Friday 27 April 2012

Carablanca again...

Don't believe everything you read in the papers... or on the internet, and especially in blogs! I must correct what I said about the music at the milonga that became Carablanca many years later. As Tango en el Cielo kindly pointed out, there was a variety of music. & I was even wrong to say that there was just one CD. Totally wrong, because (I now hear, on the very best authority) there wasn't even one CD: all the music was on cassettes brought over from Buenos Aires, and of varying quality. & when one side of the cassette had played, someone would turn it over, and the dancing would go on. Since the cassettes were of single orquestas, an evening's dance might be two or three orquestas, an hour or ninety minutes each. Tango CDs, tandas and DJing all came years later.

Curiously, this must have echoed the music of the golden age milongas, since in that era you were likely to get only one orquesta in the evening. If Pedro Laurenz was playing for you, you wouldn't get neat tandas of Di Sarli, Canaro, D'Agostino and others. (& with live music like that you probably wouldn't miss them either!)

 & many thanks to the tango pioneers of London who started milongas like Carablanca many years ago and have kept them running for us to enjoy!

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

The city salones, confiterias, and cabarets had two orchestras--tango and jazz which played alternating half-hour sets.