Limerick Tango

["Just enough education to perform" was the title of the third album by Welsh band Stereophoincs]

My position regarding the teaching of tango is the typical Irish response of “Well, if I was going to there, I wouldn’t be starting from here”. People can take their tango where they like to but if they don’t have a good starting point, if they don’t set their students first steps in the right direction, then they are doing them a disservice.

A long time ago I established that the basic-eight is not the corner-stone of tango. That instead the foundations of tango lie in the walk. But because my education had been step based there was still something missing.

That missing piece was the bedrock on which the foundations were laid. That missing piece was a simple understanding of the music. Not a complex understanding,  I had been introduced to answer-response phrasing, a simple one. Something that could be put forward to a student in their first class. A key that would help them unlock the three minutes of music ahead of them.

Oddly enough that key is offered to every student, except it it is disguised. It is hopefully safe to say that there isn’t a teacher of tango who doesn’t at some point during a students first class tell them to step on/off (delete to taste) the stressed beat. And with that piece of information the student marches off like a metronomic mechanical monster chewing their way through steps.

The hidden key is implied in the statement “step on/off the stressed beat”. If you are to step on/off the beat, then when there is no beat do not step.

Yes this is linked to further concepts like cadencia and medio tempo. But at its simplest it unlocks the tango puzzle. Allows you to hear the instruments breathe, talk to one another, talk to you. Suddenly you don’t have to fill the silence with step on step because you are both in conversation with the music.

The galling thing is that it is such a simple direction, such a simple concept that I really have to wonder why no one mentioned it to me before now.

[Acknowledgements] Adrian & Amanda Costa’s musicality class.

Which comes first: the music or the dance?

Maybe, just maybe, she’s as interested in the music as you are.

In response to Simba and Tangocommunter’s recent posts.

I’ve encountered among contemporary artists an almost consistent fear of structure. “Oh it’s so restrictive” they moan. To me this exposes their misunderstanding of the structures in question. They view structure as a shell that inhibits and restricts their growth, an exoskeketon.

It doesn’t have to be. Structure can be endoskeletal. Supporting you from the inside and affording both flexibility and stability. Well devised structures can include a redundancy that allow you to slip out the odd prop or two when they are not needed. Structure is the giants shoulders that allow us to reach further.

It’s the inability to view structure in this way that prevents musicians from exploring danceable tango. Add to this the restriction that comes from playing in groups that are too small. You’re not going to get the same opportunity to improvise in a trio than you are in a sextet. You are going to be spending too much time being support for your other two musicians to get the feel for improvisation. Now in a group of six if one member wanders off a little it’s less likely to bring the whole thing crashing down.

If you listen closely to some golden age tango recordings you will hear not a group of straight-jacketed musicians but six or so lads that drink, play cards, womanise and perform all night long. What is missing at times from modern recordings is that sense of the camaraderie of working musicians instead of the seriousness of suffering artists.

And finally of course you’re not going to get the same experience playing tango as you are playing jazz because, guess what, it’s not jazz.

There are days that I have and address there that I don’t occupy.

Some times I live there and others I’m just at home.

But none of that is enough. You have to inhabit the music.

You try and get under my skin and I’ll try and get under the orchestras skin.

Of all the lists of neo-tango or alt-tango song suggestions I can’t remember one that I listened to¹ that I jumped at going ‘that’s a tango!’.

One example would be Maroon 5’s Secret

I just don’t get the tango in that. (Now I might if it was three in the morning and I had danced every tanda since I’d arrived).

I, personally, am fond of The Loneliness of a Tower Crane Driver by Elbow. But that is because it provided an a-ha! moment. Also Guy Garvey’s singing is two fingers to those who say that only tango is sung with emotion. I play it when doing exercises.

My point is neo/alt-tango is very much something of individual taste. You might like a particular song and think it is danceable but you may have had the song on repeat for the last month. Not everyone is going to hear what you hear.

¹There may be ones out there beyond my reach that do work.

Tango music is more than a “toon“. It is the score to the film of the dance. As we know a film score is more than incidental background music but is an integral part of the story panning out in front of you. On this basis the most valid criticism of dancing to electronic-tango is that by and large it says nothing and goes nowhere. Equally it can be said of the musician centric tango-nuevo of the seventies and eighties that it says too much and wanders all over the place.

He just finished eating dinner
and stepped outside the cave to smoke
A cigarette he’d made from rolled up photo paper
They were pictures of things back on earth
He looked out on the greyish white expanse of
Uninhabited terrain he now called home

He’d seen plenty of mirages and imaginary visitors up until then
So he wasn’t sure what to think when he saw swans
And they were wading on the shores of a pale white lake
That he’d never seen there before
And it was quite beautiful and it was far away
Cause everything beautiful is far away

He knew he was as good as gone
But gone was somewhere he really didn’t mind going to
Since the shuttle had crashed many years had passed
And the pictures of his loved ones
That he drew on the walls of the cave had finally faded
He put out his smoke and proceeded toward the lake
Repeating to himself everything beautiful is far away.

Grandaddy, Everything beautiful is far away, 1998

These lyrics echo a sentiment found in tango lyrics that to an emigrant lost on the far side of the world everything beautiful is far away.