Re: [TANGO-L]

[WHITE 95 R <white95r @HOTMAIL.COM>]

----Original Message Follows----
From: Guy Williams <guyzen @FREEUK.COM>

Surely this is a matter of personal taste? There is some tango music which I
find dreary, some which I find inspiring and some that grows on me with
time. But once in a while I like to Tango to Tom Waits or Eva Cassidy or
Paul Tingen or Led Zeppelin or Frank Zappa or Saint Colombe or Stravinsky or
someone I never heard of.
Variety is the spice of life as they say.

(yes people do think I have bizarre taste in music)

Guy


With all due respect to everyone's' freedom of choice, I have to say that
some of these posts border in the bizarre.... Why would anyone say that they
are dancing tango to Led Zeppelin? (or any other non-tango music?).
Argentine Tango by definition is danced in a certain way to tango music. Not
only to tango music but not jut *any* tango music.

I think that writing such posts does a great disservice to the propagation
of Argentine tango. It show lots of disrespect and IMHO, an off-putting
cultural arrogance. Why is it that some folks insist in taking something
(tango, salsa, or whatever) and changing it to suit their ideas? No matter
how contrary they might be to the essence of whatever *it* is? Please do not
call such things "tango", please call them "my idea of tango" or "something
that I've dreamed up based on tango" or whatever new and distinctive name
you come up with... Just don't call it tango.

People new to tango will be confused and misled by reading post like these
and being taught these incorrect things. I suspect the reason so many people
take off in these strange tangents is because they don't know what tango
really is.... So many folks come to tango by many different ways that not
all really come to know and understand it.

There was another thread that addressed the importance (or lack thereof) of
going to BAires to learn about tango. Or at least that the teachers go to
BAires and become acquainted with the tango in the most genuine tango scene
of the world. Some say that it's totally unimportant to go to BAires... I
guess this type of thinking is the same that gives license to folks to post
that it is unimportant what music one plays to dance tango? Or perhaps just
how one dances tango?

I'm sorry, but the idea that a milonga consists of a bunch of folks going
every which way in the dance floor, doing poorly executed sacadas, ganchos
and boleos while some modern Piazzolla music or Hugo Diaz (or some other
outlandish musical genre) plays in the background, is totally preposterous.
This is not Argentine tango.... This will never be Argentine tango, it's a
parody, a joke, a mockery.... If the people involved are ignorant, it can be
understood, forgiven and ,yes, corrected. If on the other hand, the
perpetrators have been exposed to authentic Argentine tango, have been
educated and shown how it really is done in the milongas, and yet refuse to
understand and respect the traditions, there is no cure, no solution. Sadly,
these sorts of "payasadas" and "boludeces" are what keeps people from ever
learning and discovering the real joy and great pleasure of dancing tango.
Worse yet, if these folks become the teachers or organizers in their
community, they'll surely kill the Argentine tango more efficiently than
Rock & Roll did in the late 50's and early 60's.

It saddens and frustrates me to see these things going on. It's even worse
when the few voices of people who have spent long years learning and loving
the tango are contradicted and rebuked for being "behind the times" or
"ignorant" or "close minded". All I want to do is propagate the Argentine
tango, to dance it and enjoy it, like it was meant to be, with the music,
with my partner, with the sentiments of tango. It's not so hard to learn to
dance the tango well, it's not too hard to learn the bliss of dancing "al
compas del tango". The beat of the music is everything, "la rezonga del
fueye", the embrace..... Sorry folks, Led Zeppelin is great (I love it, got
the vinyl) but it ain't tango!

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