Diana Garcia Simon - Ich hab' kein Heimatland

Diana Gracia Simon

Ich  hab' kein Heimatland - Jüdische Spuren im argentinischen Tango

 
105 pages, paperback, 2021, in german language

 
"I have no homeland, I have nothing in this world." This is how the Austrian composer Friedrich Schwarz begins one of his last compositions before he had to flee Germany because of his Jewish ancestry. His "Jewish tango", as he himself called it, captures the experience of homelessness in poetic words full of suffering.
Expulsion, loss of home, being eternally driven - a recurring, central theme in the tango. No title could have been more appropriate for a book that traces Jewish life in Argentinian tango. It is to the author's great credit that she has taken on this little-noticed topic. Her scientifically precise analysis does justice to the complexity of the subject.

Many Jewish artists hid their origins out of fear, even as musicians and lyricists. The few who did make an appearance are named in this book and saved from oblivion. They are imprinted with the characteristics of the tango, which is able to express all the feelings of life in exile. Or, in the words of the author: "The continuation of life in five staves"

(Reviewed by Dana Marietta Schuster in Tangodanza 99 - 3.2024)