Dear unpublished commenters - an open letter

Dear unpublished commenters (you know who you are),

Do you ever wonder why your comments aren't published? Why your comments are deleted?

Do you ever notice that people become cranky in their responses to you when you *are* published?

I have a couple of thoughts as to why.

As long as you keep taking people's writings, kneading them like they were children's playdough into a little platform for you to stand on and speak,

as long as you pummel every blog post's content into a different shape, reconstructing people's thoughts so that they become opportunities to talk about something else that you find important, well, you can't expect your efforts to yield any results.

Or is it just that you don't read properly what others write?

All the best,

Tango Immigrant

Ps. This post is open for commenting. It's entirely possible - although not guaranteed - that I'll publish your comment this time.

Words of comfort

(dancing with famous teacher / dancer)

Him: "That was really comfortable."

Me (in my head): "Shoot."

***

Lately, I've been contemplating a word: cuddleshuffle, which seems to be a novelty word meant to describe "walking in a nice, close embrace". I'm not conviced that I like it.

Sure, I'm all for a lovely embrace and more walking / less (badly executed) tricks. It's just that this cuddleshuffle word creates a funny image in my head - one of dancing with a teddy bear, wearing felt slippers and possibly also flannel pyjamas.

It makes me think of laxness, not relaxedness.

And laxness is not what I want from tango. I want compactness, engagement and commitment, even when standing still. I want to dance with - and within - a stately and confident body, wearing spiky heels and a dress. Even if I'm wearing sneakers, I want to feel like I'm wearing spiky heels and a dress.

So my question is this: Do the words we choose - and the way we use them - have any impact on the way we dance?

If we can take the word cuddleshuffle and make it mean something more than, well, cuddling and shuffling, if it can help us get rid of unnecessary tension and put more emphasis on a warm, committed embrace and a great walk, then let's use it.

If it just makes us believe that dancing in a close embrace only equals pottering around the dancefloor without any intent, I really want us to look for a more useful word.

From the other side of the DJ table

Friend: "Why does DJing have to be such a hair-splitting undertaking? I wish he would just put on some music and cut the crap."

***

This week, I had my first DJ job ever; at Tangomood's Monday practica in Oslo. This is an unguided practica with a distinct milonga feel, where quite a few beginners mix with some more advanced dancers.

As I sat down in front of my computer to prepare, I felt a bit split. Who was I actually going to play for? The beginners? The advanced dancers? The people who know a lot about tango music? The people who don't know much about tango music yet (and would much rather dance to nuevo / alternative anyway)?

I decided from own dancing experience that it was over-ambitious to create an evening where everyone was happy. So I settled on one specific goal for the evening: making dancing to traditional tango music easier for the beginners. Criteria: everything I played should have a consistent beat throughout and a nice melody to connect to. With a bit of luck, the advanced dancers would like it, too.

So far, so good.

Sitting down at the computer again. Wanting to play everything in my iTunes library. Wanting to play reliable Canaros from the thirties every third tanda. Wanting to play only instrumental pieces to avoid confusing the beginners with extravagant vocalists. Wanting to play only vocal pieces because the instrumental pieces might become boring. Wanting to build super uniform tandas. Wanting to build super varied tandas.

Gaah.

Meanwhile, an imaginary crowd of advanced dancers were still floating about in the outskirts of my mind, asking for more subtlety, more novelty, more variation, more whatever. And I was in this crowd myself.

In Norway, we have this expression: "meeting oneself in the doorway". Hello, dancer-who-criticises-the-DJ-then-wants-to-become-a-DJ.

Ok girl, stick to the criterias. Consistent beat, nice melodies. Look for what you love yourself. Listen with other people's ears.

After some more grinding of teeth and ripping hair from head, I finished my playlist (yes, a playlist! I know!) with what I thought would be beautiful, fun and unpretentious stuff for this particular evening.

How did it turn out? Apart from some nice feedback, I don't really know. Reading the floor is not easy for a beginner DJ. And there will always be people who dance without actually enjoying the music. There will always be people who sit at a milonga, and you won't be able to tell why.

But there were both beginners and advanced dancers on the dance floor, and they were smiling as they danced.

***

If you have been DJing, do you remember how you felt the first time?

On tandas and safety nets

I just came back from Viento Norte - Festivalito Milonguero. Throughout this event, as is common at milonguero events / encuentros, (almost) all of us said "thank you for the dance" after one tanda.

It's been two days, and I miss it already: this buzz of excitement we experience every ten minutes.

The electricity in the room when the floor is empty and the cortina is drawing to an end. The electricity inside. What is the DJ's choice for the next tanda? Will it be something I love? Will I be able to find the right person for Donato, Di Sarli, D'Agostino?

I miss the anticipation in the room before each tanda.

Girls on the edge of their chairs, necks craned, backs straight as rulers. Guys standing tall, looking across the dance floor. Heads swivelling to locate the next favourite partner. Secret smiles as decisions are being made. Determined looks as the tanda starts. Eyebrows shooting upwards, happy nodding, broad grins, guys walking towards their lady. Humorous exclamations of disappointment if someone else was chosen. Misunderstandings, blushing and bashful laughter.

I miss this carefreeness, one that I don't find elsewhere. I miss the carefreeness of not having to plan ahead for the tanda after, a tanda I don't know anything about. The carefreeness of not having to worry about getting stuck with the right person, but the wrong music. The carefreeness of not making anyone feel bad by saying "thank you" after one tanda.

And most importantly: I miss being reminded to dance without a safety net, to dance knowing that there's no next tanda if I fail miserably during the first four tangos. I miss being reminded to walk into the embrace, into the music, into now, to challenge myself to immediacy, without hesitation or reservation.

I even miss the sting of sadness when a perfect tanda is over, a sadness coloured with the comfort of thinking that if we danced another one, it might have become just a little less perfect...

Female tango composers: Dorita Zárate

Since it's International Women's Day tomorrow, I thought I'd celebrate by starting off a series of posts about women that are unknown for many of us. These women have something special in common: they were composers in a time when the tango music world was dominated by men.

In these posts, I'll focus on women who composed music that was recorded, so we can listen to their work.

The first female composer I discovered was Dorita Zárate. In addition to one milonga that wasn't recorded, Por ella, she wrote one tango - No esperaba verte más - and one milonga - Zorzal - that were recorded by Carlos Di Sarli.

(collage by me - images found at Tangos al bardo and tango.info)

Sadly, I couldn't find much information about Dorita Zárate online. There's a small biography in Spanish at Tangos al bardo though, which tells us that Zárate's real name was Teodora María García, and that she was born in 1917.

Zárate was a singer as well, and her career started early: when she was only 15, she won a contest for new voices at the Radio La voz del aire. She sang occasionally with Ciriaco Ortiz - who used to call her "Gauchita" - and even with Rodolfo Biagi on the radio.

Dorita Zárate wrote both music and lyrics to No esperaba verte más and Zorzal.


Recordings:

* No esperaba verte más  Carlos Di Sarli - canta Jorge Durán - 1946

* Zorzal  Carlos Di Sarli - canta Roberto Rufino - 1941

* Zorzal  Orquesta José García - canta Alfredo Rojas 1942


Zorzal was also recorded in 1969 with Enrique Rodríguez and Dorita Zárate herself, but I couldn't find this one online.

Zorzal is a type of bird - for instance a blackbird - but to me, it looks like the lyrics might be about a man that was a great singer:

Lyrics copied from tangostangos.com.ar

If you have additional information about Dorita or her music / lyrics, you're welcome to post it in a comment. I'll be away this weekend, so comments will be published on Monday =)

Yo no sé por qué te quiero - beauty in simplicity

Drawing music is both fun and useful. It always makes me see something I didn't notice - or didn't know I had noticed. So this weekend, I made a drawing of a tango I love a lot: Yo no sé por qué te quiero. It was written in 1934 by Francisco Canaro; with lyrics by Ivo Pelay. My favourite version is Canaro's own recording, canta Ernesto Famá 1934.

You can listen to it here: archive.org and YouTube. The links are to the same recording - I hope that at least one of them works if you live in a country that restricts online listening. The links open in another tab so you can listen and look at the same time. 

I'm fascinated with how Canaro builds his composition out of one, very small idea. Basically, most of this tango consists of one tiny structure:  ╱╲

Here are the two parts - A and B section.

This is by no means a full musical analysis - and it's not meant to be - but we can still see how Canaro builds a whole story with his small fragment. I especially like the way he's changing the mood from the A section to the B section. He uses the same idea, but breaks up the structure, adding suspense.

If you leave a comment, I'm very much interested to hear if this did make sense or not - and if you are familiar with music notation / have done this kind of thing before.


Additional links:

- Francisco's younger brother Rafael recorded a quite beautiful version a couple of years after.

- Lyrics and version by José Carnet / Nelly Omar on Todotango

Traditionalists have feelings, too

Guy at local milonga: "You really like tango music, don't you?"
Me: "Um. Yes!!!"
Me (in my head): "Now that's a strange question."

***

You've probably read the tango music discussions on blogs and Facebook - you know, the ones concerning "do we want more nuevo / alternative in the milongas or not?" In these discussions, there's always some person using words like "traditionalist", "tango music police" and similar - in a tone that seems quite sarcastic. These persons' comments usually imply that traditionalists are people who protect tradition just for tradition's sake, without any further thoughts, and that they are conservative, reactionary, dogmatic, narrow-minded and generally afraid of new stuff.

I'm sure that there are traditionalists that fit this description perfectly. I'm also sure that some traditionalists are writing stuff that is upsetting to those of you who love nuevo. And of course: there are lots of nuevo lovers who don't generalise!

But still. I'm becoming increasingly cranky from being labelled as something that I can't relate to.

The thing is: I'm not a traditionalist just for the sake of it. Basically, this is not my tradition - or, to put it differently: it doesn't have to be my tradition if I don't want to. I'm not an old porteño that experienced the Golden Age. I'm a modern Norwegian girl with no prior connection to the history of Buenos Aires. As an immigrant to the country called Tango, I can choose to be a rebel if I like.

As I've pointed out before, I only liked nuevo and alternative music in the beginning. Actually, I'm not sure if I would have continued dancing if it weren't for the nuevo tandas at the local milonga and my beloved Gotan Project CD.

But then something happened: I went to a class where the teachers danced to El Flete by D'Arienzo. And I thought: "Hey, this is fun stuff!" I went home and listened again to the few CDs I had and found more fun stuff I had ignored. The rest is, well, history - pun not intended.

During the last six years or so, I've discovered a whole world of qualities and emotions in the music from the Golden Age: The sharp and energetic rhythms of D'Arienzo, fleetingly touched with lyricism. The robust, down-to-earth sadness of Rodríguez with Moreno. The slight naïveness of Fresedo.

The reliability of Canaro, paired with the milk chocolate-y voice of Maida and the incredibly cute "po-po-po-s" from a muted trumpet. The bandoneóns in some Donato tangos, sounding like birds. Oh, and these pianists. The majestic Carlos Di Sarli and the manic Rodolfo Biagi.

I've laughed when dancing to "Gato". I've found the perfect calmness with D'Agostino. Heck, I'll admit it: I've even cried. Not on the dance floor, but in broad daylight in front of my laptop, tagging Di Sarli's "Hasta siempre, amor". I don't even understand that much of the lyrics. It's all there in Horacio Casares' voice.

So I'll keep defending the traditional music. Not because it's traditional, but because it makes me dance through every emotion during a three hour milonga.

(and yes: I find some traditional tango music mind-numbingly boring. But who knows - I might like it at another stage of my life)


Links to the music:

Juan D'Arienzo instrumental 1936 - El Flete

Enrique Rodríguez canta Armando Moreno 1942 - Yo no sé por que razón

Osvaldo Fresedo canta Roberto Ray 1935 - Isla de Capri

Francisco Canaro canta Roberto Maida 1935 - Tu y yó

Edgardo Donato canta Horacio Lagos 1936 - Me voy a baraja

Carlos Di Sarli instrumental 1956 - Viviani

Rodolfo Biagi instrumental 1940 - El yaguarón

Edgardo Donato canta Horacio Lagos 1937 - Gato

Ángel D'Agostino canta Ángel Vargas 1944 - Esta noche en Buenos Aires

Carlos Di Sarli canta Horacio Casares 1958 - Hasta siempre, amor