What makes a good tango number?

Someone put this question to me the other day.  It is an obvious question but a good one.  I remember asking it myself about ten years ago.

Then, although I felt what a good track was - and this has not changed - I lacked confidence in responding to the same question.  I am not sure why.  Maybe just lack of enough experience to back up the belief. Maybe because in music and dance the brain catches up later with what the body feels much earlier.

Why does the question even matter?  It matters to anyone who is interested in the music, who cares about the music, who reflects upon it.  Although, actually, to know what makes a good tango track you don't need to reflect.  You just need to listen, to in fact turn off thinking.  A great track is one that demands to be danced, the body wants to move to it, the floor fills to it. 

A good track brooks no opposition.  Mi vieja linda is an example.  Nothing else by Emilio Pellejero's orquesta, that I can think of, has survived to be danced in the milongas.  So that is an inconvenient track to place in a tanda, but do we ditch it? Of course, not because it's a superlatively good number.  Instead, we find two good friends for it so we can play it.

More cerebrally, there are at least a couple of other clues to what makes a good tango number.  There are a surprising number of good  - if not really good - dancers, who lack discrimination in music.  Like maybe, 80%, maybe 90% of people (depending on the milonga and the country) they will dance to almost anything. I guess they just have a lot of dance experience instead.   But there are tracks or eras (the 1920s) that some good dancers deliberately won't dance and that is a clue to what makes good tango music for dancing.  The clue is more in what good dancers don't dance.  Of course, motivation is hard to guess. Maybe it's just that they can't find the right partner? Do their feet hurt? Are they too hot?  

The very best dancers, for me, are all about music.  They dance the music, the pauses.  Steps, figures are really not that important to them and  don't feature significantly in their conversation about dance. 

The other hint is simply to know which are the tracks that are popular, that have survived to be danced across 90 years.  But really, it's a case of if you don't feel it you ain't gonna know.

There are popular electro trango tracks of course at alternative milonga.  If you like your music thumping easy, slutty, then by all means.  It's the difference between going to a fairground versus an art gallery or a good restaurant.  Classic tango dance music has a complexity and a finesse that, happily, attracts some and repels others.    

The attendees in the traditional milongas of Buenos Aires were the most discriminating dancers I have met regarding music.  They rarely seemed to not want to dance a track but then the tracks at the milongas were were nearly always good.

The modern group Orquesta Típica Andariega has been around for a while.  "Andariega" means wandering, roaming, nomadic, from "andar" to move or walk. Their vals Gira Gira and Buenasera are good but then there are other orchestras (Firpo) who have done vals that are markedly better than their undanceable tangos. Is Gira Gira good enough for the milonga?  I don't know because I haven't heard it there.  It is not at all the same to listen to outside of the milonga and think it might be good for dancing and to be in the milonga and know.  That is the real and only test: does it pull you out of you seat?

I have only once that I remember put modern orchestras into a setlist. They were:

Mi Vieja Linda  - Emilio Pellejero

Cacareando (Sexteto Cristal).  The original (1933) is a classic, also somewhat annoying, so if I heard the modern version in the milongas more I might come to prefer it.

Papas Calientes (Ariel Ramirez).  The good original is by Donato, in 1937. 

I also can't remember mixing a tanda with such a huge gap of years but this was an experiment in a practica with mostly new dancers, not a milonga. Sexteto Cristal has covered Mi Vieja Linda but it isn't as good as the original and if it isn't the very best it isn't worth playing. This is a surprisingly controversial idea.

These apart, and La Juan D'Arienzo live, I can't remember dancing a modern orchestra in the last ten years.  Suggestions welcome! 

I heard a salsa DJ yesterday play a few good tracks that got everyone up and dancing and a good half that were just dregs, fillers.  I chatted to him, indicating a few tracks and orchestras I knew from his display.  Ah, but I can't play just well known tracks he said otherwise we would be down to a limited selection.  This guy has been dancing since the mid 1990s but I know this rubbish because there are hundreds if not thousands of great salsa tracks, far more I am sure than there are great traditional tango tracks that number in the many hundreds. 

As my dad's health as declined over recent months I have taken more food to them for the freezer. Now, have it during the week! I urge ...and I will bring some more.  But dad would put it away and save it for weeks.  For what? I would say, frustrated.  For best? 

Carpe diem! It is not worth playing indifferent dance numbers just to save the really danceable ones "for best".