Johnny Mercer's song "Tangerine" captures this romanticism, as it tells the story of a glamour girl from Argentina, "the beauty of her race," who turns out to be empty and shallow, and her dark eyed beauty merely due to artful makeup. So while people in the U.S. romanticized Latin Americans, they also, using varying levels of subtlety, disparaged the very cultures they looked to for inspiration in songs, films, dances, and other entertainments. The American public was not alone in looking to another country for cultural inspiration. Argentinian people also drew upon musical styles from outside their borders, even as far away as the United States. During this period, the form of music that was the most greatly imported from the U.S. was jazz. As with tango in the U.S., Argentinians interpreted and made use of jazz in different ways than those employed in the country of origin. They listened to jazz with varying attitudes, some critical, some complementary, and as their U.S. counterparts had done with Latin Americanism, Argentinians viewed jazz, and U.S. culture in general, as the other. Jazz was as exotic to them as tango was to people in the U.S.
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Argentine writers were the first in Latin America to thoroughly examine jazz as a technically sophisticated musical genre. In the 1930s and 1940s, a number of Argentine jazz journals, particularly Síncopa y Ritmo and Swing, came into being to promote jazz and capitalize on its growing popularity in Argentina. (Borge,
Argentine writers were the first in Latin America to thoroughly examine jazz as a technically sophisticated musical genre. In the 1930s and 1940s, a number of Argentine jazz journals, particularly Síncopa y Ritmo and Swing, came into being to promote jazz and capitalize on its growing popularity in Argentina. (Borge,