www.youtube.com/watch?v=1dUQ7xrEwlU

It is exactly 10 years since I first put a hesitating foot on a festival dance floor today. So I thought it would be fun to refresh my memories and reflect a bit on where I was then, and what I still keep from that time.

We were just entering the local tango scene, and didn’t really know anything about tango at all. We had seen Carlos Saura’s Tango, maybe Sally Potter’s Tango Lesson, but probably not yet at that time. Nobody in our community at that time had ever been to Buenos Aires. There was no youtube. Most, if not all of the visiting teachers were regional teachers.

There was a lot of buzz, we just had to go to this festival.

In addition to a few regional teachers, the festival featured Gustavo Naveira & Giselle Anne, Antonio Cervila Junior & Vanina Bilous, Julio Balmaceda & Corina de la Rosa and Javier Rodriguez & Geraldine Rojas. None of these names meant anything to us.

The workshops were spread out on several venues, so we had to run around to find the next workshop, and in the few moments in passing by the few people we knew from before, they were making comments on the dance floor quality (whether it was slippery, coarse, hard, soft etc) which puzzled us, as that was not issues in our thinking about dancing. It was a strange world, this tango scene.

The single workshop I remember most clearly was with a couple that should well known to anyone that has been in tango for more than a few months (this is the presentation on the festival website, 2000):

Javier Rodriguez & Geraldine Rojas (Argentina)
Geraldine is only 18 years old, but she surprises everybody with her capacity as a tango dancer. The couple is one of the “hottest” at the moment. They expose a youthful enthusiasm and joy that the public loves.

I’m pretty sure we signed up for workshops at the lowest level with visiting instructors, Beginner II (Just above absolute beginners):

Beginner II:
Approximately from 3 months to 1 year of classes and practice of dancing. Should know: Walking forward and backward, the two basic salidas, forward and backward ochos and placing of the body in all the cases.

As a warm up exercise, J&G did forward ochos, the woman doing overturned ochos and the man doing forward ochos as sacadas. It was a disaster. Not one single couple in the class were able to do it. J&G must have been terribly disappointed with the level of the class. They were mumbling ‘catastrophe’ among themselves as we tried in vain to stay on our feet with a minimal degree of dignity and control.

Nevertheless they made a lasting impression. Despite several detours over the years, this was the tango we eventually came back to. Calm, controlled, elegantly walking and with a great heart. I think watching this amazing couple at an early stage was very important in creating a vision of what tango was really like in my mind. Even if I didn’t know it myself at the time.

Both Julio and Corina and Gustavo and Giselle were teachers that we would take many lessons with over the following years. Unfortunate circumstances prevented us from taking lessons with Javier and Geraldine again, even if we did try. And when we finally managed to take lessons with Javier again, he and Geraldine already split up.

Two years later, Natacha Poberaj, then touring with Roberto Herrera, asked in a workshop whether I was taking lessons with Javier and Geraldine, which was hard to answer since we did not take many lessons with them, but we liked their dancing a lot. So yes and no…  She asked because something about Simba reminded her of Javier. I still have no idea what that could have been, though.

It could be that I put too much weight on this, but from my own experience first impressions matter. Which is one reason I think it is so important to bring first class dancers to my community. Not some mediocre regional couple. Some of the best. The real deal.

Before we can expect people to find their own tango, they have to see the real tango. Smell the real tango. Touch the real tango. Listen to the real tango. And feel the real tango.

That is what happened to me ten years ago.

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www.youtube.com/watch?v=LIckScLypGA

This extraordinary video gave me some food for thought and made me finish a line of reasoning that started after noticing a youtube comment. Complaining that the dancing was all acrobatics, but had no feeling for the music. Sounded very familiar, only this time it was not tango dancers, but b-boys they were complaining about.

Hip hop and tango have quite some things in common (and obvious differences, of course). Both span several cultural expressions in being essentially urban subcultures. Different times, different places, both have a reputation for somewhat old fashioned gender roles and have grown from local fenomenon to global activity with a strong pop culture image.

Now, in addition to being fascinating in its own artistic right, a few things got me thinking about tango about this video.

1. Dancer’s statements
2. The choice of music
3. The role of the internet

The internet: As more and more material gets posted on youtube and other places, ideas on how to dance tango spreads much faster around the globe than before. Now even old footage of several of the old milongueros begin to become available. While we often had to rely on someone’s teacher’s teacher’s teacher, often we can see for ourselves. People always watched and learned from each other, now it is more available than before. Some see this development as a problem, to me it is mainly a positive force. The dedicated beginner can learn a lot from a few hours before the computer that took years of traveling not many years ago.

Dancing to the ‘wrong’ music: All the dance numbers in this video are performed to music not associated with this kind of dancing. It is music from a different culture. It is not music from the streets, it is “art music”. Besides the effect of the unexpected, I assume the connotations of the more respected art form are very much intended for, demonstrating the artistic value of the dance.

But at the same time betraying the very culture that fostered these talented dancers. It is a powerful effect, but it could wear off soon. That is what I think happened  with the electrotango in the wake of the first Gotan Project and Bajofondo albums. It first sounded very refreshing and promising, but after a while the classics proved why they were classics, once again.

What works well in a show does not always work in the social dancing setting. Some people think electrotango is a way of building a bridge between familiar pop music and the real tango. Lately, I have found that I believe it is counter productive in building musical awareness, as people tend to end up thinking tango is danced to any music, and even after dancing for years, they can’t tell tango from other rhythms. At one point I played a short tanda of cumbia at a milonga (requested by several dancers), and some people started dancing milonga. The visiting teacher was shaking his head…. --This is cumbia, not milonga!

Memorable quotes:

It’s all about details — everything I move has purpose.
--J Smooth

when I’m dancing… ’cause at that point it’s just my body and the music, it’s not really a conscious decision, I’m gonna do this next, I’m gonna do this.  It’s kind of like this other level where you can’t make choices anymore, and it’s just your body reacting to certain sounds, and the music
--Kid David

it’s never what you do, it’s how it’s done.
--Kid David

you create power, then you tame it.
--Lil “C”

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Most djs follow a reasonably predictable scheme when they play, grouping the music in tandas of the same orchestra and from the same period. Also some variation of a repeating pattern is common when it comes to the sequence of the tandas.

However, new dancers often don’t know this (doesn’t anyone teach about how a milonga works?), and they don’t know the music. And as the incentives to learn it all alone are not as they were in the old days in Buenos Aires, many djs provide an extra service to their community in displaying what they are playing. Or it could be a device to get to work in peace and not have too many questions. Personally I enjoy having people come over and chat about the music.

Ms. Hedgehog’s recently posted about a nice book used for displaying the orchestra currently playing and/or the nature of the upcoming tanda (pitured above, photo from tangotandas.com. If you like the book idea, this could be a good place to start, as making one that looks as good yourself will take some time and effort.

The problem with this approach, as seen from the dj, is that it adds one more task that could distract from the primary activity, which is selecting the best music for dancing. Also, being a geek,  I prefer automation where possible, and it is not quite robust with exceptions to the general rules, playing other genres occasionally, maybe, mixing tandas etc.

I have previously used a screensaver showing orchestra, singer, title and genre for the previous, current and next track, making the information available to interested parties if I were away from the computer, and it would be easy to project the same information or add an extra monitor (However I never wanted to shell out the extra cash  let along add another piece of heavy equipment to bring, being mostly a volunteer.) If I ever set it up again, I will detail the setup in a separate post. In short I had foobar2000 write a text file with the relevant information, and samurize pick it up and display it as a screensaver.

On the tangodj mailing list a nice LED display was discussed as an elegant solution, which I would prefer to projection, but it is sort of expensive, and I don’t get that many questions, so for me it is overkill, and it probably requires a little work/programming to get it working with my current setup.

Using a separate monitor, I think using a web server would be an easy solution, and that opens up other possibilities as well, now that smart phones are finally taking off, lots of people have small computers in their pocket or purse, and could easily check a web page displaying what is currently playing and other relevant information. last.fm is a very simple solution, but it doesn’t display what is coming next. Web page, twitter or whatever, as long as you get the address distributed to the people around, you are basically there. You could print the url or qr on the ticket or the menu or something.  The obvious downside is if everybody ends up sitting with their nose in their phone all night.

Of course, a real milonguero already knows what’s playing…

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I had a couple of requests for the plugins for MusicBrainz Picard in the last months. I haven’t used them much myself, as there sadly are few contributers on tango music to the MusicBrainz metadata database.

However, I just checked whether they worked with the current format of tracks.csv from tango.info and the newest release of Picard (0.12.1). With one minor adjustment, they now do, and I uploaded the new versions to be found on the tagging with MusicBrainz Picard page.

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Enjoy!

HT: Jorge

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www.youtube.com/watch?v=eb3rA-2Rlf8

Clearly, they got something out of all these body mechanics workshops…

There is something about the fluffy prose of the tango advertising that is either funny or tragic. Maybe both. Why is it that the ones teaching ‘quality of movement’ have nothing of the sort? What exactly is ‘organic tango’? (Tango Voice does a great job in dissecting that term). What about ‘body mechanics’? Apparently these are often used together. Now which one is it, organic or mechanic? I am confused.

It’s probably just me, but my interest in taking workshops seems to be inversely related to the content of this kind of nonsense in advertising. Give me tango pure and simple, and give us teachers that dance well. Thank you for your patience.

HT: Jorge

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– Using your eyes is the simplest if you feel a bit uncertain. — See how the other guests behave. Everybody participates in a kind of theatre, where the guests, too, play their parts. That means that you are a part of the other people’s experience, just like the others’ behaviour is a part of your experience. That is why behaving properly is a way of showing respect for the others’ experience.

It’s not that hard, really. Visiting a new and unfamiliar milieu. Like a luxury hotel, as the above quote (in my translation) refers to. Or a milonga in Buenos Aires. Or somewhere else.

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If you already subscribe in some way or another, skip this post entirely. I added a facebook page for Simba tango in case you would like to get updates from this blog there.

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That’s all.

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–There is this guy…. and he plays the tango, too. I was at a Christmas party, sharing table with a guy that was writing his thesis on stride piano or pianists. Somehow the topic of tango had come up (strange, isn’t it?), and he was delighted to enlighten me about this early tango reference in American music. He promised to make me a copy, but that never materialized.

Nevertheless, I managed to track down the recordings myself. I didn’t remember the name of the pianist, but a little investigation revealed that it must have been Jelly Roll Morton in his Library of Congress recordings with musicologist Alan Lomax. In the recording sessions with Lomax, he tells his life’s story and illustrates by playing the piano. The sound quality isn’t great, of course, as this is really documentation of jazz history, old, and not really a recording meant for publication.

Fortunately, these recordings were published on cd a few years ago, and most of the “tango” songs (e.g. “New Orleans Blues”, “The Crave” and “Creepy Feeling”), you will find on Volume 4: Winin’ Boy Blues. Brilliant.  Morton himself calls what these tracks have the Spanish Tinge, which is really the habanera rhythm, so Spanish does not really refer to Spain, but rather to Afro-Caribbean influence.

I have often thought of the similarities between jazz and tango (more about that later), and in that context it is interesting to note that the self proclaimed inventor of jazz found the habanera so imporant to make jazz swing:

Now in one of my earliest tunes, “New Orleans Blues”, you can notice the Spanish tinge. In fact, if you can’t manage to put tinges of Spanish in your tunes, you will never be able to get the right seasoning, I call it, for jazz.

–Jelly Roll Morton

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From the product pages:

Either it’s after work, while studying or on a hung-over Sunday morning, this is a garment with a real statement:
- Who cares!

This has got to be the ultimate subversive fashion.

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