Another pearl of wisdom from Igor Zabuta's blog - but this one is penned by his partner, Emma Kologrivova. She writes about all the cool things which draw women into tango, including "a desire to be lead, to relax, to immerse into the dance, the body and the music" ... and then continues (translation is mine):
Maybe for my lack of imagination, I reused an image from my other "translated wisdom" blog post about the art of active following.
Truth be said, with the experience comes an understanding that following is a complicated skill. It requires a sense of one's own axis and boundaries. An ability to let the partner's energy in - but not to dissolve in it. An ability to follow the suggestions - but not to guess, hurriedly. To listen to the leader - but also to sense one's own desires. To be whole, letting every signal to pass through the body, but also to have an inspiration to add your own personality to the moves. To be lead, but never to be forced.
Back in January, I wrote that I have already introduced all the important musicians in tango's history in the comments to my playlists on this blog, and it's a good enough reason to stop publishing playlists altogether (not to mention the obvious fact that most of the new tandas look very familiar after so many years of DJing :) ) Still, occasionally I find a thread of history worth writing about, or try a new orchestra or an unusual era of a better-known orchestra, or start "reinventing the bicycle" of the tandas which feel far too familiar. Here I'm going through the 10 playlists I added since the decision to stop set-blogging, to pick the few tandas worth writing about.
Julio Sosa with his DKW-Sissore, a German-designed
sports car with an Italian body manufactured at a
short-lived small car factory in the Argentinian province
of Santa Fe in the 1960s. The singer didn't survive a
crash of this beauty. He was 38.
For Julio Sosas's February birthday, I went through tons of his recording and ended up building just one mixed tanda with a lone Sosa track for the Junando practica. We don't hear much Julio Sosa at our milongas, obviously, but it could have been very different, had El Varon del Tango not died so early, at 38! Julio Sosa was born on February 2, 1926, in the poverty-stricken outskirts of Montevideo in Uruguay. One of his many early jobs was with a provincial orchestras there, but it paid too little to make ends meet, and at 23, Julio quit it to sing in the cafes of BsAs. Soon, he was noticed, and got a succession of jobs with the 2nd tier tango bands, and finally, in 1960, convened his own orchestra. By all accounts, it was a wrong time to start a tango band. The government support for the national music of tango disappeared with the violent overthrow of Peron's populist regime, and the new happy-and-patronizing music of La Nueva Ola was all the rage. Even the master records of the Golden Age tango orchestras ended up destroyed to make room for more Nueva Ola studios! I wrote about the Dark Ages of Tango on this blog before, but I failed to mention that for a while, Julio Sosa held the lines against the onslaught of the new commercial music. Tall, masculine, young and charismatic, Sosa continued to attract the youth to tango - and not just to listen, but also to dance like himself. His disc sales rivaled those of La Nueva Ola! It all ended on November 26, 1964, when Julio crashed his Argentine-built sports car into a traffic light, the third speed car he totaled in quick succession, only this time it was fatal. With the death of its last iconic singer, tango never stood a chance...
The verdict: it is a passable vals tanda, good for a charged crowd later at night. But only Angelica really stands out...
Francini-Pontier - Alberto Podestá y Julio Sosa "El Hijo Triste" 1949 3:49
Alfredo de Angelis - Juan Carlos Godoy "Angélica" 1961 2:41
Héctor Varela - Argentino Ledesma y Rodolfo Lesica "Igual Que Dos Palomas" 1953 2:36
The most legendary tango dancer of the pre-Golden Age fame, Ovidio José "Benito" Bianquet, better known as El Cachafaz ("The Troublesome" / "The Outrageous" as the lunfardo word may be translated) was born Feb 14, 1885). El Cachafaz is celebrated in the lyrics of "Adiós, Arrabal", and that's why I decided to play the following relatively standard D'Agostino tanda during the same practica. Follow El Cachafaz label to read more about this awesome dancer who conquered the affections of the Parisians and triumphantly returned hone, only to lose it all in the post-Great Depression chaos. Who then rebuilt a show dancer's career from scratch when tango started to return to life, but died at 56 without witnessing the full bloom of tango's Golden Age.
In March, I tried a really experimental - and not really recommended - tanda of super-late Calo instrumentals which are all the rage in Europe (it went OK really late at night though):
Miguel Caló - Instrumental "Luna del viejo castillo" 1964 2:37
Miguel Caló - Instrumental "Elegante papirusa" 1966
Miguel Caló - Instrumental "Para Osmar Maderna" 1963
You may know that I am not a big Troilo fan, and I usually stick to the few most reliable tracks of his, but in April I wasin the mood to experiment:
Anibal Troilo - Francisco Fiorentino "Pa Que Bailen Los Muchachos" 1942 2:49
Anibal Troilo - Francisco Fiorentino "No Le Digas Que La Quiero" 1941 2:51
Anibal Troilo - Francisco Fiorentino "Una Carta" 1941 2:48
The month of May is always a good reason to play more, and more varied, Fresedo than usual, since Osvaldo Fresedo was born on May 5, 1887. A son of a wealthy family, Fresedo created elegant music for the upper crust throughout his 60+ years-long tango career. In 1920, Fresedo has become the first tango bandoneonist ever to record in the United States when RCA Victor sent him to New York (they didn't yet have an up-to-date recording studio in South America then; the US-made record's, in Victor's typical anonymous house band fashion, went for sale in Latin America as "Orquesta Tipica Select"). Before the Great Depression, Fresedo's success was so great that he simultaneously maintained 5 "Fresedo orchestras" in Buenos Aires! One of these bands was directed by 24 years old Carlos Di Sarli, an admitted disciple of Osvaldo Fresedo who, in time, far surpassed his teacher. The economic collapse in Argentina put a stop to this exuberance, but Fresedo kept on playing, largely for the upper-class functions. He wouldn't play live for the dancers again, missing the tango dancing boom of the Golden Era, and he remains kind of shunned by the BsAs tangueros for this reason, although he recorded tangos through the 1980s. But nothing could be more mellifluous than Fresedo's 1930s and the early 1940s! This May, one of my Fresedo tandas was with the voice of Ruiz rather than with the "usual" Roberto Ray
Osvaldo Fresedo - Ricardo Ruiz "Y no puede ser" 1939 2:26
Osvaldo Fresedo - Ricardo Ruiz "Plegaria" 1940 2:24
Osvaldo Fresedo - Ricardo Ruiz "Buscándote" 1941 2:49
In June at Junando practica, it was time to return to De Angelis's Angelica which I already mentioned on this page:
Rodolfo Biagi - Hugo Duval y Carlos Heredia "Adoracion" 1951 2:52
Francisco Rotundo - Enrique Campos y Floreal Ruiz "El viejo vals" 1951 2:56
Alfredo De Angelis - Juan Carlos Godoy "Angélica (Vals)" 1961 2:43
There, I also put to test a fiery vals tanda with the voice of Alberto Castillo:
1. Ricardo Tanturi - Alberto Castillo "La Serenata (Mi Amor)" 1941 2:29
2. Alberto Castillo "Idilio Trunco" 1946 2:08
3. Alberto Castillo "Violetas" 1948 2:38
(3 total)
To start the playlists of September, I tried a more or less regular tanda but in an unusual place - as an opening tanda of Milonga sin nombre:
1. Orquesta Tipica Victor (dir. A. Carabelli) - Alberto Gomez "Ventarron" 1933 3:03
2. Orquesta Tipica Victor (dir. A. Carabelli) - Instrumental "Nino bien" 1928 2:43
3. Orquesta Tipica Victor (dir. A. Carabelli) - Instrumental "El chamuyo" 1930 2:46
September is a good time to remember the great singer Alberto Podesta (b. Sep. 22, 1924), who contributed so much to the success of the orchestras of Di Sarli, Calo, and Laurenz. And what would be a better fit to the themes of Podesta and September than his "Roses of Autumn"? Alas, I always had a hard time building a good tanda of Di Sarli's valses with this great hit. Trying to fix it now with a mixed-ochestra set:
1. Angel D'Agostino - Angel Vargas "Que Me Pasara" 1941 2:30
2. Manuel Buzon - Osvaldo Moreno "Pichon enamorado" 1942 2:18
3. Carlos Di Sarli - Alberto Podesta "Rosas De Otono" 1942 2:17
I also returned to the valses with the vocals of Castillo, then an ObGyn by day but a veritable mob lord voice by night.
1. Ricardo Tanturi - Alberto Castillo "Marisabel" 1942 2:23
2. Ricardo Tanturi - Alberto Castillo "Recuerdo" 1942 2:22
3. Ricardo Tanturi - Alberto Castillo "Mi Romance" 1941 2:16
Racciatti's tracks with the voice of Nina Miranda are a kind of a flashback to me. I first danced to Racciatti's when a Japanese DJ played a tanda with Nina Miranda's vocals, fell in love with her "Gloria" and "Tu corazon", and played them myself - good 5 years ago. But the quality of these 1952-1953 records in my hands then was substandard, and I started playing later-years Racciatti's tango with the voice of Olga Delgrossi instead. With a better recordings now, I return to Nina Miranda's hits. And what a pianist they had, by the way!
1. Donato Racciatti - Nina Miranda "Tu corazón" 1953 2:32
2. Donato Racciatti - Nina Miranda "Vencida" 1953 2:47
3. Donato Racciatti - Nina Miranda "No quiero ni acordarme" 1953 2:25
Then at Mestizos I returned to the valses of D'Agostino - one of which I tried a few days earlier in a mixed tanda above - and also to mid-paced Canaro's.
1. Francisco Canaro - Ernesto Fama "El Vals Del Estudiante"1939 3:01
2. Francisco Canaro - Ernesto Fama y Mirna Mores "Tormenta En El Alma" 1940 2:33
3. Francisco Canaro - Ernesto Fama "Noche De Estrellas" 1939 2:29
1. Ángel D'Agostino - Ángel Vargas "Que Me Pasara" 1941 2:30
2. Ángel D'Agostino - Ángel Vargas "Tristeza criolla" 1945 2:27
3. Ángel D'Agostino - Ángel Vargas "El Espejo De Tus Ojos" 1944 2:49
And lastly, at Two Flames practica, I asked tangueros for suggestions, and one of them was for the OTV valses. The challenge is that only want to play the same three beloved valses of Victor (Noches de invierno, Sin rumbo fijo, and Temo) and I already played it a bit too often :) So I set out to build mixed-orchestra tandas with OTV - and ended up playing not just one tanda but two:
1. Francisco Lomuto - Fernando Diaz "Cuando estaba enamorado" 1940 2:19
2. Enrique Rodriguez - Roberto Flores "Salud, Dinero Y Amor" 1939 2:39
3. Orquesta Típica Víctor - Ángel Vargas "Sin Rumbo Fijo" 1938 2:18
1. Cuarteto Roberto Firpo - Instrumental "El Aeroplano" 1936 2:14
2. Enrique Rodriguez - Armando Moreno "En el Volga yo te espero" 1943 2:40
3. Orquesta Tipica Victor - Mario Pomar "Temo" 1940 2:55
We the tango DJs don't have any doubts about beginning a milonga with back-to-back tango tandas, the initial two T's of the obligatory TTVTTM tanda sequence of the genres. And why doubt, why overthink the thing, if there are usually too few dancers on the floor at the beginning of a night anyway. The early birds of tango are a special minority in any case, and a DJ is supposed to build the energy flow which works for the majority.
But what about the ending of a milonga, the crescendo of the Cumparsita, the dimmed lights and the overpowering emotions of love and sadness? If you keep repeating TTVTTMs, wouldn't the randomness of added track times mean that sometimes, the scheduled end-time comes with a boisterous laughter of a milonga instead of some poignant tango? Nah, of course we wouldn't do THAT to our beloved dancers :) A DJ may do something, perhaps scrapping the out-of-place milonga tanda, or adding more tangos after it, that's more or less clear. The question is, what is it exactly that you do?
The reason why I started musing about it was very mathematical. I spotted an arithmetic error of sorts in my statistical/fun analysis of the BsAs set-lists. Back then, I calculated that an average milonga had 13 tango tandas and 2.6 milonga tandas, and I was like, hmm, the number of the milonga tandas is less that 13/4, so their flow is probably not a perfect TTVTTM ... they must be skipping or replacing a milonga tanda here and there.
Sheesh. Now I saw the numbers in a different light. 2.6 milonga tandas (or 2.7 vals tandas), on average, would mean that approximately 10.5 tango tandas took place in the regular TTVTTM groupings. To add up to 13 average tango tandas, one would need to add, on average, 2.5 more tandas of tango. And it occurred to me that it's exactly what's happening ... at the end of a night!
Melina Sedo, the Encuentro warrior and DJ
Is it "in the books" or just a commonsense thing? My first thought was, I couldn't have invented it, I must have read about the "best ways to end a tango night" somewhere. But the only "DJing manual" detailing proper selection of the last tandas I found was a super-micromanaging article by Melina Sedo (and I definitely haven't read it before!)
Melina writes: "The 2 or 3 last tandas are those especially determining the emotional state people leave the milonga in. The final tanda should be tango, not vals and never milonga." (Big-name DJs occasionally - rarely - do play valses at the end, and perhaps a slow and dreamy milonga campera may fit occasionally, when the mood is right).
Since I have a good collection of published playlists, I couldn't resist quantifying what *I* do.
It turned that my pre-Cumparsita tanda is always a tango. And in the majority of my playlists, at least 3 final tandas are tango (but I often play danceable music after the Cumparsita ... often energetic and upbeat music, since I picked the habit from Momo Smitt who explained that it was the "furniture-moving music"). The numbers average at 2.5 final tango sets, perfectly paralleling the prediction from the BsAs statistics.
How many tango tandas before the Cumparsita?
I also tallied the orchestras I select for the final two tandas. I knew that Pugliese would be a winner, since his orchestra is so perfect for the crescendo build-up. And surely it was:
Pugliese 64 tandas (!) (and most of the lists without Pugliese in the final tandas had a Pugliese tanda right before them)
Mixed ultimate and penultimate tandas - 11 incl Sassone, Firpo, late-era bands including Color Tango, Ojos de Tango, Fervor de BsAs, Krebsian Orchestra, Nuevo Quinteto Real, as well as some of the above orchestras (this clearly defies Melina's advice to play only true-and-tried classic sets in the end...)
I can clearly see that I am biased against Di Sarli for the crescendo-building sets, and it's probably explained by my overexposure to late, dramatic Di Sarli's in my beginner classes. It's just hard to overcome the kryptonite "I'm a beginner all over again" vibe of this uncommonly elegant music. But as a cancer professional, I also find it hard not to see the specter of cancer in Di Sarli's perfect, late-period pieces. The Senior of Tango must have known that his pancreatic tumor doesn't leave him much time, and he was in a race against time to bring the rough, crude hits of his youth to an elegant perfection - an almost morbid perfection. Have you read Pushkin's "Exegi Monumentum"? "The monument I’ve built is not in chiseled stone"? For someone on the oncology field, it may be painful to sense. Forgive me.
I've just discovered the new star of the tango blogosphere, a super sharp and eloquent Igor Zabuta of Ukraine. And couldn't help remembering one obsessively and mutually musical tanda at last years Connect, and translating a passage from one of Igor's beautiful posts. Photo credits to Kyle Asher
There are pairs who feel a kind of a split challenge to dance musically, come what may. They step onto the dance floor with a mission to express the music together. It takes a special respect to the music and a peculiar courage. It is so understandable ... indeed, what could be more helpful for a great connection between people than a lucky overlap of their obsessions :)
I was very excited and a bit scared when the organizers of Missoula Spring Tango fest invited me to give a multimedia presentation on the lyrics of tango. I lectured on tango poetry before, but only in my native Russian, and always with the extensive use of metric-and-rhymed translations of tango into Russian. English language is a much harder medium for the metered poetry, and I only have one tango translation in English. So - uh oh - the May 2019 poetry talk would have to get by without actually reciting verses! And with as much multimedia as possible, for the ease of understanding (the slides are available here and a partial live-streamed video of the 1.5 hour-long talk, here). What a nice opportunity to think more about my fav subject! It's a go! The summary of the presentation is below.
Tango Poetry: Past to Present
"Explore self-expression in tango through song lyrics. During this multi-media lecture, travel through time beginning with sung poetry illustrating the universe of urban migrants during the Great Depression and their despairs and longs for bygone days. Learn how lyrical language is reborn with exuberance, threatened again by the censorship of the morality police, and finally reaches a beautiful synthesis at the zenith of the Golden age"
Born a song, always a song
Humble street origins: sailor’s taverns of the port… black neighborhoods … prostibulos
Neither the score nor the lyrics were written down
In fact even after the musical scores WERE written down, the lyrics remained unprinted … and largely unprintable
(on the right: the first known written musical score of a tango was composed in the 1880s by Rozendo Mendizabal, an Afro-Argentine pianist and a brothel musician. This tango, "El enterriano", is said to have been dedicated to an influential mobster from the province of Entre Rios)
The men and the women of the XIX c. tango lyrics
El Portenito Little Porteño, a bragging song about the toughest and coolest dude on the block, with lyrics which once changed from street to street
La Payanca A rare example of a "folk tango" which has known original lyrics, rather crudely and lewdly praising a popular whore
La MorochaA perfect feminine counterpart to the Little Porteño, also full of bragging superlatives about the sweetest and most beautiful girl on the block, and also not without a dose of double entendre like La Payanca
Payanca, the Kechua word...
The tribal word from Peru - the verb pallar - meant to pick up, to catch from the ground. The gaucho equivalent of battle rap, the payada, was a real-time poetry contest where singers would pick up the thread of the song from each other, a stanza dueling with a stanza. The Kechua tic-tac-toe-like game, played with 5 stones thrown and picked from the ground (above), was called a payana. And a ground lasso, meant to be thrown to the ground to pick up an animal's front legs, was the payanca. This was also a street name of a legendary BsAs prostitute; who or what she picked up from the street, we can only guess, but there was a song dedicated to her, imploring her not to hurry with the paid-for job, because, well, sometimes slower is better.
Over time, La Payanca got very new, very clean lyrics. Actually, as the XX century arrived, the women stopped being protagonists for the new, cleansed tango lyrics. And the new character of the song was now a guy, an irresistible womanizer catching ladies with his "payanca of love". But much more recently, the genders of this song changed again, and the Payanca has become a girl like of old. Listen to Alex Krebs's gender-restored Payanca below, and read more about the song and about the children's game on my old blog here.
Apropos the last strong female protagonists of tango, I mentioned that it took full 50 years before they reappeared in tango - as in Donato Racciatti's "Gloria", a girl's song about love the money can't buy ... and I just had to jump ahead and to talk about the incomparable Tita Merello and her 1955 movie song "Se dice de mi", "They talk about me". How can one not to show Tita's superb clip? But do you know that she was singing a gender-transformed version of a song which was once written about a guy? Have you noticed that the girl in this song has manners of a compadrón, while the men in this song gossip like crazy and all lose their heads hoping for her affection? I hope that the, ahem, unusual gender stereotypes there all make sense now :)
The 1900s and 1910s: music of tango wins Argentina and world
Sheet piano music
Victrola records
Paris and New YorkTango wins wide acceptance among the moneyed and educated classes, but strictly in its instrumental form
…. And where are the lyrics?? ... Shunned.
The revolution of Carlos Gardel, 1917.
Tango receives its first set lyrics, written by a real poetic talent, Pascual Contursi.
It was a sad song about broken love, which set the tango standards for the decades to come.
It was also a song written in heavy Lunfardo slang, whose protagonist seems to be a pimp, and whose love suffering is made more painful by the fact that his flat has become all dirty and cluttered now that his girl has left. The slangy opening lines may be translated as "The bitch who dumped me, just as I was having the grandest time of my life..."
Let's listen to Gardel's voice from a later recording ... and then to a much later recording where the long-dead Gardel sings the same opening line.
"A sad thought, danceable" ?
What else do the tangos sing about?
Quiz, anyone?Name other tango topics, beyond love / separation / romantic sadness
The legacy of “Mi noche triste”
A fragile macho needs some help...
Tango songs as a protective male cocoon?Sports (especially soccer and racing!). Airplanes and fast cars. Country living. Drinking amd fighting. Patriotic themes... And, yes, misogyny galore.
Carrerito (1928). A tired cart-driver asking his 3 tired horses by name to please go over the last hill before home without any whipping...
Chau Pinela (1930) Very energetic, very misogynist monologue of a guy who actually ends up losing to the woman despite all the macho bravado. He wants to throw her out in a fit of jealousy. "I will find a million women like you! Stop talking already, who do you think you are? Get you stuff out of here and get lost!" ... but apparently she never does stop talking, and it is he who ends up packing his stuff and leaving for good.
Crisis, suffering, perservering and nostalgia: the Great Depression brings tango to its knees...
The machos don’t cry! Pa’que lagrimear (1931)
The world has become a pawnshop… (Cambalache 1934)
The revolutionaries of the past got it right… (Milonga del 900)
... this part is already on the saved livestream video, so I will go into fewer details from this point on...
Refuge in the Monmartre, refuge in Ocean Dancing
Argentine restaurant "Palermo" and night club "El Garron", immortalized in several songs, where tango has found a safe haven during the worst years of Great Depression, when pretty much all the bands in BsAs went bust or stopped playing for the dancers.
Remembering Paris ... "I came as a wanderer who lost faith. I arrived to Paris, loaded with pain. The City of Light has become like the Sun for me. Your love brought me back to life!"
Fui…
Vagabundo sin fe y sin amor.
Que…
Llegué un día a París con mi dolor.
Yo…
Te encontré como un sol, mi amor!
Y…
Por tu amor yo viví...
Back home in Buenos Aires, a lone tango band keeps on playing for the dancers in the seediest establishment near the port, called, in English, "Ocean Dancing". The conditions must be too bad for the Argentines to take the job, but these guys are Uruguayans, and their homeland is hit by the economic crisis even harder. So Edgardo Donato and his musicians press on.
The 1932 "Hurricane" presages the rebirth of tango, planting the seeds of crazy energy. And what a storm it is! This hurricane isn't an atmospheric phenomenon, actually. She is a woman who destroys the metaphorical rose garden of love. Never again shall it bloom!
Reborn milonga as the only feminine heroine of tango?
"Milonga brava". A feminine protagonist, but not really a human being of flesh and blood "I am a milonga, I have no fear. I am a sound motif which progress with a swaggering gait. I was sung by the girl with sweet lips, and then they danced me on the broken flagstones of the tenement with the boy from upstairs".
Yo soy la milonga brava
Candombera y entradora.
Yo soy la milonga brava
Candombera y entradora.
Yo soy la expresión sonora
Que el progreso deshilacha,
Canción me hizo una muchacha
De boca fresca y golosa.
Y me bailó en la baldosa
Quebrada del conventillo,
Con el mozo del altillo
A quien le dio el corazón.
Young, fun, irreverent … too irreverent?
Juan D'Arienzo was derided for his youth appeal which, in hindsight, probably saved tango from total destruction. Hes fans were said to be too shallow, too preoccupied with beat, and, well, stupid. Who else would welcome tangos like this one, about hiccups? (Wait, there was one about farts, too).
A boy meets a girl in a club, but when it's time for sweet talking, he's suddenly overcome by hiccups. ( "I dream of turning into a gentle breeze which will caress your body ... HIC!!!")
The rumblings of the new, cleansing revolution...
Tango director Lucio Demare and his brother, movie director Lucas Demare, set out to change the regime and bring the country back from the morass of corruption and infamy. The social networks aren't there yet, but the brothers have music and movies at their disposal - and in 1942, they accomplish it, and a populist regime takes the reigns of power. A grand cleansing is in order, and one its first targets are the "degraded" lyrics of the tango songs. The following song is Demare's own. Can you figure out what has changed in the recording?
¿Quién pena en el violín?
¿Qué voz sentimental?
Cansada de sufrir
Se ha puesto a sollozar así...
Tal vez será su voz
Aquella que una vez,
De pronto se apagó...
Tal vez será mi alcohol
Tal vez...!
Su voz no puede ser
Su voz ya se durmió,
Tendrán que ser, nomás
Fantasmas de mi alcohol...
The censorship employs scores of the mediocre "lyrics hacks". Slang, crime, booze, gambling, everything must be removed. Some songs are simply unsalvageable. Luckily, a year later, the government reverses its course. But an amazing thing happens. The music industry realizes that tango doesn't have to be fast, or racy, or risque, to sell!
Tango itself becomes its own, beautiful subject
One of many veritable anthems of tango is :Una emocion", "A feeling", a manifesto song about tango itself... about its being simply a beautiful emotion which wins hearts without a pretense or a special effort...
