[Tango-L] Some live tango music tips from a musician's perspective.

[Barnes, Bob]

Hi-
 
My name is Bob Barnes and I'm the accordionist/bandoneonist/bandleader/arranger for Mandrágora Tango in Minneapolis (http://www.mandragoratango.com).  We've been playing a weekly Milonga every Sunday night for over 5 years.  We've learned through experience what works for dance and what doesn't.  Here are some lessons that our band has learned over the years.
 
1) If you want to be a Piazzolla cover band, a milonga is not the place to do it.  I founded Mandragora and learned Bandoneon to play like Piazzolla.  All the folks in the band came to tango through Piazzolla.  We all fell in love with classic tango by following Piazzolla's roots.  If you look down your nose at D'Arienzo and DiSarli for being too "simple", you probabbly should stick to playing Piazzolla at jazz clubs and coffee houses.  
 
2)  Tango is classical music you can dance to: you need good arrangments.  The arranger is, by far, the most important member of a tango band.  Every note in a tango band is written down.  It is possible to buy existing arrangments for Orquesta Tipica (4 bandos, 4 violins, piano & bass), Sextetto (2 bandos, 2 violins, piano and bass) or "Piazzolla Quintet" (Bando, Violin, Bass, Guitar and PIano).  If you have a different combo, you are out of luck.    It takes me about 16 hours of work to arrange one 3-minute tango.  As you can see, the barrier to entry is really high.
 
3) You can only go so far "a la parilla".  Music can often be distilled to a melody line and chords.  Jazz players call these "leadsheets" and play off of them all the time.  When tango players do the same thing, it's called "a la parilla" (on the grill).  If you a duo or trio, you can play this way and make up arrangements ahead of time (i.e. "Violin starts, then the bando comes in, then the violin takes over....).  The more people you have, the more impractical this gets.  Plus, you will never capture the subtleties of a good arrangement.  For the first 3 years of my band, we played "a la parilla" and it just wasn't tango enough.
 
4) Some people just prefer live music.  Play for them.  There are lots of "dance gypsies" in our town who can go and hear a live band every night: Salsa, Cajun, Blues, Swing, various ethnic music, etc...  They may not devote themselves entirely to tango, but they do devote themselves to live music.  Feed off their energy.
 
5) You can never satisfy hard-core tango geeks, so don't even try.  We have all met folks that believe that there has been no real tango since 1945 or who can debate at length why Tanturi is better than Biagi (or is it the other way around?)  Mandragora can not compete with the greats of the golden era.  We are all non-Argentine Hispanic-Americans who have lived most of our adult lives in Minnesota.  We didn't grow up in tango culture.  At best, it is a "second language" to us.  We could devote our lives to reproducing every nuance of a DiSarli arrangement, but it would just be much easier for you to dance to the real thing on a CD.  All we can do is be respectful of the tradition.  We try to make sure that the percent of dancers who love what we do is much, much higher than the percentage of purists who say it's not real.
 
(When I started Mandrágora Tango, 2 DJs tried to explain to me that what I was doing could never be tango and that I was wasting my time.  Luckily for us the dancers though otherwise.)
 
6) Different DJs specialize in different sounds.  Why not bands?:   Some DJs play electrotango, some are heavy on Guardia Vieja.  Some even play Piazzolla (gasp!).  Why don't you look at a live tango band as a different breed of DJ (albeit one with a much, much smaller repertory).
 
7) Keep the tempo steady and you'll always have them dancing.  Know the differences in playing for concert and for dance.  Keep a strong 2 or 4 beat and resist the urge to make dramatic pauses and tempo changes. The main problems with Piazzolla for dance is that the tempi change abruptly and the beat is seldom 2x4.    Many of our tunes can work for both concert and dance.   In concert, we make dramatic pauses and play with the tempo.  For dancing, we keep the tempo much steadier and emphasize the strong beats much more.  
 
8) Live music attracts new dancers.  We play a lot of "evangelizing" gigs: we'll play at some street fair, jazz club or music festival and bring a few dancers.  Civilians see the dancers and decide to take lessons.  It's hard to get non-dancers to stop by a dance studio to see a demo.
 
9) When a band plays in BA, the first 2 or 3 songs are for listening.  If you absolutely have to play undancable stuff, play it first and call it a concert.  (Your mileage may vary on this one)
 
10) This may sound weird and touchy-feely, but if you want to connect to the dancers while playing, focus on just one couple and try to play what they are feeling. 
 
A band can't be all things to all dancers, but it can try to be many things to a lot of them.  
 
-Bob
info at mandragoratango.com
http://www.mandragoratango.com