The TangoTouch 

'Latin' and 'Continental' Influences on Music  and Dance before Australian 'Multiculturalism’

(A brief description by the author)

See another description at http://www.music.unimelb.edu.au/research/CSAM/review22.pdf

John Whiteoak © 2008 

All reproduction, other than for an individual user's personal reference, is prohibited without prior written permission.

The Tango Touch 

In place of a formal education in Australia, I spent my teens and early twenties travelling the world on ships, motor-bikes and other transport, but mostly on ships. My love of music came not from the juke-box, radio or concert hall but from the dockside bars, night-spots or nefarious dance halls that seamen always headed for as soon as the ship was tied up and all necessary duties were completed.  Recollections of the very numerous ports visited—Haifa, Genoa, Buenos Aries,  Punta Arenas, Lorenco Marques, Bremen, Cape Verde, Kingston and so on—are somewhat coalesced.  What remains as clear as a moment ago is sitting in small bars absolutely mesmerised by the music of a virtuosic solo accordionist, pianist or small ensemble dispensing what I would come to know as Continental music.  This was Latin, 'Spanish-Gypsy', French, Italian, German, Russian, Jewish or whatever—music that segued between whatever repertoire or style might sooth, please, interest or excite the international patronage of these places. To a youth from the Melbourne outer suburb of Reservoir (made famous as a cultural wasteland by the satirist Barry Dickens) with no previous exposure to this type of music, or the way it was played, hearing this exciting and exotically 'different' music was my musical epiphany and the beginning of a life devoted to curiosity about music. The ports I visited all those many year ago would be unrecognisable today and old venues long swept away with the changes. Furthermore, since that time I have arrived at the important understanding that the pleasure and excitement of observing exotic musical, terpsichorean or other 'difference' is entirely subjective—it may well be the opposite to what performers are experiencing, even enduring.  Yet I am glad to have experienced, albeit so subjectively, this transcendent sense of difference at an impressionable age and I devote this study to those long forgotten Italians, Jews, Germans, Latinos and others who unknowingly provided it. 

What The Book Is About

It may be best to preface this explanation with one of the questions that the book sets out to answer.   The excerpt below  is taken from a 1949 entertainment magazine review of a Melbourne 'Continental' night spot, But  how does the contemporary reader interpret this half century old description with its no longer familiar references and curiously multi-cultured connotations?

When I arrived this was already well attended by patrons dancing to the tango rhythm of Guitar  Romano which is the "theme tune" of the Continental Ensemble which plays from 6.30 to 9.30  p.m.  … Barronne Kuva portrayed originality in selecting Nino Alda, Continental guitarist, as leader.  Not only has this handsome young man developed a beautiful broad tone most suitable for Continental solo playing, but he is also showing great promise as an arranger: especially of the more serious music. …he has already aroused interest by his Zanda Rhapsody for Guitar and Orchestra, and has just completed an intriguing Oriental Beguine Arabesque.   As a featured artist, the radio star, accordionist Edigio Bortoli, as always is causing a clamorous sensation.  Making a special feature of classics and yet playing Rhumbas and Tango's(sic) with brilliant versatility… ….As a special presentation, Gypsy violinist Paul Steiner, is undoubtedly a great asset to the group with his Continental library of 2000 arrangements, and a memorised repertoire of 500 compositions and, judging by the applause when playing at tables, it is obvious that his touring of the Continent has gained for him well deserved recognition.  Evidence of considerable experience was substantiated by Arthur Knight, who displayed equal aptitude when supplying the foundation for Dinner Music, or the more complicated rhythm of Rhumbas and Tango's(sic) which are a speciality of the ensemble. 

 The Tango Touch  is, above all other things, an history of what I define as ‘Latin’  ‘Continental’ and 'Mediterranean' influences on music and dance in Australia before ‘multiculturalism’ became official government policy, before substantial Latin-American migration to Australia, and before the nebulous concept, ‘world music’, became a cultural platform and successful marketing label for the products of multicultural fusion and, to a much lesser extent, the music and dance of Australian ethnic minority communities.  Yet the book also has important resonances for  present-day Australia in which 'Latin' music and dance and even a 21^st century equivalent of 1930s 'Gypsy-tango' music are only partially or, in the case of the latter, not at all associated with participants hailing from the specific nations or peoples that are perceived to have originated these forms.  

As a work of historical musicology and dance research, it is informed by extensive primary source research and personal gathering of rare documentation such as printed ephemera, published and unpublished scores and sound recordings—in fact, a similar depth and breadth of foundation research as was applied to Playing Ad Lib: Improvisatory Music in Australia 1836-1970 (Whiteoak 1999).  It is further informed by a musical background which commenced with playing ‘Latin’ and other so-called ‘Continental’ repertoire in 1960s Melbourne night spots that catered largely for European diners and dancers.  The bringing together of music and dance research in the one study comes out of the illuminating experience of editing, researching and writing for the Currency Companion to Music and Dance in Australia (Whiteoak&Scott-Maxwell 2003). This provided a greatly enhanced appreciation of the interdependence of dance (especially social dance) and musical (especially popular music) development.

As with Playing Ad Lib, The Tango Touch frames a history based on foundation research within a cultural and social perspective and approach conceived specifically for its ‘music and dance in Australia’ subject matter.  For Playing Ad Lib, I sought a inclusive conceptual framework (defined therein as ‘improvisatory music’) that allowed discussion of improvising in music across the totality of Australian music activity from early colonial times, spanning the high-brow/lowbrow music divide, but necessarily excluding the traditional musics of minority ethnic groups present in Australia over this period.   For The Tango Touch, I sought a similarly inclusive conceptual framework to embrace discussion of a cluster of related cultural influences on Australian popular entertainment that I define as ‘Latin’ influences (‘Spanish-Gypsy’, ‘Afro-Cuban’, ‘Mexican’ and others), but also to embrace discussion of the complex relationship of these influences to ‘Continental’ influences on Australian popular entertainment, including the once popular ‘Gypsy tango’ orchestras.

A De-essentialised Story

Although I had been collecting archival materials relating to this topic for some years, the determining impulse for writing the book came out of difficulties encountered in commissioning articles on Latin-American influences for the Currency Companion to Music and Dance in Australia. Members of Latin American communities we approached raised various problematic issues of authenticity, ownership and cultural marginalisation.  For one thing, much of the so-called 'Latin' music consumed in Australia at present, salsa for example, is hybridised and globalised music lacking the specific social and cultural meanings associated with folkloric forms or, say, the nueva canciơn (new song) genre with its special resonance for Chileans who fled the Pinochet government. Latin-American music and dance forms, particularly before Latin-American migration, were generally imported as (mediated) borrowings from exoticed 'others' and therefore— as postcolonial theory asserts—marginalised these partly imagined 'others'.  Our potential contributors expressed resentment towards Anglo-Australians who claimed or were ascribed expertise as performers of Latin-America genres and expressed horror at the idea that the article should include discussion of the above mentioned early manifestations of Latin-American influence, such as the vogue for tango dancing that reached Australia around 1913 via London, Paris and New York.

I received several similarly negative reactions from Latinos (Spanish speaking) who came to hear a paper I presented in Adelaide at the 2003 cross-disciplinary conference, Sonics, Synergies, Creative Cultures. Entitled ‘How Abe Walters Became Don Carlos: Australian Constructions of Latin-American Music Before Latin American Migration’, the paper  was specifically intended to gauge potential academic and public response to the book I had begun to formulate but was yet to name The Tango Touch.  Reaction to the paper was along the lines that what I spoke about was not only irrelevant to Latin-American music and culture in Australia, it marginalised Latino practitioners within the history of their own music in this country.  These understandably negative responses did not, however,  reverse my growing conviction that the ‘warts and all’ story of musicians and dancers engaging with ‘Latin’ influenced music and dance before Latin-American migration had to be told as a fact of cultural history.  

The most obvious justification for this conviction was the inescapable truism that Latinos were, with some rare and interesting exceptions, largely absent from the early story of Latin-American inflected music sand dance in Australia.  What appeared to be required therefore was the story of non-Latinos like the ABC radio bandleader Harry Bloom who creatively engaged— not with authentic music and dance forms of other cultures—but with partly informed imaginings and representations of these forms, and with little if any knowledge of the cultural contexts from which they originated or supposedly originated.   This would be a book that—like Ronald Radano's  Lying Up a Nation: Race and Black Music which critiques the almost sacred belief in a racially specific 'Black' essence underpinning the integrity and the legitimacy of African-American musics—deliberately 'de-essentialises' the early Australian history of 'Latin' influence in music and dance.  

Tangled Roots and Routes of Influence

As research for the book deepened and expanded, it became clear that the story was much more complex and comprised a number of overlapping and intertwining narratives, including colonial-era 'Spanish' influence on popular entertainment; racism and xenophobia in Australian entertainment industry industrial relations; the popularisation of the accordion and the Spanish guitar; the influence of Hollywood movies and the British Dance Academy on Australian social and competition dancing, and so forth. One of the most significant strands to emerge was the story of the role of non-Anglo Australians—individuals of Italian and Jewish descent in particular. The Tango Touch is, therefore especially concerned with revealing how and why Italians like Dom Caffaro. Angelo Candela,  Sergio Fochi, Peter Piccini, Duo Moreno (the Scartozzi Bros.), Peter Ciani, Lou and Enzo Toppano, Ugo Ceresoli, Franco Cambareri and very numerous others—along with Jews like Harry Bloom, Phil Cohen, Abe Walters, Leo White (see jpg at left), Leo Rosner and lots of others—became so closely identified with Latin-American dance music and, especially in the case of the latter, ‘Gypsy-tango’ or just 'Gypsy' music.  Dan Bendrups points out in his 2002 study of the  music and dance in Melbourne's Latino community that, even in  present-day Latino bands,  Italian-Australians remain the first choice as vocalists when no Latino is available because 'linguistic similarities between Italian and Spanish facilitate performance in Spanish' (Bendrups 2002:23).  Another relevant contemporary example is that of Australian klezmer bands who closely identify with and play 'Gypsy' music.   

Yet, it soon also became clear that in certain cases—the case of Italian-Latin music for example—there was often something more complex and deeply informed at play than just the representation or delineation of 'others' music.   Furthermore, the research revealed a surprising degree of cross-cultural collaboration in ensembles  identifying with Latin-American, 'Gypsy' or other 'Continental music', even before the Second World War.    

Latin as a Multifaceted Concept

It was therefore obvious that for the purposes of the study the term 'Latin' had to be defined in a way that extended very far beyond its most common contemporary meaning with regards to music and dance. ‘Latin’ is, for example, used as a metaphor for real and perceived connections and affinities between pre-modern and modern Italy and Latin-America, such as the fact that the Romance languages, Italian, Spanish, French and Portuguese are descended from Latin, and also for the wide embrace and cultural influence of the Roman Catholic church in the Latin-American and European countries in which respective Romance languages are spoken.

Latin: 'The Italian Touch'

'In those days, if you couldn't sing and play in four languages and master Spanish, you would never be employed by the [Latin] clubs.  You don't know anything about Latin-American until you have played in these venues.'

                                             (Melbourne virtuoso guitarist, composer and arranger, Joe Paparone)

'Latin' is also a metaphor for the actual historical affinity of Italians with Latin-American music and  dance, which is profound and traces back to mass Italian migration to Argentina, the 'Italianisation' of the tango in Argentina, and the popularisation of the tango in Europe by returning immigrants. It is not surprising therefore that Australia's first  'tango orchestra' leader was Italian (a bandoneon player who had lived in Argentina), or that early Australian composers of tangos sometimes adopted, not Spanish, but Italian pseudonyms to give their music authenticity in the eyes of the Australian public.  The section  entitled 'Italo-Hispanic Music and Dance' explores the richness and diversity of Italian-Australian efforts to replicate the engagement with modernity that was taking place in post-war Italy through modern Italian popular song, Latin music and dance, and many other aspects of popular culture.  It suggests that the 1950s and ' 60s transplantation to Australia of various features of traditional and modernised Italian popular culture was the most influential event in pre-multicultural era 'Latin' and 'Continental' inflection of Australian popular culture and that 'Italianised' Latin band music of this era was an Italian-Australian genre in its own right—the product of a self-contained and vigorously self-sustaining culture and society within Australia.

Exoticised Imaginings: 'Hispania'  and 'The Mediterranean'                                                           

Because, however, the book is substantially about engagements with representations of cultures of 'others', it became necessary to construct a concept of 'Latin' that comprises overlapping and semi-interchangeable 'lands' and 'people' of exoticised imaginings.  'Spain' or España  overlaps metaphorically (and otherwise) with Latin America  through the usefully ambiguous (if sometimes controversial) term 'Hispanic':  culturally related to or derived from Spain,  people of  Spanish ethnic heritage or of  the Hispanophone (Spanish speaking) countries, particularly those of  South American and the Caribbean.  Hispanic is derived from Hispana, a Roman province that embraced Spain and Portugal and  modern day Portuguese are sometimes embraced by the term, Hispanic.    The first Hispanic influences in Australia were early nineteenth century imaginings of Andalusia, Spain, and in particular the ecstatic music and dance of Spanish 'Gypsies' (Roma people).

This notion of intersecting and coalescing imaginings is perhaps best illustrated by a quote from Michael Frishkopf's chapter, 'Some Meanings of the Spanish Tinge in Contemporary Egyptian Music', in Geoffredo Plastino's 2003 anthology Mediterranean Mosiac.  In asking Egyptian respondents why there was a profusion of Spanish and Latin sounds in contemporary Egyptian pop, Frishkopf states that: 'most respondents pointed to Andalusia as a key factor in the selection of Spanish (and Latin) music, indicating the enduring power of Andalusia in the contemporary Egyptian imagination.  …Spanish (and by extension Latin) music is a symbol that evokes Andalusia…'.(Frishkopf: 162)

 While Frishkopf''s chapter usefully points to the common perception of 'Latin' as equating with Spanish and, compositely, as the 'Spanish Tinge', his article forms part of an anthology about another 'land' (in this a case a multi-cultured region) of exoticised imaginings that is especially relevant to The Tango Touch, namely 'the Mediterranean', extending laterally from the proximity of Andalusia through the foot of Italy to the (albeit strongly contested) metaphorical Jewish homeland.  As a more complex example of  the notion of interconnected 'lands' or regions of imagining,  the title, lyrics, cover art and music of  Isle of Capri (a  smash tango-song hit in Australia in 1936) references most of the 'lands', regions and races of imagining that are relevant to The Tango Touch: 'Spain', 'Latin-America' including 'Mexico',  'Italy', 'the Mediterranean' and to an even more overarching concept, 'the Continent'.

 To explain this proposal, the tango (which means 'to touch' in Latin) is a dance and music form perceived to draw origins from Cuba, from Andalusia, from Argentina (at a time of intense migration from Italy), and, soon thereafter, from Paris.  Its development and early popularity was also associated with Mexico, especially though Sebastian Yradier’s famous habanera, La Paloma, composed before 1865, which reached the USA via Mexico and thereon to global popularity. Perhaps not surprisingly one of the earliest tangos published in Australia was Miss Mexico (Allans c.1907).  The title and cover art of Isle of Capri is meant to evoke 'Italy' but it also evokes the Mediterranean as a sunny, mildly exotic holiday playground (replete with the promise of dark and charming Latin lovers).  As with all of these things, it was set to become an enduring standard of eclectic 'Continental music' repertoire as played by 1930s and '40's 'Gypsy-tango orchestras', suave 'Continental' dance-restaurant and cabaret bands and so forth to tango, beguine, or gentle rumba rhythms.

It’s like a fever, It’s like a plague

It's swept all Europe, From Moscow to The Hague

You kiss while you're dancing

The Continental, the rhythm is driving you wild

The concept of 'Continental' as an overarching category of influence-embracing 'Latin' as an almost integral component-is probably the most difficult to try and convey to the present day reader.  I tread and stretch most precariously in attempting to describe this multi-level construct of part imaginings. Yet this concept is the key to understanding how all the levels relate and how the highest level, Continental influence, is able to embrace not only 'Romantic language related 'places' and 'the Mediterranean'  but also many other 'places' of part imagining, such as 'old Vienna',  'Russia' , 'Hungary' or 'The Alps'.

Continental' as understood in Australia from the early 1930s was, for example, a generic term for someone from Europe.  European artists who reached Australia, such as the Jewish-German Weintraubs Orchestra and also the Jewish-German Comedy Harmonists, were often referred to as 'clever Continentals'. The Continental was the sensual rumba song hit featured in a spectacular twenty minute dance routine from the Hollywood film Gay Divorcee (1934).  In simplified form, the Continental became the Australian rumba 'Dancing Sensation of 1935' and brought increased attention to Latin-American music and dance. Continental was also a generic term for popular music perceived rightly or wrongly to emanate from or be mediated via Europe. Continental meant imbued with European style and sophistication, as in Continental décor or cuisine, 'Continental cabaret-restaurant', or, for that matter, the subdued and sophisticated rumba, The Continental.  It was a mode of musical presentation and performance as in the phrases 'played in the Continental manner' or  'presented in the Continental manner'. It also meant a specific type of repertoire for listening or dancing at the Continental-style venues that became so popular in various forms from the 1930s.

Continental music comprised a mixed repertoire of what patrons perceived to be the evergreen and newer popular music and light classics of various European countries (and their 'Gypsies'), notably Spanish, French, German, Italian, Russian or Hungarian, and of a type most likely to please an audience of mixed nationalities while also being mildly exotic to Anglo-Australian patrons. It almost always included Latin.  Other repertoire, such as American evergreens, jazz standards or newer hits were often interpolated depending on patronage. Musicians of European background sometimes referred to their Continental music as 'international music'.  Dancing to Continental music, regardless of dance genre, generally took the form of so-called 'crush dancing', dancing adapted to small floors. 

Gypsies, Tango Orchestras and Continental Influence                                                                  

The basic principle of [the Continental orchestra at the Dorchester] is the playing of Latin music in its original style, which, coupled with their playing from table to table of Gypsy melodies, creates an atmosphere of the Continental cabaret.                                                                                                                                           From  ‘Continental style pays big Divs!’ Music Maker, Sydney. November 1946

The ‘Gypsy’ of western imaginings provides the best metaphor for the conceptual overlap between Latin and Continental music, the breadth of genres the latter  embraced, and the manner in which it was presented.  Racial and cultural stereotypes of the Roma of Spain were widely popularised in George Borrow’s influential 1841 travel book The Zincali: An Account of the Gypsies of Spain, which also discusses the Rom of other nations and compares them with the ubiquitous ‘Jews’ (as do other influential nineteenth century writers).  Borrow’s Spanish ‘Gypsies’ or ‘Gitano’ are, for example,  dangerously seductive and ‘dusky’ (un-white) wanderers with dark flashing eyes and distinctive physiognomy who dance with compelling poise and ecstatic abandonment to wild and excitingly percussive rhythms, including ‘furiously’ played and ‘demoniacal’ sounding guitar accompaniment. His Hungarian ‘Gypsies’ or Czigany, ‘are very fond of music, and some of them are heard to touch the violin in a manner wild, but of peculiar excellence’.  ‘Gypsy’ violin playing subsequently became as emblematic of Hungarian culture as ‘Spanish Gypsy’ dance, hand clapping, and guitar playing is of ‘Spain’.  The style Hongrois or Spanish-Gypsy style influenced many nineteenth century and later solo instrument, orchestral and theatre composers.

One aspect of the Gypsy stereotype (with basis in fact) is that the contingencies of being a wandering race taught Romani people how to take whatever was around them—including local music—and use it in their own unique manner for their own advantage. Their ability, and that of professional Gypsy imitators, to take and embroider popular tunes and styles  'in the Gypsy manner' gave them a reputation in the cafes of Vienna, Paris, Moscow and Budapest, for example, as performers of a type of international music that was idiosyncratically romantic, exotic and expressive but also somehow familiar, and highly responsive to patrons desires: 'many musical decisions are made on the spur of the moment depending on the musician's "read" of the customer' (Bellman 1998:85).

What matters here is the historical and metaphorical association between the early 'Gypsy' or Gypsy-style café performer and the Continental venue performer of later years in Australia.  The relatively sudden mid-1930s success of 'tango orchestras'  (or 'bands') for intimate Australia venues and radio broadcasts led Australian Music Maker to publish an article explaining that 'Tango music is almost universal.  France, Spain, Germany, Spain and South America each have their own individual style of Tango, although the fundamentals are the same.’  Tango, Gaucho- tango, Gypsy-tango or just Gypsy orchestras  in Australia—despite whatever costumes they wore—played the eclectic type of Continental repertoire already discussed, providing a successful prototype for later Continental venue ensembles. The term 'playing in the Gypsy manner' was increasingly reserved for, say, a fiddler, accordionist or both playing from table to table in the café tradition of old Europe.   However, the role of musicians in larger Continental venue ensembles, regardless of actual ethnicity, remained that of looking and sounding Continental: ethnically 'different' or 'foreign' but in a sophisticated and appealingly exotic way.  For European migrant patrons, however, a Continental venue was a place of nostalgia as well as a place for dining and dancing—an imaginary journey back to a place of happy and sad recollections.

Mediated Latino Music and Dance: Bolero to Bossa Nova                                                       

'On several occasions the syncopations and cross-rhythm of the tunes were too much for the  musicians and finally a … piano was brought down…to reinforce the strings.' (a 1914 review of a Melbourne Tango Tea)

Despite the convolutions and complexities of the extended way in which 'Latin' and its relationship to 'Continental' are defined for The Tango Touch,  a central function of the book is to trace and describe the influence of mediated Spanish and Latin-American (mediated Latino) music and dance, as such, on Australian popular entertainment and related culture from the earliest known examples to the 1970s.  Seminal events, influences and trends from the 1970s to the present day are surveyed and compared in the final section.  

The colonial era component of the book follows threads of  Spanish, Spanish 'Gypsy', (and other 'Gypsy') and early Mexican influences in opera, ballet, variety, circus, Wild West shows and other popular stage genres, and also in social dance music and broader forms of popular and art music, including the Colonial era presence of the Spanish guitar.  Beginning just prior to WW1, it also traces the introduction of the tango as a stage and social dance craze closely related to the then current ragtime dancing and music craze.  Social contexts for tango dancing, such as  the Tango Tea are examined and also how tango dancing was taught and perceived from a social and moral perspective in Australia.  Imported and locally composed tango music are compared and special contingencies associated with early Australian ensemble performance of tango music are discussed.  Spanish, Mexican and other early Latin-American influences (e.g. tango song) on 1920s stage, silent cinema, and social dance music and dancing are described and situated within the rapidly shifting cultural and social processes of Jazz Age modernity ‘down under’.      

The book is, however, equally concerned with the work of professional musicians and dancers from the cultural 'mainstream' who, for whatever personal and professional reasons, engaged with these challengingly unfamiliar forms to become recognised as practitioners and, in some cases, creators of repute.  A few examples are the 1930s ABC dance orchestra leader, Jim Davidson, and the 1940s Latin orchestra leader,  'Ernesto Rittez' (Ernest Rittie), in Afro-Cuban rhythm; guitarist George Golla and reeds player Don Burrows in Bossa Nova, or Jo Muhrer, multi-lingual vocalist with the 1960s Italian-Latin Mokambo Orchestra. Among examples in dance are the sensuous and fiery 'Spanish' dancer, 'Lola Montez', an icon of 1850s goldrush era entertainment or the influential Latin-American cabaret dancer and choreographer Jeanne 'Montez' of post-War Australian entertainment.  The former was Irish and the latter Irish-Australian.

Finally, The Tango Touch, as some may even guess, drew some initial inspiration from John Storm Roberts’ The Latin Tinge: The Impact of Latin American Music on the United States.  This early work (1979, 1999) comes out of a scholarly ethos that is especially appropriate to the historical study of popular performance culture in pre-multicultural Australia.  Roberts writes that: 'In reality, the issue of “authenticity” is largely irrelevant in popular music' and that 'Critics have tended to treat “commercial” popular music as a nefarious influence on supposedly pure forms. …[Musical forms have] always borrowed from and lent to other forms; the pejorative and, in the context, essentially meaningless concept of corruption betrays a basic misapprehension of musical evolution.'  The same can also be said for dance.

Yet ‘authenticity’ and ‘borrowing'  remain sensitive issues for those who feel they have been borrowed from and had their borrowings misused.  Therefore, an extensive introduction, that  places The Tango Touch  in relation to various debates, theories and perspectives associated with post colonialism and those who dare to critique it.

  Overall Structure:

Introduction

Part One: Ethnicity and Exoticization

Part One begins with a select historical and demographic orientation to non-Anglophone migration to Australia relevant to the Tango Touch narrative.  This orientation called 'Music, Dance and Migration', discusses migration from Spanish, Portuguese, Italian and German speaking countries, Jewish, Rom, Alexandrian Greek migration and other significant examples.  Certain music and dance traditions transplanted to Australia as ethnic community, folkloric festivity or ethnic club entertainment are also discussed. This orientation is followed by 'Gypsies, 'Gauchos' and Other Part Imaginings', which overviews the origins of globalized 'Latin' and 'Continental' related music and dance stereotypes imported to Australia.  Part One, among other things, makes it clear that migration from the real or perceived places of origin of important stereotypes (e.g. Spain) was often too minimal to have had significant bearing upon local interpretations of these stereotypes as entertainment products. 

Part Two: 'Castanets, Fiddles, Accordions, and Congas'

This, the central and most complex part of the book, takes a more mainstream cultural perspective and traces the influence of imported Latin American and Continental European music and dance stereotypes and their adoption and creative interpretation by Anglo and non-Anglo professional music and dance practitioners in Australian popular entertainment (including colonial opera and ballet), reference to significant cultural and social overlap with ethnic community music dance and entertainment culture. 

The first section 'The Hispanic Touch' comprises two sub-themes:   'The Spanish Touch' (mediated Spanish influence in Australia from the 1850s) and 'Down Argentina Way' (global and Hollywood mediated Latin-American influence from the tango to the bossa-nova).

The second section, 'The Continental Touch' examines the relationship of 1930s Gypsy-tango band concept to later Continental influences, including 'Bavarian', 'Russian' and other pre-multiculturalism ethnic theme venue entertainment.

The third section: 'The Accordion' describes the popularization of the piano accordion in Australia and the special significance of its role in Continental, Gypsy and Latin music.         

Part Three 'Italo-Hispanic Music and Dance'
This, the penultimate theme of the book, describes how Italian-Australian affinity with Hispanic music and the Spanish language enabled them to inhabit the cultural space resulting from absence of Latino performers and, in the post-war period of mass migration, create a vast and vibrant music, dance and social scene based primarily around Italianized-Latin music ('Italian-Latin' band music) and canzone, modern Italian popular song.  The second half of Part Three comprised case studies                 

Part Four: From Folkloric to 'Counterfeit Gypsies'

The Tango Touch concludes with a survey of the effect of relevant later developments including mass migration from Latin-America, official multiculturalism and the world music scene.   It explains the demise of the Continental and 'Italian-Latin' venue scene but also describes some present-day continuities, such as an Australia-wide web based collective of Italian-Latin era composers, the continuing popularity of Italian-Latin dance music in Italian community social life, surviving remnants of Continental venue entertainment, and reconstructions of the Gypsy-tango concept in Australian klezmer and world music. 

Discography:

A discography of all known recordings of Latin and Continental music (recorded in Australia), including piano rolls.

Some Sources Referred to or Drawn Upon for this Book Description:  

Whiteoak, John.  'Family, Friendship and a Magic Carpet: the Music of Franco Cambareri'  in  Italian Historical Society Journal  vol.16  2008   Online at http://www.coasit.com.au/IHS/index.html.