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Djangology: 1
What makes a
good tango?
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by Steve
Morrall
What makes a
good tango from a dancer's perspective? Appreciation of any art form is
a highly subjective process and I present my personal preferences as a
'tango dancer' and a 'musician who loves to play tango' working with
the form and function of both tango dance and tango music.
A tango
dancer's appreciation of music is a process complicated by a number of
variable conditions, for instance, personal preference, the mood of the
listener, a dancer's ability to be 'in the music' rather than 'in the
body' and the context in which the music is delivered by the DJ and the
sound system. I think we can all be quite fickle about musical
appreciation - an intense tango one night can be but musical wallpaper
on another.
We all hear and
understand spoken communication in a different way. The same statement
announced to a room of 50 people can be interpretated or misinterpretated
50 different ways. Einstein once said, "the problem with communication
is the illusion that it has been understood". This illusion may be a
weakness of the spoken word, but it is something to be celebrated in
creative improvisation, like dancing. If 50 tango dancers listen to the
same piece of music, there could be 50 different and varying creative
interpretations and appreciations of the music.
I listen to
tango music a lot and have a collection of over 4000 tracks of tango
music. I guess that my current favourites make up a small percentage of
these. Some tango composers were blessed with a gift that enabled them
to write many superb songs, others, sadly, were one-hit-wonders. One
reason my collection has grown so big is that I have bought albums by a
composer on the strength of a tango that I really love, only to find
most of his other work does not move me to the same degree.
It was tango
music, not the dance that first grabbed my attention. How can a musical
genre that includes pieces as rich and technically brilliant as a
Beethoven sonata (i.e. A Evaristo Carriego, Osváldo Pugliese)
have remained widely uncelebrated? As I learnt to dance, (I was taught
using the basic eight method) I can't remember really feeling in touch
with the music. I suppose that my focus was 'in the body' not 'in the
music' until I became competent enough to relax and start to listen to
the music and use it as creative inspiration and contributing dynamic
of the dance.
As I became
more aware of the music as dancer, my curiosity homed in on why some
tango songs really inspired me to dance and why others were so
unintuitive and unappealing that I would want to stop dancing. So I
started to collect tango music in search of an understanding of my
'perfect' tango.
Tango is the
sound of diaspora, the music of displaced people from an incredible
range of cultures and countries who found themselves in Buenos Aires at
the start of the twentieth century. Travellers and opportunists,
fortune-hunters and runaways, all carrying with them folklore melodies
passed down through generations. Only the most robust, intuitive,
memorable and resonant melodies could possibly survive this tortuous
journey.
The tunes that
emerged in the early years of tango are unique in the development of
music. Remember this was a period before radio or television when
folklore was a real and vibrant part of storytelling and entertainment.
I can imagine myself as an early immigrant, arriving in Buenos Aires
without a common language and unable to converse intellectually in any
way except with music. Through music I could find a way of sharing my
sense of self with other musicians and start to integrate. I could find
a way to celebrate life (such as it is) and make a heartfelt cry of
desperation that, after spending all my savings to get to a better life
in Argentina, the reality of my new life is worse than the one I left
behind. Like other immigrant musicians, I would intuitively and
unconsciously bring all my musical folklore memories to share at barrio
gatherings. Destitute, cold, hungry, lonely and desperate, we would
seek comfort and companionship in music. We would play by ear, each
contributing the resonant songs from our homeland, learning from each
other, giving and gaining new skills until, with one voice a new
musical expression emerges. Tango was born.
As tango
emerged and rapidly grew in popularity it didn't take long before
entrepreneurs started to develop and market it to a wider audience. I
have mixed feelings about the ensuing commercial exploitation. There
would be some superbly crafted and highly popular tango music to follow
as a result but I feel a special regard for these brief years of tango
at its purest and unexploited form of art.
So what makes a
good tango? For me, some of the factors can be attributed to the early
conditions that helped create the genre.
Musical
Communication
Sometimes
I can hear a tango for a first time and know intuitively how the
musical story will be told and where it will finish. As tango
developed, musicians of different cultures and languages learnt to
improvise musical storytelling. By making the music as intuitive as
possible an ensemble could play together effectively. What worked
intuitively for the musicians still works for dancers. Like an
improvising musician, a dancer, especially a leader, needs to know
where the music is going to be able to provide an effective lead. An
example of this is using bass runs, like a jazz bass player. A bass run
can link different parts of a tango providing a rhythmic and melodic
bridge between sections. The first four descending notes of 'La
Cumparsita' come to mind. Like any good story, a good tango will tell
of many emotions, provide pauses and make contradictions through
musical dialogues and rhythmic changes. The tango Por una cabeza (by a
head) is a story about horse racing with a dramatic change from the
lyrical opening theme to the confrontational second theme. This is the
tango used in the film 'Scent of a woman' danced by Al Pacino and
Gabrielle Anwar.
Al Compas
del Corazon
Rhythm
is central to a good tango. From the earliest tribal gatherings around
the campfire to contemporary cinematic composers we have known how to
influence emotion by using the beat of the heart as a rhythm. We all
have an inner physical/emotional rhythm that defines us in ways we
hardly expect and notice. When an external rhythm syncronises or
syncopates with our inner rhythm it resonates and can move us
profoundly. Listen to Miguel Calo's rendition of Al Compas del Corazon
(The beat of the heart) performed with singer Raul Beron. The music
literally plays with our heart-strings. But a good tango will offer
more than a heartbeat rhythm. It will play with syncopation - a
technique that utilises the space between each beat in half, quarter or
even smaller interjections that offer dancers a rhythmic structure for
corte and quebradas. Have you noticed the insistence of tango music.
Sometimes I feel like an invisible hand is pulling me into the next
move. This is marcato, a sound normally produced by the bandoneon that
musically anticipates the start of the next compass or beat. Think
about a jazz band preparing to play together - the band leader will
count in saying "One, two, three, four and" The "and" is
pulling the band together into the first
beat of their performance and follows the same technique as the
bandoneon in a tango - a device that helps the dancers to mark the next
beat clearly in their interpretation of the music. Osváldo
Pugliese had a name for this technique and even named one of his tangos
after it - "La Yumba" (pronounced la sschuum-ba). Next time you
play this tango listen for the insistent calling of the bandoneon from
beat to beat.
Playing in
between the notes
I
recall a radio interview with Joanna McGregor who played the music of
Astor Piazzolla with two of the surviving members of Piazzolla's
original quintet, guitarist Horacio Malvicino, and bass player Hector
Console. She said that to play good tango it is necessary to play 'in
between' the notes and feel the music. If she played the music as it
was written did not sound authentic. She had the great good fortune to
work with Malvicino and Console who could pass on to her the feeling of
tango that is call ritmo mugre (dirty rhythm).
Earlier in this
article I lamented the passing of the early years of tango and the rare
circumstances that gathered so many musicians from different cultures
in Buenos Aires at a time when people made their own entertainment. I
guess that many of these musicians would have had a gypsy heritage and
a long tradition of improvising from the heart with much gusto and
feeling. I am awed with the virtuosity of some of the musicians I hear
in tango music, more so when I think that they are playing between the
notes and improvising as they play. These musical moments make my
spirit soar. Listen to A Los Amigos by the Francini Pontier
orchestra, especially the violin solo that starts about 60 seconds into
the piece. For bandoneon virtuosity, listen to Recuerdo by
Osváldo Pugliese and his orchestra. There is a standing joke
among bandoneon players about this incredibly difficult solo.
When requested if they can play Recuerdo a bandoneonista
replies "Depues!" (later)
If you would
like to hear the musical references made in this article, don't forget
that there is a music library available for dancers at any of our
events or teaching night. If you are looking to expand your collection,
I can recommend Michael Lavocah's online CD shop. I also have a recording of
the Joanna McGregor Piazzolla concert if you missed it.
I'll leave you
with a heartfelt hug and hope that we will sometime share a tango.
This article
is declared open source and free from copyright by its author Steve
Morrall, 2005. Please attribute extracts to to the author using this
webpage as the source. If you have an experience of
tango as a dance, social interaction, confrontation, reconciliation, or
enlightenment that you would like to share, please email Steve at the
address shown below. Thanks
Email Tango UK
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