Composing Finnish tango music started gaining momentum in the 1930s. When at the same time it became customary to dance tango using simpler social Foxtrot steps the ground was laid for the Finnish tango boom. Finnish tango differs from Argentine tango in all three main aspects of tango culture, namely music, dance and poetry.
Wanha Tango (Old Tango) is a style of tango developed by dance teacher Juhani Tahvanainen. It is based on Finnish tango and Argentine tango and is meant to be danced in dance pavilions especially to Finnish tango music.
Articles on Finnish Tango
- What’s the difference with Finnish tango (Tango in Depth, 2014)
- Tango in Finland (National Inventory of Living Heritage)
- Once I waited for someone — the story of the Finnish Tango (Pekka Gronow, Finnish Music Quarterly)
- Two sides of the tango coin (Alfonso Padilla, Finnish Music Quarterly)
- Social dancing in Finland (The Finnish Dance Server)
- Open air dancing (National Inventory of Living Heritage)
- The Finnish Tango. It’s history and characteristics (Jaakkola, 2002; archived)
- The melancholy of Finnish tango (Hakasalo, 1998; archived)
- Globalisation, hybridisation and the Finnishness of the Finnish tango (Heinonen, 2016)
- Finnish Tango (Tango Finlandia) (Tango Voice, 2011)
- Explaining the Finnish Love of Tango (The Economist, 2017)
- Finnish Tango: The Passion and the Melancholy (NY Times, 2013)
- Finland’s unlikely love affair with the tango (BBC World Service, 2012)
- Finland: home of the tango (The Telegraph, 2004)
Finnish tango playlists
- Tango Finlandia – Finnish Tango Playlist on Spotify (Tanda of the Week)
- Toivo Kärki’s most well known tangos (playlist on YouTube)
- Tango-orkesteri Unto (YouTube)
- Finnish Tango: Introduction (Rate Your Music)
TANGO ARGENTINO .FI 