Milonga - but not quite as we know it

Video thanks to un rien de tango.


Nathalie Clouet, a trained dancer inspired, like so many, by the Tango Argentino show in Paris in 1989, spent a year in Buenos Aires on a government grant in the early 1990s, and returned to Paris to teach. Later she invited Tete and Sylvia to Paris yearly: I went over for the workshops in 2009, the last he gave in Paris before his death, which were unforgettable, intense and warm events. She teaches and organises milongas and practicas. I'd say there's always a playful and creative spirit at work, which doesn't conflict with her great respect for Tete and traditional tango.

Her website is here. There's a lot of material of different kinds on it, mostly in French, and including a link to writing produced for her grant. My rather clumsy translation of the statement at the top of the web page is: 'To dance, to make a journey to become one with the floor, the music, space, time, partners. Our goal is to partake of the experience of movement as a group, to develop the qualitative aspects of movement at the heart of the dynamics and rhythms of social Argentine tango'. Elsewhere she explains the 'qualitative aspects of movement' as co-ordination, fluidity and lightness.


Incidentally, I notice on her website a link to a video of Pina Bausch and some of her dancers at a milonga organised in Paris in 1996 by Tete, but the video has disappeared from YouTube: it was on an account terminated because of multiple copyright infringements. Too many good videos of this kind disappear.

By invitation only

Isn't that a bit snobbish? asked a partner when I told her I'd been to a milonga you couldn't enter unless you were on the guest list. Maybe...

It's something new in London, a milonga you get invited to on personal recommendation, not one you can turn up at and get into so long as you pay the entrance, a milonga that's not advertised, that focuses on respect and courtesy, on following more or less the codigos. & the result is that you can dance for four hours without anyone blundering into you, without having to work your way round a lesson in the line of dance ahead of you, without incessant chattering from the couple behind you, without having to take evasive action from violent dancing. Since everyone is dancing, there's little chatter to drown out the music. In other words, it's a real pleasure, with a good DJ and excellent music, too. Yes, you might encounter all those problems during an evening at most London milongas, so you could say the invitation list is an act of desperation, an extreme measure, perhaps, in defense of the great pleasure of social tango. Teachers have failed to insist on basic good manners on the dance floor, and this seems to be the answer. A wake-up call, in a way.

It's not been going long, but I'd say it's a great success. Enough people turn up to make it a very enjoyable afternoon, and the dance is almost entirely close embrace salon. And since it's in the afternoon, there's no attempt to create a reddish gloom in which dancers are half asleep: tango feels relaxed and alert in daylight. I don't know how close the organisers are to covering their costs: it's difficult. But I hope it continues and thrives, because it's a sign that there's a substantial number of people in London who want to enjoy their dance and music without disturbance.

Is that snobbish?

Jorge Lladó

An email arrives from a friend returning from Bucharest, and from encounters with 'El Flaco'Dany, Ricardo Viquiera, and Jorge Lladó. Three wonderful dancers of salon tango, who tour and teach, dancers with a background in the milongas, rather than a background in professional dance or gymnastics. How come all three are in Bucharest? Of course El Flaco has visited London, but how come London is hardly on the map, unlike most of the rest of Europe, when it comes to salon tango, especially since these days a substantial number of us dance, or try to dance, salon? Isn't it pathetic?

Not that there's a lot we can do, except rant, like me. Visitors from outside the EU who want to work here are treated as immigrants, so employing them legally is a complicated and expensive business, and if they aren't legally employed they can't be advertised. & sadly tangueros with a background in the milongas aren't invited. It was explained to me that visiting teachers need to give earth-shattering displays to encourage people to learn from them, but I think this view demeans the intelligence of UK tangueros. It's an outdated view that might have been true six or seven years ago, but for many of us it's no longer the case. Of course it's true that the teachers who are brought over 'know' the salon dance: they know the steps and have a thousand ingenious variations. But it's not their dance. They are likely to teach a subject, not a passion and a culture. They can teach the facts, they teach what is danced but can they teach how it is danced, the feeling? Aren't they dance teachers who don't actually teach dancing? 

It's really time this changed and we started to enjoy the tango teaching available across the rest of Europe. It seems we are trying to find our way there, even without visits from dancer/teachers like those three, and it would be good to have some help!

& who is Jorge Lladó? He's younger than the others, in his 30s. I've seen how faces light up when he arrives rather quietly and quickly at a local milonga, and it's obviously where he loves to be. There's a great interview with him and his father on Practimilogueros There's also an increasing list of YouTube clips, but sadly I can't find one of him and partner dancing actually in a milonga, so this clip of a demonstration at El Beso will have to do. 

Personally I'd rather watch this over and over than five seconds of an earth-shattering display. There's plenty to learn; the precise, unhurried tempo, the energy, the softness of the feet, the posture. & much more.

Jorge learned from his father, now in his 70s and a dancer since he was very young. The story is in the Practimilongueros interview. First, Jorge was standing wrongly, his head held forward, in effect, round-shouldered. It took 14 months to correct the posture. (How would any of us react to spending 14 months being told to get our posture right?) Then he learned a salida, and wanted more, but his father said: 'You're moving but not dancing!' One year later (how many of us would have waited?) he was taught more steps and started to take his mother to milongas, where he danced with her for two years. After that all the women wanted to dance with him. (It's curiously reminiscent of those Zen master stories.) & above all he was taught courtesy and respect, the bedrock of the milonga.

Jorge is also the nephew of the late Tete, spent time with him and learned from him. There might not be much apparent similarity in the way of dancing, which is as it should be, but I recognise the same joyful enthusiasm in the dance of both, and I'd assume that for both of them it comes from the music, from vals in particular.

A visit from Jorge could make a big change in UK tango. For too long UK tango has focused on externals, on steps, on appearances. It'll take us a lifetime to even begin to get a real feel for the music, and how that feeling moves the torso, but someone like Jorge could show us the heart of it, the warmth and enthusiasm, the courtesy of tango, and show us how it is really danced.

Video thanks to Gurisatanguera.

PS. Since I wrote this I came across another demo by Jorge which is very much more extreme than the one above, and in every way a poor example to social dancers. Perhaps his teaching is still very sound, but why create a 'do as I say but not as I do' situation? I went back to the partial video of Ricardo Vidort and Muma dancing to Quatro Palabras to enjoy again the gentleness, kindness, musicality of tango. It's really sweet! It would be so good to see someone dancing and teaching like Ricardo again.

Carabelli 2

(I've no academic authority to write on the history of tango music: I'm just trying to work it out for myself. What I've written may well be wrong in places, but it is based on the stories in Todotango and Wikepedia. & it's based on my own ears, what I've heard when I've listened to the music, so of course it is partial and biased: no apologies for that.)

I get the impression that at the end of the 1920s and into the 30s Carabelli's recordings set the pace, arrangements written by a highly skilled classical musician experienced in ensemble playing, who was excited by the rhythmic vitality of jazz and was also respectful of the tango of the day. Busoni thought of music without prescriptive labels, and Carabelli chose to make tango richer, he took tango to a new level. To me his recordings are the earliest tango that actually sounds like the tango of the Golden Age. I can't help hearing, for instance, a direct link between the music of Carabelli and Pedro Laurenz. Not only did Laurenz play in the OTV, but his tango sounds rooted in Carabelli as if Laurenz, with his powerful sense of rhythm and energetic playing, turned up Carabelli's more restrained music to 11. 

There are other links between tango and jazz. Fresedo had visited the US as early as 1921, but I've not noticed much jazz influence that early: it seems it was Carabelli who made decisive use of what he'd heard in jazz. Fresedo, of course, recorded some marvellous tracks with Dizzy Gillespie much later in 1956.

I've just come across this, tango in 1912, when Canaro was 24, when Carabelli was still in Bologna. But tango recording started to peak in the late 20s, when sound quality was reasonably good. Records must have made a huge difference. For the first time musicians could listen to a wide range of music whenever they wanted, and could listen over and over again and explore the details, finding out how and why a piece sounded as it did, instead of relying on piano scores, the bare bones of a piece, or a transitory live performances, or half-remembered renditions. I'm sure the availability of recordings must have contributed to the speed of change in the music.

& I'm curious: I'd love to know what was in Canaro's record collection in 1930, or Fresedo's, or D'Arienzo's! For sure they'd have had a Victrola at home, at least so they could listen to their own recordings, and shelves of 78s. I wonder if we'll know some day: I assume that the history of the music and the dance are subjects for research in Buenos Aires. Perhaps one day there will be a really detailed history, hopefully in English. I enjoy Canaro a lot, but on reflection it occurs to me that the Canaro I love has always been between 1929 and the late thirties, a period during which his music became more supple, it 'sang', he didn't want all the notes to be the same length. Earlier Canaro is a bit rigid, and his later music is often quite strident.

The OTV and the Orquesta Carabelli only existed for recording. Apparently neither ever gave live performances, which is curious because I suspect the music he played, and the music that followed his lead, had a big influence on the way people danced. I suspect the dance developed a melodic sensibility to get closer to this new music with its fusion of opposites, of romantic classicism and the rhythmic urgency of jazz, and the result was a smooth intimate dance full of feeling. I don't know if he danced tango himself, or hung out in milongas, but he seemed to have had a very instinctive feel for the music people would want to dance to. His output of dance music recordings, including jazz and tango, was considerable: it's just that there aren't so many recordings of tango with his name on. (I read that his jazz orquesta performed live.) Perhaps his name isn't well known in tango simply because there just aren't that many Orquesta Carabelli recordings available: most of Carabelli's recordings are as the OTV.

It's not so easy to find the recordings Carabelli made under his own name. I've got the Buenos Aires Tango Club (BATC) CD, which is excellent: buy it and you support local enterprise, and the activity of people who really care about preserving their music. They issue two other CDs: 'Inspiracion' with many of the same tracks as the BATC CD, and 'Mi Evocacion', which is the CD on Spotify, and is a mixture of dance music, some tango. Check out their catalogue, which is huge and excellent. They don't sell downloads so it means importing CDs, but their CDs are probably cheaper per track than buying downloads.

iTunes has three CDs, but I haven't downloaded them, so I don't know what's on them: they may also be a mixture of different kinds of dance music. El Bandoneon in Barcelona has a CD, but it is out of stock. Amazon UK currently has 71 tracks for download though some tracks are duplicates and not all are tango. But at least La Guiñada, and Quatro Palabaras are there. (If you don't mind contributing to Amazon's untaxed profits, that is.)

As to OTV, there's no shortage of recordings of this marvelous music. Spotify has a number of albums, and the two-volume Euro Records selection is available from BATC. (Euro records is part of the BATC: same catalogue.)

Perhaps it shouldn't be surprising that it is all so good: I've yet to come across anything from Carabelli, whether as Carabelli or as OTV, that wasn't really excellent. His name deserves to be known better. It's not that he's undervalued: his name just isn't known, but I believe he established the tango we still dance to.

PS: Simba Tango drew my attention to the Tangohub summary of places to buy tango, particularly from a UK perspective. There are warnings there about BATC, about the time it can take to get CDs from them, and also about the quality of the CD discs they use. However, there's a wealth of music in their catalogue, and the prices are good. If you have a friend visiting BsAs, their office/shop is just off Corrientes a few blocks from El Beso: otherwise, if you want to make a serious order I'd think of calling and talking through the delivery options with them (or get a Spanish speaker to call for you) before ordering. As to quality of the actual discs, it's normal to rip them to lossless anyway.  

Carabelli 1

Tango came up fast. What was tango until the late 1920s? The names that have survived are Canaro, Firpo, Fresedo, Donato, Lomuto and the newcomer, Julio de Caro. Canaro in 1925 was metronomic. The beat is absolutely precise and controlled, march-like. It's a bit stiff to dance to, it's played without much emotion: the music is there, but there's not much depth of feeling in it. Much the same for Firpo. Feeling floods in with De Caro, from his educated classical background.

I can't resist including this photo of de Caro and his sextet. There's no doubting the year because in 1925 he took on a talented second bandoneon, Pedro Laurenz, then just 23, to play alongside the other Pedro, Pedro Maffia. But Maffia left the band in 1926. Such a marvellous photo: imagine going to a milonga and the band dressed like this, as formal as an international string quartet, although de Caro, just 26 himself, stands a bit at ease, slightly proprietorial, one hand resting in a pocket, his Stroh violin and bow hanging from the other. A 26 year-old who's achieved something new and very popular. In 1934 Laurenz was to leave and start his own orquesta – with Osvaldo Pugliese as pianist.

So, tango at the end of the 1920s. Here's Canaro, Tengo Miedo, 1929.  (These tracks open in YouTube, as it's easy to access.) It's fun, but compared to the tango we know now, the beat is very precise, it's stiff to dance to, it's rather 'straight'. Perhaps it suits canyengue better than tango. The notes are there, but hardly the feeling we expect. 

Here's Julio de Caro in 1930. It's closer to what we expect, but it still doesn't quite make it. There's much more feeling, perhaps too much in the violin, and at the expense of rhythm.  De Caro recorded a lot, but it's rare to hear his music in the milongas now. A kind of sentimental late romanticism creeps in, slurring over the notes as if to disguise the rigid beat, as if he was uneasy with overly rhythmic music. I like listening to it, but it's not great for dancing to. 

& since 1925 there had been a new band, the Orquesta Tipica Victor. Here's their version of Coqueta in 1929. (It's the first track on a playlist.) Suddenly we're in another world, and it's a more familiar tango world. It's simply a beautiful piece of music and it's beautifully played, full of feeling. It sings. There's variety in the arrangement, alternating smooth, legato phrases with stronger rhythmic chords, and using orchestral textures, the high violins and the lower sounds of the bandoneon and, I think, a cello. The phrases surge with life, and fit effortlessly together. The rhythm is clear and assured, but it's varied and never overwhelming. Easy to imagine yourself dancing to this late at night with a favourite partner: it's music full of tenderness. 

The OTV was directed by Adolfo Carabelli, who had his own orquesta too. & if Coqueta sings, the Orquesta Carabelli's El Pensamiento (1932) swings. My ear caught the bass line behind the singer: it sounds so familiar you hardly notice it. OTV and the Orquesta Carabelli swing throughout: they have the trick of playing one note a little long, and the next slightly shorter (or vice-versa) so the beat is emphasized. & somehow the sound is full and consistent, whereas the sound in Canaro and de Caro seems to be patchy as if they're not quite sure what to say. With OTV and Carabelli I suddenly begin to hear a kind of tango that is fully recognisable. Tango didn't take the direction of Canaro's formally precise beat, nor the romantic excess of De Caro. 

Of course, there are examples and examples. Canaro in 1929 could sound more sensitive,  and there's a great clip of De Caro playing both for stage and social tango: his music here is a much more recognisable tango. The film, Luces de Buenos Aires (1931), features Gardel, and shows how successful De Caro was. Incidentally, the clip shows stage tango from 1931, exaggerated then as now: the social dancing in the clip is relatively smooth.  

 So who was Carabelli (1893–1947)? He was older than de Caro and a few years younger than Canaro. Todotango has it that Canaro grew up playing a home-made violin for coins on the back streets of San José de Mayo in Uruguay, while Carabelli studied composition, harmony and counterpoint as a child. A prodigy on piano, by 15 he had performed in Buenos Aires concert halls, so he was sent to Europe to continue his studies. He was accepted at the Lyceum of Bologna, where he studied with Busoni, himself a child prodigy, a piano virtuoso from an early age. Busoni is chiefly known for his opera Turandot, and for an unfinished opera, Doktor Faust. He's also known for many piano arrangements of J S Bach, music he seems to have had a close feeling for. He thought of music as without prescriptive labels, and in 1907 he had written about the possibilities of microtonal and even electronic music.

At 20, in 1913, Carabelli graduated as a Master in Composition. (The first performance of Stravinsky's Rite of Spring was in May that year, which Carabelli must have been aware of.) At the outbreak of the First World War he returned to Buenos Aires, where he played the classical repertoire with the Trío Argentina.

Then in 1917 he met the Russian pianist Lipoff, who was touring as pianist to Ana Pavlova, innumerable dying swans worldwide in the twilight of her career. In 1914 she'd left Europe for the USA with her husband, her touring career in Europe presumably cut short by the outbreak of WW1. (In 1917 she also danced in Lima, Peru, where an English boy called Frederick Ashton was taken by his parents to a performance. He was so impressed, he made dance his life. Sir Frederick Ashton became famous as a choreographer, a co-founder and director of the Royal Ballet.)

Todotango adds: 'Lipoff had a wide knowledge of jazz music; Carabelli marvelled with this expression and he devoted to it definitively'.

What was jazz in 1917? Ragtime: Scott Joplin died in 1917. Blues: WC Handy, 1873 – 1958. Buddy Bolden 1877 – 1931: his band was a top draw from 1900 onwards in New Orleans. Stride piano: Jelly Roll Morton, 1890–1941, was in New York in 1911, and writing down his compositions from 1914. (Both Handy and Morton made use of the habanera rhythm, too.) King Oliver was just getting going in 1917, and Louis Armstrong and Bessie Smith came a few years later. 

The earliest jazz recordings were made in 1917. They were successful, and led to the worldwide popularity of the music, but in 1917 you probably got to know jazz from written music and by listening live. If Lipoff was Pavlova's pianist when she arrived in New York in 1914, he must have heard jazz live there, and he could probably reproduce what he heard. He could also have had a folder of sheet music as it's said Scott Joplin, WC Handy and Morton published sheet music. A broad range of pre-bop jazz existed in 1917.

Inspired, Carabelli started the River Jazz Band in Buenos Aires. In 1925 he was hired by Victor to lead an orquesta that could play jazz or tango, and he made his first tango recordings. He was able to choose excellent musicians. He recorded under his own name, and also as director of Orquesta Tipica Victor, with many of the same musicians. He directed the orquesta, played piano, wrote the arrangements, and rehearsed the musicians, many of whom would have trained classically in local conservatoires. The personnel varied, and included prominent players from the other orquestas of the time. Pedro Laurenz and Anibal Troilo both passed through OTV, as did other excellent musicians and vocalists. Carabelli continued recording jazz too, as well as versions of all the other popular dances of the day.

Carabelli was innovative in other ways: he recorded Milonga Sentimental with Carlos Lafuente in 1932, possibly the first recorded milonga in tango history. The words had been written by Homero Manzi the previous year. (It's on the Buenos Aires Tango Club CD of Carabelli.)

In 1936 Carabelli gave up leadership of the OTV, and made his last recording, a fox trot, in 1940, retiring to his home town where he lived by teaching until his death seven years later.