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

[Carol Shepherd]

Sharna Fabiano has given me permission to post this article to the list, 
so we can read and discuss.

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The Rise of Neo Tango Music
© copyright Sharna Fabiano 2003
http://www.sharnafabiano.com/

The reawakening of the argentine tango at the turn of the new century is 
that of a great spirit rising after a deep slumber. In its recent 
revival since the late eighties, the tango has inspired legions of new 
dancers all over the globe with its powerful partner connection and 
intricate, elegant movements. Of late, momentum is gathering for a 
revolutionary wave to crash into the tango world. Young dancers are 
experimenting with new concepts in tango social dance, and along with 
them contemporary tango musicians are inventing a hybrid sound that 
blends traditional instrumentation with modern electronic music. I call 
this new wave "Neo Tango."

The breakthrough creations of contemporary artists such as the Gotan 
Project, BajoFondo TangoClub, and most notably Carlos Libedinsky are 
heralds of the new global tango. These artists have blended tango with 
contemporary electronic music. Commenting on his newly released CD, 
NARCOTANGO, Carlos writes:

"At the hour when there are only a few couples left on the dance floor, 
magic sneaks into the Milonga, and I watch people dancing and 
experimenting with a new kind of Tango dance. When my body is exhausted 
from dancing for hours and I don't want the night to end, at that hour 
NARCOTANGO was born. It was then that I could imagine the music that I 
wanted to dance to, and to see others dance to."

Until very recently, nearly all of the music used for dancing today's 
social tango has been taken from old recordings of Golden Age 
orchestras. Even most young tango bands tend to fill their repertoire 
with compositions from that period. But our era is different from the 
Golden Age of tango in Buenos Aires (1930s-50s). We have different 
musical instruments and technologies, different social venues, and 
different styles of dress. All of these things inspire today's tango 
dancers and musicians to play and improvise in new ways.

However, there is something familiar about this creative urge. One might 
say, in fact, that invention and experimentation are at the very root of 
the tango tradition. Let's recall that in the early 1900's, hopeful 
immigrants from Italy, Germany, Eastern Europe, Africa, and various 
South American countries all converged on ArgentinaÍs port city of 
Buenos Aires, bringing with them not only their hopes and dreams, but 
also their portable instruments and their cultural traditions. Like 
today, it was an atmosphere of discovery, conflict, and social 
adjustment. As the disparate members of Buenos Aires' early century 
melting pot gathered together, the tango was born. Today, we witness its 
re-birth. Creeping into the souls of enthusiasts around the globe, the 
tango is searching for a current musical context.

This is why modern and culturally relevant music is so essential to 
effectively renew the spirit of the tango. The "Neo Tangos" that the 
aforementioned groups have produced are hybrids of traditional 
instrumentation and electronic sound, artistically bridging the gap 
between the Golden Age and the new millenium. This hybrid tango music 
strikes a chord with mass audiences, and its vibration has the potential 
to generate not only small gatherings of aficionados, but an 
international social and artistic movement.

Neo Tango cannot be dismissed as the latest addition to the thriving 
'world music' genre because it is not limited to the fusion of 
electronic music with traditional instruments. On the contrary, so deep 
is the need for new tangos that adventurous dancers of today are 
claiming music from genres across the board: blues, rock, disco, fado, 
and countless world music sub-categories. Phrases like 'alternative 
tango' and 'non-tango' are already standard lingo. At a workshop on this 
subject in Rochester, NY, my students came up with three essential 
characteristics that a compelling Neo Tango shares with a Golden Age 
Tango: 1. It has a consistent, walkable tempo; 2. It tells a story 
through melodic and rhythmic sophistication; 3. It has powerful 
emotional substance.

Popular music and tango music are circling each other out there in the 
collective unconscious, like two planets approaching alignment. 
Starbucks' new record label Hear Music accidentally (as far as I know) 
produced a few Neo Tango albums recently. More than half the songs on 
volumes 1, 2, 4, and 5 are functional for dancing tango. Even more 
exciting is local phenomenon Thievery Corporation's latest album Richest 
Man in Babylon, which Rolling Stone describes as "stories of a better 
world." Several tracks on this album fits requirements 1-3 above.

Earlier this year I gave a tango performance at a screening of the film 
The Truth About Charlie (a remake of the classic Charade). The script 
now has a tango bar scene in place of the original jazz bar scene, and 
shockingly enough features the music of the Gotan Project and Llasa de 
Sela, an utterly non-tango artist widely played by tango 
experimentalists. Coincidence? I think not. Someone in the film industry 
has a finger on the pulse, so to speak. Already, regional music 
preferences have begun to emerge within the global tango community, and 
DJs are beginning to win accolades for their distinctive tastes in 
non-traditional tangos. Dan Kesmayr writes from Germany:

"Here in Munich, we have a milonga called "Tango-Fusion" which basically 
is a mix between a milonga and a dance club event. The music that gets 
played is [traditional] tango (3 out of 20 songs?), stuff like Gotan 
project, Bajofondo, some songs from soundtracks to the movies "Amelie", 
"Chicago", and some more music that I cannot categorize, probably 
nujazz, house etc. It was never intended as a replacement for classical 
milongas, but in my world it is a really essential addition."

Dan's description of 'his world' reminds me suspiciously of the 1940's, 
when most Buenos Aires neighborhoods had their own orchestras, and 
dancers would choose where to go dancing depending on who was playing. 
Today, we have a wider variety to choose from, and I think we will soon 
see more events like Dan's cropping up in cities around the globe. Even 
in Buenos Aires there is an avant-gard milonga called "La Catedral" 
where you hear classical music, jazz, and other unexpected sounds 
innocently floating out of the sound system and the very end of the night.

Dancers today have music available to them that spans many decades and 
many countries. It has been the general assumption until now that there 
was a natural ceiling on the growth of tango, namely because traditional 
music and traditional atmosphere only appeal to a small segment of 
today's population. The manifestation of neo tango music in the tango 
world breaks that ceiling. Young people especially are drawn by the 
eclectic sound and by the fun and experimental atmosphere that typically 
accompanies it. Andrew Burt writes from Portland,

"I DJ the 'mixed music' practica here in Portland, and I think it's 
great for the younger side of community building. It infuses a lot of 
joy, gaiety, and humor into the dancing, and there's a lot more laughing 
than you normally hear."

We can get a glimpse of what might happen with tango by observing the 
development and integration of latin music and dancing into the latino 
bar and club scene. Exposed to jazz, rock, and other external influences 
since 1950, salsa dancing has persisted, through infinite permutations, 
as it began, a natural part of social life in latino social communities. 
Because Neo Tango reaches into a multitude of genres, its ramifications 
if a similar integration takes place are likely to be enormous. Tango 
dancing is proving to be a natural match with the majority of musical 
genres found in today's mainstream dance clubs. If social tango dancing 
becomes the norm in even 1% of such venues, social culture as we know it 
will be altered beyond recognition, and we just might find ourselves in 
the Platinum Age of Tango. [For more on the power of tango in social 
culture, see Sharna's previous article, The Social Dance Network.]

The truth is that young dancers have been restless for several years 
now, anticipating the appearance of this new music. Using as a base the 
work of the "tango investigation" practice group begun by Argentine 
visionaries Gustavo Naveira and Fabian Salas in Buenos Aires, young 
dancers are inventing new moves, new embraces, and new clothes for 
dancing. Tango has benefited immensely from the influence of salsa and 
swing vocabulary, and underarm turns, spins, and changes of arms provide 
rich material for this next evolution of social dance.

And so the contemporary tango music library is growing, and with it the 
allure of tango for a key portion of the 20- and 30-something 
demographic. The songs have the tango's unmistakable 'walking beat' and 
the edge of the new millenia in their melodies. The urge to innovate and 
reinvent is at the very core of the tango - contemporary evidence 
includes mixing string instruments with sythnesizers, salsa turns with 
conventional tango figures, denim with fishnets.


-- 
Carol Ruth Shepherd
Arborlaw Associates PLLC
business, technology, entertainment and media law
"practical legal solutions for creative people"
Ann Arbor, Michigan USA
734 668 4646 v  734 786 1241 f
http://www.arborlaw.com

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