[Tango-L] Cortinas (not the old car from the '70s

[Alexis Cousein]

Alex Panchenko wrote:
> Alex, I don't think that a love for the authentic danceable tango music 
> makes one a snob. 

If I recall, I didn't advocate not using old music (if you're trying to refer
to the exchanges I participated in). It's forcing me to play it in a particular
order cast in stone I object to.

In a tango tanda, I reserve the right to play three d'Arienzo from old 20s
to the end of the 40s just to show how much he himself evolved, and
complement it with another (good) track from another orchestra from the
later period -- sometimes from an orchestra not too dissimilar, and
sometimes slightly contrasting.

Or I'll start with rythmical tangos but slowly evolve to more lyrical
ones just before I'll start playing vals - or just before a tanda of
*milongas* instead, just to wrongfoot people when they take me for
granted, starting with milongas that are also more
lyrical and slower so that it doesn't jar too much.

And yes, if I blend in a tanda with the next one, I feel that (with
social customs being what they are here), more than 5 seconds pause between
the tangos and the valses (or milongas) would break the spell, so I might
not play a cortina.

To some, that's all heresy. If there's more than one orchestra in a tanda,
if the track recordings  are separated by more than two years, or even
if a track *sounds* better than the other ones in a tanda, if not
all of them have exactly the same pulse, if there's no cortina,
or if they even hear a hint of a singer (in particular -God forbid-
a female singer), they're astonished that, not only I do not get
incinerated on the spot by the True Tango gods, but people
(the ruffians!) are actually continuing to dance, depriving them
of the justification to nag incessantly for me to play (just) Biaggi
or 20s d'Arienzo for the next tanda, even though they just *had*
two tandas of music in similar style.

Just in case you missed "to some" above, if an audience *collectively*
wants a certain kind of music, that's what they'll get - but they might
have to ask someone else to DJ next time around, as I don't like to
be fenced in.

BTW, talking about "old music", I don't know what you mean by that - some
interpret this extremely restrictively.

I vehemently disagree that music of the late 40s is unfit to dance on,
and also insist that I shouldn't ban all tracks that happen to have a singer
singing on it, just because some tango fascists will insist it's "confusing" to
dancers just because they're too thick to interpret music with more melodic lines.

I'll also reserve the right to play 1955 Paris "Bando" and "Preparense" even
though they're played by the Antichrist aka Piazolla. So there.

I might even (at the end of the evening, when the mood is more mellow),
play *one* rendition of "Oblivion" just to chase the bad spirits away,
but that usually doesn't work - at three o'clock in the morning, even some
staunch traditionalists tend to grab a favourite partner to glue
themselves to while dancing on that track ;).