Cafe Baile: world music, dance and tango at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe

Dance Ihayami, one of the acts at Cafe Baile

Before children, for two or three years I used to take some of my holiday at the Edinburgh International Book Festival.  These days during August I avoid the traffic, the parking problems and the pedestrians with a death wish and read at home instead.  But if you can run the gamut of the Royal Mile without picking up a slew of flyers, Edinburgh in August can be fun.  It feels a bit like London at this time.  The greater human variety lends something of that exciting buzz I still feel each time I go back to London; for context I now live in the middle of Scotland.  At half past five on Leith Walk I enjoyed the mix of people who have finished work, interesting-looking visitors, a man in drag with wonderful pink and silver make-up and outside the Omni Centre an impromptu African music and dance act with drums and masks.  I felt sorry for two young men in sharp suits who I took to be performers but realised had the thankless task of trying to sell a finance product on the street at that time. 

Cafe Baile is part of the Edinburgh Festival Fringe.  For £9 you get a flavour of some of the Fringe music and dance acts with about half an hour of social tango dancing at the start, the end and in the middle.  It takes place three times over three weeks and I have been going for the three years that I believe it has existed in at least its current form.  This year, it has moved from the Jam House to the slightly more clinical atmosphere of Lauriston Hall. There is a bar.  In the past I have found the acts to be middling to good, a few are superb; one or two have been toe-curlingly terrible. It is all part of the rich mix you expect from the Fringe.   

In previous years I learned not to sit in the front row in case  I became a "volunteer" to an act and later to sit where I pleased - but to know my boundaries.  The hypnotic belly-dancer "Shantisha" who seemed able to move parts of her body quite independently from one another tried to persuade me to "volunteer".  I felt momentarily like Eve with the snake - entranced and appalled; not by the act but at the prospect of being on stage. I have seen for myself you never know what you might be getting in to with these things.  As with so much of life it is not unlike what happens in the milonga: during the social dancing someone I know by sight walked across the room to invite me directly.  He wanted to dance but I did not.  I was sorry to have to do so but relieved when to both requests I said "no-thank you".  Later, I asked a friend sitting next to me if he wanted to dance the Rodriguez, but he too knows his own mind and chose the girl he'd arrived with, sitting on his other side.  That's what can happen with asking, only with friends, there are no hard feelings.

The social dancing is attended by some locals and there are often a few visitors who dance tango too.

Since I have stopped going out to the local milongas as much, I have joined a non-fiction book group in Edinburgh instead.  The first Cafe Baile this year was on the same day as the book group which happened to be taking place a bit later in a pub at the end of that street so I decided to drop in to  Cafe Baile first.

There was a queue before it opened (a bit late), so the room was fairly full from the start.  There were about three tandas before the first dance act but nobody danced the first tanda.  I got up to the second Donato track of the second tanda but only danced one track.  I apologised to my friend and we sat down.  The fourth track was good but it was too late for us.  Nevertheless she agreed to the next tanda, which was vals.   I often hear good vals and milonga tandas in sets with tango tandas I do not want to dance.

It was hard for some visiting women dancers to get dances which is unsurprising when they are mixed in with the non-dancing visitors around the three sides of the dance floor. It illustrates the need for suitable seating where there is tango social dancing.  

At the first Cafe Baile there was scattered applause of the social dancers at the end of some tracks.  It felt very odd because of course this would never happen in a real milonga.  I didn't know whether to feel pleased they like the dance we love and might try it some time or whether to feel dismayed that our ordinary social dance looks to them like a show.  The idea of being a spectacle is for me, anathema.  

But how interesting it might be if someone used an event like this for experienced dancers to invite the curious who have never danced to try moving as one to tango music, without telling them what to do (and making them self-conscious), or pushing them around.  Experienced dancers meet new or potential dancers so rarely because most drop out of class before getting near a milonga or they are intimidated  when they do go because their class experience is so remote from what actually happens in a real milonga.

I did not go to the second Cafe Baile and had not intended to go to the third because it doesn't have the continuity of a milonga, the dancing time seems to be shorter this year and I don't want to sit through an act (or three) if it is poor.  If there was a separate area you could break away for a drink or snack I might feel differently.  

But a dancer had recommended some stand-up comedy by "an Argentinian", who also dances, not too far away.  I was only able to go on the same night as the third Cafe Baile so decided to drop in there beforehand.  I arrived when the doors opened.  Numbers at this time were about two thirds down on the numbers for the first one.  The DJ was quarter of an hour late and by the time the music started at about 1915 about twenty five people were there. The numbers picked up  with more local dancers arriving over the next ninety minutes.

I stayed for the first half hour set of social dancing but did not want to dance, then stayed for the first set of acts.  I enjoyed the Indian classical dancing by three women dancers from Dance Ihayami, soft and strong, elegant and grounded and the mind-bending Japanese electro act Siro-A.  

Then I went on to the comedy, getting waylaid by flyer-touts in the dark Cowgate and lost in the dank and eerie sidestreets.

I stopped by my book group for half an hour on the way back and then went back to Cafe Baile for the last set of social dancing where a friend persuaded me to dance two of the Di Sarli.  Then we danced all of the Troilo, swapping roles throughout. He said there were some very good acts in the second half.  

Photo by Shetland Arts shared under Creative Commons license.

Talk: "Special" music and applause

2014

Dancer A:  I was puzzled by the music this afternoon. I arrived towards the end of the first hour & there was nothing I recognised. 

Dancer B:   A favourite DJ of mine reported the same of DJ "X". He said he will not go again.

Dancer A:  I could recognise the orchestras for the most part but not the tracks. I danced an OTV [Orquesta Tipica Victor] tanda I didn't know with a stranger & found the music hard. But strangely everyone applauded the DJ after that tanda....

Dancer B: Unfamiliar music and hard to dance. The kind of music some people find sorely lacking in real milongas. I can understand why they applauded.

Dancer A: They also applauded DJ D's Rodriguez foxtrots. I like them but not to dance and I didn't think they needed applause.

Dancer B: I have only ever heard applause for tandas in encuentro-type events. I could not imagine it happening in city milongas such as BsAs, Berlin, Paris etc.

Dancer A:  I asked some people I knew about the applause. The partner of a DJ said that people were very appreciative of the music. Maybe they were all very experienced & it's true most people had been dancing for at least 5 years. Still, I was not generally with them on their musical views.

Dancer B: I have to say I believe it is an affectation used to demonstrate appreciation of the music by people in which genuine appreciation of the music is minimal. The feeling that the music genuinely gives does not lead one to applaud.

Dancer A:  The music became more familiar later on but still a lot of stuff I didn't know. DJ "A" liked it. She said playing unusual stuff made the event more special. 

Dancer B:  Special is an excellent word to describe it. Another is "alternative".

Dancer A:  DJ "B" said apparently these organisers like DJs who play this kind of less familiar music. 

Dancer B: This is one reason why they organise such events. The number of people who like this kind of music is so low that to get enough of them in a room to dance with each other, they have to run special gatherings.

  Having said that, in Germany and the Netherlands, there are a few regular milongas like this. I would sometimes turn up at unknown milongas advertised as 'traditional', with just fingers crossed. I recall one in Germany where DJ "C" played not one single track I recognised all night. Instead, there was an endless, uninterrupted stream of third-rate music from BsAs orchestras that never made the grade. What many DJs call C-sides.

  I learned a lot by chatting to the (small number of) regulars. They told me how they really liked that DJ "C" plays refreshingly new traditional music every night, rather than the same boring classics. I watched these people dance. They don't actually dance to the music playing. Which is no surprise, since they don't know the music playing. They do a homogenised instruction-based dance that goes as well or as badly to any tango. And this is one reason why they think that DJ "C" is playing different music every night. The music played is so immemorable, and the dancing "to" it is so remote, that they can't actually recognise whether the music is a track they've already heard. They would not know if exactly the same music was played the following week. Musical amnesia.

 This is the total opposite of the relationship with the music typically enjoyed by the best guys in a traditional milonga. Such a guy knows every single piece that is played, and if he doesn't it is because the DJ has messed up. He recognises each piece from the first second or two of the sound. He knows every single beat and note of each track of the hundreds that are his personal favourites. That's essential to him giving his girl a good time. The music is like a familiar and loved garden. He's taking his girl on a walk through it.

Dancer A:  That is an excellent point. And I do feel that. I recognise tracks from the first beat or two or I don't know them. I almost never have doubt on this. I truly hate "leading" pieces I don't know. Several times in the past I have had to excuse myself mid tanda because of that. 

Dancer B: I refuse. Like you, I'll walk off the floor rather than fake it.

  Yet some only like music they don't know. I know another DJ who says she hates to dance to music she's heard before, so a trad music night was for her "a nightmare".

Dancer A:  So what happened to DJ "C"?

  She is now well-known as a promoter of their manifesto against the focus on Golden Age Greatest Hits that 'we've all heard a hundred times', and for the 'undiscovered treasures' that we have not. It is interesting reading.

Applause: Apollo and Marsyas

The contest between Apollo and Marsyas,
National Archaeological Museum, Athens, 215. 330-20 BCE.

  So Midas announced a music competition.  The audience gathered in the forest.  People leant against trees and rocks, waiting for the concert to begin.

  Apollo appeared and the crowd fell silent.  His lyre rang out, tinkling and glittering.  The sound rippled across the glade, spreading like sunshine.  The listeners felt warm, as if golden light had filled their hearts.

  The crowd rose to their feet, cheering.

  Then Marsyas played his flute and a low sound, like gentle wind, echoed through the forest.  The sound seemed to lift the listeners into the air.  The notes rose higher, and the listeners felt as if they were flying!  Then with tumbling notes, Marsyas brought the listeners back down to earth.

  The crowd were silent.  They did not clap, or cheer.  They did not even smile.  Marsyas was sure that nobody liked his music.

  Midas addressed the crowd.  "I think you'll all agree who the winner is!"

  Apollo grinned, and Marsyas hung his furry head.

  "His music moved us so much, we could not clap or smile. Marsyas is the best musician of all!"

  Now the crowd cheered!  They stamped, shouted and roared for more until Marsyas played again.  After that Marsyas became famous.  He played his flute all over Greece inspiring people to make their own flutes from bones, wood and reeds.

- From Greek Myths: Stories of Sun, Stone and Sea by Sally Pomme Clayton (Author), Jane Ray (Illustrator).

I have occasionally heard applause mid-milonga at the end of a track or tanda. It has never been at an ordinary milonga though, always at a special event where the audience - I mean dancers -  evidently feels moved to demonstrate particular appreciation.  And yet each time for me it has felt  strange and unwarranted.

Applause at the end of a milonga is altogether different. Here in the UK at least it is a customary thanks to the DJ.

Thanks to Sally Pomme Clayton for permission to quote this passage.
Image 'Apollo and Marsyas' from the Ancient History Encylopedia licensed under Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0

Cafe chat: learning

Blane and Bryan

After the Saturday afternoon practica in Glasgow I went with some friends to a cafe, which is a kind of loose custom with some of us.

I went to the practica because I have been dancing the other role regularly since about the winter and yet I can't really "do" ochos or ocho cortados in the other role.  It hadn't really bothered me until recently I started thinking they might be a good thing sometimes.

I had tried learning the "cross" in the few guy classesI tried before I realised that was the really hard way to learn and later with friends...Parallel system....cross system....she has to be on this foot, I have to be on that foot...the timing has to be right...and everyone had different ways of doing it.  It was hopeless.  So despite that it's a classic "move" I gave up trying to figure out how to "lead" the cross and then one day it must have just happened on its own.

It was the same with ochos.  On the rare occasions I have tried to "do" them in the past I had to wholly stop the dance, engage the thinking mechanism and literally work out how to do it, by which time of course I have become completely deaf to the music not to mention treating my partner as some kind of malleable object.  This method is excellent for discovering the different levels of patience among friends! Of the few I inflicted this on, everyone has been extraordinarily tolerant. I suspect it's just practice.

But I do think it has to be practice, said as such to a partner, because it isn't fair or right to practice your brand new "moves" on some unwitting suspect you invite for a social dance if it's to the extent of having to stop, work things out and start again.

Treating a milonga as a practica is a no-no, treating a practica as a milonga can work to an extent.  Many locally, perhaps a majority, go to practicas to dance socially which illustrates a gap in the market for  a certain kind of regular, relaxed social dance event.  Perhaps it also explains why afternoon tea dances in my area are so popular.  But I think trying something out in a practica but disguising it as a social dance is a  mistake.  I refused a new dancer recently who invited me - directly - to a social dance in a practica.  I don't think I was wrong but I still felt bad.  Next time I saw him I asked him if he wanted to practice together in both roles and we did.  He was so good in the other (woman's) role it was revelatory.  I suspect that the earlier a guy starts to dance in the other role, the better he is in both, sooner.  

So I wanted to practice ochos with my friends, who in this case turned out to be the patient and tolerant Bryan who sometimes likes to change role too.  That's not surprising because pretty much all the best guy dancers I know also dance or have danced the other role.  In fact I swapped roles with three guys at the practica so was delighted.  I've noticed before once one guy sees a guy swapping, others seem happier to do so too.  But I notice many, especially with less experience, prefer to swap with women than with other guys, whereas in fact, it is better to swap roles with a variety of people (you like and trust). 

In the end in the way these things often go Bryan and I practised not ochos, but a kind of turn I like that he does.  I couldn't remember which feet we both had to be on:  "If we are one creature, he needs to be on our first foot, and I need to be on our fourth foot."  But that was too complicated. So then: 

 "Ah, if I remember that our outer thighs need to be together and then the turn is what is counter intuitive then it might come to me." 

 "I don't think so", said Bryan, "It is from the chest, really", which of course, is true.

I did kind of get it eventually, through a combination of those last two points but was left with the unmistakeable sense that how I - we? - pick things up is very nebulous, hard to define, although I know fairly clearly how I don't learn well.  

Afterwards in the cafe we were chatting about how we learn.  Bryan does everything - videos, lessons, by feel and sense; Blane said he was a visual learner, he had to see what his feet were doing.  I said talk and seeing it demonstrated was utterly lost on me.   I suspected that if I was to learn a new "thing" I would have to do it and feel it - ideally by an experienced guy backleading it for me, and then do it over til I got the sense of it.  

 "I really believe everyone learns best that way. You know that proverb:  'What I hear, I forget; What I see, I remember; What I do, I understand.' It's a bit like that."
 "No, everyone learns differently."

So after I'd been mocked into being less camera-shy we decided to each say how we "do"/"lead" the cross in the guy's role.  The sound isn't very good on the videos but I think you can see we all had different views.  This was Bryan in time-honoured cafe-fashion using a fork to represent the spine of his partner which I think he moves past the saucers: her feet.  Blane demonstrates in serious Glaswegian style his new view that it's all about flow, whereas I just had no idea. 

Shooting from the hip

Plausibly Troilo-Marino: drama, melodrama, or sophistication?

It's easy enough I suppose to shoot from cover so I thought I should try and say something about why I don't think the Troilo-Marino or Troilo-Ruiz tangos are that great for dancing although I don't feel compelled to justify that because I have not made the claim that the later sides are "perhaps the most sophisticated dance music ever recorded".  Moreover, I hear this music played or its supposed merits talked about by some DJs so often at the moment I'd like to give some examples of it to show why its apparent virtues may be controversial.  

Speaking of fair, "Well, but why don't you like it?" is a fair question.  I say so largely  only because I ask it often enough, privately - trying patience, no doubt  -  and very occasionally I get brief, enlightening answers.  I don't know if I can do the same but I can try to say why this sort of music is not, to my mind, the best for dancing - with the caveat that trying to explain taste or to describe music in words may be a fruitless and forsaken exercise.  Yet the mystery of taste is an enticing field and there is a whole branch of philosophy devoted to it. Wittgenstein took things further saying that ethics and aesthetics were one.  He also said famously "Wovon man nicht sprechen kann, darüber muss man schweigen" - Whereof one cannot speak, thereof one must be silent.  I suppose in my case curiosity about whether one can speak coherently or usefully about music is a stronger influence than signs which may suggest the contrary.  On the strength that you learn more conclusively from your mistakes than from advice and that perhaps it's easier to say why you don't like something than why you do I'm going ahead anyway.

Take Recuerdos de bohemia (with Marino, '46) from the middle of the Golden Era.  For me it's like fill-in music in a movie.  (All such qualitative judgements here are merely personal.)  I can't imagine anyone would confess to playing this in a milonga and I wonder how it could go so wrong after Fresedo-Ray did it so well more than a decade earlier.   The Troilo is like being in a deranged dream.  I can't for a moment believe it was written for dancing, so let's say it's not a fair choice.  The sound wobbles unpleasantly within the first thirty seconds of Asi es Ninon (Marino, '46). It is better instrumentally than vocally I think.  Camino del Tucumán (Ruiz, '46) I find dull for dancing though who's to say it's not well suited to flirtation across the tables.  Tedio (Marino, '45) pretty much sums up my feelings about the pairing of this orchestra and singer.  I have heard these last three tracks in milongas but for balance let's choose some tracks I hear more often.

If the volume is up you'll hear the wobbly sound at the start of Tal vez será su voz (Marino, '43) which always sets me on edge and it's the kind of track that can really grate when overplayed.  Someone who knows once told me Troilo had a poor sound engineer, and you can hear it in this and  many other tracks.  

I heard Cuando tallan los recuerdos (Marino, '43) in the milongas I used to go to more often around my way and it makes me think of a film at the cinema where the guy is running after his girl imploring her to come back.  It's no surprise that when you search for that title on Google it's the Caló-Iriarte that comes up first because, I expect, like me, more dancers prefer it.  Confesion (Ruíz, '47) from Michael's site is a better recording compared to much on the internet and it is one of his choices for the tanda he submitted to Tanda of the Week.  I think this is good music, but it is not the music I like for dancing and it is very far from the best for dancing.

I quite like Fuimos (Marino, '46) and Uno (Marino, '43) and might dance them though with Fuimos I really can't help but think of that romantic black and white film again and when Marino comes in, I want to sit down and listen.  Perhaps I just can't think of many guys I would like to dance this with and in the other role I doubt I'd want to invite anyone to these. There are at least as good versions of Uno for dancing: the d'Arienzo-Mauré ('43) and this evening at least, my preference: the Biagi with Acuña ('44).  La Noche que te Fuiste (Ruíz, 45):  lovely track and I am susceptible to it. It is another of Michael's choices for Tanda of the Week, but listen to the Caló-Iriarte version (also '45); Michael calls it merely "simpler" and there is something in that but I find it both strong and delicate and anyway I think one needs to be wary about using  "simple" as a disparaging descriptor.  I like Marioneta (Ruíz, 44) and dance it even though I find Ruíz as a singer a bit nasal. Sin palabras (Marino, '46) is a great track too, a good tango to listen to.  I might dance it with the right partner, though more likely I'd regret getting up.  Café de los Angelitos (Marino, '44) is OK but as with the Canaro (with Roldan, '45) I'd rather have a drink to it, preferring, for dancing again the Biagi (with Alberto Amor, '45).

In Naranjo en Flor (Ruíz, '44) the long, lingering vocals just don't make me want to dance.  I think rather of a swooning woman in that black and white film.  I'd prefer to listen to the more interesting instrumentals of the Laurenz-Linares or to the Rodriguez-Moreno (both also '44) and I guess I do dance those, especially the Rodriguez.  I love Laurenz but what I really feel about this kind of Laurenz is that it's the equivalent in his orchestra to what I hear in Troilo-Marino, too overblown and extravagant to be the very best music for dancing.  There's arguably more of that sort of thing in this tanda.  Having said that the opener, La madrugada,is a gorgeous, very danceable track and actually I'd dance any of the tracks in that tanda.  If I have any problem with these perhaps it's with Bermúdez: for a soft, crooning singer, his voice is also very strong and insistent. You can hear that especially in Me estan sobranda las penas.  Sometimes there's the sense it could tip over into melodrama.  I don't look for that in tango.

Much Troilo doesn't hold back at all with that grand, melodramatic feeling - like Cancion desesperada (film melodrama again - Marino, '45).  Mi tango triste (Marino, '46), Rosa de tango (Marino, '44), Sombras nada mas (Marino, '44), Cotorrita de la suerte (Marino, '45) are drama and passion for those who like that sort of thing and I can see that some might.  Certainly, I seem to hear them often enough to want to groan and hide.  I mind Rosicler (Marino, '46) less but probably only because of association with the far better De Angelis (with Martel, also '46) where the sound is also superior and I much prefer it for dancing.

But again, judge for yourself. Listen to any of the three Troilo-Marino tango tandas on Tanda of the Week (all three were published between the end of 2014 and May 2015) and then listen to this tanda Antti put together of Troilo with Fiorentino.  Which makes you want to dance more?  You hear the wobbly sound again in Los mareados, but still, I think there's no comparison.

In his careful way Michael says Fiorentino's '41 sides are "...the most accessible dance music Troilo ever recorded, the music that sounds most like the other bands." I simply don't understand what this means. Who could he mean? All the top orchestras are so distinctive that it is one of the reasons I think they probably are great. Troilo-Fiorentino like Biagi, like OTV or perhaps like Canaro? The idea is bizarre.

Troilo-Marino or Troilo-Ruíz is currently on trend among some DJs.  Perhaps it is played on the marathon and the clubby encuentro circuit.  This music appeals to people who do like drama in their music or their dance and it is good that they are supplied with the kind of music they like to dance to. If you have those dancers at your milongas then you had better be prepared to play it if you want to keep them sweet - if you accept those kind of gigs; though as Chris pointed out they are not the classics that have been pulling dancers to the floor since the 1940s.

For me, and many I think the challenge is in finding a DJ who plays most of what you like.  How much easier for travel that would be if those who DJ published their sets.  Until recent or sample sets are available more widely the risk of going on-spec just to find out is too high for me.

After a milonga had finished, I was talking to a visitor. In the set that had just played there had been a Troilo-Marino tanda.  I had found the busiest two hours of the set to be OK but I wasn't getting that thrill of pleasure that a great first track induces and the tandas weren't taking me to that relaxed, meditative state that great track after great track, tanda after tanda induces. I was in the milonga only for that couple of hours.  Later, another day I went back to hear a more representative, longer set by the same DJ, staying for three and half hours and after that I wouldn't go again for danceable music.  But that first time I was talking to the visitor about Buenos Aires. 
"How is it there?" I asked her. 

"Here," she said, indicating the salon with her head, "the music didn't really give me a feeling for dancing. I danced it, but....there, the music is different." 

"What do they play there that is different?" 

She didn't know the orchestras well enough to say. "But there I get more of a feeling for dancing" she said and really, for me that said everything.

Photo:  By Jenny Mealing (Flickr) [CC BY 2.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0)], via Wikimedia Commons

'Independence of mind' & 'The coercion of taste'

Knowing your own mind...

Update 5.4.21:   This piece was too long and much later I was inclined to split it up but there are comments attached so I can't.  I have divided the piece though into the two sections of how I would have it now.


Independence of mind

This section is about the advantages and especially the dangers of influence when we start to learn anything I suppose.

I think that idea of tango DJ Antti Suniala's that "edge, passion and drama" is what makes for good music for dancing is subjective, a matter of taste  and at the very least controversial.  Antii's blog is a useful resource and Antti is an experienced DJ.  But while it is good for new dancers and new DJs to listen to experience, it is at least as important to think for oneself especially in matters of taste.  New dancers and DJs naturally look to experience to learn.  But the strangers they may learn from - DJs, businesses, organisers, teachers, writers -  have a reputation or a status to uphold based on financial or social investment.  The danger is that beginners are likely to swallow these pronouncements whole.  After all who ever questions anything in dance class?   

Kant, by the way, did a great, very readable and short piece on this subject: What is Enlightenment? It is about taking responsibility for your own learning and the opening paragraph is, for me, one of the great, fearless opening paragraphs of any text, a clarion call:

Enlightenment is man's emergence from his self-imposed nonage. Nonage is the inability to use one's own understanding without another's guidance. This nonage is self-imposed if its cause lies not in lack of understanding but in indecision and lack of courage to use one's own mind without another's guidance. Dare to know! (Sapere aude.) "Have the courage to use your own understanding," is therefore the motto of the enlightenment.

The news in almost any week demonstrates human fallibility and the succumbing to temptation, to greed and excess even among those we elect to set a course or standards for a civilized society. The same fallibility exists in learning: people with experience are still human, flawed and often wrong. Their credibility though, especially if you pay them, rests on the fact that you will accept the authority of what they say for good - one hopes - reasons of your own. 

It is a good thing though when people change their mind, demonstrating humility and intellectual flexibility. In fact, teachers, like scientists, who are dogmatic, who do not change their mind in the face of evidence to the contrary are not worth the title. The key thing is to trust your own experience, judgement and instincts and to test them out.  

Clearly, sometimes you want and need to speak to an expert about technicalities but even so, this division between "experts" and "people" has always been, for me, unnatural to an extent, artificial and often more unhelpful than useful. When we engage with people in conversation, just as "other people" that engagement is different to when we engage with experts.  What people say and how they say it stands up on its own merits instead of our interlocutor having a leg up on the pedestal of expertise.

If one maintains some independence of thought but uses a guide it will also be easier to accept when one has reached the limits of that guide's knowledge.  Too much trust is a dangerous thing in more ways than one.  You risk being wrong, stranded, alone and disappointed.

*

The coercion of taste

I don't mean this in any way to be a personal attack on Michael Lavocah. I've met him twice briefly.  I doubt he would remember either occasion.  I barely do but would recognise him.  So I only know him through his first book, where I learned interesting things.  I do intend to use it as an illustration of the dangers of taking experts at face value. 

I guess Troilo with singer Alberto Marino or Floreal Ruíz could be described as having "edge, passion and drama".  See Michael Lavocah's interesting comments about Troilo with Ruíz and Rivero in his contribution to Tanda of the Week.  

In comparison here's an example of a Troilo-Marino tanda more recently. I have heard at least two other DJs laud the praises of Troilo-Marino, as seems to be the fashion, not to mention the recent thread on this subject on Antti's new Tango DJ Forum. 

But to say or suggest that Troilo-Marino is appreciated by the better dancers  - with a none-too-subtle wink-wink as I have seen post-milonga on social media by yet another DJ - is patronising for starters, elitist, mistaken in my view, a great example of herd mentality among some of the cabals of DJs and as absurd as trying to someone trying claim that Japanese food is superior to French.  Regardless of whether it is right or wrong ut is illustrative of why this kind of thing is unhelpful at best and patronising at worst, .  It also demonstrates one of the many ways that social media really doesn't bring out the best in people.

Michael said :

"we didn't know how to listen to more sophisticated music. Many communities stuck to the "easier" 1941 sides.

The surprisingly confident insinuation that if you prefer the "less sophisticated" Troilo-Fiorentino it is because you haven't evolved, developed or kept up, or that you unfortunately have an undeveloped musical sensibility. Never mind, you might get there eventually.  Meanwhile, judge for yourself which most gives you a feeling for dancing.

Presumably, "communities" means "social dance communities", because well, a class isn't really a community, is it?  It's a class.  You could try to call it a "learning community" I suppose but it smacks of the sort of empty phrase you read in government pamphlets.

Michael:

 "The situation is much better now, with Troilo-Marino regularly played at many milongas and even chosen for performances."

"Even?"  Is performance supposed to be an apex of social dancing or at least worth comparing with it?  How odd because it is obvious to nearly everyone that performance dancing, and very often the music chosen for performance has almost nothing to do with social dancing. To think that Troilo-Ruíz/Rivero is what good social dancers like and that what is suitable for dancing socially is suitable for performance (or vice-versa) is to my mind a double whammy of a mistake.

Back to Michael on Troilo's later sides:

"...requiring plenty of active listening." 

So "ordinary dancing" doesn't require plenty of active listening? Crikey! What on earth do you do then when you're dancing to the bog-standard, "less sophisticated" stuff? Not listen? Listen passively? Just move?

"It won't be suitable for every tango environment....The level of the dancers was high...so I felt the tanda had a good chance of going down well."

Pause for applause for those dancers, perhaps on the way to performance themselves or a wriggle of self-congratulation.  It is quite true though that if a DJ has a practica with ten newish dancers, they are not necessarily going to play the same tracks they might play in a room of a hundred where you can see there are dancers with years of experience.  I once played the De Angelis "El Huracán" at probably the wrong time to the wrong crowd.  Some dancers in the room were visibly startled (at 2.10).  

Michael diplomatically describes his sophisticated choices as ones that "won't be suitable for every tango environment". Pause to squirm and hope you are not unwittingly part of one of those or that you are not one trying to dance beyond your assigned class "level". 

Michael again:

"But Troilo's later sides from the 1940s - still very much from his dance era - are still relatively rare flowers at our milongas. This is perhaps the most sophisticated dance music ever recorded..."

I disagree with this odd, hesitant, yet forceful claim. But perhaps I'm wrong. Michael is after all an experienced DJ, dancer and author of a couple of books on tango music. Luckily there are also some experienced dancers and DJs - not least in Buenos Aires - who think that Troilo-Marino and most Troilo-Ruíz  isn't that great for dancing or at least that Troilo-Fiorentino is better.  The much loved vals by Troilo-Ruíz are exceptions and of course there is Flor de Lino, which in fact the submitting DJ recommends if you like your vals in fours. 

But Michael has published and if everyone is sagely nodding along with him about this kind of Troilo or that a DJ should "Only play what you like" (Michael's 'Rule 1' on 'How to be  Tango DJ' in his book Tango Stories: Musical Secrets) and you think otherwise you may find yourself a lone nay-sayer, or rather you are going to find yourself sitting down while everyone else is busy showing how well they dance Troilo-Marino or Troilo-Ruíz with all the edge, drama and passion it inspires in them and feeling very...authentic I suppose, or perhaps entitled after all those years of working hard to improve their dance.  Not quite lone though.  Only on Sunday I was chatting to a very experienced guy, a gentle, subtle, careful dancer.  We quit the floor when the (cortina-less) tandas changed to dramatic music with strong vocals:  concert tango.  "I know some of the 'advanced' dancers like this kind of thing," he said "but I've never liked it for dancing; I've come to dance a few Pugliese tracks but the more dramatic stuff doesn't give me a dancing feeling." 

What actually happens is that the people who recognise Troilo-Marino or Ruíz versus Troilo-Fiorentino, usually some DJs, who are often good dancers, will dance it with all that edge and passion and others may try to ape that in the same way they try, unfortunately, to ape the performance moves they see in performance and that they learn from their performer-teachers.  More crudely, some, usually impressionable, newer dancers, or new DJs will start thinking that edge, passion and drama are all good because somebody they think they probably ought to listen to and respect tells them it's true.  Consequently, they dance some Pugliese, late Di Sarli, some Troilo and good, strong d'Arienzo, Biagi and Tanturi, and a lot of concert-tango that ought not to be played in the milonga at all (but so often is), in the same way.

Still, if you disagree that the Troilo-Ruíz tangos are "perhaps the most sophisticated dance music ever recorded", and can ignore the suggestions of being a poor dancer, an "unambitious" dancer, an "unsophisticated" dancer (compliments, to my mind), console yourself that anyone who argues that way saying "it just is sophisticated" without any evidence for that, is holding a sort of faith-based position, a position which won't allow itself to be proved wrong, which is a very weak position.  And just because some may hold that faith it doesn't mean it's right, it may just mean they have power, influence and status among those who accord it; and if you keep up with this blog, then you probably already know my view on that sort of thing. 

My feeling about Troilo with Marino and Ruíz is personal and perhaps I'll change my mind some day. Others patently do like this music for dancing.  But that is my point really.  We give respect and authority so easily and often on grounds that have nothing to do with the point at issue.  The great thing about the milonga is the way it works as a leveller - everyone can see and hear and feel for themselves.

A new dancer won't necessarily discriminate or calibrate so well in dance or musical judgement or milonga etiquette simply because they don't have the same reserves of experience.  Many do come to develop better balance or core strength, or to think that some music is more nuanced, more interesting to dance than other kinds, or that there is good reason for the traditional milonga etiquette but I think it is something best decided from exposure to these things, for themselves and perhaps in embrace and conversation, rather than through diktat or in exchange for payment in money or unthinking respect.

It is fine to claim that some later Troilo, say, is the most sophisticated dance music ever written, if you can back it up. What constitutes good is very subjective, certainly in the world of dancing tango.  You can try to corral and point to a consensus of those dancing that music, or those who go to milongas that play it but again that handily excludes those who aren't and who don't.  What you can do to test for yourself is to watch what kind of music people you think are good dancers dance well to and make up your own mind.

People often don't like it when you judge for yourself, especially if it undermines a money-making enterprise.  Something like that happened recently on Tanda of the Week. A music business had released a new recording where the sound quality was in question.  As a last resort the businessman said, essentially "That's just your poor taste due to inexperience".  I don't mind at all because the sound test in the comments of that post speaks for itself to anyone who cares to listen and decide for themselves.

I think persuasion works better to change thought and behaviour, but where is the line between coercion and persuasion?  I find a subtle, insinuating arrogance and presumption by some dancers and some DJs - DJs particularly - about what good dancers dance.  But taste is just different.  What people like in music and in dance is highly personal.  It is one thing to say what you like and why you like it and on the strength of that you might even go so far as to claim that people with well developed sensibilities of taste will - perhaps even ought to - like that sort of thing too.  That might be persuasive, if rather risky.  

But it is quite another thing to imply that if you want to be (or perhaps more importantly be considered) a good dancer this is the kind of thing you'll like, or you ought to.  That I think is the danger of these statements.  They can be manipulative, coercive of inexperience, even unintentionally.  In any case, experience counts for less I think when making pronouncements about matters of taste; or it is more dangerous than it is useful.  Stifling, herding people, especially new dancers and new DJs into ideas about what good dancers dance, and therefore what they perhaps ought to dance if they want to be thought good dancers is repressive and unhealthy. Or people can misread a personal "this is what it is like for me" from a source claiming or accorded some authority as a collective "this is what you ought to feel if you have well-developed musical taste".  People need space to evolve ideas and feelings about what they like without pressure.  They need freedom to do it and also freedom to change their mind.