty to the likes of the public whom he’s the most obedient servant of, would be enough to turn this young trader into an outpost of the purest Tango. Even the fussy Borges is proud of him: 

"First of all i would like to signify my personal satisfaction as a porteño after noticing that the young generations of dancers, even though provincianos, proved to be insensitive to the lures of a short-sighted localism, and decided on choosing for their typical etchings the natural frame: Buenos Aires.  The old-fashioned gaucho’s equestrian silhouette, with its set of spurs, knives, hankies, nutrias and french heels, beats a retreat at last – dejado como chacarero – towards the bleak horizon of unemployment."

So the Typical is no longer the natives’ merry jalopy, but a modern, aggressive and constantly updated vehicle of profits, a real high-yield financial product which is worth an investment today. The Bartok’s quartets, that Julio Cortazar loved so much, won’t disturb the bombo anymore.
More explicity, in his essay "Iguanas and dinosaurs" Juan Villoro warns us against the identity’s quitclaim related perils in the nationalist genre. The only resource of the Latinamerican artists and their domestic ramifications in the years to come – he says – will be a versatile and willing authenticity, a category which is not exclusively provided for in the valuational disciplines, such as numismatics for example, but also in the performing arts. As a consequence, the Broadway and Corrientes Tango major firms are by now doing their best to become more local: while some are staging the adaptation for adults of their shows by discharging the compadritos, the New Year’s Eve singers, the Valentinos and the anatomically correct ballerinas, others are pondering the cast’s serious tanguisaciòn by means of a bunch of turning-model old milongueros. If a walrus leather bag, a Boccioni’s dented bronze or a Gardel’s tooth auctioned in Medellìn can all be authentic, there’s no reason why it couldn’t be so a turkey like the Tango Milonguero™.
Both Villoro and Borges agree that, in authenticity matters, the past is nothing but a determination of the present, the epigons invent their precursors. A recent publicity gimmick becomes a far-off times tradition, an old style of dancing which was abandoned because dull, is now a ready-to-patent rediscovery. There is no weirdness, no matter how fake soever it may be, that wouldn’t be endorsed by some Mr. Dumb’s memories.
Authenticity is thus a deliberate value added, with good prospects for the future. Once overcome the non-profit cultural hesitations, the today’s Tango can count at last on a real mercantile capital venture that’s up to the well-paid requests for exoticism coming from the theaters and the dancefloors all over the world, including Argentina.
If the camels are lacking in the Koran, i bet you anything, somebody will soon provide it with them

© TQR Jean Fajean - Easter 2001

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