Drinking and ruffians

If I associate tango and the milonga with a drink, for no good reason that I can think of, it's red wine. But the photo is of white wine. Well, we're out of red wine, sherry, port...

Killing time today in the serpentine Post Office queue I looked for the lyrics for El encopao (The Drunk) by Enrique Rodriguez which happened to be playing on my headphones.

I've heard it said that the sound of Rodriguez' orchestra is happy.  Michael Lavocah's chapter on Rodriguez in his book Tango Stories: Musical secrets is subtitled "cheerful tango" but I don't find Rodriguez cheerful or happy. Vendrás alguna vez? I think sounds unambiguously happy.  There's something happy about Déjame ser asi and Adiós, muchachos but also something that isn't.  I find more happy tracks in Fresedo or Canaro. Donato (Lavocah: "get happy") for me has muted playfulness rather than happiness.  The Rodriguez foxtrots are jaunty, for sure, the vals are upbeat, but track after track of the tangos is sombre in tone. Suerte loca, El huérfano, Son cosas del bandeoneon, Cómo has cambiado pebeta, Cómo se pianta la vida and many others all have it, even if the rhythm sometimes belies the tone. I've often wondered what it is that conveys that special kind of Rodriguez melancholy. His bandoneons seem to have a particular tone, it comes, too, from his singer, Moreno. His pianist is as identifiable as Biagi.

"What good is melody? What good is music, if it ain't possessing something sweet? Now it ain't the melody and it ain't the music...there's something else that makes this tune complete" sings Louis Armstrong in It Don't Mean a Thing (if it ain't got that swing).  It's a better way of saying that trying to write about music, as has been said eloquently before, is like dancing about architecture, singing about economics, a perversion of the subject but any way you care to phrase it, a fool's errand.

The tango translation database is a resource I can't recommend enough; that and the new service from Michael Krugman through Tango Decoder which lets you learn the music, learn what the words mean and improve your Spanish all by watching a 3 minute film with subtitles in English & Spanish. Please do like, share or otherwise support these initiatives, especially the new one. I find them among the most useful tango-related resources on the internet. The first track with bilingual subtitles is Di Sarli's Patotero Sentimental (Romantic Ruffian).

This particular link in the database took me to another useful and well-known resource - the Tango And Chaos site. In the notes below the lyrics for El encopao I was surprised to read that few people drink in the milongas in Buenos Aires. Surprised, because I'd heard just about everyone drinks. So which is it? I don't know but guess that as with most things some do and some don't.

I've wondered for a long time what the words mean. The song is so sad and the lyrics prove it:

Me dicen "El Encopao"...
los que no saben
lo que me ha pasa'o.
Y me ven hecho un cualquiera...
que digan lo que digan.
¡Que ya no me hacen mella!

They say I’m the "Man of the Bottle"...
those who don’t know
what happened to me.
They look at me like I’m nobody...
but they can say what they say.
It doesn’t matter to me!

I prefer to know these things, not least since reading a North American DJ, Dan Boccia, on the subject:

I still remember watching a couple of Argentines chuckle as one couple went bounding gleefully across the floor, all smiles and upbeat to "Verdemar", which is a wholly thoughtful song, both in it's arrangement (the Di Sarli/Rufino version) and the fact that it's dealing withsomeone's lover who has just drowned.

Amazing what you can do in the Post Office these days.

Equal difference

Sometimes you hear it said that the traditional etiquette, of men inviting women to dance, and of the invitation being wordless and from a respectful distance, is out of date, that it disempowers women from invitation or at least does not give them the same equality as men. The mirada, the look from the women, signifies desire to dance. Traditionally, it is an invitation for the man to invite her to dance. It is not the same as the cabeceo, the nod from the guy, which is both desire to dance and invitation.

Guy-girl stuff, about difference and compatibility, happens in the milonga, even if only on the floor. Quite what that is or how it works is not that clear. Were it not the case though you would see a far greater mix of same-sex combinations on the floor. I like that in the milongas here in the UK I can dance as the girl or the guy.  I also like that the milonga can powerfully re-establish the difference between men and women, after work where we are all ostensibly equal. You still hear it said that at work women gain equality by sacrificing or denying things to do with being a woman, choices about family, dress, attitude. You especially hear about this in places like the City. On the flip side, it is not a new point that asserting femininity, in advertisements, in magazines, is often done in a degrading or an unrealistic way, not in a way that promotes equal respect for the sexes.  

But this is not necessarily true in the milonga. Women can be very feminine and very equal in the milonga and in the dance, never more so than when sitting opposite men. Sometimes it has happened that we are women, not sitting alone, but chatting together. By chance we are sitting opposite some guys. The previous week we might all have been men and women, friends, sitting, chatting on the same side of the room. This week we are two different yet compatible tribes, watching each other with the tension, the pleasure, the possibility of invitation to dance and the option to accept between us.

Yet women allow themselves to be dubbed "followers" when the dance is about togetherness. Some women allow men, who are not friends, to walk up and invite them, making a real choice about whether they really want to dance now, with this person, difficult. Or they allow men to do things to them that are uncomfortable; to pull awkward moves, do stunts. They let themselves be pushed around on the floor or be treated in a degrading, inelegant way. It is stating the obvious that by dancing with these guys the women who accept them encourage that behaviour that presumably continues off the floor, though perhaps not with them. By the same token it is not encouraging behaviour that is fun but careful, respectful. It is a wonderful thing, too rarely used where I am, that through exercising the feminine choice that the milonga allows, things can be more equal and the standard of dance will also inevitably rise accordingly.

With thanks to Jean Gouders for permission to use his cartoon.

The Crimson Countess

I met Jackie in Sicily just over two years ago. She has had 5 joint replacements and counting. She dances with all the best guys.  She is tanned from years of sailing and sun-worshipping.  Her hair has either a pink or purple streak running through it so her friend calls her the Crimson Countess.  She is tiny with a personality that doesn’t fit her frame, packed with fun and very practical. She has a smart accent and no pretensions. In a breath she flits from mock-imperious, to indignation, to innocence, to laughter.   She keeps the peace. She is open and optimistic. She has the measure of things.

"Never get up!"

I once stood up in response to what I thought was an invitation from a guy I have danced with before and who I know to be a master of the long-distance cabeceo. Whether he noticed or not I'm not sure, but, saving my dignity he walked straight past to his chosen partner. Assuming it was deliberate it was a well-managed act of face-saving, allowing me to go on to refresh my drink.

Dancing outside Scotland I would be so unsure whether the guy was asking me I would check, look around to see who else he meant, check back, look around again, and triple check he meant me. I would do this so often that the experienced men who stuck around long enough for me to gain confidence would be openly laughing by the end of this charade. The advantage for me was their experience and their desire to dance, demonstrated by their patience. The disadvantage is that it’s an inefficient and unpolished way of doing things and you can lose half a track in the time it takes. And there is no point doing the hand to the breast, “Me?” signal if the other women on either side of you are responding to the same man in the same way.

At the same event, I accepted a dance, did the triple-check and then when he was a mere couple of metres away, with eyes still on my partner, got up because he was on the other side of the gangway to the floor with a river of people flowing between us. It would have been difficult for him to get through to me so I thought to meet him in the gangway. He saw me and made his way to the floor, expecting me to be right behind him. People got between us. On the floor, he turned around expecting to find me there, only to have a well-known woman put herself into his arms, though not before she slid a sidelong look at me under her raised left arm. Mugged! He looked at me with “What just happened?!” on his face but accepted her. It was an awkward situation and he danced the next tanda with me.

I recounted this incident to a lovely women at this event, confessing my mortification and she very practically said “Never get up”. I thought after this trial by fire, unambiguous advice and good sense, that I had unequivocally learnt this rule. I was completely wrong.

I found that as the guy, inviting, I was not quick enough acting upon an acceptance to collect a girl from her seat. Her friend stood up and lacking experience I clumsily explained that I had meant her friend, thinking after my own experience as the muggee I must surely be doing the right and honest thing. I then failed to catch the presumably mortified friend’s eye for the rest of the afternoon and there followed complicated intercession through mutual friends to smooth things out later. 

You’d think I’d’ve learnt. I then got up twice more after apparently unambiguous invitation from the guy by cabeceo was not followed by collection. The first time because the dancer was experienced yet did not collect me and my desire to dance with him outweighed my judgment. I wondered, unconvincingly, if perhaps they didn’t collect in his country. Luckily it passed without mishap so now I call it a calculated risk. The second time was with a dancer I knew to have less experience and who seemed unfamiliar with the principle of collection. I ought to have stayed where I was until he figured it out but I walked towards the guy only to encounter an experienced man who was approaching to collect me, thinking I had accepted him. Again, I had to clumsily explain the situation.

Knowing that I’d finally learnt these many lessons I recently nodded a hello to a friend from our seats on opposite sides of the room. Later, we agreed to dance, still from our own seats. He came over, I stayed where I was. He reached my seat. I stood up. “Oh no”, he said, grinning, “I was only coming over for a chat!” and took me to dance.

The conclusion of these stories is that there are endless ways to come a cropper! Cabeceo works fine, but it works as part of a system, and part of the way that system works is “Never get up!” and “Collect the woman, quickly, directly and unambiguously from her chair making sure you look at no one else as you do”! It’s civilized and it works. Being collected from your seat is also a lovely way to start the dance. Ideally you’ll be escorted back there afterwards.

Artwork by Fottantuno: http://fottantuno.deviantart.com/ with thanks for permission to reuse.