Brent's Milonga Blog Archives |
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2006 Nov. 6 - DJ Project: Biologists might well ask how DJs reproduce. On one level, their (DJs') peculiar habit is to reproduce the work of others, plundering the nest of other birds, as cuckoos are said to do. They give others' work their own spin, at their most benign by creating playlists, and at their most interventionist, mixing new elements into the original pieces and mashing pieces into other pieces, until everything begins to look and sound a bit cuckoo. But the real question on this occasion is how do DJs reproduce themselves. Where do little DJs come from? Sex education courses do not answer this riddle. Parents speak of it not. Official government brochures on the subject are absent. Tenured professors eschew it. No one has formed the relevant NGO. Until now. At the Cafe Casablanca, Victoria's tango institution where on Sunday nights the Collectiva de Milongas de Buenos Aires, a coterie of lusty spinners, engender musical evenings for the benefit of the Argentine tango dance community, there has been conceived the seminal DJ Project.  The project is devoted to answering the riddle, and indeed, by any means including parthenogenesis actually birthing the creatures, in all their plumed splendour.The first feathers have been woven. On designated Sunday Milongas by Request, dance community members are invited to bring their favourite songs on CD to the DJ of the night for inclusion in the evening's playlist. Besides tapping into the wealth of the community's most loved songs and interesting surprises in the spirit of creative freedom, this first step may flush out the closet DJ, crack a hitherto unnoticed egg. In plain English, anyone wanting to learn more about DJ-ing is very welcome to contact the odd bird warbling this blog (email Brent) or any of the DJs at the Cafe. The web too has its treasures in this regard. Texas DJ Stephen Brown, who has DJ-ed in Victoria, has a fine website for musical education. Visit his Tango Argentino de Tejas. Oct. 31 - Hallowe'en: Out they flew from their caves and attics. The Cafe Casablanca was happily haunted tonight.  
 
 
Sept. 18 - Memories of Garufa: A refreshing wave of young passionate energy swept into town this past weekend - committed musicians with a big reputation and generous hearts, and equally generous, patient, leading-edge teachers, inspiring us to discover more in the music, more in tango movement, more in ourselves than we'd known before. With the Trio Garufa (Adrian, Guillermo, and Sacha) and Homer and Andrea, we tunneled into the music of Astor Piazzolla, learning about his deep layers of rhythmic subtlety, played with that, and with how we could dance his langorous melancholy. We learned the sentence structure of golden age tangos, the better to express our own improvisational utterances. We learned more about the codes of traditional tango - navigation, connection (remember the Blind Tango, Capturing the Moon and Jealousy games) - and were given greater confidence to break out of our habitual patterns (Now!) and explore new ways to free the body's energy in the dance. And it was so invigorating to be among so many members of the local and international tango community and especially to see children learning alongside young and old adults. Our guests have returned home. Their inspired performances on stage and on the dance floor at the Cafe Casablanca and the Edelweiss, their joyful natures, our own time in the tango trance, and our own musicians jamming with the Trio give us new models to emulate, and promise of creative fun ahead. 
August 26, 2006 - Milongas as Time-Tellers: Milongas are marvelous timepieces, far more interesting than regular clocks, particularly in the era of the beep. Regular clocks no longer tick; they beep and disturb: random inhuman squeaks from mostly invisible machines engendering anxiety and acceleration. On the other hand, the enchanted Milonga arrives regularly in its community each week, bringing an esthetic order to the diurnal rounds, redeeming with its music, its line-of dance circling, its circles within circles, its social circles, its ovals of red wine and coffee, redeeming with all its intricate internal order the passing moments that otherwise depart as we age without ceremony and with no little fear.  Milongas also mark the comings and goings of our friends over the year. Their presence brings us joy, their absence is noticed. Friends in modern times move in and out of our lives like the rotating figures in massive clocks in European public squares. Music and dance are ambassadors that work an artful magic on the mystery of time. By a process of enchantment, time is also made our friend, and our usually hidden fears over its iron march are rightfully eased, I say rightfully for where there is no alternative there should be no fear. In the scheme we have devised and called the year, we have arrived at the end of summer. The melancholy of tango sings rather more clearly these days and will in the fall ahead, although we have much to occupy ourselves with during the harvest and really can dance into winter in good cheer.August 12, 2006 - Memories of Eduardo Saucedo: Generous-hearted Eduardo spent last weekend in Victoria, teaching, performing, DJ-ing and dancing at the Cafe Casablanca, and socializing with our tango community. He has visited our area a number of times since 2000, having made his first North American foray here and on Salt Spring Island with his friend, manager and tanguera kikki. This time Eduardo's mother Gladys came too. Meeting her goes a long way toward explaining the goodness and decency of Eduard's nature.  As is common knowledge now, Eduardo is a tremendously exciting choreographer and performer. He's one of the regulars at CITA in Buenos Aires and many other festivals around the world. He's taught for years at BA's Confiteria Ideal, featured in the movie The Tango Lesson. His teaching, famously and joyfully energetic, was preternaturally insightful even before his current excellent fluency in English, and is now obviously as good as teaching gets in the tango world, infused as it is with such a positive spirit. His teaching and performing this time focused more than ever on the importance of bringing one's passion to the dance, expressing something essential of oneself each time on the dancefloor. No one performs figures more dramatically and precisely than Eduardo. But he reminded us again that as inspiring and fun as these creative aspects of Argentine tango are, tango's core is the individual dancer's passion and allowing oneself the freedom to express it in this unique social and artistic medium. His most powerful lesson was his own performance with kikki this time at the Cafe, where he embodied the less is more principle sublimely, including one dance to a non-traditional tango.
July 29, 2006 - Live Music and Improvisation: Last night's Milonga at the Cafe Casablanca was a serendipitous joy. Roland Grittani, accordian player extraordinaire and artist whom we are lucky to have among us in the tango community for part of the year when he's not in Paris, brought along Andy Fielding from Richmond, another extraordinary musician of astonishing virtuosity and versatility, and the boys took to the stage to provide two sets of live music for dancing and listening. Roland's speciality is the French waltz musette, and he generously treats us to these wonderfully danceable pieces (that share the spirit of tango) from time to time, along with tangos. Last night he and Andy pulled out all the stops, Andy on piano, then on accordian too, then for perhaps the first time in North America or maybe anywhere, at least in recent memory, the banjo, for accordian and banjo tangos. 
The highlight among many highlights for me was Andy's unveiling of his "Tango #12" for solo piano, his own composition and the first time he's played it in public, one of the sweetest tangos I've heard, its melancholic melodic and harmonic virtues eliciting such a long standing ovation that we were all a little stunned at our own happy reaction. Again, the power of live music came home to us last night, how there's no substitute for humans in the room offering the gift of the creative spirit with its acoustic magic working on our ears and bodies. And so skilful were the musicians in improvising - and the evening itself was improvised, inasmuch as their sets were a surprise - that the improvisational nature of Argentine tango was brought home again to us too, how it's all about living in the moment, and celebrating being here. Here's hoping we can persuade these musicians, and their colleagues, to give us more very soon. Last night was also a tantalizing taste of live music fun to come during El Weekend de Garufa in September. A final note of thanks to Chuck, our host at the Cafe Casablanca, for expanding the possibility of this kind of improvisation by installing a stage with a piano in the Cafe under Carolyn's beautiful mural. July 8, 2006 - History of Tango: Because tango is so powerful an experience, it ambushes the initiated and uninitiated unpredictably, and thereafter the victim is compelled to try to come to terms with such a force, and as part of that process, try to understand how it came to be. Much history is available, much of it in oral form, promulgated by dancers, dance teachers, DJs, musicians and milonga bloggers. Many books have tackled the subject.  The Internet is awash with theories of origin. The free online encyclopedia Wikipedia is a useful example. A recent book by Robert Farris Thompson, "Tango: The Art History of Love," explores the underappreciated influence of African culture on the origins of the dance and its music. Borges weighed in. But at the end of the day, and not diminishing the importance of a cultural context, text about tango is as irrelevant as text is for meditators - it can even become an impediment, an excuse. Tango is experience, pure and simple, it is living in the moment.June 24 - Meditations on Codes III: The third tango connection is with the community, specifically among the community on the dance floor during a song. When a Milonga is in the zone, when it's working right, when somehow the DJ's careful building of an evening (luck is no small factor) and the group's chemistry fuse, tribal energy - so potent in the political arena - lifts all the dancers into ritual space (to use Joseph Campbell's phrase). It is then that the truth of tango's being more than a couple dance arrives with an entrancing force, despite the view of the tango being merely a passionate dialogue between two people. The image of two people dancing together on their own has its appeal as iconography. But the history of dance is about people dancing in groups, the tribal identity being affirmed and explored esthetically - and in the old days religiously. The community code on the dance floor is courtesy, just as it is in the dance of wider social relations in life away from the dance floor. Tribal indentity can be crafted out of darker motives, to be sure, when the mob rules and it's them against us. But the civilizing influence of courtesy and good manners is the true foundation of long-lasting positive human relations. Intentional and habitual courtesy brings individuals in from the cold to the warmth of loving companionship. It is inclusive and welcoming to all. At Milongas, courtesy means respecting your partner and all partners on the floor (leaders in a sense dancing with all the leaders on the floor), moving in the line of dance, not passing other couples, not performing expansive figures if there isn't room, ensuring all followers are asked to dance, not talking as couples dance together, respecting the DJ, the music and the Argentine tango tradition as well as the possibilty of creative evolution of the tradition, respecting everyone's individual tangos, being clean, being friendly, respecting teachers, event organizers, hall managers, and the physical environment, leaving politics and religion at the door, and so on. Courtesy is the royal road to the tango's deepest pleasures. June 9 - Meditations on Codes II: I've referred before to the three connections of Argentine Tango: the connection with the music, connection between the couple, and connection with the community on the dance floor. The first, as Cacho Dante has said, involves the leader being slave to the music. The leader is a channel through whom the music inspires the couple's movements. The leader has an obligation, fuelled by the pleasure of the great tango music tradition, to travel deep into the music, to hear all it has to offer, to respond to it with his or her soul. The music should be approached seriously, as an opportunity to experience something authentic in life, in one's own life, with the kind of attention the musicians themselves gave to their creation. They travelled inside it and the journey became a journey into themselves. The more I've danced, the more I've come to believe that while the leader ostensibly initiates steps, there is a kind of "couple mind" created in each dance, a unity where identities dissolve into a new identity a song long. Movements are initiated and executed by this entity. The fusion is forged by the heat of the first connection, the leader's journey into the music and him or herself. The stronger the connection, the more intense the heat. Here emerges the couple connection, born in fire. If we are speaking in terms of codes, the invisible code here calls for first the leader's willingness to take the journey and second a respectful openness by the partners to this merging. I would say it helps to have an affection for the old identities that are to be abandoned for the length of the song, but even more important, a capacity to let them go and greet the new merged unity in wonder. May 30 - Nuevo Tango: Part of the nuevo tango movement's charm is its less than perfect organization. The recent 2nd Annual Nuevo Tango Festival in Seattle charmed in that regard. One reason was Seattle's hypercharged city-wide tango schedule, which with Folkfest and regular events underway over the Memorial Day weekend began in excitement and finally just wore people out.  Multiple last minute shifts in venues, as vertiginous at times as a nuevo tango colgada or cambio del frente, helped too. An essential element of nuevo tango movement is its daring to be off axis, as dancers say, two bodies sharing a single axis, hanging in space, counter-balancing each other. Organizers know the off-axis experience. Dancing is at the mercy of community halls and otherwise heavily booked space. Argentine tango dancers spin to deceased Argentine tenors upstairs while Polish sopranos belt it out to the soup and salad set downstairs. And there is a law that bears down on organizers to the effect that when there's a sudden change in venue, the key to the new place doesn't fit the door. That's just life on the circuit. What went beautifully for us were the exciting young teachers. Two of them were Celine Ruiz and Damion Rosenthal, she French and he an Argentinian living in Paris and paying I think their first visit to North America. In March they were teachers and performers at CITA in Buenos Aires where according to a friend who was there they were the hot ticket item. Outstanding performers aren't always the best teachers. Celine and Damion were both - as teachers patient, gently humorous, inventive, organized, and very very precise. They took time with everyone individually, nothing missed their eye, and they always had a solution, even though the students did not always have the capacity. Their two performance pieces during the Saturday night milonga were of the hair-raising sort that only trained dancers can pull off. Their second piece was a object d'art, a dramatic choreography one doesn't often see at such events; they are reserved for the serious stage shows like Forever Tango or special one-offs in Buenos Aires' theatres. Next stops for Celine and Damion were Minneapolis and Chicago, just to prove the interest in Argentine tango is everywhere, and then their return to Paris and performing and teaching all over Europe.May 21 - Meditations on Codes I: Every human activity has codes visible and invisible, even tango. Many people, including this writer, think tango means liberation and freedom. But as Bob Dylan said about birds in their prison of the sky, tangueros feel their freedom while dressed in chains, albeit lovely light ones mostly. New tango dancers know something about chains. The dark secret of learning to dance tango is that it is a hard slog. Experienced dancers cheerfully recount to perspiring learners the old saw that a tanguero (i.e., lead) needs to apprentice for three years. Sadly, this is roughly true. Learning the follower's role is no bed of roses either. One analogy for learning tango has the progressive nature of the process flowing from unconscious incompetence to conscious incompetence to conscious competence to unconscious competence, the ideal state when improvisational impulse translates instantly and magically into movement. This process works cyclically and randomly. Even very experienced dancers go through it or move around in it learning new moves. My own analogy for the blood, sweat and tears of the learning process is visual. All at first is struggle in blackness. A pinprick of light flickers on, then off. More struggle, one, then two pinpricks of light. Months pass. The pinpricks enlarge to the size of quarters. One day, two quarters unite, equaling perhaps 30 seconds on the dance floor. This little star of light during an evening one remembers, and is motivated by to continue. Over time, more light, and longer lasting, the duration of a song, several songs, an evening! Hosanna! I would like to conclude this and subsequent Meditations on Codes with a statement of solace, if not a moral. It is this: the mostly invisible code of the learning process when revealed ought to be a source of pride and humility, the balancing of which is the hallmark of any worthy quest. May 7: Back from Europe, the old dance city of Vienna. Milongas or practicas every night, sometimes two a night. Mondays, Christian and Andrea's vigil dancing salon-style to no music earlier than Pugliese; then to the Cafe Fledermaus at Spiegelgasse 2 at the Graben and a block from a hotel where Kafka mused on how much more damaging oppression is when driven by love. In the 1960s, some of the most surgically satirical musical cabaret in the world cut deep in the cafe's little underground. Now traditional tango music is DJ-ed by Leandro. Tuesday at the Turkish "Aux Gazelles," with samovars, hosted by Juergen, who is off to teach at the first Tangofest in the Crimea next week at a spot where Chekov wrote the Three Sisters. Wednesday a Practica at Lehargasse, named after the operetta composer.  Thursday our friend Raphael DJ-ing at the TangoBar, wishing our community at home well from the saal where once the Habsburg era Deutschmeister regiment in uniform drank and danced. Later, a Milonga at the Volkstheater. Friday, Volksbrottango, an alternative milonga with electronic tango, jazz and more on a tiny white tile floor by the bar. At 11 pm, we sneak past the prostitutes on the Mariahilfer Strasse - expecting Harry Lime to materialize - and on to the Galeria Ideal, massive paintings on the walls, cigar smoke, bamboo floor, a glass of wine for somebody's birthday, and our friend Jorge from Buenos Aires, whose dynamic, youthful tango style and serious commitment to teaching lift us again this year. We need to call Susi for the location of the moveable Saturday Milonga, and we are invited to a little special Milonga in Jorge's studio Sunday. So the Argentine tango around the globe. (The photo is a detail of Ernst Fuchs' renovated Otto Wagner Jugendstil villa. Seventy-six year old Fuchs is an astonishing renaissance genius of Vienna.) April 14: I am happy to see Gotan Project has brought out another CD: Lunatico. Like the first CD, the tracks remember dancers, unlike the second CD, which was interesting but not easy to dance to. Two of the new songs were available on line first in an EP in March, then the whole CD debuted on line in April. The physical CD isn't yet available in stores in my neighbourhood, which to an honourary member (not card-carrying by virtue of age) of the Want It Now generation and one who prefers no sound compression wherever possible, is mildly frustrating. I've played the two songs from the EP at our Milonga, eliciting some interest, if not the fascination - and for some the revulsion - the early days of Gotan generated. It is probably safe to say the idea of Gotan has been mostly integrated into mainstream appreciation, albeit not into every mainstream Milonga. The intensity of Gotanic reaction has passed. Battles of old vs. new seem rather quaint now and are rather more likely to be replaced by discussions about quality, irrespective of era. Life has moved on. Live and let live has crept in unannounced. Aficionados of various types, schools and eras of tango have settled into their musical and dancefloor homes fairly comfortably without having to issue manifestos. Gotan's admirable respect for the tradition and their good musical sense as the group explored new terrain have earned them their place in the tradition. April 7 to 9: This weekend, visiting tango teachers Tony Fan and Ilana Rubin brought both the wider world and a deeper one into our little community. They took the ferry north from Seattle where they host a popular Milonga "underground" almost every Saturday for 80 to 100 people or more. Their tango school is one of the oldest in the region. Seattle, like Portland, is a vital center of Argentine tango in North America. Tony and Ilana never stop learning, drawing deep from the well in Buenos Aires, either by travelling there or by inviting portenos north. They present the model of serious learners to their students, in a manner that immediately demonstrates that learning tango is not a pastime: it is life believed in un-ironically. And they always have something new to give, lately of the Pugliese method, a milonguero style that cuts the traditional tango turns so sharply and with such unpredictable bursts of animal energy that watchers lose control over their own trembling limbs. Keen exemplars of the commitment to style, over the years their teaching has become very much about nuance. They teach more about less. In performance they display the absolute giving over to the dance that is the hallmark of Argentine tango. Life outside the dance seems trivial by comparison, but that is only because it is being expressed under compression, as in poetry. Ilana is known for the grace and precision of her footwork, her eyes are closed, and Tony prowls the floor like Rilke's panther, pushing the relationship between the music, him, Ilana and the audience to point where something has to give and it is usually the audience, who cry out "eso" in acknowledgement they have been transported into ritual space.  March 31: The human voice is wonderfully exhibited in tango. The lyric impulse has been integral to tango since its beginnings, and the sound of Argentine Spanish in poetry and tango song is a rich and satisfying music. The singer has had many roles and many timbres. The voice of the great Carlos Gardel - tango's most famous singer - so thrilled devotees that he became a kind of god. The statue on his grave is tended carefully, a cigarette kept burning in his cold hands. Traditional tango dancers decline to dance to Gardel songs, out of respect. Usually tango lyrics cry out loss and frustration, or speak wryly or bitterly or hopelessly of disappointment. Some lyrics had political connotations and resulted in reaction from the State - proscriptions, jailings, and so on. Orchestras at certain periods regarded the singer as an ornament to be rolled out late in the song. At other times, including more recently, the singer started close to the beginning of the piece, and his or her emotional turmoil overtook the piece's rhythmic center. This could sacrifice a song's danceability. Happily, some current singers give us very danceable songs - I think of Kevin Johansen and Daniel Melingo. Unlike these two deeper and charmingly rougher voices, tango male singers were usually tenors, although Gardel is a high baritone. Tenors from the golden age have extraordinarily beautiful voices. Female singers cover a wide range, more often than not throughout tango history providing listening rather than dancing experiences, but with many outstanding exceptions: Nelly Omar, Mercedes Sosa, Virginia Luque, Carmen Duval, to name just a few.  March 24: A couple of selections at tonight's Friday night Milonga at the Cafe Casablanca from Kevin Johansen's Sur O No Sur, a fairly recent CD with terrific pieces, wonderful rhythms and wit. Kevin's parents were Argentinian and American, and he plays with both cultures and others besides - plays, in fact, with the modern reality of cultural relations.Mar. 10 - I played a few selections from a CD of Finnish tangos Hedy brought back from Vienna - "Finnischer Tango: Tule Tanssimaan." One of the interesting chapters of tango history is that Finland adopted the tango as its national dance. Finlanders regard the tango as their Blues. The tango arrived in Finland very early in the tango's history - around 1908, when it was beginning its conquest of Europe, starting in Paris. Paris was a stop on the Grand Tour for wealthy young Argentinians; they brought the tango from their homeland and as the saying goes, it took Europe by storm. According the CD's liner notes, the first Finnish tango was composed in 1915 and was a bit of a parody, reflecting the northerners' ambivalence towards the dance. And for part of its early history, the Finnish tango followed the European model of the tango more than the Argentinian. The path of the tango had bifurcated in Europe in the early part of the twentieth century after its first great Argentinian-dominated wave, resulting in the less scandalous international tango - the ballroom version - a very different dance than the Argentine tango. However, as time went on, the Argentine tango and its sensibility developed strong roots in Finnish soil, in the sense that the tango became more than a sentimental and exotic rhythmic pattern, an amusing oddity. It grew into an expression of the soul of Finland, uniquely Finnish but also sharing with the Argentine tango a sensibility of authentic emotional experience and expression. A tango festival founded in 1985 in Finland is the biggest Finnish music festival, drawing 100,000 people. The Finnish tango very strongly features lyrics, and the poetry of the Finnish tango is fascinating. Feb. 10 - Politics may not come to mind on first hearing tango, but tango has been much discussed and written about as a political activity. No surprise, really, for if politics is how people organize and govern their groups and how power is expressed in them, tango is politics as art. The elegance of the dance and the beauty of the music belie the tango's aggressive origins and the fighting drama of its esthetic. That yearning to connect, mournfully expressed in many tangos, is just a beat away from the violence of its frustration. The tango was not born in artistocratic courts and ballrooms like many dance forms; it tumbled up in poor neighbourhoods among dangerous people. The compraditos danced tango with knives in their boots. Men practised competively with other men to impress women, then men and women danced their sexual battle, their short affairs of pride and conquest and loss. The angry energy of tango even frightened the military. In the 1940s, the dictatorship outlawed lunfardo, the street language of tango, and banned songs that were deemed too political in their depiction of the hard life of Argentina, such as those with lyrics by Discepolo. Pugliese spent time in jail, his orchestra members placing a rose on his piano to symbolize his presence. From street politics to sexual politics to politics of state - so much at stake in the tango, and such pleasure on the dance floor in our own struggle and exile. Feb. 3 - A great pleasure to host live band Tango Abrazo at the Cafe Casablanca as part of the Milonga of the Unveiling, where beloved tanguera, actor, and artist Carolyn Sadowska unveiled her magnificent wall mural. Tango Abrazo's repertoire spanned the tradition, including some beautifully executed Piazzolla. The very accomplished musicians also inserted French musette and jazz flavours deftly into the evening. The energy of live music is such an inspiration for dancers, communicated as it was so powerfully even through such a huge crowd. Jan. 20 - The tango, milonga and vals are not the only exotics that bloom during a night of Argentine tango. Two other specimens related to the tango also emerge from time to time, albeit less frequently than the other three: the candombe and the cayengue. The former is usually regarded as a precursor to the tango. It was danced in a vigorous improvised fashion by African Argentines, descendants of slaves, mostly to drums. It was not danced as a couple dance, and apparently is still danced today in Uruguay as a non-couple dance and something very different from the tango. Somehow, however, the collision of candombe and the early milonga was an important part of the tango's evolution, and a tango-ized candombe is played from time to time at Milongas, as indeed I did on Jan. 20 when I played "Negra Maria," with J.C. Miranda, an ancient and powerful evocation. Regarding the cayengue, I can only say it is a style of tango-dancing popular in some barrios of Buenos Aires and not often encountered or understood as dance moves elsewhere, however often the music itself is played. I played Vancouver's Tango Paradiso ensemble's fine "Nueve de Julio" cayengue on Jan. 20. Jan. 13 - The poet Ezra Pound, who achieved notoriety and a spell in an asylum for the mentally ill for wandering into politics (this aside has no relation to the upcoming Canadian election on Jan. 23), once said poetry that strays too far from the dance atrophies. It is interesting to think of the tango music tradition in that context. Poetry is textual music: it relies on sound and rhythm to achieve its goal of a condensed artistic experience. Like music it happily uses verse and chorus circularity. Dancers of course rely on sound and rhythm and they go in circles blissfully. Early tango composers were intensely interested in rhythm and their interest always included dancers. When early composers experimented in more sophisticated tangos, the experiments were usually not made at the expense of dancers but rather were designed to enrich the dancing and the listening experience. D'Arienzo became worried at one point that such experiments were straying too far from the dance, and made it his mission to re-introduce a "muscularity" to tangos, by which he meant the return of a compelling rhythm, without which dancers cannot easily transcend the regular work-a-day life and move into ritual dance space. Rhythm is liberation and also a prison, as we know from the noise of urban life. Over the decades from the 1930s forward, one can observe the tango straining at rhythmic limits. The career of Pugliese demonstrates that perfectly - mostly he succeeded in creating more complex tangos that could be danced to and were a treasure to hear. Some composers' best work - think Canaro - was in their earlier most purely rhythmic period; later, he retains the rhythm but is more often going nowhere in particular with it, only freighting it with string-heavy orchestration. By the 1950s, when rock and roll arrived and politics were turning even more toxic in Argentina, composers and the dance became more and more estranged. In this context, the career of Piazzolla came at the time it had to arrive - the tango went far into outer and inner space, most ingeniously, but left the dance floor, until its joyful return in the 1980s. Jan. 6 - The years wheel forward, 2006 is here, the clock turns, the dancers move counterclockwise and circle on their way, the world within a song advances and returns, verse and chorus, hearts wax and wane. The DJ hopes to create a soundscape that satisfactorily integrates such puzzles of time. 2005 Dec. 30 - As my pal Diane says, a crowded dance floor produces a special magic - somewhere the critical mass is reached, and the group gives tremendous energy to the individual dancers. It's the third fundamental Argentine tango connection, along with connection with the music and connection with one's partner. We happily welcomed many dancers from the USA, some from Australia, from Salt Spring Island and other communities. Wonderful music from guest DJ John Dewhirst, El Grande. My thanks to John. Happy New Year to all! Dec. 23 - Tango music started life as a street rebel, trying to express all of life authentically in its lyrics and rhythms, unmitigated by officialdom. Artists like Borges sneered at the cultural tendency to tame it. Despite attempts to domesticate it over its more than a century of existence, it retains its capacity to speak directly to and of the heart. As salon tango master Miguel Pla has noted, the tango is like the magic mirror in the Snow White tale - a truth telling medium. Tango's history of proscription, says Pla, is a series of attempts to break the mirror. The paradox is that tango's endurance is a result of enduring rejection by the mainstream of pop and political culture, for which rejection, properly viewed, we should be grateful. Even today with its astonishing resurgence around the world and its recent function as an engine of huge tourist revenue in Argentina, the authenticity of tango survives, uncontaminated by efforts to stereotype it, or render it into a competition or an ad campaign. All this may seem far afield from the simple pleasure of an evening's Milonga. But the Milonga in one's own neighbourhood is where tango lives. A Milonga is founded on connection with the music (and as a result a true connection with one's partner and the community), a connection that burns away the dross of commercialism and surface emotion, and engenders in dancers the addiction to tango that brings them to a Milonga every night of the week, at Christmas time, during snowstorms or floods - for the freedom from television and manufactured existence, for the freedom to experience the essence of their lives authentically in the language of music and movement. Dec. 16 - Pieces with more complex rhythms, like Pugliese's dramatic works and Piazzolla's, are usually played well into a Milonga. I like to start with very dependable regular rhythms to allow dancers time to enter the ritual space of the tango and synchronize with each other. Just as couples when they first embrace need to move a little in pendulum fashion silently on the spot for their two bodies to become one, so must all the dancers on the floor move to a regular rhythm for awhile to connect with the music, connect with the community around them, and begin collectively to create the unique Milonga of a particular night together. Going too early into the dramatic exploration of emotions and soul by a composer like Piazzolla before the cerebral worries of the day have been transcended through rhythm can maroon one in a lonely isolation. On the other hand, remaining too long in the purely rhythmic part of the tango world robs dancers of the tango's astonishing range. Dec. 9 - Sound fidelity is a subject that exercises the minds of many DJs. The inescapable fact of recorded danceable tango music is that most of it was recorded in eras of poorer technology. This weighting is partly the result of our living in a non-partner dancing age - most recorded music now isn't for couples dancing in an embrace - and partly the result of the long history of the tango - 50 or 60 years of it lies in low tech past. Fortunately, many old tango recordings have pretty good fidelity, and newer technology can improve some older recordings. Of course, such fabulous music so sophisticated, so danceable, so emotionally deep and satisfying, is simply worth playing, no matter what the fidelity. Nonetheless, a good Milonga requires that many of the pieces of an evening have better fidelity. The ear just tires otherwise, and the heart and feet lose their energy. Therefore, DJs search for orchestras today playing authentic danceable tango music, and happily, they exist. But that search cannot be indiscriminate, of course, any more than should be the search through the past. Some modern tango orchestrations forget the dancer, or sag into preciosity. Some singers place their role so much in the forefront of a piece and/or wade so deep into vibrato that the result is not danceable at best and bathos at worst. Nuevo tango, neo tango and alternative music with their fine fidelity offer much pleasure if chosen with care by DJs with knowledge of and loyality to the tradition. Always, what counts is an understanding of the tradition's emotional essence and only then application of that understanding first to the search and second to the compilation for any given Milonga. The emotional essence of the tradition can be discovered with delight in the strangest places. Dec. 2 - The cortina is a short (about 30 seconds) musical interlude played to separate tandas of songs, cleanse the musical palate, and allow dancers to thank their partners of the last tanda and find new partners for a new short romance on the dance floor. Tandas are groups of three or four songs of the same orchestra or same musical style, e.g., four pieces in a row by Carlos De Sarli, or three pieces of "walking music." Every two tango tandas are usually succeeded by a tanda of three tango walzes or three milongas. Over the course of a tanda, couples can come to know each other's dance style and deepen their experience of the music and movement together. The cortina is part of the Buenos Aires code and provides couples with a convenient time to bid each other goodbye. Not all DJs use cortinas, and those who use them do not use them at the end of every tanda. Finding the right cortina to end one tanda and set the stage for another or deciding when to not use a cortina is an art in itself. Cortinas need to be different enough from the tango music to signal to the dancers that it is a cortina and not another tango. On the other hand, if the cortina is radically different in mood and style from tango, it can destroy the mood created by the beauty of the tangos surrounding it. Nov. 25 - I'm indebted to Ann Clark, a tango tour arranger, for this meditation of Sally Potter's on the music of Argentine tango: "I think that at the heart of the tango is the music. It's like an undiscovered continent. It's rich and devouring because it's so passionate. But at the same time, it's meditative and contemplative. It can be calm or rhythmically driving. And it has a lyrical intensity. Tango is unique in world music because, although it is popular, it has the depth and profundity usually associated with classical music. When you dance tango, you are constantly in the embrace both of an extraordinary musical culture and of another human being. Because of the physical closeness of the dance, it is possible to explore intimacy in a metaphorical way while pushing your own inventiveness and creativity to their limits." Sally Potter, Filmmaker, Creator of 'The Tango Lesson.' Nov. 18 - I've played selections from two Quebec tango groups lately: the Ensemble Romulo Larrea with Veronica Larc, and Intakto. The Ensemble Romulo Larrea's CD is called Tango du Coeur, and Intakto's is simply Intakto. Both demonstrate the vitality of Quebec's tango culture. Veronica Larc sings in French, in a mournful swelling romantic style, and the Ensemble is traditional in its approach to tango, although albeit with an interesting Quebecois sensibility; some of its material ventures farther afield. Intakto's Chilean singer, Alejandro Venegas, expresses a gentler but very compelling romanticism. The eight-member Intakto creates new tangos with wonderful world beats, including electronic. Venegas writes the music, and the lyricist is Manuel Aranguiz. They also play some traditional tangos in exciting new ways. Nov. 11 - Remembrance Day in Canada and an evening of tango among friends at the cafe. Tango is very much about remembrance and loss, the melancholy of looking back sadly: "A sad thought that can be danced," I think Borges said. A famous tango song interpreted by many artists is "Recuerdo," or "Remembrance." One of the most moving interpretations of this piece is by the harmonica player, Hugo Diaz, whom I mentioned last week and whose Recuerdo I played this week. His articulate breath in Recuerdo is operatic in its intensity. The companion of loss is yearning, and the pleasure that is tango derives from these two companions - loss and yearning - dancing through us on the floor. But as Shakespeare's works demonstrate, sadness and the tragic sense of life are heightened by the presence of the comic, each throwing the other into relief. In tango, the comic is represented by the milonga - the 2/4 time dance that predates the tango, and is a witty, cheerful expression of the life force's commitment to living, even as the tango wonders whether it's all worth it. Where the tango often pauses to ponder and reflect, the milonga is always stepping, its traspie syncopations overflowing with the joyful affirmation of being alive. I played one of my favourite milongas - "Ella es Asi" - "She Is Here!" In other words, not "She Was Here and Is Now Gone - o Woe!" The traditional order of music in an evening's playist has two tandas (three or four songs per tanda) of tangos followed by a tanda of three milongas. This traditional ordering functions well, I believe, in delivering a healthy balance of loss and affirmation. Nov. 4 - After a grounding of de Angelis, Lomuto, D'Arienzo, I played Leonard Cohen's Hallelujah and later Tiziano Ferro's Imbranato as a couple of examples of tango outsiders or alternative tango. And I played selections from two different Hugo Diazs, one who leads an intimate bandoneon trio and another, an extraordinary musician, who played tango on the harmonica. His famous Milonga Triste was one the jewels in the movie, The Tango Lesson. In my view, playing alternative tango (and to a certain extent also electronic tango) requires solid grounding in traditional tango, especially the steadily rhythmic, for the musical essence of the alternative selection to be properly "adopted" by tango - for dancers to experience the excitement of the alternative piece's potential affiliation with tango. See you this coming Friday at the cafe. Oct. 28 - Guest DJ John Dewhirst, aka El Grande, presented a richly rhythmical evening of traditional tango to a crowded dance floor, from intriguing selections of "walking music" from the time when the guarda vieja was shifting into the golden age (late 1920s to early 1930s), to a joyful batch of milongas. Many thanks, John! Looking forward to a return visit. Next Friday, I'll be back at the helm, with traditional, neuvo and alternative favourites. Check out the giant poster on the south wall - who are those tangueros? Oct. 21 - I started the evening with selections by Adolfo Carabelli's orchestra. Carabelli, born in 1893, was a musical prodigy, playing piano concerts at age 8. As a teenager he studied classical music in Italy, then formed a classically-oriented tango trio. His next phase was jazz improvisation, before returning to tango and forming the Orquesta Tipica Victor, a studio tango band in the 1920s highly regarded for its musicianship. Carabelli later formed his own dream orchestra, which never played live, only in the studio, featuring outstanding musicians and singers of the 1930s. I'm very pleased to announce that John Dewhirst will guest DJ next Friday, October 28. Oct. 14 - I use the term "milonguero" to describe the style or feeling of much of the music I play. The term has many meanings, and, perhaps like the experience of dancing tango and the many individual ways of dancing tango, its meaning varies with the individual and ought not to be too narrowly defined. Certainly one of its meanings refers to someone who is a regular attender of Milongas. Milongas in Buenos Airies are usually crowded, requiring a style of dancing, often in a very close embrace, that relies less on elaborate figures and more on the subtleties arising in the couple when they have become one with each other, with the music and with the community on the dance floor, when all hearts beat with the music's heart. The dance then is very internal, introverted, quietly and almost invisibly nuanced, immensely rich in the couple's unfolding, improvised world within a world. I very much like Cacho Dante's thoughts on this subject, available at this web address: http://allseattletango.com/read/cd2.asdf. I quote briefly from his article and invite you to savour it all. "A milonguero is a slave of the music, the tempo, and the space. When he dances, music invades his body and is translated into his steps and his movements. He never misses a tempo. Such blending with the music is what produces a sensation that their bodies are actually speaking (chamuyan). The milonguero dances level with the floor, managing space is essential for him, he follows the "ronda". His steps, turns, and walks are always aimed forwards, he never overtakes another couple, he takes care not to cross other people's path. He will do his thing (milonguea) in whatever space is left. He dances for himself and his partner, not for the spectators. He does not exhibit." Cacho of course speaks of the social dance. I should add I'm a great fan of creative choreography too and the fascinating expansiveness of nuevo styles of dancing. I also liked Homer Ladas' comment when we had the privilege of his visit last year that he sets out to make the very best of, derive the best experience from, whatever space he finds himself in - small or large dance floor, crowded or not, new music or old. Tango is a multi-hued palette. Oct. 7 - The first Friday in the new Cafe Casablanca with its wonderful big dance floor was greeted with tandas of Francisco Canaro and Ricardo Tanturi and ended with El Arranque's six-minute long La Cumparsita. Late night was jazz-influenced, with the Adrian Laies Cuarteto's Decarismo, por ejemplo, and Piazzolla's Tanguedia III. A couple of my favourite milongas: Ella Es Asi (Edgardo Donato) and Milonga del 900 (Glorias Portenas). Sept. 30 - A large, boisterous, friendly crowd said so long to the old Cafe Casablanca and looked forward to good times at the cafe's new location at 2524 Bridge Street. Chuck took pictures and the music played Les Mots (Mylene Farmer), Comme Il Faut (Carlos di Sarli) and after saying all that could be sung in French, spoke of Nostalgias ((Adriana Varela), Suerte Loca (Enrique Rodriguez) the Viejo Porton (Rodolfo Biagi), Recuerdo (Shifrin) and Inspiracion (Miguel Calo). Sept. 23 - Some orchestras this Friday were those of Pedro Laurenz, Anibal Troilo, F. Canaro, Rodolfo Biagi, Miguel Calo, and Juan D'Arienzo. And there was Astor Piazzolla and his disciple Pablo Ziegler. Some new orchestras: Orquesta El Arranque, Color Tango, the Julian Plaza Orquesta and Orquesta Desquite, and Electrocutango from Norway, and Lalo Shifrin. Astonishing voices of Dante and Martel, of Vargas and Podesta. Another whisper of the Portuguese with the haunting singer from Bahia, Brazil, Virginia Rodrigues. Sept. 16 - Some of the orchestras I featured at the Cafe Casablanca were those of Rodolfo Biagi, Lucio Demare, Florindo Sassone, Ricardo Malerba, Enrique Rodriguez, Oswaldo Pugliese, A Ramirez, Nuevo Quinteto Real and Roberto Firpo. I also drew from BajafondoTango Club, Gotan, and Nu Tango. Cesaria Evora is great to tango to, as are certain Belleville triplets for the hyperactive. |
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