Re: A Tango concert

[joanna bujes <jbujes@xxxxxxxxx>]

As a dedicated tango dancer -- of some five years -- I can't resist
adding to this. As the waltz characterized the 19th century, the tango
will surely get the honors for the 20th.

Born in the slums of Buenos Aires (and made "respectable" in Paris in
the 1920's), tango is danced all over the world. I think part of its
continued appeal must have to do with the continual migration and
feeling of  "homelessness" that characterizes modern life. The tango is
stereotyped as a music of romantic passion; but I think the
circumstances of its birth reveal its mood more accurately. Ttango was
invented by exiles: exiles from the Argentine pampas, exiles from
Africa, from Germany, Italy, Turkey....who found themselves thrown
together in Buenos Aires at the end of the nineteenth century. The
longing of the music reflects the longing of these people for their lost
homes, lovers, language, culture...and that longing continues to be felt
today, which accounts for its continued emotional relevance and
popularity. But the music can embrace many moods: anger, joy, nostalgia,
cynicism. Modern tango embraces three forms: the classical tango (the
most familiar), but includes a lovely waltz style, as well as the
"milonga," a fast mazurka-like dance, the "grandmother" of tango, which
is still danced.

One of the greatest composers and performers of tango, Osvaldo Pugliese,
was a communist. As he was often arrested, the story has it, he would
wear pyjamas under his tux, so that he could be more comfortable in
jail. While, he was in prison, the members of his orchestra would put a
red carnation on the piano (his instrument).

Tango is not actually classified as a ballroom dance, but as an ethnic
dance. It is not an easy dance to learn; it takes about a year to feel
comfortable with it, but the possibilities are endless and you basically
keep learning it forever. (As an aside, I'd add that Tango is one of the
few things in life, where the reality (dancing it and what that feels
like) is actually better than the fantasy (what you think it's going to
feel like.))

There are three "Tango" movies that are available on video if you want
to have a look-see:
"Tango," "Tango Bar," and "The Tango Lesson."

As Louis mentions, the tango has been adopted and interpreted by many
different countries and this has resulted in a variety of flavors, chief
among which are the French (wistful/playful), Russian (gorgeous),
Turkish...and always, Argentine. Some of Piazzola's tangos are eminently
danceableand very beautiful; some are not. Gotan's Projects's "La
Revancha del Tango" is a pretty good example of the way it's being
modernized and fused with other musical forms.

As for gender relations. As my tango teacher put it: "In the home, the
woman rules; but on the dance floor, it's the man." When dancing tango,
the man leads and the woman follows, though it is possible to play with
this. By and large though, the man leads, while the woman must attain a
state of zen-like presence, attuned to the most subtle of clues, to
figure out what's happening next. The possibilities are infinite.
Basically, the man's responsibility is four-fold: to choreograph the
dance, to lead, to dance, and to "drive" around the dance floor so as to
not bump into anyone.  Tango has convinced me that men can do more than
one thing at once;  and some do it exceptionally well.

And that's probably more than you've ever wanted to know.

Joanna
-----------------------------------------
Louis Proyect wrote:

> Last night's "Tango for Valentine's Day" concert featuring Pablo
> Aslan's band Avantango was sponsored by one of NYC's great cultural
> institutions, the World Music Institute. It was my first exposure to a
> live performance of one of the world's great popular music.
>
> Roxana Fontán, who came up from Buenos Aires just for the occasion,
> was the featured vocalist while four dancers performed during about
> half the numbers. It was among the more memorable concerts I have
> attended in the past ten years or so and I invite you to check out
> Avantango's website (listed below), which has some performance clips
> from other of their concerts.
>
> The tango, like practically all other popular music including jazz,
> has absorbed and digested various influences from the rest of the
> world. Aslan is a disciple of Astor Piazzolla, whose songs constituted
> over half the program. The Piazzolla style, which he called "Tango
> Nuevo", can best be described as a fusion of Tango, classical music
> and modern jazz. Although it can strike me sometimes as being a bit
> cerebral and hard-edged, "Tango Nuevo" proved irresistible last night
> as Piazzolla songs such as "Milonga Loca" provided a bittersweet
> background for the Tango dancers. (A Milonga is a gaucho song.)
>
> I am also very partial to the Tango fusion style of the band Gotan
> Project, which has borrowed from techno and Jamaican Dub. Although it
> was formed by French musicians, it includes Argentine musicians who
> were living in exile. Their album "La Revancha del tango" (The Revenge
> of the tango) is top-notch, although it stretches the boundaries of
> the art-form to the limit. If you go to their website, you can hear a
> performance of "El Capitalismo Foráneo", a departure from traditional
> themes of jealousy and nostalgia but very much in tune with the
> nation's reality today.
>
> That being said, politics has always been present just below the
> smoldering surface of Tango. As the expression of proletarian
> sensibilities, the music has often interjected itself into the class
> struggle in Argentina despite itself. During the 1930s, the army
> suppressed Tango because it was seen as a potentially subversive
> force. After Peron's rise to power, the music enjoyed a golden age as
> Buenos Aires could boast of ten to fifteen orchestras, either
> professional or amateur, per barrio. It was also at this time that
> Tango began to detach somewhat from its plebian roots. This gave rise
> to the song "Tango de otros tiempos" (Tango of Other Times):
>
> Tango, you were the king
> In one word, a friend
> Blossoming from the bandoneon music
> Of Arólas
> Tango, the rot set in
> When you became sophisticated
> And with your airs and graces
> You quit the suburbs where you were born
> Tango, it saddens me to see
> How you've deserted the mean dirt-streets
> For a carpeted drawing-room
> In my soul I carry a small piece
> Of that happy past!
> But the good old times are over
> In Paris you've become Frenchified
> And today, thinking of what's happened
> A tear mars your song.
>
> The overthrow of Peron coincided with the rise of rock-and-roll, which
> crowded Tango to the margins just as US capital was doing to the local
> economy. It was up to Astor Piazzolla to effect a revival. He received
> his original training as a classical musician and studied with
> Argentina's Albert Ginastera and with Nadia Boulanger in Paris.
>
> He had the idea that tango could be a serious music, not just for
> dancing. The old guard, however, felt threatened in the same fashion
> that a conservatized Peronista labor bureaucrat might have felt
> threatened by the student left in the 1960s. Piazzolla recounts:
>
> "Musicians hated me. I was taking the old tango away from them. The
> old tango, the one they loved, was dying. And they hated me, they
> threatened my life hundreds of times. They waited for hours outside my
> house, two or three of them, and gave me a good beating. They even put
> a gun at my head once. I was in a radio station during an interview,
> and all of a sudden the door opens and in comes this tango singer with
> a gun. That's how it was."
>
> Tango has had enormous influence worldwide, even though it has often
> been appropriated as a kind of kitsch, like Carmen Miranda. For
> example, Rudolf Valentino stormed Hollywood as a Tango dancing gaucho,
> even though the cowboys of Argentina were not known to have danced
> this essentially urban art-form.
>
> Tango is also enormously popular in Finland, where the characteristic
> theme of nostalgia, even found in Piazzolla's more refined
> expressions, resonates deeply with the population. A Finnish scholar
> Pirjo Kukkonen suggests that tango lyrics reflect "the personality,
> mentality and identity of the Finnish people in the same way as folk
> poetry does". There is a yearning for the old homestead, or a distant
> land of happiness, while references to autumn rains and dark evenings
> in Finnish Tangos become symbols of crushed hopes.
>
> To a very great extent, the nostalgia of the Tango evokes the
> "Ostalgie" of former East Germans for a time when things were better.
> Although it is altogether unlikely that the heyday of Peronism and the
> Tango will return any time soon in an unmediated fashion, the
> popularity of Tango does suggest a belief that "a better world is
> possible".
>
> To do Tango: <http://www.todotango.com/>http://www.todotango.com/
> A history of Argentine Tango:
> <http://totango.net/sergio.html>http://totango.net/sergio.html
> Astor Piazzolla website:
> <http://www.piazzolla.org/>http://www.piazzolla.org/
> Gotan Project: <http://www.gotanproject.com/>http://www.gotanproject.com/
> Avantango: <http://www.avantango.com/>http://www.avantango.com/
>
>
>
> Louis Proyect
> Marxism list: www.marxmail.org