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.