Dieter and I went to a small bar in Montevideo called ¨Fun Fun¨, to hear the tango........Uruguay is not very well known when it comes to the tango but actually Montevideo is, together with Buenos Aires, the “tango capital”.

Tango was born in the mid-1800`s among locals and immigrants, many of them italians. With its rhythms, candombe combines various African traditions and was popular with black slaves in Uruguay and in Argentina. The steps of the candombe are known the world over in another form - the tango. Experts believe the tango was created when the candombe merged with the milonga, an Argentine dance based on the polka, and the habanera, a Cuban dance.

Some scholars think the word tango had African connections, possibly referring to the name for drum in some African languages, while others think the word may be derived from Latin. In any event, in some parts of Latin America, 'tango' was associated with places where blacks gathered to dance. In Argentina and Spain in the late nineteenth century, tango referred to black dances in general.