ABSTRACT
This chapter explores the commercial rise of tango in the Río de la Plata in the early twentieth century and traces how the urban worlds of tango in Montevideo and Buenos Aires were marked by musical collaborations, commercial and legal practices, and venues. Drawing on various primary and secondary sources about tango and mass culture in Uruguay and Argentina, this essay argues that transnational histories of tango's rise should be attuned to intellectual and commercial exchanges that reflected competing and overlapping worlds of mass culture. Uruguayan contributions to the emergence of recorded tango are analyzed and understood across regional, transnational, and global frames similarly to the musical genre itself.
