The Tango Machine: Musical Culture in the Age of Expediency by Morgan James Luker (review)

In recent years, music scholarship in Argentina has largely focused on tango, especially concerning the history of the genre and the various identity politics associated with the music and dance. Rather than focusing on defining tango as a genre, Morgan James Luker's The Tango Machine: Musical Culture in the Age of Expediency explores what tango does for Argentina, and how. Framing his narrative around George Yúdice's The Expediency of Culture (2003), Luker explains how tango has become a mode of cultural production that advances numerous political, social, and economic agendas from a multitude of actors after Argentina's neoliberal turn in the 1990s. These "managerial regimes," as he calls them, include tango artists, nonprofit organizations, transnational societies, and record labels, among others. Luker argues that "cultural-policy making has become the key mediator of cultural practice and artistic life at all levels and in nearly all places" (180), and as such, it must be considered a critical component of contemporary music scholarship.

Drawing primarily on fieldwork from 2004 to 2007, nearly every chapter begins with an ethnographic vignette, which then transitions into the goals and practices of a specific type of managerial regime. The early chapters start with local examples of managerial regimes such as the Buenos Aires–based contemporary tango groups 34 Puñaladas and Astillero. With each chapter, the scope broadens to include nonprofit arts organizations such as TangoVia, followed by larger, transnational organizations like UNESCO. The book concludes with an analysis of the cultural industries' increasing influence on economic development around the world. Luker consistently reassesses the mediation of global and local sensibilities along the way, suggesting that this "dual trend of detachment and connection" (136) of Argentine tango to Buenos Aires, to Argentina, and to the rest of the world is an expedient characteristic of the genre that allows for its use as both a cultural and economic resource. Short transcripts from Luker's interviews with performers, composers, record producers, concert organizers, artistic directors of nonprofits, and cultural-sector government employees are included throughout the book to illustrate the myriad modes of thinking about the purpose of music in the age of expediency. Although there are no musical transcriptions included, save three short rhythm examples, the detailed descriptions of sonic characteristics and other musical features in the text itself represent how the sound of tango music perpetuates its tendencies as a product of managerial regimes.

Interdisciplinary in nature, The Tango Machine will likely serve as a useful resource for performers, historians, cultural policy makers, and scholars in heritage studies and Latin American studies, in addition to ethnomusicology. The strongest point of this book is its impeccable balance of music, history, economics, and cultural policy making that negotiates the complex relationships between sound, heritage, tourism, and politics. The framework is broad enough to prove relevant to other musical genres in Latin America and beyond. Luker includes just enough historical background on Argentina and tango to make the book a valuable resource for a much wider audience, without diminishing its value to specialists in the region or genre.

The approach to studying music through cultural policy making sets this book apart from historical and sociocultural literature on tango, and it undoubtedly makes up for the minor questions that arose after my reading of it. The book almost exclusively focuses on tango in Buenos Aires. Although Argentina's capital is of course an important city for tango, the music and dance is used as a cultural resource both nationally and internationally, so it might have been interesting to compare the "tango capital of the world" to other places that also use tango for economic or political gains. For example, the discussion of TangoVia, a Buenos Aires– based nonprofit organization introduced in chapter 3 as a managerial regime might have been enhanced by a discussion of other case studies from arts organizations in other Argentine cities and abroad. Despite...