Orquesta Típica Misteriosa Buenos Aires / 7 de enero (J.Arias)

As good as it gets...

Nuevo videoclip de 7 de enero, tango de Javier Arias que registramos en nuestro ultimo disco "Tu lado acústico" con la aparición estelar de: Roxana Suarez/Sebastián Achaval, Inés Muzzopappa/Fernando Galera y Rocio Lequio/Bruno Tombari.

Nuevo Nuevo

Home grown music, right here in Austin, from my close friend Meagan and Riddlore?...CD release at Esquina Tango a couple of weeks ago...



bajo la tierra :: riddlore?



megalore :: meganoke [artwork for this one is Alejandro Almanza (HOU) I believe]

Beautiful Tango

Hindi Zahra ...thanks go to Emily Valentine and "Tanguera PorSiempre" on Facebook for the find...

High School Band Tango Nuevo :: Sorry, I couldn't resist...

The first song is John Powell's "Tango de los Assassinos" from the film "Mr. & Mrs. Smith" starring Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt.

On Nuevo :: A visual quiz

The debate about nuevo tango goes on. Most call it a "style". I always thought tango "style" was more of an individual thing, not a type or form of the dance. I always thought about it like this, that over time, I would eventually find, or develop my own "style" when I dance tango. Or that it would somehow, miraculously, spring forth out of my "cellular essence" over time. (I just made that up...) Not that I would be "dancing" a particular style, but that my dance would have its own individual style. My own unique quality and character of movement - no matter what 'form' of tango I might be dancing at the moment.

I think of nuevo more as a "form" of tango than an individual style. Milonguero/more close embrace, salon/more open embrace, show/stage/fantasia, nuevo, swango, texas/two-step tango (which I have yet to invent), tango con salsa, tango parody/humor...what am I missing? I don't know if 'form' or 'style' or 'type' is the proper word I am looking for.

I'm even up on wiki looking at the Linnaean Taxonomic structure. (you remember it from biology class - kingdom, phylum, class, order, family, genus and species) There's even some new ones - superkingdom, and "tribe", which I like. It's kinda like "Which church do you go to?" that you get alot in the South. "Hi, my name's George, I live next door and I saw that you just moved in. Welcome to the neighborhood! Which church do you go to?" Talk about a non-sequitur.

Anyway, I like "tribe". I think we should all adopt/be in our respective/different "tango tribes". Nah, never mind, then you have to have a chief, or a high priestess, and a medicine man, and the guy who cleans the latrine, and all kinds of skanky dogs hanging around...not that I don't like dogs, just not the skanky tribal variety...but I digress...

I know this is not the direction we want to go in, further classifying and categorizing and identifying and defining and debating and ultimately dividing. I am definitely a proponent of the "one tango" philosophy. Just don't be doing your "one tango" if it is in direct and immediate conflict with my "one tango". (Big grin...)

But, (and there always is a but...{I love to be repetitive and always say this...it's my "style"...})...back to wiki...there are a couple of interesting things I discovered...

Taxonomy...identification/categorization/classification...is a human thing...we humans like to do that kinda shit...it is innate..."some have argued that the human mind naturally organizes its knowledge of the world into such systems..."

And the other one is..."Anthropologists have observed that taxonomies are generally embedded in local cultural and social systems, and serve various social functions. Perhaps the most well-known and influential study of folk taxonomies is Émile Durkheim's The Elementary Forms of Religious Life.

So what we have here is a failure to communicate...no, I just wanted to say that...in a really twang-y tone of voice...

So, what we have here is an innate, embedded, socio-cultural folk auto-taxonomy going on. We can't help it. We're all just trying to figure out this mystery called "el tango" and where we all fit in its scheme of thangs...no, not "we"...it's our brains that are doing it all by themselves...boy howdy that's an effing concept...that there's this whole subculture of subconscious human brains all doing their thing together without our direct knowledge or participation...I think I'm having a Matrix moment...I'm gonna have to go ponder that one some more....sheesh, that's deep....

Whatever...I'm kinda just blowing smoke here...but it's kinda making a little sense...?

Because I am a man...no, a male...and males are visual creatures...and it makes better sense to "see" something sometimes...with your visual cortex...here is the visual quiz...and of course, the ladies are very welcome to take the quiz, too...

(sidenote...I am in awe of the females of our species..they use not only their visual cortex, but their intellect, their heart, their soul, their divine feminine intuition...whereas we males are under the influence of our visual cortex and the resulting squirt of some neural peptide juices, deep down, "somewhere", and that's about it...I'm over-simplifying and over-generalizing for effect of maximizing the scope of the compliment to the ladies out there...we're not all neanderthals out there...but you get my drift...)




MULTIPLE CHOICE QUESTION:: WHICH ONE OF THESE IS "TANGO NUEVO"?

(College level, so that's why there's six possible answers instead of three like high school, to make it more challenging...)

Please leave your answer in the comments section. Bonus points for being obtuse.



NUMERO UNO ::





NUMERO DOS ::





NUMERO TRES ::





NUMBER FOUR ::





NUMERO CINCO ::





NUMERO SEIS ::





BONUS ESSAY QUESTION ::

DOES NUEVO TANGO REALLY EXIST, OR IS IT A FIGMENT OF THE SUBCONSCIOUS HUMAN IMAGINATION?

On nuevo tango :: Sex with Pornographic Athletes

I didn't say it, Suzy Vegas did.

"Salon tango is like having sex with someone you love, nuevo tango is like having sex with a pornographic athlete."
Suzy Vegas [www.lasttangoinbuenosaires.com]

But now I'm wondering what happens when you dance tango with someone you love who has the skillset of a pornographic athlete....?

On the subject of nuevo tango :: a more intellectual connection?

Some guy on Tango-L today said that nuevo tango (note my passive aggressive use of lower case) involves a "more intellectual connection".

He didn't outright say "a more intellectual connection than traditional Tango", but I will take it as imnplied. A veiled insult against my intellect. Well, the intellect of us all.

I think I know what he was trying to say, that somehow nuevo requires/involves more thinking/real time analytical processes during the dance.

And that, my friends, is the difference between the two forms. The perfection of the perfect connection comes when there is no conscious thought. It comes when two people are absolutely there, in the moment, with the music and each other and nothing else.

It's sad that so many people will never experience this.

So don't get me wrong, although I am most definitely an AT purist, I am still in a "live and let live", "no judgement", "it's all good" tolerance mindset with regard to nuevo, but I'm with my new friends Jorge* & Mrs. Red Dress when they say (my paraphrasing) "it ain't Argentine Tango..."

Gaston y Mariela :: Tango Nuevo