Driving beat

A few days ago, in my attempt to describe my subjective feeling towards the driving beat of some typical orchestras (for the identification of these orchestras), I came up with the following (in my opinion) simple descriptions. No doubt, the purists may baulk at these over-generalisations, but I like them anyway. 🙂

• Biagi, Roldolfo: head-on collision with a sledge hammer – in a nice way (eg. Golgota, El Recodo, Racing Club).
• D’Arienzo, Juan: light taps on shoulder (e.g. Pensalo Bien, El Flete).
• Pugliese, Osvaldo: ocean waves building, building until they become irresistible (here I am thinking more of the La Yumba, Gallo Ciego type of feeling, not so much Recuerdo, etc.).
• Troilo, Anibal: punched by nails (as in hammer and nails), sometimes difficult to work out where the pain is, sometimes itchy…

Conversations in Tango

Tango has sometimes been described as a “private conversation between two people”. But if we cut through the proverbial hyperbole, what does it mean exactly? Is it just leading/following: “I speak, you listen?” By the way, from what I can see, even when people may disagree in principle to the last statement, they are ultimately betrayed by how they dance.

However, I believe that there can be a more literal interpretation to the “private conversation” question. In November, I was very privileged to attend a class on musicality where we looked at phrasing in Tango. Without going into the technicalities of music – which I am not qualified to discuss in detail in any case – I now think of dancing to the music (from leader’s point of view) as being quite similar to “punctuations” in my movements. That is, there are occasions where I complete a sentence, pause and take a breath, before starting the next sentence, and there are times where I increase the “volume” to emphasize a point, etc. Subsequently I think leaders and followers can both become more attuned to the music they are dancing to, as well as being less hurried in all movements – just like when we are having a friendly chat, no?

Incidentally, there are indeed specific techniques (ps. I am NOT talking about embellishments or adornos) for the follower to express her “voice”, in response to a leader’s intention, but that is something which I will elaborate in future.