Setlists: "Mine, mine, mine"

Linnaea Mallette

A: Hi XXX, I have just seen you are DJing at XXX. I am thinking of coming to the milonga but it would be a significant detour from my route home. Would you be willing to share a recent set list for travel purposes? 

B: Hi! I am not sure I understand what you are asking for. If you are wondering about what kind of music I play, I will happily tell you. But I do not share set lists.

A:  So what kind of music do you play?

B sends standard DJ blurb for a marathon and tries to palm me off saying they play danceable music (does anyone claim the opposite?) and covers everything from drama to Guardia Vieja none of which tells me anything useful. 

A: If you don't mind my asking what is your reason for not sharing set lists for travel purposes?

B: My set lists are my work. I spend time and effort on them. I see no need to give them out to a complete stranger. As I say, I happily discuss music and musical taste, but will not give away my work.

I ask DJs if they will share set lists quite often. 

Sometimes I ask them to share privately because I want to know whether travel to hear them may be worthwhile though I know from experience that even a good sample set is no guarantor because poor soundcraft can - and often does - ruin a good or good enough set.  Most of the time I get a positive response - but then I don't ask everybody. That tells me a lot: that most DJs I ask are probably relatively nice, trusting, relaxed, open, good-natured and secure people.  

Sometimes I ask people I know if they will let me share a set publicly (I think always one I have heard) on The Outpost or on Milonga Review for all the many reasons that sharing sets is useful. I can't remember anyone I've asked who has said no.  I found that slightly surprising and very heartening. I've had - still have - one waverer but that's all. 

Although these are genuine reasons for asking people to share probably the most interesting thing for me is to see what kind of person shares sets versus what kind of person will not. And - the reasons they give when they don't (if any).

I understand people may not want to share setlists but I rarely buy the "can't" argument.  It is so unpersuasive I don't hear it often.  Sometimes I have written sets out by hand, photographed and posted them.  Once I wrote down a set on paper from an agreeable DJ's computer at the end of the night and  - short of spare time - typed it out on the train on the way home and posted it from my phone.  It didn't have the dates so it wasn't ideal but even with just orchestra name and track names an experienced DJ can tell at a glance what the set was like, it gives even a new DJ some idea, it tells dancers who want a reminder about a track they loved what it was, it tells a potentially travelling dancer what this DJ played and it tells everyone that this person shares.

I have heard many reasons people give for not sharing playlists - not always from people I have asked. One tends to get a vibe from that sort before asking.  They are nearly always to do with my work, my effort, mine, mine, mine and - always unsaid - my fear.

Still, I love to see the ones who say "No" publicly. It's so revealing.

The first one I saw was Charles Long's (of Eton) and can still remember the surprising sense of being pushed away since I'd recently seen someone taking a completely opposite approach.

Of course, if you are going to share a set it is better to do it well.  I saw some questions here about how to share setlists but have yet to see them well answered. 

Setblogs: "Art meant to be shared"

The title quote is Cliff Coulter's which I love because it resets the idea of sharing the list of music that is played in a milonga away from the negative reasons people give for not doing so. From here (Archived).

I also like the simplicity of Jerry Allen's view "You can share any playlist, it is just a list of songs". When I think of the "Mine, all mine!" DJs who won’t share, I do love the contrast with statements like this.

So, a term as rare as it is useful: “the setblog”. This is a regularly updated list of sets (i.e. the music, the tandas and tracks) played by a particular DJ at real milongas and made available on the web. It is like a public diary of the music that a particular DJ played and where it was played and when.

To my mind the best of these setblogs because of the quality of the music for dancing, the presentation and the fact that musical clips are often provided, is Chris Jordan’s here.  You can also see how a particular track has been used in combination with other tracks through his "uses" feature giving results such as this.

Don’t miss also his Top Tandas - usefully grouped by date.  There are many reliably good ideas here for DJs, especially new DJs. I don't think there should be any guilt or reservations about using these as whole tandas because I believe they are probably offered there to be used however any DJ wants to use them. I doubt Chris thinks anyone "owns" the ideas about playing music that has been played in so many combinations (many of them now famous, classic tandas) for decades. If a new DJ was to string say four or five hours of these tandas together in a set and they lived within a couple of hours of me, I would be there! It could be so easy. Why do people want to make it hard?

Other sites with setlists (information, not endorsement). If you know of any more, please do say.

Current:

By Dmitry

Latest sets from Port Townsend (under More>Last Milonga Music)

By Clive in UK

Jessica Schilling's public playlists on Spotify  

"With that in mind, it doesn’t seem like giving away any great trade secret to let people know what you played. Everyone, including the DJ, learns as a result!" From here.

Archive resources:

Homer's sample sets.  Various music.

A few mixed music setlists from C-U tango, Illinois from 2011  

David and Ann’s  practica playlists (mixed alternative/trad from 2012 and earlier).

 

Others

There are also some here and by other DJs scattered through this blog you are reading, e.g. here and on the Milonga Review website e.g. here.  I might get around to putting them all in one place one day.  

Sample tandas  

Derrick Del Pilar's Favourite Tandas

Tanda of the week: Variable tanda contributions by the site host and various DJs.

Clint's tanda collections  

Tango Route's tandas on Youtube

Track groupings by Anton.

Starting to DJ: Technology

A: Start your DJing right, please. This will massively empower you to empower others.

B: How do you mean, "right"?

A: Mainly without distraction/diversion/obstruction from technology, and from experts distracted/diverted/obstructed by technology.

Note: in this case, "A" is a technology expert.

Starting to DJ: Me-jaying

Kianti Azizah, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons

A: Please don't let your "It's not me" discourage you from using others' tandas. You should not expect to make good tandas on day #1.

B: I think we misunderstand each other. I'm not. But I have to make the tandas partly myself. I simply won't learn if I just copy tandas or even sets from someone else.

A: You won't learn the composition side, but you will learn the performance side. And the performance side needs learning first, I think, esp. if you have no experience with PA.

B: There is a difference between studying someone else’s tandas and setlists and making choices and judgements of your own based on that (which may result in playing the same tanda), and just playing someone else's precomposed setlist. Use of someone else’s sets or tandas has to be the former, active use.

A: Can't see why. Next you'll be wanting to play the notes! :)

B:  It isn’t active. Like dancing. It isn't "just" following, is it? 

A: Beware of me-jaying. The good DJ is not a leader. He is simply a provider. If what he provides is good, no-one cares how active he is. Unless (if he's a me-jay) him/herself.

B: Me-jaying? I've never heard of that!

A:  Extreme example (aided by technology) here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P8_PjawCcy8

B:  I dunno, maybe he just likes vinyl. People do, I believe. 

A: Sure he does. All the better for Show DJing :)

B: Plenty of people there don't seem to mind.

A: Plenty of people aren't there. :)

I haven't heard tango on vinyl, but should you want to, besides Jens-Ingo, I know this DJ specialises it, (advert) and this one (advert).  I'd be interested to hear of any other vinyl-playing DJs you might know of.

Not about the DJ

Yesterday, at the end of the milonga the host had immediately invited thanks from the dancers for the music.  Of course it is lovely to be appreciated, but from my small corner table I squirmed in the public spotlight.  I was more delighted when someone came up later to thank me privately and to say they had not realised I had played the music. I had been able to chat and dance because the gaps between tracks and sound of my tracks had been normalised for me meaning I did not have to be constantly at the controls managing gaps and volume (or pretending to). I was DJing from a very small device not a laptop so who the DJ was was not at all obvious.  Doing so also avoided the many problems of laptop DJing.

I don't remember DJs in Buenos Aires being applauded.  I feel it is more seen as just a job over there requiring competence, not special treatment.  When Solveig DJd in Cambridge - everyone wanted to applaud, me included.  It depends on the atmosphere.  But the feeling from the music at the end of the night, even after good music is often not the social duty of applause, but sometimes more naturally to chat with your last partner as you leave the floor.  Sometimes I feel guilty if I forget to applaud - but it has become a convention here in Europe, I do not think it is always something wholly natural.

Marine Hall, Fleetwood, (Blackpool Tower weekend, 2016)

John Hickey-Fry's Marine Hall interior, CC 2.0

 

I can think of a few examples most unlike the more low-key DJ spots I mentioned. Most memorably, Beth Anne Osborn. I heard her the first year of the Blackpool Tower weekend (2014) which was the only year I went. Video. I already mentioned the highlights for me of that weekend, which were neither the music nor the dancing. I heard Beth Anne DJ at the Marine Hall in Fleetwood on the Sunday. 

'A':  What can you do if the DJ is playing painfully loud music?

'B':  Normally I leave, and avoid that DJ in future.

'A':  Can you say something?

'B':  Yup. You can tell the organiser why you are leaving.

'A':  I asked the organiser to do something about the sound which was so loud I was wincing & my ear hurt. I sat and sat and sat. I enjoyed watching the dancers for quite a while. The music was good. I talked to the DJ for 5 minutes. She runs the Portland tango festival. 

'B': Famous for the likes of this . (I have never been.)

'A':  I learnt some interesting things about tango in Ann Arbor, Michigan & her view of the differences in guys internationally. But the volume was still going up & down. When she put on Fresedo so loud it distorted the sound I'd had enough. Where we had been chatting, behind the speakers it was fine & she only walked the room once (after I complained to the host! ).

I left and took a walk along the beach in the sun and went back in later.

As I was leaving my friend came out to see if I was alright. I said I wanted fresh air & sunshine. She asked if I was having a nice time. I explained. "You're not in the mood, are you?" she said. "You're not making any effort to dance! Take off your cardigan & look as though you want to dance! "

'B': Ah. Start with a lie. :)

'A': I protested, "I'm cold!".  It was a big, chilly room.  On the one hand what she said was all perfectly true. But I was doing the textbook thing - waiting to be asked & keeping an eye out. But no I wasn't in the mood & getting less so every ten minutes. I'd avoided a few "late cruisers": guys who walk the hall after the tanda has started. I wasn't sure how they danced but I didn't think it was worth the risk. And I wasn't returning eye contact with guys with whom I didn't know how they danced. So after I'd been there an hour & a half I realised it wasn't salvageable & left.

Head-banging to Pugliese

opethpainter

“I saw an American DJ Beth-Anne Osborn (Marine Hall, Fleetwood, Blackpool Tower tango weekend) doing the same once [pumping the air]. Someone told me she organises an alternative scene in the US. She played good tracks when I heard her 18mo ago at Fleetwood near Blackpool but the headbanging to Pugliese, the focus of the DJ spot on the stage, the arm punching the air...  I didn't dance a single tanda there - the conditions, the gloomy room and the deafening volume made for one of the most unpleasant atmospheres I can remember at a milonga. But I see last year they brought her back again. Friendly lady though.”

I don't want to be mean. Beth Anne was interesting and accommodating to talk to a stranger mid-tanda.  Maybe the head-banging is just the American way and the track, which was near the end I think, was amazing. It felt like slow-motion or the notes at that point drawn out. If memory distorted into feeling, the scene would be slightly surreal, like a neon light on the blink in some strange bar, or like a strobe light flickering above Beth-Anne. That's what it felt like, observing:  that piece of the track in slow-motion and Beth Ann on stage, her torso and head moving up and down to the music, completely absorbed by it.  

But she was having fun and shouldn't the DJ have a good time too?  Why should anyone care what she does on stage - the dancers were dancing, the sitters were watching (and we weren't many) and Beth Anne was enjoying herself.  I think we are just used to our DJs being more reserved here. It was fun, it was entertaining for me, watching. It was a cultural thing.  It was only unusual. 

Let's say it was just that I didn't have a good time there.  I'd been deafened, frozen, not danced and eventually abandoned ship.  There was a bit too much "whipping up".

Sometimes though things do go too far.  I'm thinking of DJ Goran Nikšić at the December Etonathon 2015 which I don't think I ever did get round to reviewing.  It was partly I suppose because I didn't see how I could pull off being honest, polite and still hope to get back in.  You can get a flavour of the guy and his music here.  I couldn't quite believe it when I saw the DJ line up for this year.  The new version (phew!). But it was what he actually did at  the Etonathon that I'm thinking of.    Another time maybe. 

DJs like spoons

Generally, I don’t like to see attention drawn to the DJ spot. In nearly every milonga I visit the DJ is given some kind of prominence. Often they are up on a stage and not always I feel just to be out of the way of dancers. Or they are in the centre of the short side of the room, as here, the table surrounded by fairy lights as if to emphasise how special the DJ is. I love fairy lights and would not want to deny them to any DJ why do tango DJ's seek prominence and why are they accorded such adulation, like an array of minor tango gods?

Who is the star, really?  The music, or the person choosing it & sticking it on the sound system? I remember a sound engineer saying that DJing for tango, is one the easiest types of DJing, which may be why it attracts so many rank amateurs.

I recall someone saying they would like to borrow a set from a well known DJ, one of the names that commonly draws a crowd and play it under their own, less well known, name, just to see how it was received.  The idea was an experiment regarding to what extent dancers are influenced by name over content.   Someone else mentioned a DJ  - not a 'big' name  but one I have heard reliably mentioned as probably worth hearing - referred to by someone else, to my surprise as not being a name that attracted good dancers, probably because my guess is they are low-key and unflashy rather than that they do not play well.

My ideal host would run a milonga with such reliably good music that the DJ name would not matter.  I imagine that such a place would be so reliable it would be bound to attract good dancers. Other things in life - school, work, family - being equal, and they never are, for that musical peace of mind and the prospect of the good dancers I might reasonably expect to find there,  I can imagine moving to such a place were such a host healthily robust and heartily committed.

A few examples of less prominent DJing or DJ organisation stand out for me. The Edinburgh festivalito had the DJ table in the corner and when I heard DJ Solveig in Cambridge in January in I think her UK DJ debut she not only occupied a quiet spot off the busy floor but was a very quiet DJ, watching and listening, although it proved later in the year not listening enough. Now she teaches, so not that quiet I guess.

The DJ was never the focus I noticed in Buenos Aires. There, DJ's tend to be paid professionals.  Many do not dance or do not dance much.  In Lo de Celia, Dany Borelli, a non-dancer and the best DJ I heard, shared his space with the barman. Wholly unpretentious in t-shirt, sneakers and specs you could have mistaken him for the barman. He was up on the stage in Centro Región La Leonesa but set back, behind you as you come in and so unobtrusive that for a long time I didn't twig to where the DJ was. In Gricel the DJ used to be above the dancers, seeing but unseen though Janis says that's changed now. In El Beso, it's the same thing - the DJ is quietly above the dancers. Even in Obelisco, the DJ is down the far end in a little room on their own near the loos. In Buenos Aires the DJs seemed to be, yes important, but tools, facilitators not the god-like creatures many seem to want to be or are made into. 

Everyone who cared, which is to say, the traditional dancers, who cared about the music, the conventions, the embrace, which is to say mostly people over fifty, knew who the good DJs were.  They followed them round the different clubs on different nights of the week - and that meant they largely followed Dany.  

The ego that attends nearly all DJs at European tango events is absent in the best traditional clubs of Buenos Aires. It's obvious that in Europe ego is the problem because the quality of the music you hear - be that in sound quality, set balance, or tanda construction - is plain to anyone who listens.  Because the DJ is now the main event, rather than the music, they are forced to try to distinguish themselves in what they play, which screws everything up for dancers, rather than just playing good music for dancing where really the DJ doesn't actually matter; after all it's hardly as if they wrote the music or played the instruments.

A bike, to the Dutch is like a piece of cutlery, functional, reliable. Its purpose is to get you from A to B. Here in the UK, bikes are often recreational objects of desire and status. Here in Europe, DJs seem to think they have to differentiate themselves and play special surprises.  I was defending a DJ against scepticism today:  "But did he play any treasure tracks?" came the biting question, meaning any of the hidden gems I've mentioned before that are obscure and unknown for good reason.   I too don't like treasure track DJs.  I prefer to think of tango DJs rather like Dutch bikes and spoons.

“All of the six loves of the Greeks are connection”

“All of the six loves of the Greeks are connection” -  quoted from here. I think I see many of them in the milongas.

Janis, wrote that the milongas are full of ludus, in particular and I agree.

Saying you are going to a milonga via a Facebook event I think is telling people you want to make a connection with them. But what is the point of hiding behind a general placard: “I’ll be there” or the even more non-committal "I might be there - unless something better turns up".

Telling someone in some way that you value them and hope to see them is a risk in a way especially if it is over-interpreted. But if the milongas are largely about ludus I think the risk of over-interpretation is low. Besides too much attraction - eros - is distracting in the milonga. Ludus is what I find in the people I like to dance with. I feel so honoured when someone I meet at a dance wants to stay in touch, meaning: I like you, I liked dancing with you, I hope to see you again.

On the other hand, one of the things I enjoy in the milongas is how you never know who will be there and who won’t. At good milongas there may be many favourites and new people with whom one is likely to enjoy dancing. Because of that one can remain and know that others remain entirely free, needing to make no commitment to meet.

Commitment - perhaps not so coincidentally, like vulnerability - is a double-edged sword and one of the nice things about ludus is how non-committal it is and how low risk. But non-commitment is another of those things that also also cuts two ways.

Five milongas in eighty miles

There are quite a few milongas in the area around the milonga I visited in Pant; at least, it’s an "area" for someone as far away as me. That is besides the milongas in and around Manchester and Liverpool.

Milongas I know of (but haven’t been to) are, going roughly north to south:

1. Eccleston has El Cafetín de Tango milonga (Ali Vale’s Viva Tango). I have heard the tandas are in threes. 
2. Pulford, (Gresford Tango) - ?A monthly milonga in Pulford village hall run by Bob & Viv Finch.
3. Gresford - I think this is a (sort of) monthly milonga in Bob & Viv’s home. They seem to run two milongas. 
4. Pant - Sharon Koch’s monthly milonga in Pant
5. Shrewsbury - Bomboncito milonga (new), Ali Vale again.

So in the 80 odd miles between Eccleston and Shrewsbury there seem to be five milongas. I think this is how dancing tango spreads. It is getting the first milonga in an area that is probably the hardest thing. There are also milongas in: 

1. Stoke: (Tango Stoke) has a trad and an alternative milonga. Bizarrely, tango teachers get in free?!? 
2. Stafford. Occasional tango weekends and tea dances by Geoff and Pauline.  Geoff shares the music.  I hear that the refreshments at the tea dances are good. 

Keeping schtum

The Digital Artist

A: One always suspects the bans one actually hears about are likely the tip of an iceberg. It is not far off the numbers I have heard banned from Eton and that some time ago. That is an entirely different thing though being for dangerous floor-craft which I think justifiable because it protects people from injury.

B: From general experience of milongas I think it being the tip of the iceberg is very likely. I believe the majority of people banned don't tell.

A: Perhaps they just assume they are in the wrong. It can be so hard to stand up to supposed authority, or just to someone on their own territory.

B: Those to whom I have talked indicate that they don’t think they are in the wrong, but fear that others will. I think this is because the accuser has teacher 'authority'.

A: But why would someone care what others might think if they believed they were not in the wrong?

B: They might lose dances.

A: If someone was to side with a teacher not ones own banned self, then you wouldn't want to dance with them anyway, so why fear what they think? It doesn't quite stack up.

B:  You wouldn't necessarily know.

A:  Oh, I think you can tell where allegiance lies. You just have to watch.

I suspect those banned might well want to know and, elsewhere, steer clear in dance and in conversation of anyone whose allegiance they weren't sure of.

B:  Unfortunately for many, that would lose most of their dances. 

A:  Well, perhaps some others would rather not know.  I think it comes back again to quantity over quality and also that people dance for different reasons. [Many different perspectives]

I've often found that it can be nicer to dance with someone when you don't know anything about them.

Banning people

Alpha stock images - Nick Youngson

It was pointed out to me that the page for this milonga says it welcomes all “who enjoy this social/salon style of tango” but it is probably worth noting I have since heard that the number of different people actually and allegedly banned from this milonga for being too sensuous or just generally not toeing those many lines seem to be so numerous I believe some of them joked they might almost form a Facebook group. Then I discovered someone else found the same thing though I don't know whether the people he knows about that are banned are the same that I heard about separately.

I have also discovered since posting about Pant that neither was I alone in feeling nervous there. Not that he’d mind, I guess, being one of those banned (there is a sad interaction which seems to confirm it) but it wasn’t Bob who told me. It seems before that Bob also felt conflicted - receiving, like me a warm welcome and from the dancers as well as the host, yet there is certainly an undercurrent of unease going on in his posts about this group.

There’s more:

A: As one who has yourself experienced Sharons' signature public not-naming but still shaming technique, you'll spot the irony of her accusing Bob of using it. Here's Bob's report of being on the receiving end in her class.

B: Gosh. How interesting and what a useful warning for others. And what a carefully honed and subversive tactic and how difficult to pin down unless one had seen it happen before or to others. How helpful it is when people share. 

And more:

C: [The group] seemed cultesque from what I could gather and not open to alternative or liberal tango views.

In retrospect I can’t shake the feeling that I had some kind of narrow escape.

Banning people, control, rules, milongas with an atmosphere of uncertainty and unease - it's all connected, I think.

Vulnerability

James and the Giant Peach, Roald Dahl.

That idea about telling people you like them, hope to see them, want to dance with them reminded me of a video I was sent about vulnerability. Telling people those things does make you vulnerable because it is about risking a connection with someone else which is where most of us I think find much meaning in life. The converse is: without vulnerability there is no real connection. 

Actually dancing tango with someone is another kind of vulnerability but that is another story.

We have been listening to the excellent Roald Dahl books on Audible lately.  I was dismayed when one credit for The Twits lasted barely two evenings.  Incidentally, in my view this book and mealtimes are not natural companions though children seem to adore it especially then.  Tonight they begged for James and the Giant Peach, persuasive in their insistence that it was longer and remembering to omit "Honest!".

(footnote):

I seem to keep seeing things that cut two ways lately and vulnerability is one of them.  We know it, that's why we treat it circumspectly.

All children are vulnerable but poor James is especially so.  A recent orphan, slave to his fiendish aunts, missing his parents, friends and former life and completely overwhelmed by unhappiness all he can do is say how he is feeling in the hope such misery will be understood and things will then change.  He throws himself on his aunts' non-existent mercy.  Without experience and with unhappiness clouding his judgement he tries to connect with the wrong people and is rejected.  That, on top of the fact that his misfortunes are manifold, is why we feel overpowering sympathy for him.

It is the risk we take when we allow ourselves to be vulnerable.  When it goes wrong it is the most terrible feeling though in James' case he could hardly be any more miserable. One hopes most of us won't get to that stage before before having to trust someone because that is never the right time.