Link and Wendland introduce the Cambridge Companion to Music by describing the art form’s multicultural orgins and its stereotypical associations; summarize the state of tango research to date; and provide brief overviews of the twenty book chapters.

Wendland and Link discuss post–Golden Age tango by comparing the life and works of its two great pillars: Horacio Salgán (1916–2016) and Astor Piazzolla (1921–1992). They offer insight into how these tangueros traveled on two distinct paths both in the trajectory of their careers and the development of their styles, and how they shaped the next generation into the twenty-first century.

Scholar and guitarist Eric Johns traces the historical and stylistic lineage contemporary of tango guitar performance practice. He highlights two important schools of playing established by Aníbal Arias (1922–2010) and Roberto Grela (1913–1992).

Ignacio Varchausky examines tango music through its standard instrumental performance practices. He draws on the orchestral styles of two Golden Age orchestras, those of Juan D’Arienzo (1934–1975) and Aníbal Troilo (1937–1975), and illustrates with important archival recordings and scores from the tango repertory. He explains musical techniques and practices that may provide a listener with sounds of tango’s history, and how musically embodying the art form may advance one’s understanding of its culture.

Romina Dezillio considers female tango singers’ artistic and social contributions to the professionalization of women within the national and international tango scene. Her study of the consolidation process of the tango cancionista (female tango singer) during the 1930s in Argentina reveals gender-based relationships between the tango canción and Argentine society as she highlights the personal styles and careers of three star cancionistas: Rosita Quiroga (1896–1984), Azucena Maizani (1902–1970), and Libertad Lamarque (1908–2000).

Paulina L. Alberto uses original research about a multigeneration family of Black musicians to illustrate different stages of musical experimentation that fed into tango. In doing so, she sheds new light on the relationship between the Afro-Argentine musical and dance tradition of candombes and early tango, and she challenges the entrenched racial narrative of Afro-Argentine “disappearance” over the course of the nineteenth century.

Kendra Stepputat examines the choreomusical aspect of tango through an ethnographic lens in European countries. She focuses on one of the currently very popular tango social dance events in Europe called encuentros milongueros, paying particular attention to how these events, originally set up to mimic tango dance environments in Buenos Aires, have developed into translocal/contemporary tango music-dance practice that is particular to Europe. In doing so, she challenges the reader to rethink what it means to call tango a transnational art form, and how this definition is evolving.

As a composer/practitioner, Julián Graciano offers insights into tango as a transnational musical form by analyzing the performance element of spontaneity and improvisation in two musical genres typically associated with the United States and Argentina, namely jazz and tango respectively. Graciano shows show how the two genres have impacted each other in sound, style, and technique, illustrated with numerous musical examples of his own tango-jazz hybrid compositions and other tango and jazz composers. As a bonus, Graciano provides a video tutorial on how to realize a tango lead sheet.

As we laid out the final chapter order of this book, we reflected on the research questions we initially posed when soliciting proposals from an array of tango scholars and scholar-artists. How do diverse humanistic fields of inquiry further shape our understanding of the tango art form? Inversely, how does the tango help us further understand culture and society? How do interdisciplinary perspectives on tango influence current scholarship? How do international perspectives on and research approaches to tango differ, and why are they important?

Morgan James Luker examines tango through the early recorded sound industry, using archival recordings of tango artist Ángel Villoldo (1861–1919). Luker shows the reader how to move from the narrative-driven mode of “causal listening” to the object-driven mode of “matrix listening,” and so view individual recorded sound objects as things with agency. He illuminates our understanding of Villoldo as a case study.

Ethnomusicologist Yuiko Asaba provides a solid global view of tango. She examines tango’s transnational dynamics with historical and ethnographic approaches, and embraces themes of affect and transculturality between Japan and Argentina.