El Afronte
Among the many tango ensembles, this one stands out: the ten-member El Afronte Orquesta Típica brings the tango into the present day and brings all its shades between ecstasy and melancholy to the stage.
The ensemble was founded in 2004 and quickly made a name for itself in the milonga scene in Buenos Aires. The "milongas" can be compared to jazz jam sessions; they offer a world- and style-open framework for encounters between musicians, dancers, lyricists and other performers.
In Argentina, they originate from the tango tradition, but in the 1990s they developed into epicentres of musical exchange far beyond genre boundaries and were, among other things, nuclei for the Argentinean and Latin American metal and punk rock scene.
El Afronte occupies an exceptional position in this movement: The musicians of the orchestra form the core of Argentina's longest continuously running milonga, which has now been going on for over ten years. All forms of tango expression can be heard. The musicians make a point of not wallowing in the nostalgia of past decades, but also taking new developments into account.
One maxim is unalterable: Their sound remains acoustic, thus forming a clear counterweight to modern electro-tango. Dramatic, compact, powerful and frenetic.
