Musicality Part II :: How to get your musicality to flourish

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.

Malevito on Ego ::: Part One

Mi compadre Malevito just made a post titled "Ouch! My ego." Malevito speaks of the "reality versus self-perception" conundrum in tango. Do we leaders think we are better dancers than we really are? All of us? Always? Or is it only a few? Sometimes?

My comment on his post was getting too lengthy, so I'm expanding that comment into a post.

He speaks of the balance between humility and ego. Humility bringing with it the ability to admit one is wrong, or the admission of a problem and the need for improvement. My own experience with this came at year one, roughly. I thought I was doing pretty good. I thought I was coming along in my tango. Dancing and practicing lots - classes every week, visiting teacher workshops out the wazoo. The Denver Memorial Day Festival with more classes, lots of classes, had just taken place, as I recall.

Then, I saw some video of myself - dancing tango - walking. God was that a painful moment. This tango fucker seems to be fraught with painful moments. Was it this humility thing that allowed me to see my tango reality - that I had a fucked up walk? (That's what I came to call it, my "fucked up walk".) Was it ego that made me angry at my teachers and friends for letting me walk like this asshole (that would me, the asshole) for a year without saying anything?

On the other side of the scale, ego. Was it ego that motivated me to immediately seek outside help? Professional help. The first private lesson involved a drive over the mountains and through the valleys down to Santa Fe for a Cecilia Gonzales workshop. Coincidentally, I just the other day re-watched the video I made of that lesson. Ouch! My ego. Painful, very painful to watch now. I couldn't even lead a molinete with my leading shoulder. That pain must come from humility. Perhaps.

Nine months later, after many more out-of-town privates, many more workshops, many more festivals, a helluva lot more awareness of my body and what it was doing in time and space, and I found myself with a group of friends in Buenos Aires. We're there to participate in one of Gustavo & Giselle's intensive six day seminarios. Luckily, I've done a little advance research, and I know my partner and I are going to be in over our heads. I know what we're in for kindasorta. Their seminarios intensivos are designed for advanced and professional dancers. We were barely strong beginners. Barely.

This seminario was at the C/D level - their thematic program in "Cambios de dirrecion" - Changes of Direction. When we walked in to Leonesa the first day, there were dancers milling about, stretching in various positions, looking like professional ballet dancers. The freight train of memories came pulling into the stop of my mind. Eleven years old. Fifth grade. New Orleans, Louisiana. Basketball try outs. My mom and I opening the large, squeaking door to the gymnasium. Everyone on the far side of the gym stopped and turned to look when the door opened. I promptly wheeled about and told my mom "Let's go, I don't want to do this anymore".

How many times have we all felt this in our tango? "I don't want to do this any more." Which is it that beats us down? Ego or humility?

That first day of the seminario, I very nearly walked back to the apartment, packed my bags, and taxi'd to the airport to catch the next flight home. I was there for the wrong reasons. Female problems. Partner issues. I knew we were in over our heads. Our teacher had organized the trip for herself. We were simply along for the ride - to pay her way to BA really. Did ego trigger the "walk away" response in me? Was it humility that told me I had no business being there?

Was it ego that reasoned with me to stay, buck up, and make the best of it? Or was it humility? I'm glad I did stay. I didn't want to abandon my partner. I didn't want to abandon my own adventure of my first trip to Buenos Aires. My partner and I went from being at the bottom of the class (40 couples) the first two days, to being in the middle of the pack for the remainder. I reasoned that if I did not retain one single element from the six days, not one single concept, that it would still make me a better dancer. Not immediately. Not the next month. The next year? Perhaps. My rationale was that the workshop material would sink in through osmosis - over time, things would come back to me. And I was right about that. It was a humbling experience for me, that first trip to Buenos Aires. Tango has been a humbling experience for me. Methinks if it's not humbling you, there's something amiss.

In my life (thanks to a few books on Taoist principles), and in tango, I try to tend ego to zero, and tend humility to the infinite. I joke, mostly to myself, about "Me, myself and I" - the three entities at work with regards to "Alex". I say to myself, "Self, now is this me, myself, or I at work?" Me is me. The true being, the true essence of energy that is me. Myself is my self. Perhaps my physical self that is closer to the me side of things. I is the asshole, the pure bad ego sonofabitch that I have pretty much rid myself of. I count myself lucky that I never really had much I in me. Me is the humble. I is the arrogant.

It's kinda like cholesterol. There is good cholesterol and bad cholesterol. I think there are two egos. Good ego, the me ego. Bad ego, the I ego. Good ego, the spiritual acknowledgment of self, the ego of humility, the ego of selflessness. Bad ego, the earthly manifestation of self interest and selfishness.

But now I sit here and wonder, is this post, this entire blog, fueled by ego? Fueled by I? Or me? Or myself? I once updated my Facebook status line to read, "Alex is glad I'm me." I like that. Or is it me likes that? Third person verbal worm hole.

Dammit! I got sidetracked again. Once again, thinking too damn much. More on the tango-centric aspects of this post another time. I've got to get ready to drive out to Bandera. Sweetie-pie honey bunch has a gig out there on the banks of the Medina River. Plus, I've got to go get those photos of the wild chatterbox orchids we found on our bike ride yesterday.