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.
  

April 24, 2007: Tanda Club: Vals

Here's a playlist of some of the most danceable Vals I know. I've put them together in a series of 3-song tandas for your listening and dancing pleasure. You can click here for a player that opens in its own window.



You can download all these valses as a single .ZIP or .RAR file (175M)

April 24, 2007: Tanda Club: Milonga

Here's a playlist of some of the most danceable Milongas I know. I've put them together in a series of 3-song tandas for your listening and dancing pleasure. You can click here for a player that opens in its own window.



You can also download these tunes as a single .ZIP or .RAR file (145M)

April 13, 2007: Tango Divas

In 2008 we may be putting on a "Tango Cabaret" with Soprano Maria Jette. She is a nationally known singer who just happens to make Minnesota her home. We performed with her on Mambo Italiano a few years ago and wanted to work together again sometime. We're not sure what will come of this, but it could be a lot of fun. At any rate, I put togethher a mix of "Tango Divas". Here are some of my favorite female tango singers: Julia Zenko, Milva, Amelita Baltar, Tita Merello, Mercedes Sosa and others. Enjoy!

Click here to open the music player in a new window. This will allow you to listen to the music while continuing to surf the web).

December 17, 2006: Free Tango Sheetmusic Screensaver for Download

Quick Download

I've been collecting tangosheetmusic for quite a while now. I've posted a lot of it to our website, but I've pretty much ignored the covers in favor of the contents. This is a shame, since the covers can be pretty cool. A lot people collect sheetmusic covers. If you look on ebay, you'll find a lot of really obscure sheet music for sale at inflated prices since folks are buying it for the covesr, not the contents. (Coverless sheet music is significantly cheaper).

Anyway, I used Screen Saver Creator on the 50 best covers I've come across. I've taken the liberty of adding one of our new promo shots. All the images are randomly shuffled for your viewing pleasure. Many of the source images are from the collections of Richard Lipkin (of newyorktango.com) and Max Valentinuzzi, our Tango Godfather.

To install the screensaver,
click here and save it to your harddrive. Simply click on the file to install it.

Important note: This screensaver is an exe, or executable file. It is generally considered dangerous to just click on any .exe file that you come across on the internet. You can (probabbly) trust Mandragora Tango not to infect your computer, but you should make sure you are running anti-virus software just in case. You may not be able to install this on a computer at your office. If you have any susipicions about this file, please do not install it.

November 30, 2006: Contest to write Mandragora's Motto in 10 words or less!

I am about to make a long-overdue update to the Mandrágora Tango website and our promotional materials. As part of the process, we need to create a new "motto" or "10 word description" for the band. For a long time, I used "New American Tango", but that really didn't mean anything. I want something that a non-musician will understand and will be intrigued by. I want something that will grab the attention of a booking agent who knows nothing about tango but wants to hire a band to knock their socks off. Bookers and radio stations receive more promo packs than they can possibly listen to. We need to quickly describe ourselves up front to get our foot in the door. Then we'll let the music do the talking.

For this reason, I'm asking our fans for some help. You know our music sounds. You know how it makes you feel. Can you help me write the ultimate 5-to-10 word description of Mandrágora Tango?

The best suggestions win a CD of some of my favorite tangos or copy of our CD (if you don't already have a copy). I'll post the entries to the Mandragoratango.com website. I'll announce the winner at the TSOM milonga on December 9th.

If you are want to know more about what I am looking for or why I want it, you may want to read this link from the website of our CD distributor: (Just keep on clicking the "next" button untill you get bored)

Some words that come to my mind are "passionate", "sultry", "hot", "groove", "laid-back", "smoky", "lush", "classical", and possibly even "danceable". I'm sure you can think of others. Please avoid words like "crappy", "sloppy", and "out-of-tune". "Intoxicating" is OK, but "intoxicated" is not.

So send your best suggestion to info@mandragoratango.com or fill out a comment below. Let's get this contest started!

-Bob

Here are all the entries so far

• Mandrágora Tango: Music that captivates your heart. Movement that captivates your soul. Gwen Kranz
• Mandrágora Tango: Classic tunes to feed your soul (Pauline Oo)
• Mandrágora Tango: Laid-back and haunting (Pauline Oo)
• Mandrágora Tango: Music to feed your soul (Pauline Oo)
• Mandrágora Tango: Sensual and intoxicating (Pauline Oo)
• Mandrágora Tango: Laid-back and experimental (Pauline Oo)
• Mandrágora Tango: Easy on the ears and seductive to the feet (Pauline Oo)
• Mandrágora Tango: Tango that touches your heart (Pauline Oo)
• Mandrágora Tango: Argentine tango in the Heartland (Pauline Oo)
• Mandrágora Tango: Argentine tango with a Midwest twist (Pauline Oo)
• Mandrágora Tango: Sizzle from the ice-box / Sizzle from the tundra (Pauline Oo)
• Mandragora Tango -- music that unleashes every cry and whisper of the heart (Peggy Linrud)
• Mandragora Tango -- music that ignites the heart's crimes and passions
• Mandragora Tango: Fireside Tango Noir (Jason Saari)
• Mandragora Tango: Silky Sounds on a Velvet Night (Jason Saari)
• Mandragora Tango: Heart rending desires, light airy fantasies, and more are Mandragora (Jean Mueller)
• Mandragora Tango: A kiss. An embrace. A stomping, driving force. Tango in all it’s glory. (Jean Mueller)
• Mandragora Tango: Spicy, sultry, waves of tango to move your very soul (Jean Mueller)
• Mandragora Tango: Drive and passion ignite the air, stirring your sense’s imagination (Jean Mueller)
• Mandragora Tango: Dripping sensual undertones and frolicking playful overtones, loose yourself to tango (Jean Mueller)
• Mandragora Tango: Dripping sensual undertones, frolicking playful overtones, loose yourself to tango (Jean Mueller)
• Argentine. International. Intense and driven. Ten decades of tradition and innovation. (Stuart Klipper)
• Mandragora Tango. They can make any song enticing. Danceable! (Margaret Kittelson)
• Manragora Tango. Cross generational. Argentine Tango (music of the "3 minute affair"). (Margaret Kittelson)
• Mandragora Tango: Effervescent Veins of Magical Roots (Emily Maeder)
• Mandragora Tango: A Hot Fairy Tale Come True (Emily Maeder)
• Mandragora Tango: Enchanting Toes in a Heartbeat (Emily Maeder)
• Mandragora Tango: Fill your evening with 3 minute romances (Bill Boyt)
• Mandragora Tango: Stir your soul with the mysteries of Argentina (Bill Boyt)
• Mandragora Tango: Translating the mysteries of your soul into an evening filled with 3 minutes romances (Bill Boyt)
• Mandragora Tango: Tango Worldmusic with a Klezmer Flair (Anonymous)
• Mandragora Tango : Move your Passionate Ass. (Penny Callow)
• Mandragora Tango : Hot Tango for Sexy Dancing. (Penny Callow)
• Mandragora Tango : Dancing for your Soul (Penny Callow)
• Mandragora Tango : Lush atmospheric dance music, tango and waltz with an international flavor. Janet Morse

I originally thought these were some pretty good entries that someone mailed to me, but it turns out that they were just spam:

• Mandragora Tango: save up to 70% on the medications for your need (clulc@amkor.com)
  
• Mandragora Tango: Enjoy multi-orgasms using this powerful thing (BobbieMaldonado@rptopla.co.jp)
  
• Mandragora Tango: replica Watches! rolex, patek philippe, vacheron constantin and others! (iedrzyck@msn.com)
  
• Mandragora Tango: News has just hit the wires about a emerging Oil and Gas leader referenced by sharice greene (stanleyyasah@vanderleden.com)
  
• Mandragora Tango: Delight in Take your chance to make her adore you. Outrun her ex in terms of size and performance! (amortcarrot@rototank.com)
  
• Mandragora Tango: You cumm very quickly and without any control! (accelerometerbangkok@route6x6.com)
  

Comments:

Madame Yvonne said:
Entry: Mandragora Tango: Tantalizing to your heart, and 'soles'.

Ron Bacardi said:
Mandragora Tango: To listen or to dance? Both, if you dare. Mandragora Tango: Passion fatale. Mandragora Tango: Passion comes alive with tango.

November 29, 2006: New and Exciting Changes!!!

In the next few weeks, we will be re-doing our website and our "image". This website as it looks today is just too "busy" and hard to read. It's hard to tell at a glance what kind of music we play and if we're any good.

Mandrágora Tango would like to announce that Rahn Yanes will be our permanent bass player starting in January 2008. Rahn has played many gigs with us before, including our run of Maria de Buenos Aries in the winter of 2005. It's always a pleasure to play with Rahn and we look forward to many great gigs together.

We'd also like to announce that Ewa Bujak has become our primary substitute. We mostly play as a quartet, but when Christian (violin) or Scott (guitar) can't make it to a gig, Ewa fills in. We now have a large number of tangos that can be played with 2 violins and no guitar. Ewa has a great passion and flair for tango (and is the only member who can dance it well).

We had some new pictures taken recently. These will part of our new PR package which will will roll out by the end of the year. (Now that I've put this on the web for dozens of people to read, I will have to actually follow-though and rebuild the site!)

Comments:

barbara merrill said:
What a fabulous addition you have made with rahn yanes. one of the best bass players i have ever worked with...