[Tango-L] arrastre (musical)

[Huck Kennedy]

On Sat, May 3, 2008 at 12:02 AM, Jake Spatz <spatz at tangodc.com> wrote:
> Huck Kennedy wrote:
>
> > but I'd be willing to bet that if you asked 99 out of 100 tango teachers,
> including the best from Argentina, what an arrastre was, they'd reply that
> it was a foot drag and wouldn't have the slightest idea that it was also a
> musical term.
> >
> Not remotely true, IME.

     Of course it's true.  Just look in any tango glossary, the
assumption being that what's in all of them reflects the consensus of
tango "reality," as it were.

> > Dancers, even and especially the best ones, don't know diddly about
> technical music theory.  Hell, they don't even know what syncopation means
> (they think it means double-timing something), so how are they to be
> expected to know what an arrastre means in the musical world?
> >
> (a) I and plenty of others do not belong to this stereotype.

     I see no proof of that in my travels.  Sure, plenty of people
hear the arrastre in the music on a gut level and react to it while
dancing, but that's a bit different from what you're claiming.

> (b) I've had debates with 'classically trained musicians' over syncopation
> and other terms. The terms are only technical (and fixed in their
> definitions) up to a point, because there are always multiple ways to
> describe musical phenomena. Moreover, rhythm is rhythm, and belongs as much
> to poetry and dance as to "music proper." Musicians do occasionally bristle
> at the notion, but that's what makes it spicy to converse with them.

     The average musician has more rhythm in his little finger than
the average dancer.  Sorry.  Most dancers (and note that I am talking
about dance-major types, ballet, modern, etc., and not good seasoned
milongueros who understand that tango is the music and the dance
movement is only icing on the cake) are far more concerned with beauty
of movement than rhythm.

> (c) Not even /musicians/ need to know "technical music theory"-- unless

     True but rather beside the point.

> I've not seen the person who failed to get this lesson. I've seen many,
> however, who have failed to /retain/ it, and they struggle. Shall I call
> teachers qualified who turn ease into difficulty? Who teach "musicality" and
> "technique" without touching on /the major and most identifiable/
> characteristic of the music, which is common to all three sub-genres we
> dance to?

    Well I think you already know my opinion on most so-called
"musicality" classes, so I'm certainly with you on this.

> That's why I've spent the last 12 months redoing my music collection to avoid mp3s.

     That sounds very interesting, I'd love to hear more about it offline.

> I even spent several days and $100 obtaining a dumb little C/G Anglo
> concertina, just to show people how the sounds are made. (A bandoneon is an
> overgrown Anglo = diatonic concertina.) I give at least that much of a
> quantifiable damn.

     If there's one thing you've proven since showing up here, Jake,
it's that you give a very quantifiable damn.  In a world where so many
don't, I'd say it's one of your most endearing qualities.  :-)

> If reading this awakens that "critical feeling" in you, great: be critical.
> Just make sure you know whether you're critical of me, or yourself, or
> someone else entirely.

     My criticism was that you would reject a teacher out of hand just
because he or she couldn't cough up the musical definition of an
arrastre, and I think my criticism is justified.  You yourself admit
that you've had many dance partners who feel the arrastre intuitively
in their dance without having any formal knowledge of it.  On the
other hand, I think the way that you are emphasizing the arrastre in
your teaching is great.

> p.s. A further challenge (since that is what this has become):
>  You teachers who count, thus teaching people to dance to the /dots on
> paper/ rather than the sounds as played...

     Which teachers are those?  Most tango teachers can't read music
in the first place.

> do you count /in English/?

     Oh deer lowered.  What difference does it make which language you
count in?  I can't wait to hear the theory behind this one!
Actually, I do suppose it would be cool to count in Russian, with the
accent on their one coming on the second syllable (ah-DEEN).  Wow,
that might actually help with the arrastre, wouldn't it!  Plus their 4
(cheh-TEER-ruy).  Except they'd be better off trading 4 with 3 (ie.
pretending the word for "three" was "cheh-TEER-ruy"):

     ah-
     DEEN!  (dva) cheh-TEER-ruy
     deen!  (dva) cheh-TEE  ah-
     DEEN!  (dva) cheh-TEER-ruy
     deen!  (dva) cheh-TEE

Huck