[Tango-L] Moe Tango (Jack Dylan)

[Huck Kennedy]

On Wed, Nov 10, 2010 at 11:53 AM, Brick Robbins <brick at brickrobbins.com> wrote:
>> From: Jack Dylan <jackdylan007 at yahoo.com>
>> Subject: Re: [Tango-L] Moe Tango
>> The main thing, Michael,?is not to confuse what you're doing in your video with
>> Tango.
>
> Che, no seas pelotudo. Who appointed you the adjudicator of what is
> and what is not Tango? Are you the direct descendant of Gardel or
> something? Are you even a porten~o?

        I think that's a bit unfair, Brick--I would hope we could all
agree you don't have to be a descendant of Gardel or even be a
porten~o to have an educated opinion.

> Tango is big, and is means a lot of different things to a lot of
> different people.

      That has no bearing on what tango actually *is*, but go on.

> The word "tango" encompasses The Dance, the Music,
> and the Culture, and some might say the soul of Buenos Aires.

        True enough.  But tune into the tango radio stations in Buenos
Aires and you'll hear Argentine music, not random music from other
cultures that some people think might be fun to dance tango moves to.

> Your way may be good for you, but it is not the only way. Let other
> people have theirs.

        I don't think Jack is talking about not letting people do what
they want.  He's only taking issue with calling it tango, which is a
far more modest request.

       The music always comes before the dance.  The dance movement is
developed to physically express the sentiment of the genre of music in
question.  If you dance that movement to other kinds of music, you
are--well...dancing tango moves to other music.  But you are not
dancing Argentine tango, which, as you yourself suggest above,
encompasses both the music and the dance movement from the Argentine
culture.

        Now obviously Argentine tango music itself has in the past
evolved over the years and can in the future evolve as well.  But
music resulting from that is not what I (and I think, Jack) are
talking about--we're talking about not referring to as "Argentine
tango" the dancing of tango moves to music from a completely different
culture (such as Celtic music like McKennitt's Tango To Evora to cite
one hackneyed example).

        I don't know about Jack, but I could probably compromise with
the term "alternative tango."   After all, one has to describe the
curious proceedings that occur during the late afternoon at the
typical US tango festival *somehow*.   :-)   What about anyone else?

Huck