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!
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).
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!
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| Melina Sedo, the Encuentro warrior and DJ |
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.
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| 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)
De Angelis 22 (mostly late instrumentals)
D'Arienzo 9 (mostly late instrumentals)
Racciatti 9 (mostly female vocals)
Donato 8 (mostly lyrical)
Laurenz 6
Demare, Canaro 5 tandas ea
Di Sarli 4
Calo, Rodriguez, Salamanca 2
Troilo, D'Agostino, Malerba, OTV, Biagi, Tanturi, Fresedo, Varela 1 tanda ea
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.
