[Tango-L] Better? Worse? Just different. (was: tango to rap)

[Myk Dowling]

On 13/04/11 04:43, Anton Stanley wrote:
> Sorry to need to respond again. Figures can be used to seemingly add
> validity to any scenario. Prior to 30 years ago, I've read that tango was
> largely repressed by a military dictatorship. When lifted, a substantial
> increase would be expected. A more meaningful analysis would be trends over
> say the past five years, not only in numbers but demographics. I'm currently
> in BA for the next three months and am already being told that local
> classical tangueros are finding it increasingly difficult to find milongas
> that satisfy like they used to ten years or so ago. The music's much the
> same, but too many things have changed. I think they mean for the worse.
> Can't imagine what change that might be. Maybe they mean that social tango
> is classical tango and some of the subsets don't belong on the social floor.
> 'Bit like so many things in this world. Only admen and politicians tell us
> everything new is better, and a little ashamedly, I have to admit I was one.
In every thing that humans do or experience, we tend to think that 
things now are much worse than they were in the past. This is because we 
remember the good things about our personal experience and forget the 
bad things. There will always be change; it is absurd to think that 
tango can be maintained exactly the same as it was in the past.

Even the people today talking about "classical milongas" are not talking 
about the kind of milongas they had in the thirties or forties, with new 
musical compositions and arrangements almost exclusively from live 
orquestas tipica. Shouldn't we be seeking out that, if we want to 
maintain the "true tango"? Throw away the recordings and pay real 
musicians decent wages to hone their skills.

Everything changes over time, including individual people. Some things 
are better and some things are worse. But you simply can't trust 
people's memories or subjective judgements. Human observation and memory 
are very unreliable. Statistics and figures really do give us a much 
better way of judging things. Your "local classical tangueros" are 
probably getting more choosy as they get older, something that happens 
to us all. That could well account partly or entirely for their 
subjective judgements.

Myk,
in Canberra