October 4, 2009: Mercedes Sosa, 1935-2009. Gracias a la vida.

Last night, Mercedes Sosa, one of our favorite singers, passed away at the age of 74. She was born in San Miguel de Tucuman in 1935 as was known as "La Voz de America Latina" (the voice of Latin America) for her powerful songs about the plight of the poor. She was not primarily known as a Tango singer, but she has recorded some amazing tango songs. Her version of Los Mareados with Roberto Goyeneche is personal favorite of mine. Here are a few my favorite recordings of her.

One of her most famous songs was "Gracias a la vida" or "Thank you to life". I chokes me up whenever I hear it. Gracias a Mercedes Sosa

May 5, 2009: 10 existential Tango lyrics that are way too nihilistic to be sung in English, even as a Country-Western song)

10) Cristal (Crystal) 1944
Mariano Mores and José Maria Contursi
Tengo el corazón hecho pedazos, rota mi emoción en este día... Noches y más noches sin descanso, y esta desazón del alma mía...	I have broken my heart to pieces, My emotions are destroyed today… Nights and nights without ceasing, And this grief of my soul
9) Garua (Drizzle) 1943
Enrique Cadicamo, music by Anibal Troilo
Garua, solo y triste por la acera Va este corazón transido, con trizteza de tapera Sinteiendo tu hielo, porque aquella con su olvido ¡Perdido! Como un duende que más la busca ¡Garua…! ¡Tristeza! ¡Hasta el cielo se ha puesto a llorar!	Drizzle, alone and sad on the streets, This heart goes stricken with the grief of a shack I am feeling your sleet because of that distant woman with her forgetting Lost like a spirit that looks for her and calls out her name more and more Drizzle! Sadness! Even the sky begins to weep
8) La ultima curda (The Last Drunken Bender) 1944
Alfredo Castillo, music by Anibal Troilo
Lastima, bandoneón, mi corazón tu ronca maldición maleva... ¡Ya sé, no me digás! ¡Tenés razón! La vida es una herida absurda, y es todo todo tan fugaz que es una curda, ¡nada más! mi confesión.	My heart is hurting, bandoneon, from your evil curse. I know! Don’t tell me! You’re right! Life is an absurd wound and all of it is fleeting. My confession is a drunken binge, nothing more.
7) El ultimo café (The Last Coffee) 1953
Stampone / Castillo
Lo mismo que el café, que el amor, que el olvido, que el vértigo final de un rencor sin porqué... Y allí, con tu impiedad, me vi morir de pie, medí tu vanidad y entonces comprendí mi soledad sin para qué... Llovía, y te ofrecí, el último café.	Just like coffee, love, forgetfulness, and the final light-headedness of a resentment for no reason... And there, merciless, I saw myself die while standing up, I sized up your vanity and then I understood my solitude for waht it was... It was raining when I gave you the last cup of coffee
6) Yira, yira (Walking Aimlessly) 1930
Carlos Gardel y Alfredo LePera
Veras que todo es mentira, veras que nada es amor que al mundo nada le importa, Yira...yira... Aunque te quiebre la vida, aunque te muerda un dolor, no esperes nunca una ayuda ni una mano...ni un favor.	You'll see that everything is a lie You'll see that nothing is love That the world doesn't care Yira yira (Untranslatable: Almost like walking aimlessly, but also with the sense of "street walking", i.e. prostitution) Even though life will break you Even if a pain will bite you Don't ever expect a help Nor a helping hand or a favor
5) Cancion desesprada (Song of Desperation) 1945
Enrique Discepolo
¿Dónde estaba Dios cuando te fuiste? ¿Dónde estaba el sol, que no te vió? ¿Cómo una mujer no entiende nunca que un hombre da todo dando su amor? ¡Soy una canción desesperada que grita su dolor y tu traición!	Where was God when you left? Where was the sun that didn’t see you? How can a woman ever understand that when a man gives his love, he is giving everything away. I am a desparate song that screams of the pains you gave me and of your betrayal!
4) Volver (To Return) 1935
Carlos Gardel and Alfredo LePera
Tengo miedo del encuentro con el pasado que vuelve a enfrentarse con mi vida... Tengo miedo de las noches que, pobladas de recuerdos, encadenan mi sonar...	I’m afraid of an encounter with my past that returns to confront my life I’m afraid of the nights that are full of memories that shackle my dreams
3) Che, Bandoneon
Homero Manzi, music by Anibal Troilo
Puedo confesarte la verdad, copa a copa, pena a pena, tango a tango, embalado en la locura del alcohol y la amargura.	I can confess the truth to you Cup after cup, sorrow afer sorrow, tango after tango, All wrapped up in bitterness and the madness of alcohol
2) Naranjo en flor (Orange Blossoms) 1944
Virgilio and Homero Exposito
Primero hay que saber sufrir, despues amar, despues partir y al fin andar sin pensamiento...	First you have to know how to suffer, Then to love then to leave, and finally how to walk away without thinking
1) Los mareados (The Dizzy Ones) 1942
Enrique Cadicamo, music by Juan Carlos Cobian
Tres cosas lleva mi alma herida: Amor, Pesar, Dolor.	3 things are borne by my wounded soul: love, regret, pain

April 29, 2009: The original video to Nirvana's "Smells Like Teen Spirit" with our audio played instead.

Somebody on Youtube.com took Nirvana's original video to "Smells Like Teen Spirit" and replaced the original soundtrack with our version. It works in a really weird way. The tango police would definitely not consider this to be true tango and I would have to agree with them on this one.

December 18, 2008: Mandragora's Christmas Gift to You

I've made 3 compilations that fit nicely on one CD each. Suffice it to say, very few of these tunes are appropriate for dancing. In actuality, no tango can really melt your face, but these tangos really burn hard and get in your face. The music may defile your soul if you are not careful. I created this mix to show my classical-music-snob friends the depth of tango music as high art. If Jazz is the art music of the United States, Tango is the art music of Argentina. Both have a deep and rich repertory that is often overlooked in academia. Any of these tunes would be at home in a European classical concert hall, but most of them are unknown outside of Argentina. I originally made the "Cougars of Tango" compilation for Rachel Miloy, a flamenco singer friend of our who has a huge voice totally outsized for her small stature. She is starting to sing with us from time to time and really lighting up the stage. In case you didn't know, "Cougar" is American slang for an attractive older woman who prefers the company of younger men; sort of a "trophy wife" in reverse. I'm using this term to refer to the raw sexuality these women put into their singing, regardless of their age. If this term still offends you, please assume that I am referring to the Mercury Cougar of tango and accept our apologies

I've also included some paper cd cases that you can print out on 8.5"x11" paper (US standard) and fold into a neat little envelope that has the tracklist printed on the back. The folding directions are here

• The Greatest Piazzolla Compilation of All Time is a collection of my favorite Piazzolla cuts (96M: download origami CD case)
• Tangos that will Melt Your Face and Silently Defile Your Soul is a collection of some of the most kick-ass modern acoustic tangos by folks who are not named Piazzolla. (96M: download origami CD case)
• Cougars of Tango (85M: download origami CD case)

You can open each compilation in a separate window so you can listen while surfing the web:

• Greatest Piazzolla Compilation of All Time
• Tangos that will Melt Your Face and Silently Defile Your Soul
• Cougars of Tango
  

Or you can listen to them here:

Mandrágora Tango wishes you a Merry Christmas, Happy Hanukkah, Fine Solstice, Good Festivus and all the best in 2009. We hope to see you then!

-Bob, Mateo, Laura and Rahn

PS: We hope to finish our new CD sometime in 2009, 2010 or 2011. (2013 at the very latest!!!) Meanwhile, here are a 6 tracks (35M) to whet your appetite. You can also listen in a new window or click below:

September 22, 2008: Tango Band Starter Kit

I'm a big believer that information wants to be free. I also think that there are not enough Tango bands outside of Argentina. Tango dancers generally prefer DJ'd music because there are simply not enough good tango bands out there to show folks how great it is to dance tango to live music. You couldn't have a swing or salsa festival without a live band, but there are plenty of tango festivals that all recorded music. I love the classics as much as the next dancer, but I also think that for Tango to be a living art form, it needs live music.

Tango is classical music you can dance to. The musicians generally play off of arrangements where each note is written down. One thing I hear a lot from fellow tango musicians is the difficulty of finding arrangments suitable for dancing. (I've written about this in an earlier blog post). There is a lot of tango concert music (i.e. Piazzolla) available, but this is not suitable for dancing. For this reason, most beginning Tango dance bands play "A la parrilla", which means they are playing off of lead sheets like jazz musicians. This is good, but it may not be "real tango" (whatever that is). The Argentine composer Martín Kutnowski one told me that if a Tango band is not using arrangements, it is just playing "World Music".

I'd like to share some of Mandrágora's arrangements with whomever wants them. These certainly aren't the best arrangements out there and I'm certainly not in the same class of arrangers as the cats in Buenos Aires, but I want to put my stuff out there in the hopes that other musicians with other charts will do the same (if you want, I can post them to this site and link back to you).

Much, much more after the jump...

Continue reading "Tango Band Starter Kit"

September 17, 2008: Bob's Thoughts on Playing for Weddings

First of all, the wedding is about the bride (and, to a lesser extent, the groom). Unless it is 100% financed by Mom and Dad, It should be about the choices of the couple. When I got married, we looked at the reception as the only time we would have all our friends and relatives in the same room. We wanted to have a party that everyone would enjoy. We figured the next time all these people would join together will be when one of us dies, and that party would not be as enjoyable for the surviving spouse.

For most guests, the fun of a wedding comes from 2 things. First of all, watching the 2-minutes of so of the ceremony where the Bride and Groom profess their love and finally kiss. Secondly, folks like to visit with friends and relatives they may not have seen in a long time. Do whatever you can do to facilitate this. Keep the ceremony short (sorry, Catholics!). Make sure the reception is condusive for mingling and having fun. A plated sit-down dinner traps people at a table for a long stretch of time. Folks mingle at a buffet, and small children will get ansy waiting to eat. Have folks give toasts while folks are eating: if the toasts get boring, folks go back to eatting and pretend to listen. This will also prevent toasts and speeches from cutting into mingling time.

One item that Mandragora has always noticed is that open bars are always happier receptions. We're not just saying this because we are borderline alcoholics: an closed bar gives your guests a subtle message against drinking. If this is your attitude, more power to you. But think about this: if the first thing you'd to when a guest came to you home is to offer them a drink, why would you not offer them one at your wedding? Unless you have a lot of really inappropriate friends and relatives, you may want to consider an open or semi-open bar for at least some of the evening. If money is tight, you may want to serve a keg or a large quantity of cheap boxed wine available for free until it runs out. Consider a buffet-style dinner instead of a plated one to save money for the bar. Also, consider putting a bottle of cheap wine or two on each table for the guests to share. There is something absolutely hospitable about sharing a glass of wine and a nice meal with friends and family.

Continue reading "Bob's Thoughts on Playing for Weddings"

May 8, 2008: 70 of the Most Danced Tangos

The best way to become familiar with tango music is to listen to it as much as you can. Listen at work. Listen in your car. Listen while working out. The more you hear, the more you internalize the music, and, consequently, the better you dance. One of tango's little secrets is that there are only about 200-300 tangos that get played regularly at the Milongas in BsAs. Old-time tangueros will have at least a fleeting knowledge of most of them.

Think about it this way: a "Classic Rock" radio station in the US may only have 200-300 songs in regular rotation. If you grew up in the States, chances are you have heard all these songs and can sing along to a few. If you grew up in the tango world, you'd know just as many tangos.

The problem is that is can be difficult to find tango music outside of Argentina. Most of what you can buy at a records store is Piazzolla or show tango, which are not the most suitable for social dancing. People often ask me what CDs they should buy to become familiar with tango for dancing. Every dancer or musician has their own opinion. There are some good guides on the Internet. However, each CD only has 2 or 3 "hits" that are commonly played at Milongas. DJs seem to pride themselves in paying $25 for an imported CD just to get a single danceable track!

You can buy good CDs at Zivals.com The store is in Buenos Aires, but they ship all over the world. You can buy most CDs at the Argentine equivalent of U$5. Unfortunatley, shipping for a single CD may be U$8, so a CD from Zivals ends up being about the same cost as a CD from Amazon.com.

One of my favorite sites on the Internet is Tango RBerdi: El diario. This is a blog by an Argentine gentleman who posts 2 or 3 albums worth of MP3s nearly every day. He posts them to rapidshare.com, which is a German file-sharing service. You can download one file an hour for free, or you can buy an "all-you-care-to-download" pass for a few euros. Most of my tango MP3s have come from this site or other sites like it.

Anyway, I wanted to post a very subjective list of 70 of the most played tangos. If you are a dancer, most of these will be somewhat familiar to you. You can download the complete collection in .ZIP or .RAR format (280M). You can also new window. If you want to become more familiar with tango, put this on your iPod or burn it to some CDs and listen, listen, listen.

-Bob
PS: I've also put together big, downloadable collections of the most common Milongas and Vals
You can download the tunes in one big file at milonga.zip / milonga.rar (145M) or vals.zip / vals.rar (175M).

January 24, 2008: Moon Over Miami

Here's a Youtube video of my buddy Randall Throckmorton and I playing what very well might be the world's first bandoneon and banjo-ukulele duet. Randall and I have dayjobs at Minnesota Public Radio. Our company has a Christmas party / talent show every year and this was our song this year.

Many years ago, Randall and I were in a band called The Deadly Nightshade Family Singers, where we played an odd mix of styles we called "Modern Parlor Music". We used to play Moon Over Miami from time to time. Randall has an amazing ability to mangle the lyrics to any song and come up with something even better. The bridge to Moon Over Miami has the line "Hark to the sounds of the smiling troubadours/ Hark to the throbbing guitars". On one memorable performance, Randall sang the words "Throbbing troubadours" and the band nearly broke up laughing. We almost called our last album Throbbing Troubadours but we thought better of it.

November 21, 2007: Max Valentinuzzi Talks History (Personal and Tango)

Our friend Max Valentinuzzi was in town last month. He is quite a tango character. He was born in Buenos Aries in the 1920s and learned tango piano as a child. In the late 40s and early 50s he played piano in various Buenos Aries tango bands while he was in college. He moved to the US in 1961 to study biomechanical engineering and moved back to Argentina by the late 1970s. His 2 daughters were born in the states. His eldest daughter lives here in Minnesota, along with Max's grandchildren and great-grandson. Max comes to visit them every 2 years or so. This is how we know him.

Max is a professor at the National University of Túcuman, Argentina. He goes to biomedical conferences around the world and presents a powerpoint presentation / concert on tango history, in addition to his scholarly presentations on biomechanics. He gave his tango presentation in Minneapolis in May, 2005 and again October 2007. This year, I was able to get Max into the recording studios of Minnesota Public Radio to record his presentation, as well as him telling his life story. Elmira Cancelada of Tango Tales edited this raw material into a one-hour program about Max's life story and 2 one-hour programs on the history of tango.

Max Tells his life story:

Download part 1, part 2

Max's presentation on the history of tango

Download Hour 1-Part 1, Hour 1-Part 2, Hour 1-Part 3, Hour 2-Part 1, Hour 2-Part 2, Hour 2-Part 3

October 24, 2007: Some cleanups of Enrique Rodriguez by Ramiro Garcia

I've been emailing a tanguero out of Sacramento, California named Ramiro Garcia. He does some great work in cleaning up old tango recordings and making them "milonga ready". Many old recordings have more scratches and high-end noise than most modern ears care to hear. For instance, as much as I love DiSarli and Firpo, a lot of their best stuff is just too lo-fi to play in public. I think it's probabbly OK to play this stuff at a milonga where everyone is there to dance, but I most play at a restaurant that has a lot of non-dancers. I've had bartenders beg me to play stuff from this century because they are sick of hearing the old scratchy recordings.

At any rate, Ramiro has rescued some old Rodriguez tracks. To be honest, I have never DJd any Rodriguez because the cuts in my collection were simply too lo-fi. Well, not any more. Here are 9 cuts (either 2.25 or 3 tandas, depending on how you slice it) of some freshly restored Rodriguez. You can listen to them in the player on this page, or download a zip or a rar file of all these tracks. (55MB each)

There are a lot of DJs that "clean up" tango tracks before DJing them. Keith Elshaw of Montreal is probabbly the best of the. He does some amazing cleanups and has posted samples on his website. I've had the pleasure of hearing Keith play his restorations in a milonga on a trip to Montreal.

August 30, 2007: Musical Examples from Bob's Musicality Workshop

On August 25th, I gave a musicality workshop at Lois Donnay's home/studio for about 20 dancers. I've given a version of this workshop on tour before (called "Dancing in the Music), but this was the first time I taught it in the Twin Cities. We all sat down in Lois' living room and sipped red wine as we discussed tango. I brought my bandoneon and played musical examples for dancers who had never seen one up close before. I had a 90-minute presentation all mapped out, but there were so many questions and so much back-and-forth that I ended up talking about 2 1/2 hours! As readers of this blog may have guessed by now, I really do enjoy talking on and on about tango!

We hit the following points:

• Basic Tango beats ("en 2", "en 4", "syncopa", "milonga", "3+3+2", etc...), demonstrated demonstrated on the tango "Malena" performed live on bando.
• Tango structure (Antecedent and Consequent phrases, windows, fills, stops, etc...) demonstrated using "Malena".
• The differences between Concert Tango, Vocal Tango and Tango for Dance, illustrated by 5 different recordings of "Malena".
• The role of nostalgia in tango for dancing (or why there are only about 300 recording that DJs ever play)
• A danceable guided tour of tango history, featuring the tracks above. I gave a 30 second intro to each tune and folks go up to dance to experience the music kinesthetically.

Lois and I want to give this class again sometime, but with more emphasis on pairing dance moves with musical figures!

Download all examples as a single file | Open player in new window

July 24, 2007: A musical travelogue from Buenos Aries

In early July, 2007 I went to Buenos Aries to study at the Academía Nacionál del Tango for an intensive 2 week seminar for foreign musicians. I studied tango music 8 hours a day and learned more than I ever could in the States. I already posted a little bit about my trip (and a lot of pictures) on the band blog.
I basically heard live tango music every night I was in Buenos Aires. By contrast, I've only heard 3 different Tango bands in the States and only one of them even had an Argentine. I thought it might be fun to produce a slightly different kind of travelogue here: a day-by-day playlist of the performers I heard. All of these tracks are either from CDs I bought from the performers or from the performer's own websites.

Full Story plus music after the jump!

Continue reading "A musical travelogue from Buenos Aries"

June 18, 2007: Videos now on Youtube.com

On April 21, 2007, we went into the studios of Northwest Community Television to record a short concert for Baby Blue Arts, a half-hour show that focuses on classical music and musicians from the Twin Cities. We basically played a mini-concert and recorded all of these tunes in one take.

Sooner of later we will use them for some sort of promotional purposes, but right now I'm just happy to see what we look like live.

Here they are for your listening and viewing pleasure!

La Yumba (Osvaldo Pugliese)

Café con Limón (Bob Barnes)

5 more tunes after the jump!

Continue reading "Videos now on Youtube.com"

June 4, 2007: Playing Live Music for Milongas

I subscribe to a mailing list called Tango-L where tango dancers can debate tango issues of the day. Some folks were debating the merits of dancing to live music and it quickly devolved into a flame war (as many discussions on Tango-L invariably do). I decided to post my first-hand observations on playing live music at milongas.

1. If you want to be a Piazzolla cover band, a milonga is not the place to do it. I founded Mandragora and learned Bandoneon to play like Piazzolla. All the folks in the band came to tango through Piazzolla. We all fell in love with classic tango by following Piazzolla's roots. If you look down your nose at D'Arienzo and DiSarli for being too "simple", you probabbly should stick to playing Piazzolla at jazz clubs and coffee houses.

2. Tango is classical music you can dance to: you need good arrangments. The arranger is, by far, the most important member of a tango band. Every note in a tango band is written down. It is possible to buy existing arrangments for Orquesta Tipica (4 bandos, 4 violins, piano & bass), Sextetto (2 bandos, 2 violins, piano and bass) or "Piazzolla Quintet" (Bando, Violin, Bass, Guitar and PIano). If you have a different combo, you are out of luck. It takes me about 10 hours of work to arrange one 3-minute tango. (i.e. listening to existing recordings, playing the tune over and over again to assimilate ideas, working out an arrangement, entering notes into the computer, printing & proofing, etc...) As you can see, the barrier to entry is really high.

3. You can only go so far "a la parilla". Music can often be distilled to a melody line and chords. Jazz players call these "leadsheets" and play off of them all the time. When tango players do the same thing, it's called "a la parilla" (on the grill). If you a duo or trio, you can play this way and make up arrangements ahead of time (i.e. "Violin starts, then the bando comes in, then the violin takes over....). The more people you have, the more impractical this gets. Plus, you will never capture the subtleties of a good arrangement. For the first 3 years of my band, we played "a la parilla" and it just wasn't tango enough.

4. Some people just prefer live music. Play for them. There are lots of "dance gypsies" in our town who can go and hear a live band every night: Salsa, Cajun, Blues, Swing, various ethnic music, etc... They may not devote themselves entirely to tango, but they do devote themselves to live music. Feed off their energy.

5. You can never satisfy hard-core tango geeks, so don't even try. We have all met folks that believe that there has been no real tango since 1945 or who can debate at length why Tanturi is better than Biagi (or is it the other way around?) Mandragora can not compete with the greats of the golden era. We are all non-Argentine Hispanic-Americans who have lived most of our adult lives in Minnesota. We didn't grow up in tango culture. At best, it is a "second language" to us. We could devote our lives to reproducing every nuance of a D'Arienzo arrangement, but it would just be much easier for you to dance to the real thing on a CD. All we can do is be respectful of the tradition. We try to make sure that the percent of dancers who love what we do is much, much higher than the percentage of purists who say it's not real. (When I started Mandrágora Tango, 2 DJs tried to explain to me that what I was doing could never be tango and that I was wasting my time. Luckily for us the dancers though otherwise.)
   (Much, much more after the jump)

   Continue reading "Playing Live Music for Milongas"

April 26, 2007: Dancing in the Music

When Mandrágora goes on tour this May, we will be giving an hour long musicality class called "Dancing in the Music". We will talk about some musical concepts like

• The basic tango beats: en dos, en cuatro and syncopa
  
• Ventanas (Windows), or places where the music stops.
  
• How to know when the music is going to stop (and how to impress followers by
  dramatically stoping on the final "chan-chan'!)
  
• Some different parts of tangos and how to listen for them
  
• What the hell is that noise: an introduction to the wierd scrapes, scratches and percussive effects employed by tango orchestras to compensate for not having percussionists.
  
• An intro to tango music history: how do tangos from different eras and orchestras sound different
  

So how are we going to do this? I'm glad you asked.

We will set up in the middle of the dance floor and ask the dancers to dance arround us. We will play without any amplification, so dancers will hear a slightly different sound at different points in the circle. Mandrágora will play examples from different tango eras, such as Guardia Vieja (old guard), Epocha de oro (Golden Age), and Evolutionary (Post-Golden Age).

Here's a little playlist of some of the tunes we will play with a few notes of what to listen for. Click here to open this player in a separate window.

• 1-3: Roberto Firpo Felica, La Payanca and Sábado Inglés. Guardia Vieja Note how these tunes are very strongly en dos. Felicia and Payanca are slow enough that you could dance these with a step on 1 & 3, or with "quick" steps between them. Sábado Inglés is actually a Tango-Milonga, which is basically a quicker tango or slower milonga, your choice.
  
• 5-7: Carlos di Sarli Comme il fault, A la gran muñeca, and El choclo. Early Epocha de oro. Some of the easiest and best tango for dancing. A staple of introductory tango classes. A good mix of lyricism with en dos and en cuarto.
  
• 9-11: Juan D'Arienzo La Tablada, El Triunfo, and El Pollito. Epocha de oro
  Note how the beat is firmly en cuarto.
  
• 13-15: Anibal Troilo Sur, Che Bandoneon, and Maria. Troilo's career spans many eras, but he's best known for a very dramatic and lyrical tangos. Note how the back beat is usually a straight 4 with a lot of syncopas. The orchestrations can sometime be a bit lush and hard to dance to, but the tunes are fantastic.
  
• 17-19: Osvaldo Pugliese Gallo Ciego, Los Mareados, La Yumba. Extremely dramatic music. Big contrasts in tempo, volume and intensity. These are 3 of our favorite songs to play, but they are not necessarily the most danceable. DJs often hold off on playing dramtic Pugliese untill later in the evening.