[Tango-L] how many tangos (used for dancing)?

[Stephen.P.Brown@dal.frb.org]

Ron offered some comments about the number of tangos used for dancing. I'm 
offering a few more comments.

A typical cycle for deejaying a milonga is TTVTTM (two tandas of tango, 
one tanda of vals, two tandas of tango, one tanda of milonga).  With each 
tanda comprising four songs and a cortina, it is 70+ minutes per cycle. My 
current playlist is about 600 tangos, vals and milongas (including 
alternative and neo recordings), which is about 30 hours of dance music. 
(I also take salsa, swing and merengue to milongas.)

As a deejay, I mostly adhere to philsophy of playing the well-known 
classics for dancing from each orchestra.  I don't mean that I limit my 
playlist to the golden era.  I mean that I use only the top dance 
recordings for each orchestra.  For D'Arienzo, as an example, I have 37 
tangos, 11 valses and 15 milongas on my playlist.  According to the Juan 
D'Arienzo discography at tangoteca, Juan D'Arienzo recorded 1007 tracks, 
including 83 valses and 88 milongas.  In selecting my 63 tracks, I am used 
about 6 percent of D'Arienzo's oeuvre, and that is for one of the most 
popular orchestras for dancing.

(Extrapolation from my playlist suggests that tens of thousands of tango 
recordings were made.  My guess is 20 thousand plus, but would defer to 
someone more knowledgeable, such as Keith Elshaw or Tobias Conradi.  Of 
course, not all of these recordings are available on CD.)

A few djs have told me that they have playlists upwards to 1800 tracks.  I 
think they are reaching more deeply into the recordings for lesser-known 
material to establish a playlist.  I suspect on some of these longer 
playlists, there are numerous recordings that languish without actually 
being played.

With best regards,
Steve