[Tango-L] Musicality and dancing tango to non-tango music

[lgmoseley@aol.com]

I agree that Tango starts with the music. My impression is that those who can hear the richness, texture, and variety of the music of the golden age and the decades thereafter, and can dance to it, can also dance to the less strict and structured modern music.

 

However, the opposite does not always apply. People who initially dance mainly to the more modern music, especially music which comes from the pop world, often appear to find it difficult to dance to the more classic tracks. I suspect that there are two reasons for that:

 

1. Apparently, many of them cannot initially hear the beat in the traditional material. I find that baffling, but it seems to be true. However, most do eventually pick it up.

 

2. As there is a beat to the traditional music, one has to dance to it, and it soon becomes obvious when one fails to do so. One should be dancing to the beat, inserting firuletes and pauses – the ‘mira como esperan’ phenomenon. With the more modern material, one tends frequently to impose one's own rhythm onto the music, perhaps because it has so little of its own. One is not dancing to the music, but to one's own rhythm.

 

I often come across people who say that they have had several years' experience but who still ask whether a particular piece is a Tango, Milonga, or Vals. These are often the same people who baffle me by not hearing any rhythm. In our own classes we now run sessions to encourage people to listen to the layers of the music. There may be one beat in the singing, one in the piano, one in the violins, one in the bandoneons, and one in basses, all in the same track, and exchanging the lead several times - and one can dance to all of them. That is one of the reasons why good dancers often look different from each other. One piece which sometimes does the trick is Orquesta Tipica Victos's "Victrolera"

 

An interesting phenomenon which I have observed is that there are some people (men in particular) who initially enjoy the more modern material and dance to it as a series of figures or poses rather than as a dance. They tend to call the traditional material 'whiney', 'tinny', 'plonky-plonky' or something similar. However, as they become more experienced, usually after 2 to 3 years, they spontaneously start to ask for us to play more traditional tracks. It is striking  how many of them 'graduate', particularly to Pugliese.

 

It's not a strict rule. Note that many of the sentences above contain lots of "initially", "appear to", "apparently", and so on. Incidentally, our own evenings often start with classic pieces but we move to the more unstructured ones as the evening progresses and the lights are lowered.

 

What the hell do I know, though? Perhaps it's entirely subjective, and I just happen to love Pugliese and Color Tango.

 

Brazos

 

Laurie (Laurence)

 

 

Kushi_bushi The Tangonista wrote:

 

> i see both answers in the proximate causation definition

 

The "moves, customs, and behaviors" are proximate causes. They would not 

exist but for the ultimate cause - the music.

 

> i think it is the interpretation and feeling that make it "your 

> dance" and the movements, etc. that make it tango.

 

Kushi, attribute your view to the fact that, as you've told us, "your 

dance" is one that "finds much of the traditional tango music whiney and 

uninspiring", "like a bag of cats being mistreated" and prefers "dancing 

to gotan project...".

 

It's no surprise tango music dislikers assume it must be the moves/steps 

that make it tango. It's like someone who doesn't believe in electricity 

having to conclude that what causes a desk fan to turn is the air 

movement. Despite the pointlessness of such an arrangement.

 

The believers are the dancers who love the music. It's the music and that 

love of it that makes it tango.

 

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