Re: Music, Tango, & Dancing...

[JeffryesSussex <doktordogg @YAHOO.COM>]

--- Roger Pick <pick @CABLESPEED.COM> wrote:
> it also paints a very negative
> portrait the tango dance
> community for not supporting tango orchestras by
> hiring them, nurturing
> them, and demanding that they play wonderful dance
> music for our
> milongas and recording that music for use to use in
> our practicas and
> for personal enjoyment.
>
> I believe that it is the dancers that drive the
> creation of truly great
> dance orchestras.  We support a large and growing
> number of teachers of
> dance.  At some point in the re-creation of viable
> tango (people speak
> of a "golden age" of tango that, apparently, is not
> in the present) we,
> as dancers, must support, by paying them for their
> music, orchestras
> that give us the pleasure of the dance.

I certainly sympathize with this yearning for a more
vital community of live musicians.  I used to play
piano in dance orchestras a long time ago.  More
recently, I worked in the Broadway industry.  I
changed careers after a decade of commercial work
because there wasn't enough live music to make a
viable living at what I was doing.

It isn't a coincidence that the "Golden Age" of tango
corresponds with the "Swing Era" here.  The economics
of those times could support large orchestras like
that.  People's entertainment choices and the support
costs of live music are very different now, and it
affects musical entertainment of all genres.

People who love live music always wish that it were
supported better, and are often wistful about the past
while being righteously indignant about the sparse
consumption by audiences in the present.  This is as
true for symphony orchestras as it is for tango bands.

If you can drum up interest in engaging tango
musicians, great!  Do it.  I wish you a lot of luck.
The reality in New York, however, is that as large as
the tango community is, tango performances are still a
small niche within an overall market and it's not
sufficient to support a large number of musicians who
play tango.  There is a very small number of competent
players here who can be heard with any frequency.

On another rant, whereas the widespread piracy of
intellectual property on the internet through file
"sharing" (a euphemism for stealing) has impacted the
livelihoods of all recording musicians (and production
personnel like me who made a significant amount of
money from residual payments), I wonder if it might
affect the economics of live music performances in a
positive way.  If musicians can't make money from
their work in recording, they'll stop recording.  (For
example, any new tango recording quickly gets
"burned", i.e. stolen, and distributed throughout a
tango community.)  Maybe live music will return as the
primary contact people have to current musicians.

On the other hand, that might be too hopeful.  People
seem quite happy to listen to old tango recordings
forever.  We might have to wait a long time to see a
new flowering of either the recording industry or the
live music industry.  This is why I now program
computers for a living and play the piano for myself
at home!

Jai

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