[Tango-L] "Alternative" Music....

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Dear Nina,


Pesochinsky> Hmmm...  did these dancers actually announce that they were dancing  
Pesochinsky> "Argentine tango"?  Just because they are Argentine does not mean that

What is argentine tango? According to all contemporary description is a way of dancing. Originally danced to music that was not stylistically well-defined. Now, of course, it is. There is an almost fixed idea what "tango-like" music is.

But when I test it on new students I find that they 

a) sometimes are unable to identify certain performers as tango (such as Gardel...)
b) will not (unable to) distinguish between different rythms and therefore will dance to anything that I put in, including canyengue, vals, milonga...
c) are not really giving a damn about originality, but will be interested in music they like and consider danceable (not frowned upon in Europe...)

This also reminds me, that the different styles that are called tango are so diverse, that you could as well play Bach and still dance tango to it, there would be no less difference. 

Of course tango FOR DANCING is a different issue. Many tangos were not intended for dancing. These tango were different because they encompassed other styles or used unusual arrangements, or maybe just used 'the tango feeling' as a dramatic tool. 

However, some of them later became part of the milonga-repertoire. 

Now with neotango, why not? With other world-music/lounge/jazz, and especially pop and rock'n'roll it is a bit more tricky, but using the same extrapolation basing it on rythmical/mood/theme/arrangement similarities, it is just contemporary music, to which people dance tango. 

They could dance a mixture of polka, slow fox and hip-hop as well, but they choose tango with some changes. This is what they feel right. 

As for calling this phenomenon argentine tango... Well I disapprove. 

It is DEFINITELY not Argentine. But it is tango. A sub-class (or rather evolved class) of it. Maybe you could call the dancing style using the naming of electro-tangomusic as neotango (to distinguish it from the nuevo technique)... It is not pure old-style original tango as it is using technique and movement from many other dancing styles (but well processed, so they are quite hard to identify), but a child of tango nevertheless...

NB: Argentine Tango is a way to distinguish tango from other tango styles. AT is usually referred to as 'tango' by natives and will include all styles danced.

NB2: I am not a proponent of neotango, but I like to dance to it at times. However, may hard drive contains about 80Gbs of 'traditional' tango (14000+ songs), and maybe only 4-5Gbs of modern (got recently from my 25 yo dancepartner, who is very fond of it).

Cheers,
Aron