Garúa: careful what you practice!

Upon asking a Colombian language exchange partner, I discovered that he did not know the word garúa. The word he knows for a persistent drizzle is llovizna. 

Here in Scotland, being well-acquainted with this kind of weather, there is a word for this kind of day: dreich.  As in,

-  What's the matter? 

- Och it's a fair dreich day and ahm jist scunnered.

Fair, here, means not 'fine', but 'very'.  Scunnered, a word my granny used, means 'fed up'.

However, the Asociación de Academias de la Lengua Española's  Diccionario de Americanismos, (as in, Latin Americanisms) suggests that  garúa is recognised in many countries. 

An Argentinian friend sent me Garúa, the song, in the Goyaneche version.  He had noticed a difference in the lyrics in one line of this version (Biblioteca Popular) and this  Spotify version. 

The former has:

 "No se ve a nadie cruzar por la esquina".

The latter: 

 "Hasta el botón se piantó de la esquina".

El botón is lunfardo slang for a cop. 

My friend thought it was because of censorship by the military dictatorship.  

- And you think it was removed because the military wouldn't have liked the reference to a policeman in dereliction of his duty?

- Es posible, pero no sé.  Durante los quiebres de los gobiernos democráticos, los gobiernos de facto = dictaduras coartar las libertades individuales y cometen censuras de todo tipo, bajo la excusa de "la moral y las buenas costumbres". No sé si fue así con este tango en particular, pero sí ha ocurrido con muchos!

[Maybe, I don't know. During the breakdowns of democratic governments, de facto governments (= dictatorships) restrict individual freedoms and commit censorship of all kinds, under the excuse of 'morality and good customs.' I don't know if this was the case with this particular tango, but it has happened with many!]

The introduction to the piece tells how it came to be written.  Troilo composed the melody in 1943.  In the attic of the Cabaret Tibidabo, located on Av. Corrientes, between Libertad and Talcahuano, Pichuco hummed and played the melody for the poet Enrique Cadícamo. The poet walked home under the persistent drizzle and thus began composing the lyrics.

There is a translation which I think is intended to scan, by Jake Spatz. and one to compare by Derek Del Pilar.

  

*

The song has a warning line that fits well with modern recommendations for mental health.  The singer says he is,  

pensando siempre en lo mismo me abismo y aunque quiera arrancarla, desecharla y olvidarla la recuerdo más.

[Always thinking about the same thing, I fall into despair, and even though I want to tear her, discard her, and forget her, I remember her even more.]

It is a, possibly inadvertent, warning.

Abismarse, a wonderful literary, verb, comes from the noun, abismo, meaning abyss, and means to sink, to become overwhelmed, engulfed, lost.   

What la refers to his not explicit, but I think it's a safe bet that la is a "she".

There is an interesting piece on Quote Investigator about the well known "Watch your words" advice which has been attributed to everyone under the sun:

Watch your thoughts, they become words;

watch your words, they become actions;

watch your actions, they become habits;

watch your habits, they become character;

watch your character, for it becomes your destiny.

No matter where it comes from or how far you take that possibly pseduo-proverb, the advice to watch your thoughts is sound

It put me in mind of a a crazy guy  I saw on Instagram the other day, but speaking a lot of sense:

Practice ain't reserved for just musicians and ballplayers. Anything that you do on a daily basis is something that you practice. If you beat yourself up every time you make a tiny little mistake, you're practicing that. If you snap at your friends and family when life is a little more stressful than normal, you're practicing that. And anything that you practice every day, you're gonna get damn good at it. So many people dedicate serious time and energy accidentally practicing things that hurt them. The beautiful thing is once you realize this, you can unlearn your practices. And you'll realize underneath all of these things you accidentally learned, the fun-loving kid that you were when you were young is still underneath it all. Be happy, be silly, realize it's not you. It's the things you practice that are making you mad sometimes, most of the time, okay? Don't be the Michael Jordan of being mad, all right? Come on. Stop practicing the bad stuff and start practicing the stuff that helps you.

[Edited to remove interjection]

The night before my friend sent me Garúa, I was talking to a friend in the milonga about the deaths of our respective parents.  The deaths of our parents had caused us to think on our own end.  My focus had been not to put the burden of care on my own kids, to try and have my life sorted out so that theirs could continue with a minimum of disruption.  I hope to have organised the disposal of my own remains.  I don't know how practical that is.  Is there any point paying for e.g. cremation at home, in advance, if, actually, you die abroad or drown? But at least it is useful to have some clarity over what should happen because when that falls to the next of kin, especially children,  they are not necessarily in a good state to deal with it and the more decisions that have been made and the more plans put in place, the better.  I have no idea if dad actually asked to be buried or in that particular churchyard or whether that was a decision my brother made.  Did dad leave a letter? I still don't know.  I wasn't part of the arrangements. So if you have it planned in advance, and communicated, then it is just then a matter of following a script which is a deal easier than writing it. Such had been the way of my thoughts.  

Having no children, my friend's thoughts about planning for his own demise were very different. He wanted to start planning his thoughts for his last hours. Now I am not at all sure how much you can control that.  His parent fell into a sudden coma, passing away soon after.  My father had weeks in a hospital bed, largely lucid, but sometimes in a kind of hospital delirium people get from being ill, on medication, on a routine not of their choosing, with strangers coming and going and where they can't necessarily even easily tell the time of day. Nevertheless, my friend thought there was value in training your mind for those last hours by going over the good things in your life.

This seemed sensible.  An end-of-life doctor told me some years ago that some people will not let go of life and, even if you try to ease their passing, if they do not feel ready and fight their ending it goes hard for them.   

Endings aside, I thought my friend's idea of daily mental practice for your final hours probably had more intrinsic value as a daily exercise of gratitude, not just for the things you have now but for the things you have been gifted in life.   

And if you can think on the good things of the past, you may be more inclined to appreciate the present.  Mum has this gift.  Even in the grip of Alzheimers, a disease which is like being very slowly consumed into some inexorable awful maw, and after recently losing her husband of 54 years, she said this week that the secret to a happy life was positive thinking and appreciating the people you have in your life. 

And if you can appreciate the past and the present, you may also be able to project your mind into the future and consider the effects of your actions which helps with difficult decisions you may have to make today. 

Contempt

Djgriffin7, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Might they think 'contempt' is a bit strong?, I wondered, after the last piece. Yet only the day before I had been chatting to someone who said how unpleasant it was dancing in London.  I agreed.  Egotistical, arrogant, rude, impersonal is more than sufficient to convey the idea.  I remember one basement práctica where I had felt transparent, invisible.  I think it might have been with reference to London that he told me that he invited a woman to dance only for her to look him up and down, sneer at his shoes and spit out, 'No, you don't have the right kind of shoes'. I clarified and yes she actually said that. 

But it wasn't just there.  The guy was a confident dancer, musical, fun, not fancy. Even when he sat with tango champion friends, women would sometimes still treat him with contempt.  

Yet the same guy talked to me about the  "tango community" worldwide. Inasmuch as people attending milongas make community, I guess. He was generous spirited. 

The tango elite

 

rodimuspower

'Elite' has always had connotations of male power, vigour, and superiority: the elite guard, elite condoms perpetuate the idea. Search for 'elite' these days and the images that come up are of transformer type creatures, non-human, powerful, un-relatable, lacking personality because, well, they are not persons.  They are aggressive-looking and very well defended. 

So it is ironic to see a comment that tango attracts a kind of elite person. That wasn't the word they used. No, they talked about the kind "ready for" tango, having "a certain maturity" those who have "loved and lost" and experienced the melancholy and betrayal heard in the plangency of the bandoneon.

Connection through dancing tango is such a profound , embodied and human experience that it is hard to see the parallels with what is meant by elite in popular culture today.

This portrays tango dancers as "special", in a world apart, who have made it, even if only through experience. In the microcosm of the milonga there is at least as much in the way of every unkind and awful thing that happens in the world outside.  There is no elite.  There is just the same kind of human behaviours as everywhere else.

I am now into my thirteenth year in the milongas and in that time I have seen men lecture women, minor and major harassment of both sexes, manipulation, lies, cruelty, bad manners, a friend mentioned  "the nastiest things being said about other people".  I have regularly seen dangerous and selfish dancing including by many teachers. There have been infidelities, broken engagements, divorce, power politics by teachers and organizers, organisations and groups that claim to be for the community without every holding elections, snubs, cutting out, cutting in for that matter, obsessive control and extraordinary acts of revenge.

Then there is common or garden unkindness, selfishness, crassness, pushiness, and the things the milongas are famous for: snobbery, arrogance, vanity, ego and contempt. 

And consider, these, in the UK, are largely the middle classes: academics, artists, professionals, therapists - the irony, or perhaps they are there for the need.

Sure, there are instances of kindness, good manners, volunteering time to help out and  occasional generosity. A Peruvian acquaintance yesterday was telling me about a very poor elderly woman that used to bring milk round the houses on her donkey.  You would ask for 2.5 litres and she would give you three. Los que menos tienen, siempre son los que más dan. It is always those who have least, who give most, he said

The milongas are, on the whole, places I like to spend time, listen to the music, watch the dancing and the miniatures dramas of human behaviour play out.  They are where I regularly have interesting chat and occasionally some great dances. But in no way does all this balance out to make tango dancers some kind of elite. Quite the contrary. 

When I have a conversations about porteños with other latin people, they are invariably mocked and  disparaged for arrogance and untrustworthiness. This is far from true of everyone and I invariably found  warmth and kindness in Buenos Aires.  On Tuesday a woman told me the only place she was mugged (at knifepoint) in Latin America was near Retiro station. When you hear repeatedly about a culture of arrogance and untrustworthiness you are wise to at least take it into account. Sometimes I see photographs of Argentinian dance teachers where it is all there: immaculately dressed but with a steely, cold haughtiness.  That seeps into the milongas.  Not all of them and not all the time.  But in a place where invitation is by look - the look says everything.

Dancing tango can be a special experience. But let's not kid ourselves. There is no rarefied elite that dances tango.  We are just as morally bankrupt and corrupt as everyone else. The people bandying around the word "community" generally have an interest in people believing that is what they are part of. It is an easy sell, if not a true one.

There are just groups of very different people who get together in loose agglomerations, mostly looking for dance and connection, sometimes accompanied with simpering and self-congratulation when it all works out and sometimes with tears, upset when it doesn't. But for the most part, in the milongas, people live out their enjoyment, friendships, loneliness or insecurities, quietly.

Shallow seas

 

I saw this reshared by a friend on their social media.  Part 1 was a paragraph on 'How to bring new and young people into our tango?' which is a question apparently doing the rounds just now.  This feeding off each other's ideas in the blogosphere, which soons turns into forms of plagiarism, is one of the reasons I rarely read most tango opinion blogs, and then only from those I feel have scruples and who have the backbone to do their own thing. Still, it is a valid question, or would be if it specified about bringing them where, exactly. 

Somewhere, apparently - the writer didn't say where - there is "the idea that we should make tango more “fun”, “party-like”, and create an atmosphere of dance club, in order to attract new dancers." Anyone who has danced salsa, or even forró knows that a traditional milonga is a more sober experience.  

But part 2 sets warning bells jangling with "the mouthpiece"  speaking for "the community". The trite and self congratulatory comment about what is required to be a tango dancer reveals more of the character. Another reason I avoid reading tango blogs and pronouncements is the depressing shallowness of thought.

To answer the question: the way to get more people into tango is obviously to bring friends to practicas and milongas. The dropout rate for classes is stratospheric.  And the reason might very well not be that people are "not ready" for tango.  How did people learn to dance tango in the past, before its commercialisation? In conventillos, with the people they hung out with, the people they were around already.  There were no teachers.  So they probably didn't drop out the way or in the numbers they drop out of classes today. The reason - god almighty, why is this so very hard to grasp, so extraordinarily controversial? - the reason people drop out, might it just be the learning method? In the milonga they see the real thing.  Those being guided learn in practicas and milongas by dancing with people who can already dance.  Those wanting to guide learn to be guided first and then practice walking in milongas or moves, if they want them, in practicas with people who already have those moves.

If a friend said to you, Oh, I've discovered this amazing dance or musical style, I would love you to experience it!, would you be more inclined to see or hear it for yourself if they suggested you go to an expensive class or to actually watch or see people dancing that dance or playing that music in a social setting, usually much cheaper?

DJ "authenticity"

Leo Reynolds

For the record, I completely disagree with you, but I don't play or dance to the music you like. But if I did, I would still go about the same way as I went, which is to say, I had the offer of music, I had Chris's set blog to go by, and I reacted very much the same way as you at the time. And I remember saying something like, 'Yeah, but if I just play your tandas, it's not authentic. And: Who says you get to decide what's good music?' And he said, something like, he didn't, it wasn't him, it was music he heard in Buenos Aires and in traditional milongas that has been played for a long time, and stood the test of time since it was first played. And I struggled with that answer for a long time. 

Eventually I came to a gradual peace with it because they are among the best sets I have heard in terms of: a lot of tandas I and others like to dance.  Not totally.  There are some tracks I think are missing.  I'm not so keen on some of the milonga choices. There are a few tracks I personally dislike but accept as part of the standard. On the whole I think to have those top tandas and and setblogs public, and free is invaluable for new DJs and both interesting and useful for others. 

He also said that he knew of people who did play his music, whole setlists and he didn't mind, probably on the contrary and I don't think it's to do with ego.  When I had the 'Larga las penas' practica here, years ago, the kids were young, I was relatively new to DJing and didn't have much time, I sometimes played them.  I think he just wanted there to be more traditional music out there. And whether that was by people finding their own way or people using his tandas.  He knew it was easier if people could copy his tandas or use his tandas as a starting base for their own. 

When [redacted] started DJing, he thought that setblog was an absolute goldmine and said it saved him so much time. But I didn't do that when I played in the city. I did refer to C's tandas, but I made my own because I felt it wasn't honest otherwise or I wasn't learning properly.  All that was wrong.  I think once he said something about making life hard for myself.  It was true. And he said something along the lines of what would I be doing next time,  playing the instruments? 

That's when I realized a lot of that stuff, about, "Oh, it has to be authentic, it has to be mine, it has to be creative", that is the ego speaking, even while I resisted the label "DJ" with my name as having too much ego . And, you know, the DJ is this tiny element. The DJ is nothing, really. The DJ is just there to put the music on the speaker. There are a few skills involved in that to do with the volume and the gaps between tracks and yes, not fucking up your tandas and playing a balanced set that suits the people in the room, but really, playing tango music, and this is how it's put to me, is the simplest kind of DJing there is. The way DJs at events are billed you'd think there was some mystic art when it's really not rocket science. 

There are famous tangos that are regularly put together. So, you know, if you try and mess around with all that, you're just messing up, you're just fucking up things that already work.

If you play for people who can really dance well, you're playing for people who are more likely to know and care about the music.  So that's your yardstick. Unless it's not, I suppose. Most DJs I see don't play like that.

A lot of milongas don't have people who can dance well, but most have some.  If you play for everyone else, they don't typically care that much. You can see it in the dancing. So you play traditional music by listening to the tandas you've heard that work and, if you are smart, learning from published setlists.  It could not be easier. 

The thing I find confounding is how often this simple process is fucked up.  So it's not that it's not that it's a mystic it's just that it's just that it's a pretty easy skill that is bizarrely beyond the reach of most people. I suspect it's usually. on the part of the DJ, overthinking, ego, boredom or an overly pedagogic instinct.  The number of supremely arrogant DJs who want to educate dancers rather than play for them to dance, is depressingly high. 

And then there's people who play the music they themselves like.  What about the frigging dancers?! It's like saying "I love American food" so I don't care what you like, you're all going to eat American.  I suppose that's OK if you know for sure they like American or if you're a closed shop, the kind of place where teachers have "milongas" only for their own students.  That isn't a milonga, that's brainwashing.

That was blog #500.