Chinese musicians savor taste of tango

"Tango music makes my blood burn," says the 22-year-old Zhang, who studies guitar at the Sichuan Conservatory of Music. "When you suffer difficult moments, like being heartbroken, the music is a salvation."

Madrid-born violinist Hurtado was Liu's roommate when she studied in Germany, and he is excited to play the music in a Chinese band. New to China, he is eager to explore its music as well: "It's possible to do a new creation with the tango music."

Liu says tango, which had low origins in cheap dance halls and bordellos, was booming in the early 20th century and reflected life in the city of Buenos Aires, the capital and largest city of Argentina. From the 1960s to the 1980s, Piazzolla brought jazz and classical influences into tango, which has been termed nuevo tango, or new tango. Today, tango innovators sometimes merge it with electronic music.

Earlier this year, Liu completed master classes in bandoneon and tango orchestral arrangement at the Rotterdam School of World Music with Argentinean bandoneon master Victor Hugo Villena.

That experience capped years of finding her way.

In 2009, Liu worked as assistant to veteran singer-songwriter Dadawa, when she spent two years in a UN initiative to explore ways to preserve the cultural richness of ethnic groups in the midst of development. That vast exposure to Chinese ethnic music inspired Liu to experiment with tango.

In 2010 she found her way to Tango Chino Club, the first tango club in Beijing, which has given tango dance training to over thousands of Chinese people since 2008.

Ma Ke, the club's founder and director, was impressed by her talent.

"She is very persistent in tango music and full of creative ideas," says Ma, who first fell in love with Argentina football team first and then was eager to know more about Argentina culture, like music and dance.

In the tango club's early days, only foreigners living in Beijing joined in. But as more Chinese people became interested in tango, his club includes plenty of locals.

"Music is free. It will be enjoyed by people of different cultural backgrounds as long as we merge it in a proper way," he says. "I am looking forward to the tango music out of the Chinese musician's interpretation."

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