TTVTTM and the flow of the final tandas

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)

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.

BC Tango music class notes ... and a memory detour to Moscow

Salt Lake's art nouveau Ladies Literary Club (now The Clubhouse at 850 E. South Temple) used to be the cradle of the "dance tea parties" (the dansante) of the heyday of pre-WWI American tango boom, and it's amazing to witness its rebirth as a tango venue a century later. And it's especially poignant that the first tango workshop in this grand hall focused on the history of tango!

Tango BC is a contemporary tango duet (Mariano Barreiro, piano, and Santiago Cursach, guitar).

But they don't just play music - they teach how to interpret tango. Their class started with a history lecture, dividing the story of the tango music into 4 chapters:

Tango BC duo

1880 - 1925: Guardia Vieja (exemplified by Villoldo, Arolas, Canaro, Matos Rodriguez....)

1925 - 1955: Guardia Nueva (such as De Caro, D'Arienzo, Di Sarli, Pugliese)

1955-1975: Avant Garde (Piazzolla, Salgán)

1975 + : Contemporary Tango (Fernandez Fierro, El Arranque, Ramiro Gallo - and of course Tango BC themselves)

Guardia Vieja (Old Guard) musicians were almost all amateurs. Europe and Africa influenced the emerging synthesis of different musical forms: Congolese and Angolan candombe, Afro-Cuban and European fusion of habanera, and Argentine hinterland's milonga campera. The fusion of milonga and candombe existed in its own right - listen to Azabache! Mariano and Santiago play examples of the three ancestors of tango, asking the listeners to identify what flowed into the future tango from each of these genres.

Here I must tell you that Bizet's Habanera holds a very special place in my musical education and, perhaps, in my path to tango. We must go back in time to the 1970s Moscow for this story, but before we get there, let me mention that the Habanera from Carmen wasn't actually created by Georges Bizet. He may have thought that it was a folk song but he soon realized that the tune has been composed 12 years earlier by Sebastián Yradier, a native of Spain's Rioja region, who also composed the other most famous habanera of all times - "La Paloma" (Yes, the songs which brought worldwide fame to Cuban music were composed by a Basque who haven't even visited Cuba until the age of 50!)

Kropotkinskaya station.
Wikipedia image

Yet for me, Carmen's Habanera evokes neither Spain nor steamy Cuba, but snowbound old town Moscow. More specifically, my grandfather's traditional walking path to the Moscow Conservatory. Gramps Karl (or Charles, as grandma preferred to call him in French) was a semi-amateur orchestra clarinet player. Everyone in his family was a part-time musician or singer or actor, but his older brother, violinist Isaac, has been executed in Stalin's purges along with their father; and soon after, they lost the sisters' piano as well. Grandfather Karl was the lone musician survivor now. His children didn't share his passion about music, and now he was hopeful to get me, his first grandchild, into it. Karl bought an educational concert series at the famed Conservatory for the two of us -  up at the balcony overhanging right above the orchestra. Soon, I was able to name every instrument - alas, visually, rather than by ear :) Honestly, I didn't like these concerts at all! But I keep the fondest memories of our walks together. Grandfather lived an exotic life, having grown up in Switzerland, picking his first Russian only after high school, moonlighting as a translator for foreign dignitaries for a while - and then, after his family was decimated by the bloody purges, he was kicked out of grad school, worked on river boats and nearly perished in a floating crane disaster, and then it was his turn to be sent to the labor camps and his luck to come back alive ... not all of the stories were safe to share, but out of the ear of the fearful grandmother, he had some amazing stuff to tell. 

We'd start at Kropotkinskaya Metro Station, one of the most beautiful in Moscow, built in the early 1930s to serve the giant House of Soviets which has never been completed. So the huge, airy subway ended up being far too big for its modest neighborhood, and eerily more beautiful because of it. The steel frame of the unfinished palace has been cut into anti-tank obstacles when the Nazi troops advanced to the outskirts of the city in 1941, and the remaining giant hole in the ground eventually made way for an outsize open-air swimming pool, open year round. Karl would occasionally take me there in the middle of Moscow's long winter, too. 

Chess playing at Gogolevsky Boulevard remains a Moscow tradition

We'd walk up Gogol Boulevard, where the chess players would converge at street tables outside of the Central Chess Club to play, no matter the freezing cold. We'd cross Arbat and dive into the maze of lanes of the former Royal Fermenters' Borough where the artisans once prepared sauerkraut, pickles, and kvas (fermented malted rye bread drink) for the Czar's palace. There, hidden away from the main streets, stood in obscurity the first Soviet skyscraper, the Mosselprom Tower, all 10 stories tall, still sporting the faded ads from pre-Stalin's years, complete with the mural of the Horn of Plenty dispensing such indispensable products as cheap smokes and caramel candy. (Its namesake, Mosselprom, was the 1920s agricultural product processing and trading conglomerate). And finally, we'd round a corner and there would be the gilded edifice of the Conservatory! Our weekend walks continued until I finally heard a musical piece I loved. Alas, it was the Habanera from Carmen.

"You can't get yeast and papirosi (the cheapo smokes
once popular with the Russians and  evenpreserved in a
 tango name, Elegante papirusa) anywhere
but in MOSSELPROM!"

I'm afraid my admission broke my grandfather's heart. He was, like, all is lost, you'll never get to love the classical music, you're obviously destined to like rock and stuff :( But in hindsight, perhaps it wasn't an omen about rock music, after all. Perhaps it was all about my future infatuation with tango?

Back to Tango BC's workshop now. More musical influences came from the European dance beats - note that almost all early tango composers came from Europe themselves or were born to recent European immigrants. The earliest bands had just 3 instruments - guitar, flute, and violin. Bandoneon comes from Germany later, following a more humble concertina. Bandoneon has a unique ability to modulate the intensity of its sound on the same note, adding a great expressive potential to the bands. But tango has already been well established, and bandoneon "invaded" it against the wave of initial rejection - and changed tango!

Piano "invades" around the same time, and professionally trained musicians and larger bands come in.

The Old Guard music started out rigidly structured. Julio De Caro worked to break the stereotypes. Rhythms acquired syncopation instead of uniformity of the regular "marcato" beat of the Old Guard. Where all the instruments used to play together, now emerged a great room for individual expression of different musicians. The New Guard times have become known as the Golden Age of tango, when its music sounded everywhere!

Santiago and Mariano then introduce us to the Argentine terms for the 3 principal beat patterns of tango, and illustrate walking to the 3 beats by playing :Por una cabeza" with varied and variable accents: the main beat / "marcato", the "blancas" / "whites" of every other beat (so called in Spanish because the half-notes are notated by hollow ovals, "white inside", as opposed to filled-oval quarter-note "blacks"), and the unevenly spaced "sincopa"... plus "arrastre" / drag effects merging together the adjacent sounds of the sincopa, as in dragging one's palm over the guitar strings. It's a great workshop plan, to alternate between listening and practicing to the customized live music on the dance floor!

There was so much more in the workshop material which I couldn't cover in my notes ... from the fundamentals for those who just begin to discover tango to the discoveries which surprise and enlighten the most seasoned tangueros. Thumbs up, Tango BC!

The Big 5 Orchestras: a global view

A survey matures...
Tango Tecnia worldwide annual survey of the attitudes and preferences of the tangueros had substantially widened its reach in its second year. In 2014, the survey was only available in Spanish, and its audience in North American continent was pretty much limited to ... Mexico, while in Europe, it largely probed the opinions in Spain (with a smaller number of responses from France and Italy). In comparison, in 2015, an English language version of the survey brought many more countries into play, despite a poor quality of English translation.
In 2014 nearly half of the 1282 survey-takers were Argentinian, but only 25 people from the English-speaking countries responded. But in 2015, less than a third of the 2229 participants were from Argentina; this time, 283 Americans and Canadians, 116 Britons, and 29 from Australia and New Zealand responded. Germany has become strongly represented, along with many more Northern, Central and Eastern European nations.

Tango Tecnia 2015 Survey respondents. In my representation, "other Anglo countries" are Ireland, Canada,
Australia, NZ, and South Africa. I included Russia and Israel in "Other European" category.

The age group appeal of the survey widened too. In 2014, tangueros in their 20s and 30s predominated, and the average age of the survery-takers was only 40. In 2015, the share of people in their 20s and 30s dropped to 40%, and the average age increased to 45.

Of course like any Internet survey, it's subject to biases of self-selection ... basically only people who care about its questions would chime in. But when we discuss the tango orchestras and their significance, it's kind of OK to draw some conclusions from the opinions of those who care.

This isn't a full list of the ingredients of a "balanced meal of a milonga" like we saw in Weigel's survey. Here we see the orchestras which make the tangueros eager to dance, the ones which they gratefully remember dancing to.

One pet peeve: in 2015, the survey-designers simply forgot to include Edgardo Donato on the list! (It ranked #12 in 2014).

World's 5 orchestra favorites, and the runners-up

D'Arienzo ~ Di Sarli > Pugliese > Canaro ~ Troilo led the pack (statistically speaking, D'Arienzo and Di Sarli with their 75% and 73% favorability rating weren't significantly different, as were Canaro and Troilo with their 61% and 60% favorability). This actually marks the first time in my research when the elusive Big 5 have been defined with statistical significance (all 5 were significantly ahead of the next  runner-up, Calo). An increased study size makes all the difference!

D'Arienzo and Di Sarli were the winners across the spectrum of ages, gender roles, and geographical locations, while Pugliese was somewhat less favored in the US (where it was rated the 5th).

Troilo was more favored in Argentina, but not significantly so (64% vs. 58%, p-value = 0.02, too high in this multiple-testing scenario).

But Francisco Canaro offered a stark example of regional and cultural differences. It topped the popularity chart in the UK, but wasn't even in the top 5 in Argentina! (the first one of a long list of orchestras which ranked far lower in Argentina than in the rest of the world).
Overall, favorability of Canaro outside Argentina was 68%, compared with only 51% in Argentina. The difference was extremely significant (p-value 0.000000).

#6 Calo was significantly ahead of #7 Biagi. Calo was universally popular (but most of all in Colombia and Venezuela)

#7 Biagi was in statistical dead heat with #8 Fresedo, but significantly ahead of #9 De Angelis. Biagi was universally popular (but least of all in Argentina, albeit with only marginal significance)

Fresedo, De Angelis, and #10 Tanturi were roughly statistically equivalent, but significantly ahead of the #11, D'Agostino. Fresedo came in the top 5 in France, Italy, Germany, but was less popular in Argentina. De Angelis was in the top 5 in Colombia and Uruguay. Tanturi was more popular with older people, and made the top 5 in Brazil.

Worldwide favorability rating of the top 10 tango orchestras

A few more assorted observations which probably don't reach statistical significance, but still sound intriguing.

#11 D'Agostino made the top 5 in the UK
#12 Laurenz was more popular with the older people, in Germany, in France.
#13 Sexteto Milonguero was in the top 5 in Chile and Brazil, unknown in the US
#15 Demare was less popular in Argentina, with marginal statistical significance
#16 Orquesta Tipica Victor - older people's orchestra; top 5 in Sweden; significantly less favored in Argentina. Ditto Lomuto.
#17 Enrique Rodriguez ranked poorly in Argentina and Mexico
#18 De Caro ranked worse in Europe and the US; Varela also fared poorly in the US, as did more modern bands such as Los Reyes del Tango, Orquesta Sans Souci, Esteban Morgado, and Herederos del Compas
#19 Color Tango ranked high in Latin America; so did Bajofondo, Hugo Diaz, Otros Aires, and Sexteto Mayor ... but with a marked exception for Argentina.
#32 Donato Racciatti unsurprisingly fared the best in Uruguay, but is also significantly more appreciated in Argentina than in the rest of the world.
#56 Juan Maglio Pacho was popular in France and Italy, they must have gained access to his better quality records unavailable to us?

Argentina is a world apart

Time and time again, an orchestra would show dramatically lower ranking in Argentina than abroad. Many of these cases involved contemporary bands which may be less known outside Argentina, so their ratings were available only from a handful of foreign locales. At first it was bewildering to see how a band gets most of its votes from Argentinians, only to rank the lowest in Argentine in comparison to other countries. Especially considering that Argentine vs foreign survey-takers "liked", on average, about the same number of orchestras (approx. 13), and that the rank-frequency plots inside and outside Argentina were pretty much indistinguishable. As it happens, the issue with the smaller contemporary bands turned out to be an artifact of Tango Tecnia's analysis methodology (where they excluded countries and regions with zero votes, and used the highest ranks for all orchestras which had the same number of votes in a country, thus dramatically inflating rankings of lesser orchestras in smaller countries).

But there are also major classic orchestras which the foreigners appreciate much more than Argentines. Note that all of them are associated with the early Golden Age / pre-Golden Age culture.

First and foremost, it's Francisco Canaro, already discussed above (51% in Argentina vs. 68% outside, p-value 0.000000)
Not surprisingly, Canaro's close associate Lomuto is in a similar situation (16% in Argentina vs. 27% outside, p-value 0.000000) (Incidentally we've just discused how neither Canaro nor Lomuto are ever played for the Tango Mundial in BsAs)
The difference in favorability is even stronger for OTV (15% in Argentina vs. 34% outside, p-value 0.000000)

Less prominent early-age orchestras show a similar pattern:

Firpo (10% in Argentina vs. 17% outside, p-value 0.000066)
Carabelli (5% in Argentina vs. 13% outside, p-value 0.000001)
Rafael Canaro (8% in Argentina vs. 14% outside, p-value 0.001340)

On the contrary, several later-period and contemporary bands were significantly better appreciated in Argentina:

Los Reyes del Tango (23% in Argentina vs. 10% outside, p-value 0.000000)
Orquesta Sans Souci (18% in Argentina vs. 9% outside, p-value 0.000000)
Gobbi (22% in Argentina vs. 12% outside, p-value 0.000000)
Salgan (14% in Argentina vs. 9% outside, p-value 0.002)
Racciatti (18% in Argentina vs. 11% outside, p-value 0.0002)

My guess is that even within the orchestras which foreigners and Argentinians love equally well, the latter may be biased in favor of late Golden Age and post-Golden Age records...

Followers' heaven, leaders' hell??

A number of contemporary bands had much higher favorability rating with the females. Amores Tangos, Bajofondo, Otros Aires, Gotan Project, Almagro, El Afronte, El Cachivache, Ojos de Tango. So did Piazzolla. Are these orchestras united by the pain they cause to the leaders? Please cue me in!

Poema dethroned?

Tango Tecnia survey also offered an opportunity to rate about 40 music titles (not specific records but just titles, often played by different orchestras, sometimes multiple times even by the same orchestra like Hotel Victoria or La Cumparsita). It was probably an unsophisticated  survey-writer's personal list of favorites. Whatever, I can still enjoy the fact that last year's winner, Poema, has been dethroned this year (and lost 1/3rd of its past popularity??). So did Recuerdo. On the contrary, Los Vino and Pollo Ricardo doubled their popularity. But I don't remember the survey's methodology, and can't quite figure out what to make out of its results.