Part II in my musicality the holy grail of tango series is primarily this: Listening to Tango Dance Music - A Beginner's Guide.
Scroll down for some of my original drivel-thought on the flourishing part.
Here's Part I Musicality The Holy Grail of Tango if you missed it.
You might call this one a prequel. Going back to basics. Or rather going to the original, the root/s, the foundations. The genesis of musicality.
The music.
Wow. That's some profound shit there Alex. He says. Self-deprecatingly. (grin)
Sidenote: I found this beginner's guide on TodoTango.com, excerpted from Michael Lavocah's "Tango Stories - Musical Secrets"
So, as I pointed out in Part I (parroting what Elizabeth said in her post), it's important to listen to a lot of tango music. The good stuff, not the bad shit. It's also important to have some background into what you are listening to. The structure and the elements and all that musicological jazz.
It's also important to think (hard) about what you are listening to. Sure, yes, just "listen" sometimes, letting the music wash over you and envelope your heart and soul, only engaging your brain by maybe throwing in some astral projection (see Part I). But sometimes do engage your brain, and think about the structure and elements Michael describes. And describe it very well does he. Not sure why I just dropped into Yoda-speak. (grin)
I would add a fifth element to acknowledge/be aware of/think about whilst listening. Another element beyond beat, rhythm, melody, and lyrics.
That fifth element would be emotion. First, the emotion "of" the music. Inside it. Emanating from the instruments, emanating from the musicians through their instruments. The vibrations sent forth across the air, making contact with your ear drums. Next, doing all the primordial things that the miraculous human body and brain does, all of the energetic electro chemical type stuff swirling around your heart and your soul and your being. Eliciting some sort of emotional response, hopefully. Your internal emotional response to the emotionally infused music that was just delivered unto you. You might ask ten different people to describe the emotion(s) "of" a particular song and get ten different answers. Then you might get different responses if you ask about the internal emotions of the listener, or rather their emotional responses. The stuff that wells up inside you when you listen to a really beautiful tango. Your favorite tango. The bubbles that form on the surface of your primordial ooze and then pop, manifesting into righteousness multitudinous itty-bitty thought bubble/clouds that we think when we're emotionally vibrationally energetically stimulated. Whilst dancing. Dancing tango. To good tango music. Dancing tango to good golden-age tango music. The warm and fuzzy shit.
Is there a song that makes you cry every time you listen to it? Or nearly every time? Or even some times? For me it's this one. I don't know why. I don't have any historical or experiential connection to the song. But it gets me nearly every time. It's just so fucking beautiful. And the magnitude of the beauty that the human animal is capable of creating. And the magnitude of the utter destruction of humanity itself, not to mention the destruction of the planet, unleashed by humanity itself. That's what gets me when I listen to this one. I think. Perhaps.
But I digress.
Hell, that one, perhaps, being the fifth, might even be the elusive quinta essencia. The Fifth Element. The Quintessence. Earth, Fire, Water, Air. Tango.
I've written about that before. https://alextangofuego.blogspot.com/2009/01/deep-tango-thoughts-golden-age.html
Okay, maybe the emotion of tango music isn't actually "THE" Quintessence of Tango.
But maybe it (the emotion of tango) just touches the surface of the concept (of the quintessence of tango).
Like a single candle illuminating a large dark room.
If you've read my blog for any length of time, you'll know that I tend to go round and round and digress all over the place and then gel it down to something in the end. That's what I love about extemporaneous writing disjointed bullshittery. Not knowing the point/conclusion/gist of what I'm writing until I get to the end, and I'm kinda sitting here pondering what I've just written. And then it comes to me. Voilà. I like that.
My point with this one, the point that I didn't realize until I got to the point of writing all the drivel above, is that for your musicality to flourish, there needs to be a direct connection between it and your emotions and the emotion(s) of the music. Think of it as a web of energetic interconnectivity/ed/ness.
IMHO.
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