[Tango-L] Community Expansion Brainwashing

[Jake Spatz (TangoDC.com)]

Bravo to Robert for spitting on the unfounded arguments recently put 
forward. I have only a few points to add...

(1) If you're talking about community building as a spectator, you had 
better be getting your ass on the floor and giving people good dances. 
To cast aspersions on teachers, organizers, performers, or even DJs, 
without having first shut up and done your part to be a good community 
member, is poop.

(2) This home-town crap (tango in BA, bop in NYC) is ludicrous. Tango 
and jazz both went abroad to find their first audiences and devotees on 
the world stage. Thanks be to the greater aesthetic sensibilities of 
Europe for that (and to the erstwhile cheap rents of Paris). Many of the 
great jazz musicians (like many in tango) lived in and on Europe. Only 
when these arts had risen to glory (and commercial promise) did their 
home countries accept them back, and make a big ruckus about national 
treasures, which is pure hogwash.

(3) America isn't the country that came up with tango electronica, and 
it wasn't Americans living in Paris either. Also, there's more to the 
good stuff (as opposed to the crud) than a bass beat and a bandoneon, 
which should be readily apparent to anyone with a keen ear for music.

(4) The "BA milonga experience," to the best of my knowledge, consists 
of overcrowded floors (which eliminate the possibility of dancing 
fantasia, which appears to have been a social form before it was taken 
to the stage in the rock n' roll era), of tourists aplenty, and of 
inexpensive but good quality beef in large, lean cuts. If anyone wants 
to introduce a good, cheap steak to the DC milongas, you have my full 
support.

(5) Saying that everyone has to go to Buenos Aires is like saying 
everyone in BA has to go to La Viruta. Are these people in advertising?

(6) There continue to be plenty of Argentine dancers living and teaching 
in Europe and the US. I wonder how much they want to re-create BA abroad.

(7) I know plenty of musicians who are fine dancers, and it's too early 
in the game to decree that they must become mediocre tango musicians. 
This type of binary thinking (I hesitate to call it thinking) is really 
becoming an epidemic, here and elsewhere. Either/or is for switchboards, 
not the alert human mind.

Spatz
DC