In Strangers' Arms

Photo B. Dujovne. Biblioteca del Maestro

In Strangers’ Arms has been used as required reading in courses at various universities.
It has been acquired by over 170 university libraries including Harvard University, Yale, MIT, The Julliard School of Music in New York, the University of Pennsylvania, Stanford University, California State University, Indiana University, Georgetown University, The British Library, and The Singapore University.

Link to 170 libraries worldwide that carry ISA:
https://www.worldcat.org/title/in-strangers-arms-the-magic-of-the-tango/oclc/707825581&referer=brief_results

Archives of the Argentine Nation

Scope of the work and Methodology

The book views Tango as a complex human and cultural phenomenon, as more than dance. Tango is an attitude, a way of thinking, an ideology. It has its own institutions, places, icons, and much more…

With facts and new insights, this work debunks the identity that the world has constructed around the dance. These clichés violate its essentially human essence.

This research did not start with a hypothesis. It started with questions. It was carried out in Buenos Aires and in the United States. The field work took six years to complete. As a porteña who lived most of her adult life in the US, the author speaks from inside a her mother culture to her second culture. The field work used the anthropologist’s tools of participant observation, vignettes about the “internal” tango, and tape recorded interviews. Keeping up with the conversational nature of tango, archival and bibliographical research is presented in a personal narrative style.

Meditations about the unseen center of the dance and the culture that lies beyond the observer’s eyes are abundant from start to finish.

The academic research was conducted at the Archivos de la Nación Argentina, the Instituto Nacional de Estadística y Censos de la República Argentina, the Archivos de la Academia Nacional de Tango, the Biblioteca del Maestro, the “Blas Parera” library of the Sociedad Argentina de Autores y Compositores de Música, the Biblioteca del Congreso de Buenos Aires, and the Biblioteca Nacional de Buenos Aires.

Ferrer, H: La Epopeya del Tango Cantado”

Chapters devoted to the poetry adhered to the following methodology:

As with many genres of popular song, tango lyrics have been republished in numerous sources, often with a bewildering number of minor textual variants. For this book, my primary source was Epopeya del Tango Cantado. II. Antología, edited by Horacio Ferrer, which reprints the lyrics in the form of their initial publication (often preserving non-standard punctuation). For lyrics not included in Ferrer’s edition, I have followed the text in Las letras del tango, edited by Eduardo Romano. Romano’s edition also served as my primary source for date of publication; in cases where a song has different dates of copyright registration, first performance, and first recording, Romano selected the earliest date on record. For lyrics not included in either Ferrer or Romano, I have followed the online text provided by Todotango.com (a website produced by Ricardo García Blaya, member of the National Tango Academy of Buenos Aires).
My ultimate source for establishing authorship and publication date, especially for lyrics not included in either Ferrer or Romano’s editions, is the SADAIC copyright registry.

Sources matter

Argentine National Archives

The book has a bibliography, an index, and 49 photos graciously contributed by photographers from various countries. The bibliography includes  historical references based on archival documentation (identified as such), other books and journals consulted that may or may not be based on archival research (identified as such), interviews, a list of multimedia that reflects the aesthetics and spirit of the Argentine tango, and lyrics in Spanish with English translations.

See Beatriz CV and list of publications

See what academic “Readers Say”:

                                   Eric Van Young, PhD
                                   Sergio Pujo, UNLP
                                   Alfredo Minetti, PhD
                                   Jon Sauceda, MM, MLS
                                   Judith Stacy, PhD
                                   Bioeugenics, PhD
                                   Ann Dobyns, PhD