"The life of a frustrated Milonguero"

I had been told Bob is writing a day-by-day account of his and his wife Viv's stay in Buenos Aires, where they have an apartment. They returned there earlier this month. I had heard about Bob before but I hadn't realised he writes mostly when in Buenos Aires.

The other night his tales absorbed me in their days, mindless of the dates. When I came up suddenly and unexpectedly against the halt of the present it took me a moment to realise this was, temporally the end of the line. I would have to wait til the next day for a new instalment. 

When I was about ten or eleven my parents bought a small, unfussy apartment in Catalonia which they had for many years. No washing machine, no microwave, no phone, no TV. Bob's account of the practicalities of a second home reminds me of those days - the painting, the plumbing, the cleaning. I laughed when I read his analogy with the fictional character Jack Reacher in the books he is reading: [Jack] does not want a house or any ties, you spend too much time on maintenance and bills. I am starting to get very sympathetic to his attitude.  Bob is funny.  His blog is fun to read. Over lunch I told my mother about some of his trials. For a flavour try his experiences at the airport when leaving after his last trip. He incurs levels of stress surely only imitable by John Cleese. This happened months ago and still I breathed with relief for them as they get on the plane. Nothing more can possibly go wrong. They get to Charles de Gaulle and when he writes: So we sat ourselves down at gate 32K as directed, but the sign said “Moscow” you just know the story isn't over and that it isn't going to be simple.

Back home, they return to sequence dancing. After dancing tango for months in Buenos Aires? How that is possible is a mystery to me.

Bob's writes about the milongas and about life outside them but I like him best for the insight on the practicalities of real life in Buenos Aires, his obvious love for the place and his equal disbelief that it continues to function. He worries about the currency, the immediate necessity and difficulty of cleaning the windows, the You would think that as they are so security mad here I would be able to get a lock here, but no, so [the patio door] had to wait for me to get one at home. There is a lovely post No hay luz about what happens when the electricity goes out as apparently it frequently does. I remember this from thirty five years ago in Nigeria. There, it seemed to happen almost nightly so our neighbours, all British military, each had a generator in their garage. I remember the torches, the candles, then the deafening sound and the smell of the generator, how hard my father had to yank the cord to start its roar.  Bob laments the plumbing, so mundane, so necessary and I understand. I remember too from childhood that in Africa it would take an hour to run a bath. Bob worries about the X-ray machines at the exit to the airport and the paint nervously, illegally stowed in his luggage: You just cannot get Finnigan’s paint here so bringing that was a must.  He left the Hammerite thinner - with evident reluctance. Who, who wants to take paint and thinner with such urgency halfway around the world? And why? The answer is in an unapologetic post Lentejas and Nuevo Chique about a previous visit in December 2014 

The Argentines have a problem. Well that is whenever they have a problem, instead of dealing with it they try to pass the blame. We noticed the garage doors in our block were starting to rot I just looked at them and thought “why have the owners not painted them?”. Now it seems that they are trying to sue the builders. Meanwhile my balcony is rusting, so I have brought Smoothrite to paint it with. So I will have pristine metalwork, while the rest of the building owners will have rust and the lawyers will have another bonus. It is no wonder this country is in a mess. 

"Mad dogs and Englishmen", as he says in another post.  It is not an anti-Argentine tirade.  He just wants to paint his metalwork when nobody else does - they happen to be Argentine because that's just how it is - and he will go to extraordinary lengths to do it, no matter what anybody thinks just because it's the right thing to do. I think my father would like this man. How can you not admire a man like that?

Practical, down to earth, unpretentious and forthright, I warmed to him: The best thing about having your own place; toast before bed and cool aircon. Sometimes there are mistakes in spelling and grammar but I get the feeling Bob might shrug and say, So what?  What's a comma when I can tell you you can get two steaks and half a kilo of piacada for a  fiver?  "The point is" he does say, about his DJing, which I haven't heard but that is irrelevant "....if you have DJ Bob, then you know what you are getting. " Similarly: His useful glossary is biased to the real and practical side of life. I enjoy guessing a lot of the references in his pieces not listed in that glossary: Easy, Jumbo, Chino, Coto, coreo, locotorio. I thought almacen must be the butcher where they buy their meat until I read in the next post: carnicería. I like learning this way:  guessing, not being sure but knowing I'll find out sometime, someone will tell me or it will just  in some context become clear.  That is part of the pleasure. That is independent learning.

It is not unusual in languages or in life to believe you know what something means, or how things are, but you don't know for sure. 

I was reading to my children at tea the other day: 

"Trust nothing but believe everything". We put the not-so-interesting book aside waylaid into enquiry of that interesting statement and  on to the difference between knowledge and belief. Is there anything you believe but you don't know? I asked. "I believe I can be quiet but I don't know" said the chatty little one, six, earnestly and with heartbreaking insight. He can never quite contain his desire to share something with us.

In The life of a frustrated Milonguero there is the unexpected as here, about food: I love the food here [restaurant 1810], for a country that loves luke warm and bland it is a complete change. This is useful. I also like food either properly hot or cold and not bland. Or about safety; having been reassured on my fears about safety I was then alarmed to read about the street mugging Bob and Viv witnessed from their apartment. It was a reminder not to be complacent. I too felt a little shaken. 

Bob's experiences in Banco Santander are reminiscent of a line from another post Just when you think you have it sussed, they change the rules or you find there is a rule you missed. I admire his doggedness. There is a gem-like tale about the shop Easy which shows the real side to the vague tales you hear about red tape, rules, queues and general cultural differences in Buenos Aires: Total two and a half hours to buy a garden table and chairs, is it any wonder that the country is bankrupt? Lo me vuelva loco. He does it with a Brit's despair and frustration (I think there's meant to be a pun in the blog title) yet I can't help but feel that for him surmounting these obstacles is part of the pleasure. Hearing these stories of the daily challenges there, how he addresses them and also looks to his wife's happiness is what I like most.

His accounts show two distinct sides of their life in Argentina: the quotidian hassles and the pleasures (mostly) of the milonga and of the friends they meet outside these. His stories of the milongas surprise me: it is not unknown for people to pinch the seats allocated to you by the host. I would be mortified with British embarrassment. What on earth do you do? I can hardly see you go cliping to the host. Impossible to take someone else's seat. Stand? Leave? I know though just as you wonder what happens when two men cross the floor aiming to collect the same woman they both think has accepted them, that you find these things out on the ground. Some milonga stories are useful: 

I wonder sometimes about the wisdom of these milonga organisers. They cancel at short notice, then wonder where all their customers have gone. Then you get [Confiteria] Ideal, who ripped off everyone until they deserted in droves now the only way to get them back is to let them in free [but overcharge for drinks]. 

The milonga stories also remind me usefully, that what is true there is also what I already know to be true here: that you can go to the same place, even on the same night and have entirely different experiences. The mystery is, nobody, not here and not there really seems to know why. 

I started to read his earlier pieces about their trip in 2014. He tells you the price of the taxi from the airport. He tell you he doesn't sleep on the flight and how handy his noise-cancelling headphones were. Bob doesn't preach. He tells you interesting, useful things and he tells you honestly, straightforwardly how he feels.

Sleepless, books and more teacher trouble

A couple of nights ago I woke again some time after midnight and was awake a long time. I read more of the short stories in Binocular Vision (2011) by the American, Edith Pearlman. 

In Britain today we have an acknowledged handful of top writers - mostly men: Ian McEwan and Martin Amis are the two I prefer, heading into old age now.  Sebastian Faulks has never quite fitted with them for me though I'm not sure why.  Then I read an article that suggested he " is an accomplished novelist writing well below his abilities".  He "headed for middle market" apparently though anyone who remembers the reams of psychiatric terms in Human Traces (2005) will know there was nothing particularly "middle market" about that.  It was akin to the whaling terminology in Moby Dick - not chick lit.  

Occasionally I come across a jewel like Helen Simpson in her stories on motherhood Hey Yeah Right Get a Life (2001). But a lot of the fiction I most enjoy comes from 20th and 21st century North America.

Compulsive too are the stark, humane, cameos of real life in and around New York by the journalist Joseph Mitchell in My Ears are Bent (1938). Though he continued to be employed at the New Yorker between 1964 and his death in 1996 he published nothing more. The Wikipedia entry for Mitchell gives the following account of this period, which left me with mind astonished and empty bar the questions everybody wants to know: 

In a remembrance of Mitchell printed in the June 10, 1996, issue of The New Yorker, his colleague Roger Angell wrote:"Each morning, he stepped out of the elevator with a preoccupied air, nodded wordlessly if you were just coming down the hall, and closed himself in his office. He emerged at lunchtime, always wearing his natty brown fedora (in summer, a straw one) and a tan raincoat; an hour and a half later, he reversed the process, again closing the door. Not much typing was heard from within, and people who called on Joe reported that his desktop was empty of everything but paper and pencils. When the end of the day came, he went home. Sometimes, in the evening elevator, I heard him emit a small sigh, but he never complained, never explained."

Mitchell's writing reminds me a little of the British novelist Patrick Hamilton, also writing in the nineteen thirties and forties. A modern reviewer acknowledged his "novelistic genius" and says truly that "no one has written better about pubs" - nor I think, more realistically about the rougher end of real life at the time.  Yet I was startled to read the same person here say "Some, however, find his fatalistic bleakness overwhelming – Hangover Square (1941) is undeniably one of the most depressing books ever written".  I think that is an overstatement or perhaps it is just how I take my writers.  It occurs to me now that Simpson, Mitchell, Hamilton  - John Williams, for Stoner (1965) is perhaps another  - all write in ways that are perceptive, humane, funny, sometimes very sad.  They often write about people who are marginalised, those without a voice, or without much voice.  Their writing has a feeling about it that is not unlike much tango music (and some vals).  

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January, 2015:

A: What do you think of Amor Cobarde [vals, 1933]? I thought I wanted to call it a bit twee but I feel it wash over me and think it's lovely. One of the things I like about tango music is that it feels imperfect and perfect all at once. I listened to a tango in the car right after a beautiful, perfect Mozart aria and also another next to a polished big band swing piece. The tango, which was a Donato, sounded so...earthy, so rough in a way, in comparison, but so...I don't know, human, in a musical way.

  

B: Very true.

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Insomnia is a private thing. It is hard to know who has it, what it is like for them and what they do about it. My children are young and I am grateful I am really only a poor sleeper.  I have read of real insomniacs, seen the blitzed faces of sufferers and a bridled mania roiling beneath.  Among the stories in Binocular Vision there is a piece called "Granski".  As good fiction does it gives privileged insight into the life of another:

At night the kitchen became Gran's domain. Here she endured her famous insomnia. She read books about extinct mammals and examined her childhood collection of bird skeletons. "My cat brought me the corpses." She smoked. She worked chess problems and played an old flute. By day the flute rested on a table in the big useless front hall; the instrument, too, caught the light.

Reassuring, somehow, to be in company with a fellow insomniac, better really a fictional one. 

I can believe it when I read Edith Pearlman is reckoned one of the world's best short story writers. The writers, also the people actually, I most admire see the significance in things that most of us do not. Some, like this writer show you quietly and clearly.  Despite that perceptiveness, that unflinching awareness, I see no harshness and that is an art.  Rather there is gentleness and humour. 

Richard Flanagan's The Narrow Road to the Deep North won the Man Booker prize in 2014.

 In contrast, that is an unflinching, harrowing tale somehow described as a love story. The context is the building of the Burma-Siam Death Railway during the Second World War where Flanagan's own father was a prisoner of war. Brutality is inherent in the telling of the horror of that time and place but here is the comparison with other good fiction - the book is about more besides and more than a love story but what that "more" is isn't exactly said. Sometimes I think fiction is the art of restraint, of at most the suggestion implicit in showing; an art of revelation in another. Perhaps it is an element of the art of life or, for that matter the art of dancing tango. Not, of course, the kind of tango danced in class.  There is of course no guarantee that it will be tango music - or any music - in class at all.

A propos, I had a very cross email from some tango dance teachers that evening. Class tango people. I have taken classes with many different teachers. Nobody but me knows all of the teachers with whom I have taken lessons. A brief mental count comes up with twenty at a bare minimum, not including all the visiting Argentines. These particular teachers didn't like me having an opinion and saying it and they wanted me to cease and desist. I won't say in what way exactly because that might expose them and despite the email I have no animosity that way.  But lord, how I dislike being being pushed around and told what to do and say or not to do and not to say. Last time a teacher challenged me about a newspaper article that was apparently "disrespectful" about tango dance teachers this is what happened. That piece was more read than any other by a stretch so if asking me to stop saying an opinion which if it has a purpose might be a proposal of disabuse, then the aim of this recent missive could hardly have been more misguided. 

After the stories I remembered Bob Finch's blog and enjoyed reading his account so far of his and his wife's current stay in Buenos Aires, after which I fell, relaxed, into sleep.

Good rondas and choosing music for DJing

A friend sent me this video. It is of social dancers in the traditional milonga Lo de Celia, in Buenos Aires which I plan to visit soon. The video comes from the Youtube channel of DJ Erwin. He DJs at Lo de Celia on Friday, Saturday and Sunday. Wednesday is the night Dany Borelli DJs there. Interview (Found in the comments of this useful post about milongas in Buenos Aires). Lo de Celia milonga is mentioned often on Jantango’s blog.

I said [here] that Coqueta (1929), the track in the video above was “not great for dancing”. For a long time I've sat on the fence about it. I’ve thought: lovely, soft sweet music though it is, is it good for dancing? But in that post I ignored my uncertain heart and went with my head and someone else's view and heavy influence and said it was not that great. 

Wrong then? A change of heart? Does it matter? It matters only really for choosing music for DJing. It’s not just that they are dancing it in Lo de Celia; it’s seeing that ronda, how they dance that music and just hearing it again I know I would, I do dance that track as guy or girl. Incidentally, I was properly corrected recently about this. I should more accurately say men and women because (indeed) I am not a girl. But guys and girls is just a habit I've fallen into. Forgive me.

I still don’t think that Coqueta is a great track for dancing. It’s not - oh, there are so many - it’s not D’Arienzo’s Maipo (1939) to pick one at random but Orquesta Típica Víctor is not D’Arienzo and tango in 1929 is not like tango in 1939. But for that matter it’s not OTV’s own great vals Temo (1940), which I think is irresistible and great for dancing.  OTV made some lovely music, some of it good for dancing and I like some of it for listening but I’m not sure that much OTV is great for dancing. I change my mind about OTV tracks being really good for dancing more than probably any other orchestra. Luckily, in the milonga you don’t need to think. You just get that pull to dance, or you don’t. That tells you all you need to know and clearer than any thought.

What about that ronda though? I've seen film of Lo de Celia before but in that video with Coqueta I watched the ronda and for the first time saw what I've only heard about, a ronda moving to the music as a ronda. It wasn't any of that fantastical guff, that urban myth, about when, in some mythical, unpublicised, word-of-mouth-only European encuentro - one imagines upon the strike of midnight - one couple turns and suddenly in unique synchronisation, perhaps even synchronicity, all the couples turn. No. But it was a sense of seeing, of feeling everyone connected to each other and the music.

“La ronda at Lo de Celia. Exactly right, moves as one. All these old folks know their music. Most have probably danced to the same tangos for 40/50 years. They feel every note and they hear the same thing. No flash, no tricks, inspiring. And they have one of the very best DJs in BsAs.“

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F: I still think I was wrong about Coqueta. I think it is special but in the way of Mi refugio [1931] & Secreto [1932] & Nunca tuvo novio [1930 - all Orquesta Típica Víctor]

A: I think it is not great. 

F: Many seem to like it in Lo de Celia and dance it pretty well. I hear the best guy dancing is there. I hear it always spoken of as having some of the best dancing.

A: For DJing, the test I apply is: would I like to dance a whole tanda like that? The answer is No. Which suggests a tanda including it with better stuff could be improved by replacing it. Hence I doubt I'd ever play it. I might dance it if I was already on the floor especially with a stranger, but only rarely would I get up for it.

F: As to "would I like a whole tanda like that?", no, true, probably not, though what "like that" would include would need to be stated.

As for, on your grounds, replacing it with something better - it's a good argument. Yet sometimes - speaking of tangos - in e.g. Biagi, in D'Arienzo, in D'Agostino, in instrumentals often from various orchestras, I want it all great of course, and very similar. In others, some songs, especially orchestras like Laurenz, Rodriguez, maybe OTV and certain instrumentals, I want similar yes, but I appreciate the distinctive character of each track more than when I want things very similar. I mean all the great tracks are distinctive, but some even more so. Coqueta is, like those other “sweet” OTV tracks I mentioned above - a track with a very distinctive and for me a good character. That is why Coqueta is OK for me when grouped with say “friends”, rather than “siblings”.

Edinburgh (good news?!)

I mentioned here the lack of diversity in milongas in Edinburgh's long-established tango dance scene.   The clip above arrived in my inbox this evening.  It is about a new milonga in Edinburgh.

I don't know this venue but there are pictures of two halls here.

Jenny and Ricardo Oria are the most well-known tango dance teachers in Scotland.  I know them because for while I went to their classes.  They are not responsible for my change of views about how to learn to dance tango.  While it is true my experiences generally in classes did inform my views, those opinions about teaching dance versus learning to dance in a more traditional, less commercial way are not related to specific teachers with whom I took classes.  They are more to do with more general views about learning to dance, learning languages, a preference towards real social learning and an impulse towards choice, freedom and independence.

I did classes with some teachers in another town for six months or so but one day I danced with another woman, to kill (a lot of) time waiting for a man to become free in class.  I was soundly reprimanded for that so although it entailed much further travel I moved to Jenny and Ricardo's classes in Edinburgh where things were more relaxed. I was there (dancing in the woman's role) during 2013 but less and less through the year as increasingly, I danced socially locally and further afield.  

As a couple they have a sense of fun and complement one another well.  In the days when I tried to avoid social dance events with performances less than now I thought they suited the low-key, languid, elegant movements they sometimes chose.  I was starting to be interested in the music before I met them but Ricardo played so many classic tracks from the Golden Age that it was probably when I was with them that I started to pay attention to the music in a way I hadn't with the previous teachers who played tracks more repetitively.  

They are for me among the best milonga hosts I know in the UK.  They are welcoming, attentive to their guests, but not overpowering - and you do feel like a guest more than a client.  They take care, socially, of new people in their milongas.  There is always water made pretty and refreshing with cucumber and mint or strawberries and snacks.  They come round with chocolate later in the evening.  There always seems to be a lot of people willing to help.  

Bailongo apart - their milongas have been the approximately quarterly weekend events of workshops and milongas in Edinburgh called Nortena.  I haven't been for a while partly because since a lot of the attendees were class dancers more than they were milonga dancers the floorcraft, especially when busy in a milonga space which was quite intimate could be a bit haphazard for those conditions.  Another reason I haven't been to Nortena lately is because I don't always like the music. The early Fresedo in the video clip below (Felicia, 1927) is a good example.  It is not all like that.  When I was newer though I really enjoyed Nortena.

No problem for me with new people dancing in milongas if they stick in line and respect each other's spaces. In fact, there is no better way to learn to dance socially than to try it for real.   I've heard that the Orias' teaching style has changed a bit.  In 2014 I went a few times to learn to dance the guy's part but found when there were insufficient women the guys just expected me to dance the woman’s role. I wasn't ballsy enough to stand my ground then and left to just start walking in the other role in the milongas instead, a choice which has worked out well for me dance-wise and saved me a lot in petrol and classes.  Since then I hear things have changed.  I also hear more is said in class these days about the conditions in real milongas though I recall this was never absent.  With luck this will translate to good conditions in the ronda.    

This new milonga will I hope bring new people in to see what real social dancing looks like where there is much to learn just by watching and listening and to dance with regular social dancers who, like me have also been feeling that lack of diversity in milongas.  I say regular like me though lately, between poor conditions for dancing and unreliable music, I have not been that much of a regular in Scotland.

I have every hope this new milonga will be nicely set up and have a good floor.  Certainly,  Nortena was nicely organised [picture] with tables, cloths and from what I can remember, suitable lighting. Video here.  With warm hosts, sufficient seating, adequate lighting, dancing in the ronda and I hope great, classic tandas that will make new dancers fall in love with the music as I did then this milonga sounds promising.

Open-mindedness

On Tango Voice recently there were some interesting comments in a liberal style:

"I am an old man, 70 this year, and dance a simple style, but it seems a shame that younger dancers should be discouraged simply because I, and possibly you, are old and grey in spirit if not in fact. If dancers are fit, and if they can do figures I can’t, and as long as they respect the two or three foot floor tile I claim for myself, well bully for them."

and,

"The evolution of tango was refined during the “golden age”, but it seems, especially with followers putting as much time and energy into learning to dance as leads, that the evolution continues. I may regret that this has largely passed me by, but I have nothing but admiration for those that can dance a musical Salon Tango that incorporates the “Nuevo” repertoire."

Someone else said:

"Personally, I prefer a chest to chest, simple dance with musicality. But I don’t close the door on individuality of style, especially if it’s musical and emphasizes the connection and the embrace.

I do realize that the tango like many other dances, musical styles and everything else is always in a state of flux and evolving. Personally I do not like the evolution to non-tango music and poor execution of moves. But I do have great admiration for the modern top tier dancers like Gustavo & Giselle, or Chicho or many other argentine tango dancers of today. They are very accomplished artists and their dancing is orders of magnitude better than the vast multitude of self-styled “milongueros”.

Too bad I don’t have the youth, skill and talent to equal them, but I certainly respect their talent and their tango." [sic] 

This gentleman is also 70.

Not all that long ago, I thought Chicho's dancing or any famous performer were examples of great "tango".  I preferred when it was to traditional music but I thought it all amazing.

These days I think rather that happily in our part of the world people can dance freely and in whatever style they like, to whatever music they prefer and go to whatever milonga or dance takes their fancy. That said, clarity when you begin, over what you are learning, what you expect to dance, what you can dance, would really help because not all paths lead to the same place.  For instance, there is a chasm separating what Gustavo does - even though it's to traditional music - from the traditional social dance called Argentine Tango. That is why I am surprised and puzzled that a dancer who prefers a traditional dance admires a Gustavo-type dance.

But, you say, when they start out in classes by, say, the Gustavo-style teachers (my first teachers learnt from him) new dancers may not want to become dancers of traditional tango.  Like most, I did not understand the differences, not for months.  But many people in class do want to dance socially.  And in Europe we see dancers, becoming better and more experienced, tend to like traditional music and a traditional setup.  More milongas are becoming more traditional in music, in invitation and in the conditions for dancing like appropriate seating and lighting.  This includes many younger dancers.  In Berlin I was struck that the milongas with best music and dancing attract a largely young crowd.  There are many good girl dancers in Berlin, young or youngish dancing traditional music with good young and older guys. What these people dance rarely bears any relation to the Chicho/Gustavo type dancing.  Not all young people like this.  The international group of lovely, warm, welcoming people in St Andrews, Scotland for example dance a very close embrace to mostly alternative music.  

Like many, I have changed and in a relatively short time.  I went, unwitting, to nuevo style classes.  Within a couple of years I was choosing rather to dance traditional tango, socially.  Had I my time again, had I known what a milonga was, I might have gone along and watched and listened and seen what happened because you learn much that way.  Provided you know that learning to dance tango is very much a question of just showing up at the milongas, not once but for a while, then things start to happen, slowly.  Some people understand this instinctively.  I was not one of these. I was impatient.  Many just want to dance as much as possible no matter to what or with whom though this tends to change with time.  Just turning up though - and it can be easier and more fun going with friends - you see and hear how things really are and you always have freedom of choice, over whether to dance or not, to what music, with which partner and when you come and go.  And you have the milonga chat, the really valuable information and stories and jokes.  Even if I choose not to dance much at a milonga, something good or funny or interesting always happens.  Besides the music and the dancing, conversation, exchanges, life just happens in the milongas.  Peoples preferences and characters  in all their variety are visible and it is absorbing and wonderful to see and to enjoy.

There are places in Europe, even in the UK where dancing in the Chicho/Gustavo way even in the inner ronda or dancing in the centre at all actually, just isn't on. So people who've been to classes and paid and paid and paid for months and years to learn what they think is Argentine Tango then turn up at a milonga run perhaps by people who are not their teachers and they risk being complained about even thrown out eventually or at best they mess up the ronda and wonder why people don't seem happy with them. Going from class to a milonga they might as well have gone from Earth to Mars.  Actually, there are still not enough milongas like that in the UK where the host would step in and have a quiet word. In some, anything goes.  Haphazard music, random tandas, no cortinas, mixed music, little discernible ronda, direct invitation, open hold dancing, poor seating lighting and  floor are all tell-tales. 

But many of the weekend events in Europe most certainly expect a certain style of dance and adherence to traditional etiquette and you can't get in except by registration and selection - on who knows what grounds.  People wonder how you get from class, to the elitist encuentros and the answer is: you don't. You do lots and lots of social dancing because it isn't just a matter of dance hours.  It is different in essence from class dancing. 

Even if dancers do stick to their own two or three feet on the dance floor, completely different tango dance styles in my experience don't mix well.  At least I think many trad style dancers don't feel what they do mixes well with a nuevo style in the same place.   For traditional dancers, it can be worrying at best, anti-social at worst.  Besides, nuevo style dancers don't tend to have the same conventions about e.g. invitation, or about clearing the floor during the cortina.

Tango dance classes do sell even when they are expensive, time-consuming and when what happens there bears no relation to what happens in the real milonga, even when students go to class and to the milonga.  I think that trying to learn this improvised social dance in a class is about the best thing you could do to harm your chances of ever being able to dance it. But my real point is different: teachers who dance for status and money are never going to relabel their workshops "Tango [sic] for performance" because they know the scales would fall from the eyes of the same people enraptured by the "tango" they've just seen performed. That is really what turns my stomach about these performances even while I remember my previous feeling of admiration. There's the swagger and braggadocio of it all and the fact that it's almost always about moves over music but let's put that aside as a matter of taste. What I really mind is the deliberate sleight of hand, the "this is tango" - now pay me to learn what is never going to translate into social dancing in the milonga and when we've bled you dry most of you will (sensibly) give up. And of those who don't, years in the milongas will slowly rub away the harm done in class.

We though, social dancers, can tell the new dancers about the real dancing in real milongas, socially where they choose and are chosen by the people they just want to dance with, who make them feel good and they can get up to music they enjoy when they feel like it.  That is why there is an explosion of good new, young girl dancers in parts of Europe today - just because they are going out dancing tango socially with guys who can already dance.  Guys, incidentally who don't tell them "You're so tense. Relax, can't you." (A woman told me this yesterday, it's very far from uncommon).  No, so the good girl dancers go dancing with guys who just dance with them, nicely.  And there, in the right setting where it is natural to dance what others are dancing they can try nuevo, or alternative or dance traditional Argentine tango socially and know each of these for what they really are.

Firpo (and Edinburgh)

In the summer I heard Organito del suburbio (Firpo, 1929) played by an experienced dancer, one of the current DJ crew in the rather shadowy Edinburgh Tango Society. Perhaps they exist but I have never seen a committee, accounts, public meeting or any kind of public accountability of this organisation to its - what, members, dancers, attendees?  In contrast to this apparently loose arrangement, milongas in Edinburgh are tightly controlled.  There is astonishingly little diversity in milongas for a scene with the longevity of that city - some twenty years.  The organisers at the Edinburgh Tango Society currently have the monopoly of the two regular weekly as well as the one monthly milonga in the city.

Organito del suburbio is the sort of track that makes me lose the will to live. You would have to be made of steel to be willing to travel to endure this sort of music which has been part of the Edinburgh milonga culture for many years.   It was teamed with Marejada (1929), example again by DJ Xenia of Israel and Entre tangos y champagne (1928) to which unless you're a masochist I suggest you don't listen. This sort of thing is why Firpo has such a bad name among many DJs. 

Whereas Fresedo, Canaro, OTV, Lomuto, Di Sarli all improve in the 30s, Firpo and De Caro do not, or not enough.  For a while, hearing it so often I thought I must be mistaken in my gut feeling about Firpo.  I searched once for hours looking for a decent track. Last week, someone else told me they did the same recently, with the same result. I even followed a social media thread about Firpo looking for a good tanda for dancing, without success.  At best there was Volver a vernos with Ignacio Murillo (1943).  Perhaps I've just been listening to Firpo too much again lately but it is pretty good and apart from a certain plod, a certain jerkiness, a certain affectation and a slight desperation in the singer, it hardly sounds like Firpo to me...  Di Sarli's (1942) version though with Podestá is better.  Arrepentido is too self important and heavy and if I cringed at the start by the last 35 seconds I don't know if I want to laugh, cry or am just transfixed.  It's trying stuff but it might fit well with the sorts of tracks (like Desengañao) prized by those who like "special" music. 

Fantasmas is - optimistically - a fun gimmick (not for dancing). I heard it also in a milonga in Edinburgh last year with El compinche (1937) and De vuelta al pago (1940) which I think is supposed to be clever and quirky and subtle as many Firpo tracks try to be and it is none of these.  Todotango cites La chola (1941) from this "inspired composer" but I find it in the same vein as these (no link available online).  Apparently De Pura Cepa was an early hit of his, and this might be it in 1934. But compare what D'Arienzo does with the track of the same name, as a milonga in 1935.  There's no comparison.  Why play Firpo? 

Milonga.co.uk calls his El amanecer ("the dawn") iconic.  According to tango.info, Firpo seems to have recorded this track many times. The 1928 version is a pretty awful, but inventive track. The 1936 version is manic and it isn't good for dancing.  The 1938 version is startling.  Everything is toned down, subtler, much more relaxed with the birds very much in evidence.  I still don't think it's good for dancing but it doesn't sound like most Firpo.  By 1953 he has gone back to the manic, stressed tone. By this time, Di Sarli had picked it up in 1942 and refined it in the well known version of 1954. I hear both in the milongas. Why play Firpo?

La murra is typical of the Firpo I hear from time to time. The jaunty tone tries to persuade you it isn't actually as dull and nagging as toothache. This and the moaning struggle of the tuba-like instrument makes me groan in unison. It's the kind of track you might nod off to only to be jerked awake by those insistent violins and that's before you get to the cheering and the chanting.  It was joined when I heard it in Edinburgh with Loco lindo (1936) and Vea Vea (1937) which both seem to try so hard, as often with Firpo and yet they just don't do very well. It is one of the things that makes listening to Firpo depressing. I prefer anyway the very early and wholly different Di Sarli version of Vea Vea - and even then not for dancing.

Firpo's Didí (1937) is embarassing, like bad Fresedo, especially in comparison to the Biagi version or the Tanturi. I've seen it teamed with Tierra negra (1947), which feels like a stand-in trying desperately to temporarily entertain an audience who've been let down by some other act.  You can hear examples of whole Firpo tandas by DJs Bärbel Rücker and Paul Svirin on Tanda of the Week here. Just compare though Paul's opening choice No quiero verte llorar with the Fresedo version and feel the qualitative difference. Why play Firpo?

Not far from me I heard in a social dance many tracks in the style of the Buenos Aires Tango Trio’s El Ultimo Cafe (hearing is believing).  Hearing afterwards Firpo's La carcajada (1935) I thought with relief “At last - a potentially danceable track”.  This though was in, I can’t say a set, because it had no discernible structure let alone cortinas but was stranded in a list of tracks so unremittingly undanceable that the reason I stayed was partly through a kind of hypnotised disbelief and partly because my children were happily playing and eating tapas.  Listening to it in more balanced circumstances I was wrong about that track. Leaving aside that insane cackle in the violins and the baleful tone of the piece, of course it isn’t danceable. When you consider what might otherwise be played who would want to dance it? 

I prefer Firpo in vals. In Aberdeen last year I heard Atardecer campero, Barreras de amor (both 1936) and Entre los ceibos (1942). They aren't my favourite kind of vals but I think these are nice, certainly in comparison to the tangos. I don't know if they pull me from my seat but I doubt I would avoid dancing them with the right partner. 

Poor Firpo. He was just too early.  He records Alma de bohemio in 1927 but the Biagi (1939) and especially the Laurenz (1943) versions relegate his version to history.  He records Ya no cantas, Chingolo in 1928 but is eclipsed by Rodriguez in 1943.  Because he has a place in the history of tango music is not reason enough to play him for dancing in milongas today.  When people come out to play, why would you lecture them?  Never to a partner and not via the music either.  Nor, for that matter by organisers to the dancers in general. There is a milonga in Edinburgh "borderline pretentious, so everyone is a little bit serious and constrained" (not my description) where people are lectured collectively, publicly about cabeceo and the ronda - "Everyone always sits squirming in the seats like naughty children."

Even in the 40s Firpo just can't quite keep up.  Here's Sábado inglés (1940), irritatingly Firpo-like, though so different to Volver a vernos and the relaxed 1938 El amanecer.  Compare though D'Arienzo's version (1946). And so it goes on. The desperate edge to La murra in 1936 and earlier is explicit in his frenetic El entrerriano.   But compare the great D'Arienzo version. (1946)  Why play Firpo?  Firpo seems to have a divided personality, sometimes plodding, sometimes raving, occasionally relaxed, when he is at his best.  His tangos have range, but it isn't good range, like Canaro's or Di Sarli's.

Unless the tangos really speak to you, please consider not dancing them because when you do it tells the DJ and their friends to play more of it and then you get whole geographical areas of Firpo, like a fungal blight, played regularly.   The awful thing is, if you hear enough of it you can get used to it as you slump in your chair.  Few DJs though really rate Firpo. When you ask them they do a sort of half shrug and look a bit shame faced and confess to a tanda now and then.  Firpo is one of their last choices, or their first - they put it on at the start of a milonga when no-one's there, with all the other poor early stuff.   Luis Petrucelli by the way is another such e.g Yo soy la milonguera, La Viruta (both 1928), heard in Stirling 2015.  Michelú (1930 - no online links but you didn't miss out;) is another, heard with La Viruta again in Edinburgh.  So is Julio Pollero e.g. Yo soy la milonguera (1928), Qué Vachaché (1928) also heard in Edinburgh 2015.  Playing these and the unmentionables to whom I gave enough space last time ensures virtually no-one turns up for the first hour of a milonga as is indeed the case at the Edinburgh weekly milongas. 

Not enough milongas are even the four hours that Edinburgh's used to be. Doubtless the idea is to try to bump up attendance when there is little throughput from class into the milonga from the 11+ teachers running classes locally. 

This is such a shame when Edinburgh in the last year or so had started to play cortinas in the milonga more than before when there was often its trademark "silent cortinas" with the many attendant problems those create. The lights will also dim for the milonga which I know from experience makes it harder to invite by look, especially for visitors. 

Were there great music played from the start, as elsewhere with good conditions such as excellent lighting and cortinas, people I have found are often in situ early.