Stuttgart - El Amateur milonga

Teehaus im Weißenburgpark

I loved the name, El Amateur, long before I saw the place.  That alone is a call to those who prefer traditional social dancing to events centered around the professional tango dance industry with workshops and shows.

Access

The location of El Amateur is wonderful with great views over the city.  It is not in the city centre but it felt to me like a place doing its own thing and unapologetic.  I was told there is no public transport to get there, that taxi was best. I see that public transport will only take you so far.  You would have to walk at least 25 minutes on foot and it is uphill. 

Adventure
I had left the Sunday afternoon milonga in Tango Loft less than an hour before.  By the time  I had returned to the hotel, showered and changed it was nearing 8pm and the milonga would start in half an hour.

As things turned out my friend - a local - decided to come to this milonga.  Though we had never danced he had had three failed attempts to learn to dance tango in class and was now very into the contact improvisation dance scene.  He suggested given the hour he pick me up and we go by motorbike.  I agreed after much hesitation and only after establishing his last crash had been several decades previously.  He promised “bicycle speeds”.  In childhood or teenage years my father had said I would be disinherited if I ever got or perhaps even rode on a motorbike.  The force of that statement more than any genuine threat had stuck through life.  I have had friends affected by serious and fatal motorbike accidents and seen them on the roads so have had every inclination not to get involved.  In the circumstances though it did seem like the best way - so I thought until, rigid with fear, I had to get on the thing.  He told me my skirt could not catch but I nevertheless hitched up my dress beyond I felt - once astride the machine - what decency required. Though it can hardly have been further than 3km distant and we apparently never topped 40km/hour I think it was thrilling but terror, especially on bumps, curves and acceleration overpowered most other sense. Trying to take my mind off things I wondered if I had control issues and decided if not on the salon floor then certainly as regards personal injury.

The setting 

...of the venue is casual.  You can sit outside with a drink before the milonga but I just sat down to get over things, revive feeling to my tense limbs and to remember about breathing. 

Bar

Inside there is a bar for which at that stage I was extremely grateful.  Apparently the restaurant is closed just now but there was nevertheless good value African food in the adjoining room served by a lady from the Congo to whom we spoke in a mixture of English, French and German as she spoke them all. This room also serves as the bar.

Host

Though we did not really speak I understand the host was Otto. Johannes, who I believe is the regular host, was on holiday. Entrada was by donation. We gave 10 euros apiece. 

Conditions

My quick photo makes the room look less nice than it is. It is true it is not as jazzy or as stylish as Tango Loft but the conditions for me were superb. Seating, lighting, floor, room shape and size were all ideal.  You could see all potential partners from wherever you were in the room without moving, though some guys did.   As in many Buenos Aires venues you need only move your eyes.  I feel  especially in unfamiliar places or where I am less at ease the more you have to turn your head, still less crane your neck, you start to leak discretion and the milongas for me are all about that.  We got a table and were able to keep it. I already knew this milongas has existed for twenty years. Seeing it I was not surprised. 

I had been to a cafe in a beautiful park above the city that day.  It had had the same relaxed feeling as the El Amateur milonga.

Attendance

I am poor at estimating and did not count but there was enough for a good evening. The lower end of thirty to forty perhaps. It seemed to be mostly locals who sat for the most part down the left hand side from the door with the better dancers toward the further end towards the DJ spot.  There was a handful of dancers from the milonga weekend: a group who came together including DJ Stephan, his wife with I guess their friends and one other. 

Atmosphere

It was just...quiet and focused on dancing. One or two of the Tango Loft group did not seem to dance much so perhaps they did not like it or were just tired. It was a very different atmosphere to Tango Loft.  Despite that it was all new to me and I was dancing for the most part with a brand new beginner guy and in swapped roles I felt much more relaxed here. Otherwise I found the atmosphere hard to judge partly I did not know the place, second because my friend and I were so unusual in that setting dancing the way we were. 

Music

The music was probably - eventually - the best I heard all weekend. The DJ was Mohamed of Sydney, possibly this guy, friend of DJ Stephan Resch. When I walked in though I thought I had made a terrible mistake. The music was simply awful: heavy, plodding Guardia Vieja.  I was shocked and disappointed.  It went on for at a guess two, perhaps three tandas. I went to change my shoes in the Ladies, we paid the entrada and the music was still terrible.  At this stage I had not realised the DJ was a dancer from the milonga weekend. To escape it we went to see about food and drinks next door. I started to feel euphoric but I think that was more happiness at survival than the sekt. 

I considered leaving in the time we were eating next door except that I could not just then face getting back on the bike.  I heard two or three bearable tracks, heading towards good. Had it lasted any longer I might have left or gone outside for drinks and to watch the sun go down. 

Suddenly the music changed, became and stayed wholly good, which is to say, mainstream, until near the end of the milonga. I asked the DJ about the start and he said he often started that way and that some people like it.  Some do but not I think the same people who stay for most of the rest of what he played. It is, in my view, a common DJ error.  De Angelis came up in the conversation and he said he rarely played that orchestra, I don’t know why. I think many people find De Angelis hard or hardest to “get”. It was the last orchestra for me. Not everyone likes it perhaps because some DJs can play such terrible tracks by him. I remember hearing only one (good) De Angelis track played the whole time I was at the Stuttgart milonga weekend but heard it often in Berlin. 

There was another change at about 2340 to I think possibly Varela/Ledesma Qué tarde que has venido which I did not want to dance. I felt it a shame.  I know some like this but it was so different from everything that had gone before and to which everyone had happily danced.  Many had left already I guessed because it was a school night.  I waited to see what was going to happen. It turned to I think Pugliese which was OK but I do not dance that in swapped roles and decided to call it quits.  I noticed someone else doing the same.  It was nearly midnight in any case.

Dancing

The outer ronda seemed fine. Inside the ronda were the beginners, weaker dancers, people who overtook and one or two wilder dancers though in fact we were not so many. If I had not been dancing with a complete beginner I would not have wanted to be in the middle there. 

I danced with three guys besides my friend and enjoyed them all.  Two appeared to be visitors.  “Viel sonne” remarked one, wryly, of my British, sunburned back.  I agreed in English and squirmed, still Britishly.  It was clear I had been outside incautiously that afternoon.  Then, in German: Did I not speak German? Again, I squirmed. Not enough to converse.  Like many tolerant, accomplished Europeans he repeated what he had said this time in English and agreed to my remark that his accent his was not German, telling me his country.

The women nearest me were not looking my way and given the spectacle my beginner friend and I must have made I can’t say I was surprised.

Three other guys, locals I think, I would have danced with but they did not seem to want to dance with me either. I felt rather shunned. I considered they found our dancing so awful in swapped roles that they couldn’t face me as the girl, or to an objection to women dancing in the other role, or simply an objection to a beginner guy dancing at their milonga. But with so many variables and plenty others besides it is not worth guessing. So there were some OK to good guy dancers there I had not seen at the Tango Loft weekend and the same in girl dancers.   There were also the kind of average dancers you find everywhere at local milongas in Europe.  Some local dancers stayed only for a couple of hours, arriving and leaving early or arriving later and leaving later - another reason to DJ buffet style - which the middle part was - as opposed to as an arc or mood DJ.

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.