[Tango-L] Missing Magic

[Shahrukh Merchant]

macfroggy at aol.com says:

> This nostalgia for what used to be, that life, people, things, milongas aren't what they once were, is very tango!

Alberto Gesualdi <clambat2001 at yahoo.com.ar> kindly provided the lyrics:

> We live in the present . 
> Our ego clings to the past and our mind tries to hide into the future because it does not like a present continuous as it happens to be.
> ...
> ?and then the mind will atone (with some complaining , yes , but will atone). And we dance , here and now.

Now all that's missing is the music ... :-)

Some other comments:

"Trini y Sean (PATangoS)" <patangos at yahoo.com> wonder:

> Was that the time of the nightclub fire?  I've heard it said that that event really changed the milongas.  When the clubs were closed, people found other things to do and some didn't go back to the milongas.  When people went back they may have changed where they went.

No, that was much later, December 2004 (the sentencing for those deemed 
responsible just took place a few weeks ago, almost 5 years later). And 
I wouldn't say that that really changed the milongas anyway. For a 
period of several months, yes, while all dance venues were closed and 
only slowly being allowed to open. And a few never came back, or came 
back in different locations, etc. Some like "Lo de Celia" took longer to 
come back. But ultimately, it did not really change the nature of the 
Milongas as a whole.

robin tara <robinctara at gmail.com> (who started the thread) adds:

> I want to apologize to anyone for whom my posting seemed like an admonition
> to forego the tango  experience in Buenos Aires.  Or to imply that going to
> BA these days won't thrill you at all.

No, your posting didn't come across that way at all, but yes, it 
probably bears reinforcing that Buenos Aires is still the only city that 
lives and breathes tango, but you have to know where to find it (though 
you will likely run into it accidentally anyway).

The change is that the milongas are decreasingly the places to find the 
"original" Tango (but many are still special places nonetheless). In 
fact I would suggest that you come sooner rather than later, because the 
flat-world phenomenon is increasingly flattening the Tango as well (by 
that I mean that, for better or worse, it is being increasingly 
internationalized).

Art and commerce (of art) have always had an uneasy symbiosis, and Tango 
is not immune to this. What the recent internationalization phenomenon 
has done is upset that balance. International interest and money feeds 
the commerce *but does not have the same stake in the culture*, having 
"discovered" it a decade or two ago at most (I'm talking about 
discovered it in its current form, not about the Belle Epoque era export 
-to-Paris discovery), without even the strength of a sense of identity 
behind it. Contrast that to a century plus of local Tango culture in 
Buenos Aires (ok, Rio de la Plata region), where the culture is 
furthermore intertwined with a strong sense of identity that is part of 
a subconscious national identity. Which do you think is more likely to 
care about preserving traditions?

The "art" part of the symbiosis got confronted with a huge uphill battle 
(and it's not clear whether the UNESCO declaration has helped or hurt 
art's side of the battle--my take is that bureaucracies and art don't 
mix ... but let's see). Whether it's up to the task remains to be seen. 
Tango survived suppression during the dictadura ... but perhaps it has 
an insidiously stronger challenge now: insidious because it is not 
suppressing it, but chipping away at it.

Ultimately, it's all Darwinism at it's finest, but that doesn't mean one 
shouldn't reflect on the some beautiful now-lost species, and lament 
that one now has to visit a zoo to see what was once out in the 
wilderness for those willing to seek it out. And sure, write a Tango 
about it ...

Shahrukh