[Tango-L] live music

[Gülden Özen]

Hi Korey,

Thanks for being the voice of reason and for your respect for the 
musicians who actually work very hard to please the dancers, who do 
not only try to revive the music that has been already created but 
who also try to create new music for the tango fans with all the 
training, experience, talent and love they have! You certainly speak 
for many silent members of this list or for those who do not care to 
be on this list at this time. Just to let you know, yes, there are 
tens and hundreds of people here in North Carolina just like you have 
witnessed in Seattle or Mt.Vernon gatherings who really love the live 
music to dance to and actually, Tango Lorca is at the top of their 
list! I can easily tell you that they love Tango Lorca's music not 
because it is the only band that they had a chance to hear live but 
it is one of the best ones that speaks to their soul and mind.
Last January when we hosted our first festival after 8 years of 
hosting different kinds of special dance and musicality workshops and 
live music milonga weekends, we did not hesitate to bring back Tango 
Lorca by popular demand! For our crowd, they have a "rock band" 
effect :-) Their CDs are always in high demand and the milongas they 
play live music are described as "magical" by many of our dancers. 
Last January, Tango Lorca played at our festival with two great 
additions: Christine Brebes and Hector del Curto! Hector now has a 
wild group of fans in Durham and they definitely want him to come 
back with Tango Lorca even though he has his own band :-)
Well, one reason why these guys have such a refreshing influence on 
our dancers is the wonderful musicality workshop they taught together 
with Fernanda Ghi! Yes, Fernanda and Guillermo were the first to 
introduce us to Tango Lorca back in 2001 and they keep inspiring us 
about dancing to live music each time they interpret a piece almost 
like another instrument "playing" with the orchestra.
And their musicality workshops were received with great enthusiasm by 
a group of ~80 dancers at our first festival.

For our upcoming festival in January 2007, when we had to consider 
not having live music only because of financial limitations, our 
"tangophiliacs" came together to raise funds to keep having live 
music at our festivals saying that "a festival without live music is 
not really a 'festive' thing"! We hope to see them succeed in their 
effort to keep our festivals "alive" and to keep supporting our tango 
musicians who have taken a tough path with very little chance of 
feeling rewarded let alone getting rewarded in a way that could allow 
artists to keep producing "the food" for our souls.

Gulden


At 01:00 AM 8/15/2006, Korey Ireland wrote:
>Hello Michael, Igor, Neil, Janis, and others concerned about live
>music for tango dancers:
>
>Thank you for sharing your perspective, its important for all of us
>to recognize there is a variety, different tastes, and that diversity
>potentially makes us more robust as a community.  I'm doing the math
>in my head to work out the "contentment" ratio ...but at last nights
>milonga in Seattle I believe there were about 200 people "happily"
>dancing to live music by Conjunto Berretin, I won't claim they were
>perfectly interpreting this energetic and playful ensemble, but they
>weren't doing any worse to my eyes as a dance floor then when the DJ
>played.  In fact, the energy in the room was noticeably boosted when
>the band played.  Then there was the event last week in Mt. Vernon
>where Tango Lorca with special guest Hector Del Curto played for a
>room of enthusiastic dancers (apparently minus Michael and a few
>others).  Again, watching the room with the band playing and later
>with the skilled Djing of Robin Thomas and Robert Hauk, I didn't feel
>a big shift in quality of dance, maybe a small change in energy
>level.  Well, my point is just to give some voice in this forum to
>the hundreds of dancers who do seem to enjoy dancing to these
>groups.  We hear from the few outspoken critics frequently, lets put
>it in context.  I count about 300 for and 5 against.
>
>Not to dispute your claims, they are of course, your experiences, but
>just to show another view, which in fact I believe to be a majority
>perspective - live music is a delight to dance to!  We are extremely
>fortunate that musicians of the caliber of Tango Lorca, Conjunto
>Berretin, and Trio Garufa (among others) chose to devote considerable
>time to learning dance repertory and style.  (and yes, I can assure
>you, they do make a considerable effort to please us!)  Quite the
>contrary of sucking, or being too much work, I often find dancing to
>live music a highlight of a festival weekend.
>
>Perhaps there are others reading this who can corroborate?
>
>These musicians are, by and large, warm, generous, accommodating,
>people, who put uncompensated effort to play in a difficult and
>subtle style that we will recognize as good dance music.  This is a
>style that developed from an economy that employed musicians 7 days a
>week, 2 gigs a night, until we have such an economy I think its a
>little unrealistic for us to expect the same musical conditions, and
>if you want to improve the situation, hire more live music, give your
>local band more practice, and perhaps some positive feedback.  When
>you criticize, blame, or vilify these musicians, you just make them
>less likely to take an interest in our art form, which ultimately is
>an impoverishment for all of us.  Please, think carefully about the
>human beings who are effected when you feel it necessary to flaunt
>your superiority and criticize those who endeavor to inspire us to
>dance.  Your words have an impact on the musicians who can be
>extremely discouraged by the intolerance of dancers, and for those of
>us who dream of some day dancing to live music that is as good as, or
>possibly better then the recordings we love to dance to.  As I
>understand it, dancers came back to tango in the late 30s and 40s
>because a new musical style played by innovative musicians compelled
>them to dance.  I'm sure at the time, there were a handful of people
>who said it was bad, the the status quo was better, change is scary
>and wrong, I imagine we're all happy that no one was swayed by these
>complaints.
>
>Respectfully,
>Korey Ireland
>
>_______________________________________________
>Tango-L mailing list
>Tango-L at mit.edu
>http://mailman.mit.edu/mailman/listinfo/tango-l