Prof. Morgan Luker, Reed College, Portland, OR

Explore tango music beyond what DJs play at milongas, from its musical roots to contemporary compositions, with Professor and ethnomusicologist Morgan Luker.

5:00pm EDT Sunday, April 26

Playlist and list of references in the talk.

Photo Credit:

Dancers are usually familiar with Golden Age recordings of tango music from the 1940s and 1950s that they hear at social dances. However, tango as a music genre has a rich history that spans over a century, with a large and varied repertoire, a rich vocabulary of styles and countless subgenres. In this seminar, Prof. Luker will take us on a journey through the evolution of tango music, tracing the tango’s musical roots, influences, trends, and major artists, from the genre’s earliest iterations to the thriving contemporary tango music scene.

This session will be interactive.

Morgan Luker is an Associate Professor of Music at Reed College (Portland, OR). He holds a PhD in Ethnomusicology from Columbia University. He is the author of The Tango Machine: Musical Culture in the Age of Expediency (University of Chicago Press) and the founding director of Tango for Musicians at Reed College, an intensive summer music program that brings musicians from around the world to Reed College to study tango. His current research examines historic audio recording as objects of knowledge in about Argentina.