[Tango-L] Musicality. What is it?

[Huck Kennedy]

Victor Bennetts <Victor_Bennetts at infosys.com> writes:
> 
> The tango embrace is intimate so a follower can tell a lot
> about a leader,   [...]
> One of the things they can tell is if the leader is actually
> listening to and enjoying the music. To me that is musicality.
> I don't think lessons help all that much on this particular
> point.  You have to first and foremost like the music and then
> secondly listen to it a lot so that you know it by heart and
> can anticipate what sort of steps are going to fit a particular
> passage.

     Bingo.  Thanks, Victor, for posting that.

     For those of you of a certain age in countries
where the Beatles were hugely popular, do you remember
how so many people growing up at the time knew every
single one of their songs intimately, so much so that the
music was practically running through our veins?

     Similarly, that's how well many of the WWII-ear
guys and gals knew the Big Band swing music.

     Well that's how well you need to know the various
tangos in order to dance them with musicality.  You
will be seriously handicapped unless you always know
exactly which note, phrase, etc. is coming next in the
song.

     Which is another reason many of us prefer to dance
to the tried and true old recordings than to some of
the newer stuff, or to obscure (at least to us) live
orchestras' unpredictable interpretations of the old
stuff.  We want to know precisely everything that is
coming, so we can dance with as much musicality as
possible, in a natural, almost subconscious way (since
the music is so heavily burnt into our brains), without
having to actually think about musicality analytically,
which takes all the fun out of it.  We want it to be
just like breathing.

     If you can only hazard a guess as to where the
music is going next, your musicality is going to suffer.
If you know the music so well that it's almost a part
of you, and you love it, dancing with musicality becomes
as easy as singing.  And note the "love" part (which
Victor also mentions)--that's why many people sit out
tandas of music they don't particularly care for.  If
the music doesn't move you, you're not going to be able
to dance with as much musicality, because good musicality
requires being emotionally involved with the music.

     So my advice to anyone starting out is, don't waste
your money on so-called "musicality classes."  You'll either
just wind up standing around group-clapping like some kind
of trained seal--if you can't feel the rhythm yourself,
clapping along with and thus mindlessly aping the people
who can is not going to help you much 10 minutes after
the class is over and there is nobody who knows what
they're doing to ape anymore--or else you'll wind up
listening to some teacher drone on and on abstractly about
various qualities of orchestras, which will be little more
than blather to you if you haven't first spent a gazillion
hours listening to the music so you can even begin to
understand on a gut level what the instructor is going on
about.

     So I say spend your money on tango CDs instead, and
then listen to them until your ears fall off!

     Actually, I have a lot more advice than that, but
until you know the music of as many tangos as possible
very intimately, you'll just be spinning your wheels
in any attempts to be musical.  It's kind of like trying
to have a nice tight musical jam when one or more of the
musicians doesn't know the underlying song--other than
in jazz, it usually just winds up being aimless, boring
noodling.  Which is precisely (and unfortunately) what
a lot of tango dancing looks like, especially when it is
compounded with trying to do too many complicated and
technically difficult steps.

     I also agree with what Victor seems to be implying
(if I'm reading him right), to wit, that musicality just
comes naturally to some people more than others, just as
moving elegantly (without any regard to music, just
judging the pure movement in and of itself) comes easier
to some people than others.

Huck