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.