Thursday, March 29, 2018

#astf2018 :: through my lens

Farting around with Adobe Spark...click on it right in the middle of the image and then use the scroll bar in the resulting new window to scroll down...real slow like...a little goofy...like I said...farting around...

#astf2018


Or, here's the entire album on my flickr account...click on the image to click through to the album/set...then look for the "toggle slideshow" icon upper right...

#ASTF2018

Thursday, March 22, 2018

Tuesday, March 20, 2018

Pretty damn damning, 68 million views

Somewhere between firming up and melting :: Tango Quote

Luciano Mares y Gabriela Fernandez

On the subject of the embrace, or tension in the embrace...here is the entire post...

"Tone without tension, melty but not flaccid, presence VS "resistance", awareness but not micromanagement, assertiveness without force, grounded while also buoyant..."

Catherine Young (on Terpsichoral Tango Addict's FB post)

Friday, March 9, 2018

Verdemar Versions :: Tango DJ Lamentations

Okay, so lamentations is really the wrong word, because I'm not lamenting about anything...but observations...thoughts and ponderings and thinkage...whatever...bubbling primordial soup type stuff...

(it just dawned on me that Verdemar is pretty much lamentations, so maybe I should have titled this post "Verdemar Lamentations"...I'm digressing and blabbering...sorry...

Anyway, I just thought I would share a little of the inner workings/goings-on of DJ'ing...curating a music collection and playlists for milongas...this was something I got side-tracked on this morning...I can't even remember now what triggered me to delve into this...oh well...I'm glad I did...

As a once-in-a-while DJ here in Austin, I spend a little time here and there in my spare time while I'm resting tweaking my music library, which is now sitting at about 300 albums, 3,000 songs. A big part of being a Tango DJ is doing the investigatory work into the various recordings of a single song - to determine which recording is the best audio quality, which is the best orchestra and arranging, the best singer, the best year/version, and last but not least and probably most important - the most danceable.

Most tango songs were recorded by several orchestras, sometimes several versions over the years with the same orchestra but different singers, sometimes with the same singer.

Take Verdemar as an example. Carlos DiSarli composed it in 1943, with lyrics by José María Contursi. There were ten or eleven recordings done, with six by Di Sarli. It's one of my all-time favorite tango songs.

I don't care for the 1943 version sung by Roberto Rufino, whose voice is a little nasal-y sounding. The version I've loved and played the most over the years is the 1955 Oscar Serpa version - 3 minutes, 3 seconds. However, I just discovered a 1954 Serpa version that's a tad slower at 3:12, and seems more sad and forlorn. Which it should be. Based on the subject matter.


Here's the newly discovered 1954 Di Sarli/Serpa version - the audio quality is kinda glitchy - but it's available on TangoTunes. Very clean, and stretched out to 3:16.




Here's the 1955 version (that used to be my favorite) - Di Sarli/Serpa:




Here's the 1943 Di Sarli/Rufino version:




Here's a 1943 version recorded by Miguel Caló with Raúl Iriarte - the arranging here is a little to upbeat and happy for the lyrics - to me anyway:
Note that there's also a 1966 Caló /Rufino version...fwiw...



Reading the lyrics/translation, I also just became aware that they've dropped the last verse in every version.


Here is Alberto Paz' (may he rest in peace) translation from PlanetTango:

Verdemar... Verdemar...
Se llenaron de silencio tus pupilas.
Te perdí, Verdemar.
Tus manos amarillas, tus labios sin color
y el frío de la noche sobre tu corazón.
Faltas tú, ya no estás,
se apagaron tus pupilas, Verdemar.

Te encontré sin pensarlo y alegré mis días,
olvidando la angustia de las horas mías.
Pero luego la vida se ensañó contigo
y en tus labios mis besos se morían de frío.
Y ahora... ¿qué rumbo tomaré?
Caminos sin aurora me pierden otra vez.

Volverás, Verdemar...
Es el alma que presiente tu retorno.
Llegarás, llegarás...
Por un camino blanco tu espíritu vendrá
Buscando mi cansancio y aquí me encontrarás.
Faltas tú... Ya no estás...
Se apagaron tus pupilas, Verdemar.
Verdemar... Verdemar...
Your eyes filled with silence...
I lost you, Verdemar.
Your yellow hands... your lips without color
And the cold of the night in your heart.
You are missing... you are no longer here...
Your eyes have extinguished, Verdemar.

I met you without thinking it, and I cheered my days
forgetting the anguish of my hours.
But soon life was merciless with you
and in your lips my kisses died of cold.
And now... what course will I take?
Roads without dawn get me lost again.

You will return, Verdemar...
It’s the soul that has a premonition about your return.
You will arrive, you will arrive...
Through a white road your spirit will come
Looking for my fatigue and here you will find me.
You are missing... you are no longer here...
Your eyes have extinguished, Verdemar.


Here is Derrick del Pilar's translation, from Poesía de gotán: The Poetry of the Tango:

Seagreen
lyrics by José María Contursi
music by Carlos Di Sarli

Seagreen…Seagreen…
your eyes filled with silence.
I lost you, Seagreen.
Your yellowed hands, your colorless lips
and the cold of the night upon your heart.
You are missing, you aren’t here anymore,
your pupils have gone out, Seagreen.

I found you without a thought and I brightened my days,
forgetting the anguish of my hours.
But then life became enraged with you,
and upon your lips my kisses died of cold.
And now…what road shall I take?
Dawnless paths lose me once again.



So that's it. That's all I have to say about that. For now.

Have a good weekend y'all...




Thursday, March 8, 2018

Ignacio Varchausky :: Estilos Fundamentales de Tango Seminarios



I ran across this on YouTube and created a playlist - somewhere in the neighborhood of 20 or 22 hours of lectures by Ignacio Varchausky on the "fundamental styles of tango". All in Spanish, but no worries for those of us whose Spanish sucks. Click the little gear icon at the lower right of the video screen and turn on the auto-generated Spanish subtitles, let them populate, then click on "auto-translate" and pick your language. It will hesitate for a moment while it's queuing up. Thank God for Google.

Also note that Ignacio is the founder of TangoVia - a non-profit and website which aims at preserving, spreading and developing tango culture throughout the world. Be sure to check out their Tango CD collections, although the Spanish version website is better for this. Looks like you could find them on Amazon, but there are no direct purchase links.

There are also a dozen or so playlists on the Parkinson TeVe YouTube Channel, or click on "Videos" to see everything listed individually. Lots of stuff to watch and listen and ponder and learn here, including various live orchestra performances.

Here are the titles of the videos in the playlist I've created (above):

Pugliese
D'Arienzo
Piazzolla
La Milonga
Laurenz
El o Los Choclos
Calo
Fresedo
Francini-Pontier
De Caro
Elementos Basicos
Gobbi
Salgan

The Politics of Touch, by Erin Manning

Manning, Erin -Politics of Touch by juanfecas on Scribd

Wednesday, March 7, 2018

Tango Shoe Painting :: Los Angeles, CA, USA









This is a great idea! I didn't want to publish her name and phone number out there on the web, so contact me and I will put you in touch with her.



La Vida Es Corta :: Tango Short by Bassel Hamieh, with Naomi Harris



TANGO: La Vida Es Corta - Life is Short!
Bassel Hamieh is celebrating life with Naomi Harris in Los Angeles, California...on Saturday ·
NEW TANGO SHORT FILM!!! "La Vida Es Corta" - Life is Short! Got to work on this small project with the beautiful Naomi Harris. It was hard to convince her at first, but I knew she would be the perfect fit for it as she not only is a beautiful person on the inside and out, but is an extremely beautiful dancer. When she finally said yes, we spent 3 hours in the cold to film this. It was so fun! Hope you enjoy it.

The song is obviously "La Vida Es Corta", composed by Ricardo Tanturi, lyrics by Francisco Gorrindo, sung by Alberto Castillo, recorded on February 19, 1941.



Sunday, March 4, 2018

Breaking down tango steps & sequences :: The Mini-Milonguero Dip :: A practical YouTube/Video Tip

Let's face it. Human males are visual troglodytes. "We like to watch, Eve."

And with tango, due to the complexities and nuances of the quality and character of motion through time and space and to the music - weight shifts, where your weight is on your foot aka where your center of gravity is in relation to your foot, where you want her weight to be, where you want your foot/feet to be, where you want her foot/feet to be, etc. Sometimes if you lead her to shift her weight just a little too far, the opportunity to do what you were planning to do is lost. In a few-to-several-hundred femtoseconds of little brain farts bubbling up in the primordial soup.

I know many of us leaders, perhaps most of us, use YouTube to glean/harvest/study new vocabulary and "stuff" for our tango roll-o-dex of moves. Or maybe movements is a better word. Ah. I see it's actually "Rolodex".

Using the video settings to slow down the speed to .50 or .25 is helpful, but scrubbing the video back and forth is hellatiously frustrating, especially on a mobile device.

After years of being hellatiously frustrated by the inability to have really slow simple control to break things down step by step, I had a eureka moment a couple of weeks ago.

Now, after being hellatiously frustrated reading all my drivel, here is the actual tip.

Slow the video down to .25 speed on your computer or iPad, then video that with your phone. Then using your phone, it's much easier to scrub back and forth step by step to figure shit out.

With the Austin Spring Tango Festival coming up, and being slightly week in my small space Rolodex of movements, we've been taking classes with Vania on the subject, and practicing a few times a week. We've been working on incorporating a cross-footed ocho cortado to the cross (aren't they all?) with a front cross step back to the close side on her part simultaneously with a mini-milonguero dip on my part. Mini-dip. Not mini-milonguero, although I'm sure they exist.

Sadly, the milonguero dip has been missing from my tango Rolodex for all these years.

My thick skull couldn't absorb it until I broke it down step by step and body position by body position. I'm slow that way. And I guess I've been slow on the uptake of figuring out that I could video the slowed-down video. Oh well.

Anyway.

That is all.

Oh. Here's the video. From timestamp 0:40, then he repeats it at 0:48. Michelle and Joachim. I like their "stuff".

Saturday, March 3, 2018

Open Call for Tango Tattoos

Untitled
Possibly the most famous, famously artistic tango tattoo in the world lives and dances right here in Austin...the impaled heart on fire...photo by yours truly, whilst DJ'ing at Tazza...

I figger'd I'd do a post on tango tattoos, but not many images show up in "tango tattoo" searches due to the co-opting of the word "Tango" by a certain Texas fraternal order/civic organization. And I'm guessing there are lots of tango tattoos out there that wouldn't necessarily show up in an image search anyway. I've collected a dozen or so for a future post, but that's about it.

So I'm issuing an open call for people to submit images of their tango related tango-centric tango tattoos. Along with the back story of the tattoo. Or your thinking about deciding selecting the image and also the name/city of the tattoo artist, por favor. Obviously if you know someone who has one if you can share this post or otherwise let them know.

Send images to "the name of this blog without the dots" at gmail. Alternatively perhaps leave a link in the comments. Or DM me on FB.

Gracias in advance.


Friday, March 2, 2018

Duendes del dos por cuatro :: Illustrations by Héctor Palacios

Click on each image to be brought to the La Gaceta website and the journalistic notes (in Spanish) by Roberto Espinosa for each image/individual...in a new window...click on the La Gaceta website link to go the the website and scroll through the images yourself...

“Duendes del dos por cuatro”, se denomina la exposición que reúne notas periodísticas de Roberto Espinosa e ilustraciones de Héctor Palacios, que se inauguró en el Centro Cultural Virla de la Universidad Nacional de Tucumán, el 11 de diciembre de 2015, en adhesión al Día Nacional del Tango. La muestra reúne crónicas periodísticas publicadas en el diario La Gaceta de Tucumán, entre 1988 y 2015, que evocan a intérpretes y creadores del tango, como Carlos Gardel, Osvaldo Pugliese, Aníbal Troilo, Astor Piazzolla, Edmundo Rivero, Enrique Santos Discépolo, Julio Sosa, Mariano Mores, Enrique Cadícamo, José Luis Padula, Napoleón Escobar, Eduardo Podazza, Rubén Juárez, Miguelito Ruiz, el Polaco Goyeneche, entre otros.

"Spirits of two by four", is called the exhibition that brings together journalistic notes by Roberto Espinosa and illustrations by Héctor Palacios, which opened at the Centro Cultural Virla of the National University of Tucumán, on December 11, 2015, in adherence to the day National Tango. The exhibition includes journalistic chronicles published in the newspaper La Gaceta de Tucumán, between 1988 and 2015, which evoke interpreters and creators of Tango, such as Carlos Gardel, Osvaldo Pugliese, Aníbal Troilo, Astor Piazzolla, Edmundo Rivero, Enrique Santos Discépolo, Julio Sosa, Mariano mores, Enrique Cadícamo, José Luis Padula, Napoleon Escobar, Eduardo Podazza, Rubén Juárez, Miguelito Ruiz, the Polish Goyeneche, among others.

Anibal Troilo



Astor Piazzolla



Astor Piazzolla



Carlos Gardel



Edmundo Rivero



Eduardo Podazza



Enrique Cadicamo



Horacio Ferrer



Jose Luis Padula



Julo Sosa



Leopoldo Federico



Mariano Mores



Miguel Ruiz



Napoleon Escobar



Osvaldo Pugliese



Roberto Goyeneche



Rodolfo Mederos



Ruben Juarez



Enrique Santos Discepolo




http://www.lagaceta.com.ar/imagenes/galeria/3093/duendes-dos-cuatro.html

“Duendes del dos por cuatro”, se denomina la exposición que reúne notas periodísticas de Roberto Espinosa e ilustraciones de Héctor Palacios, que se inauguró en el Centro Cultural Virla de la Universidad Nacional de Tucumán, el 11 de diciembre de 2015, en adhesión al Día Nacional del Tango. La muestra reúne crónicas periodísticas publicadas en el diario La Gaceta de Tucumán, entre 1988 y 2015, que evocan a intérpretes y creadores del tango, como Carlos Gardel, Osvaldo Pugliese, Aníbal Troilo, Astor Piazzolla, Edmundo Rivero, Enrique Santos Discépolo, Julio Sosa, Mariano Mores, Enrique Cadícamo, José Luis Padula, Napoleón Escobar, Eduardo Podazza, Rubén Juárez, Miguelito Ruiz, el Polaco Goyeneche, entre otros.

"Spirits of two by four", is called the exhibition that brings together journalistic notes by Roberto Espinosa and illustrations by Héctor Palacios, which opened at the Centro Cultural Virla of the National University of Tucumán, on December 11, 2015, in adherence to the day National Tango. The exhibition includes journalistic chronicles published in the newspaper La Gaceta de Tucumán, between 1988 and 2015, which evoke interpreters and creators of Tango, such as Carlos Gardel, Osvaldo Pugliese, Aníbal Troilo, Astor Piazzolla, Edmundo Rivero, Enrique Santos Discépolo, Julio Sosa, Mariano mores, Enrique Cadícamo, José Luis Padula, Napoleon Escobar, Eduardo Podazza, Rubén Juárez, Miguelito Ruiz, the Polish Goyeneche, among others.