The Empty Bandoneón Case

The Empty Bandoneón Case
by Mark Word

Strange as it may sound to non-musicians, the mystery of life dwells in musical instruments. 

I have heard of wonderful instruments which have been found or have had been in storage for years, but once found, they require a long time before they speak again.  It’s as if they feel neglected and will not sing with joy until they can trust that you will come back and play with them regularly.

So it was with my bandoneón.  My father bought it for me when I was 12 years old, and “she” was my best counselor, mentor, friend for many years.   As a teenager, I would have never told you these things, but now, I only hope to tell you what musicians know to be true with the relationship they have with their instruments.  I think it is a secret that instruments have their own life, but it shouldn’t be.

I called my bandoneón “Sara.”  She had a personality all of her own.  Her case’s handle looked like a smile, asking me to come play.  But of course I had to do my homework, and had to avoid looking at her smile.  If I took too long to get around to playing, she would be angry at me.  I knew that she was mad because her keys would stick.  I would have to take time to just take care of her.  My father also had bought a repair kit and showed me how to fix the sticking keys.  Sara needed care.  She wanted more than just to go out and play with me. 

Most often, though, she was not moody with me.  She would console me after a hard day.   Each instrument has its own feel, I suppose.  I played the trumpet too, and I learned to resuscitate life into the trumpet.  The eighty-eight keys of the piano too had their own appeal with its left-handed walking bass and the poetic right-brained melody.  The piano could twist my feelings from one chord to the next with her mysterious chords.  When no one was around, I would let the chords sustain until they died out, listening for the Gnostic wisdom they might tell me.  Of course, I did this only when I found myself from time to time alone at home. 

But compared to any other instrument I know, the bandoneón is truly like a person.  Her buttons are in illogical places, like the memories we store in the random recesses of our brain.  Like our words with our meanings, her buttons all have two separate notes.  Just like the dual personalities of private and public, the bandoneón has her left-side keyboard has for soft, intimate private tones. On the right she speaks up in a clear-voiced melody.  She has her manic side too, capable of talking as fast as anyone during the break-neck speed of the variación at the end of a tango.  The bandoneonista just needs to get out of the way and let her talk.  But the most human feature that she has is that she can breathe and sigh without making a note through her bellows.

Maybe I am mad, but I felt her presence most when I just would listen to her breathe.  I would open her smiling case and let her breathe in my embrace.  Her smell was the perfume of wood, enamel and a touch of oil, reinforced with years of having given me so much joy or having helped me during times of sadness.  She would smile with delight as I opened up her case and she would leap into my arms, ready to play a tango or vals.   If she and I really wanted to run and play, we indulged in a milonga.

Sara eventually looked forward to the times I had troubles with my romantic life.  That is when I made up new tangos and would play with her for hours.  This ritual started when my first girlfriend, Elena, had left Montevideo to live in Buenos Aires with her parents, I was sad, but when I pulled out my bandoneón, only then I realized how bad it hurt to have my first love move away.  My bandoneón was a channel to the emotions that I hid not only from the world but from myself.  I embraced Sara and she consoled me.  The day Elena left, I sat with my bandoneón on my lap, but I couldn’t play at first.  I was numb.  I just opened and closed her bellows and let her breathe with me.  I felt her empathy, her soul.  Tears fell on her shoulders, and I told her I was sorry that I had wept on her.  Eventually a vals came out as powerful as I ever had played – Desde el Alma.  This was tango.  Its essence.  My heart ached and now I could speak from my soul about this music that my parents so loved.  Now tango was truly my music, not just my parents’. 

When I came down from my upstairs room, everyone looked quizzically at me as they sat at the dinner table.  I thought that perhaps they all could see that I had been crying, and I felt this horrible shame of being the youngest and still just a baby.  Mother took away these wild imaginations:   “You have never played your bandoneón like that before,” she said.  Father didn’t say a thing.  I saw his powerfully tacit pride in his eyes.  He squeezed my shoulder as I sat down next to him at the table.  He said so much with his eyes that words were not necessary.  I knew what he was thinking:  Another generation would carry on his beloved tango, the pride of Montevideo.   I felt as if it were my mission now, like the keeper of the fire in ancient tribes.

How is it that we forget about important moments in our lives through the distractions of daily life?  When I turned seventeen, I was so busy with school and many friends that I slowly neglected my bandoneón until I nearly had forgotten her.   A few years later, I was struggling financially at the University, and a friend told me about some Japanese tourists who would give me a pile of money for my old bandoneón.  The only reason I resisted is that I was sure that the tourists were only going to display her on a table somewhere, and Sara would not be played.  I wrote off these sentimental anthropomorphic feelings because I so much needed the money.   I justified my cold calculation, telling myself that I probably would never play her again anyway.   At the last moment before I sold her, however, I decided that I would keep her smiling case.  I guess that was my way of keeping a part of her and get the money too.

I am telling you this story because later in life tango became something very important to me again.  I started dancing tango for the first time.  I felt as if everything I ever knew as a musician was still there:  My feet were like my fingers, playing a duet with my partner on the dance floor.  My lungs were the bellows that told my partner about the phrasing of the music we were playing together.   I felt just as alive when dancing as when I had played music in my youth.  I had new friends and a new passion in my life.  People at work noticed that I was a new person, with a new lease on life. 

I needed my community of friends-who-embrace when my parents died, the biggest loss of my life.  I didn’t deserve having such great parents, and now they were gone.  My two brothers and my sister were far away, but luckily I had friends – mostly from the tango world – who would embrace me and be present with me in my grief.  The solo task was left to me to go through all my parent’s belongings at their house.  Every little thing was full of memories, and it was an emotional roller coaster for me.

I found Sara’s case in the attic.  She was still smiling at me.  How stupid I was to open the case thinking she would still be there!  How stupid, my shock when I opened the case and she wasn’t.   She could no longer breathe in my arms.  I could not play a simple melody and harmony on her.  I could not console her and promise her never to neglect her again!  I was no longer in denial.  She was gone.  Just like a drunken fool, I sobbed onto her red-velvet bedding, which seemed to intensify the smell of her haunting enamel-wood-and-oil perfume.  It was a deep, pitiful sobbing at first without tears, but then all the tears of all my losses throughout my life seemed to let themselves pour out.  How long it had been that I had not wept!  The torrent, I guess, came from years of machismo-glue that had clogged up my tear ducts.

I cannot know where Sara is now.  I only hope some little Japanese kid learns how to play her, and that she will breathe for him, console him.  For now, I console myself by imagining that she sings to me whenever I hear the bandeón as I am dancing tango.  I console myself that my parents realize that their beloved tango lives on only when it is danced, and that I have continued in their hope.  I am carrying the tribe’s tango-fire.  With every tango, with every tanda, Sara’s voice seems to go more and more to the core of my soul – desde el alma.

Author’s Note:
This essay is fiction only in a few details:  I did not grow up in Uruguay, and I do not play the bandoneón (das Bandonion).  Everything else is true, just a different instrument.

Mark Word,

living near the birth of the bandoneón in Rheinland-Pfalz, Germany

Photo credit:  The photos are from an instrument sale on Ebay.  http://www.inorg.chem.ethz.ch/tango/band/band_node47.html

Tango-Beat's Last Entry

Tango-Beat, my blog, has a new name.

Since 2009 I have been writing a blog, which I thought would be more about music and especially rhythms of tango. Sure, I have written on this, but rarely. It is time for a change, especially because a company called Tango Beat has full rights to that name.

I recommend that you check out the excellent service they do for tango dancers at:
 www.tangobeat.com.

The new name of my blog is:
 www.tango-therapist.blogspot.com.

I have a new entry there already, called the Essence of Tango, because as I was moving over my blog to the new name, it was a draft I accidentally published.

PS.  My blog was nearly named "Tango Iconoclast."  However, I decided on "Tango Therapist" over "Tango Iconoclast." because I am perhaps the opposite of this.  As a few people have pointed out, I am not up to the task of being an iconoclast.  That's hard work!  And much of what I promulgate is a return to traditional tango because of its therapeutic effect in contrast to an every-increasing love of show-tango and tango-as-tourism.  I promote the ideat ideat that a man and a woman taking full responsibility for being present in a dance.  This notion is not iconoclastic but the return to the sacred icon that has been shattered by the same producers (or mentality) that is behind "Dancing with the Stars."  (Sorry if you like this show.)

Essence of Tango

I nearly had an aneurysm when I asked a tango teacher from a large US city, visiting in DC, what was the "essence of tango."  His response:  "I find the rhythm of tango the least interesting thing about tango.  It is the harmony and melody from Europe that is most interesting."  I tried to clarify because certainly my ears did not hear right.  Another teacher spoke up in a agreement with him. This video clip was what came to mind.  I need not say anything or even quote D'Arienzo. The scariest thing:  The first teacher was from Argentina. I don't expect anyone to believe me.  I wouldn't believe it unless I heard it myself.

Here is a quote from 1949:
"In my point of view, tango is, above all, rhythm, nerve, strength and character... I reacted against that mistake which caused the tango crisis and placed the orchestra in the foreground and the singer in his place. Furthermore, I tried to rescue for tango its masculine strength, which it had been losing through succesive circumstances. In that way in my interpretations I stamped the rhythm, the nerve, the strength and the character which distinguished it in the music world and which it had been losing for the above reasons. Luckily, that crisis was temporary, and today tango has been re-established, our tango, with the vitality of its best times. My major pride is to have contributed to that renaissance of our popular music." - Juan D'Arienzo

Milonga Lisa

My Milonga Lisa*

The music is fast.
I don't push her to take the next step.
The music drives her to do that!
The music leads --
No, it drives us a la vez.
But she stops when my body signals
The music's moment of pause.
A new phrase takes us back to tempo.

At end we stop and laugh
Like children who've jumped
From a swing to roll on the lawn.
We smile as we lie on the grass.
The music starts; no time to talk!
We run back to swing yet again
To the divine voice of La Música.
My milonguera sits in the Louvre of my mind,
The coy woman who has returned my nod.
She is my Milonga Lisa.

*From Wikipedia: "'Milonga Lisa' [means 'Simple Milonga'], in which
the dancer steps on every beat of the music; and "Milonga con
Traspié," in which the dancer uses Traspiés or contrapasos (changes of
weight from one foot to the other and back again in double time or
three steps in two beats) to interpret the music. Thus, dynamics may
be danced without having to run fast or without the use of much space.

When a tanguera closes her eyes

Navi went with me to every milonga in the Washington, DC.  She told me how to get there, andshe never got upset with me if I missed the turn she told me to take.  Sure, she would just roll her eyes and say,“rerouting,” and she’d come up with a route that would fix my mistake.  Sometimes she would say, “At the firstpossible moment, make a legal U-turn.” She was delighted when I made a “creative” U-turn because we were back ontrack.  Then in December, I asked her toclose her eyes, and as a surprise I sent her off on a cruise to Germany.  She was totally surprised that she woke up ina whole new world.  She only could tell me longitude and latitude of where I was.   Her whole reason forbeing is know where she is and to help orient me.  But once awake she didn't know where she was! 

Navi was really upset with me.  She was hyperventilating, but I did my best to speak slowly and in a low, soft voice, which calmed her down.  I told Navi that I would soon get a new CD of German maps.  "Navi, you are smart," I said.  Soon you will memorize all the new maps."  I assured her too that she can take me to all my milongasagain.

What seemed to please her most was that I told her that she now knowswhat it is like to be a tanguera!  “When a tanguera really likes the way I dance," I told her, "She closes her eyes and she is totally surprised when she opens her eyes and she is in a place she didnot expect.  Then I know that I have donea good job of letting her be 100% a women but at the same time let her embody the music so deeplythat she forgets that she is mortal for 15 minutes.”  Navithought about that.  She didn’t sayanything, but I knew that she liked the idea of being my tanguera.  She no longer was upset with me.

Now, I have another problem. When I put in the new GPS CD into her memory, she told me in an especially sexy voice as we had arrived at a milonga in Heidelberg something that haunts me.  She never addresses me personally, but in Heidelberg in the shadow of the city castle she did: “Mark,I don’t want to wait for you in the car this time. Can you take me in?  I want to beyour tanguera.  I want you to hold me inyour arms and I will close my eyes the way you told me the tangueras do.  I would sometimes just forget where I am."

Even my psychiatrist (a tanguera) doesn’t believe me that my navigation systemis jealous.  I am worried.  Will Navi stop taking me tothe milongas?  Will she take me somewhere, getting me lost forever?   Navi and I have become close, but what can I tell her?  I cannot tell yer, "You are a navigation system, you cannot be my tanguera!"

Being a tanguero seems toget more complicated the longer I dance.  

Music Workshop: Tango and its African Roots

Preface to the Post:   This article is on musicianship for tango dancers, and may not be easy reading.  My poetry and prose on the psychology of tango are usually easy reading; so please don't give up on me because of a few posts on musicianship!  However, I feel that if you take the time, that it will open your mind to the very roots of tango.  And there are elements of psychology/sociology to this post in that many have devalued tango's roots via a lack of psychological insight.  Maybe it is slow reading, but I hope this discussion will open up your appreciation of why tango moves your heart and your body to move when the now-dead tango musicians begin to play.  Pour yourself some coffee and read slowly, and forgive me if I lose you for a few moments.  If that happens, stay with me.  Get a general picture of the origins of tango and that will open you up to much more later.  I have four videos to share -- it's show and tell:  Not hard at all!

Let's start off inductively by seeing and feeling:  Listen to this folk music (zamba argentina) with dancers very much not in folk costumes!  The music is in 6/8 (very much like the feel of 6 in tango's vals).  Sometimes you will see the dancers feet dancing on the pulse like vals (1**4**/1**4**:||) but often when they are going faster they will dance variations off of tango's most important rhythm (1*3*5*/1*3*5*:||).  More on this rhythm later, but it is the center of what I want to convey to you as being very important in tango's most primal rhythmic expression.



Here is the more traditional not-in-high-heels zamba argentina and you can see the footwork I mentioned above:



Although the majority of musicians and dancers have a love affair with the melodic, harmonic and instrumental influences of Europe, the fact is that tango would be nothing without its heart -- its rhythm from Africa.

Our Lack of Psychological Insight:
I see this huge silence about Africa as a typical devaluation of Africa.  Nothing is new about European influence on misunderstanding the value of Africa and its inhabitants.  Without devaluing Africa, the European slave trade would not have been possible.  Are we all educated and now we are over this devaluation?  Well, let me ask it this way:  Is the Civil Rights struggle over?  Latin America is particularly blind to its own racism, so please don't turn to people from South America for their opinion to find "openness" -- their devaluation of tango's influence is particularly "European" and denied in spite of many glaring facts.  Argentina prides itself on being the "most European" Latin American country, especially being the only Latin American country with so few people of African heritage (less than 3%).  So I would fully agree that indeed, Argentina is the "most European," which may include some the less positive things that Europe has imported to the Americas -- its ongoing ignorance and value of Africa's influence.

Surely you have heard the term"Afro-Cuban music"!  Have you ever heard of "Afro-Argentine" music?

Sorry, that was a trick question.  Of course you have heard Afro-Argentine music.  Not only have you heard Afro-Argentine music, you dance to it at every milonga and in every traditional tanda.   [Please visit the link on the term "Afro-Argentine" here].

I wrote an earlier musical workshop article on thinking in six.  The post was on the vals and I even used Baroque dance to show how the vals is really in six.  However, as I wrote that post, only then I remembered about my earlier discoveries as a Latin percussionist:  Most well-known Latin American music (son, mambo, salsa, merengue, samba, bossa nova, cha-cha-chá to name a few) came out of the sacred 6/8 rythyms of Africa.

Let me give you the most important example, the 6/8 rhythm that created salsa, mambo, son, merengue, cha-cha-chá, cumbia and others.  They all first started like this in 6/8:  1*3*5*/*2*4**:||  This part of my show-and-tell story needs you to clap!  If you start out slow and then eventually get it up to tempo, you will find yourself miraculously clapping out the most popular clave-rhythm in all Latin American music, which is also miraculously NOT in 6/8.  The first time I did this I was dumbfounded!

The preceding rhythm is today called the "son clave" (from the Cuban music called "son," a slower version of mambo).  The word "clave" comes from the word for wooden dowels (claves or "nails") slaves used to play the rhythms of their homeland.  The dowels held together the crates the slave dock workers unloaded from European ships.  Later, during and after the chaos of the Haitian's war against the French colonists, some slaves escaped to Cuba taking their clave rhythms with them as their only baggage.  In Cuba, then, we really do not have "Afro-Cuban" music.  Really, the black Haitians musical inventions in the new world was Afro-French to be fair to Europe's important influence with their music in Cuba.

Again the rhythm above was in 6/8 as:  1*3*5*/*2*4** :|| which is often reversed to *2*4**/1*3*5* :||  This reversed clave-rhythm will have to be a later discussion because it is the most important development of the most dancable music in tango's Golden Era.  (I hope that perks up your interest for a later post).

Tango has only the first part of the rhythm above, which gives tango the drive that it has:

6/8:   1*3*5*/1*3*5* :||

When you put this rhythm into straight time it turns into something close to the original as 3/3/2 (1**/4**/7*).  Especially in tango nuevo, one hears the 1, 4 and 7.  What gringos often don't hear in most Latin American rhythms is that the "clave" rhythm never goes away.  In fact it is omnipresent and responsible for the melody along with what is being played for syncopation around this rhythm.  If you don't hear it, I believe that you feel it and it is what drives you to love tango.  I have heard tango musicians and teachers talking about syncopations that show up in the music, but they are not aware of the underlying rhythm that has generated these syncopations.

What I hope to demonstrate here is that this feeling of 6/8 is actually behind the pulse (heart) of tango.  So how is it that vals, which is essentially in 6, is "European" as so many claim?  If you wish to get at the primal tango, listen to tango´s "vals cruzado"!  The vals often explicitly expresses the 1*3*5*/1*3*5*:|| of the original tango rhythm from Africa.   I have been saddened to experience in my discussions with some tango musicians and vocalists that the majority see the vals as hardly being tango at all but "European."  This is simply ignorance of the facts.  I more recently have come to see that the vals is more primal and directly connected to tango than any other expression of tango.  The "cruzado" of the vals cruzado is the crossing rhythm of a vals within a vals.  Nothing is further from the truth that the vals is "kind of like a Viennese waltz," as I have heard musicians claim.  To me this is just another devaluation of the African link.  Being aware of this rhythm makes my vals.  So far, I have not heard any complaints.  Instead, I experience some some huge smiles and laughter from the pure joy that the cruzado brings to the dance.  The steps seen in the zamba above (1*3*5*) are applied to what the musicians are doing in the vals, and it has a feeling of flying.

Let me give you another example, this time from Gotan Project.  This piece (below) is also in six.  The key to it goes back to our primal rhythm of 1*3*5* :||   But this time they ingeniously slow things down and drop the 3 on the first measure and the 5 on the second measure.  So here is how it looks:  1***5*/1*3*** :||  Practice clapping that rhythm very slowly and then you can clap it to Gotan Project below.  I promise it will be fun, and get you back to your African roots.



I started this blog idea from a question of my conocido, Andreas, in Germany.  He heard the above music as being divided into two measures of 4/4 + 2/4.  His question gave me the idea of showing how important 6/8 is to most Latin music.  Did I say Latin?  Much of jazz, fusion, funk, soul and rock take from this rhythm.  The clearest examples of this rhythm in today's music is hip hop and regetón, which have this 6/8 rhythm of  |1*3*5*:|| as their base).  The later two types of music may have come dircetly from modern Angola's popular and very-much-analogous to tango music and dance, called kizomba.

Warning label on the kizomba video clip below:  Tanger@s who love nuevo may never want to dance tango again after seeing this dance from Angola.  Second warning:  Do not let your children see this next demo unless they are over 21.

If you hear hip hop in the background, maybe you will also notice the same slower milonga rhythm.  Nothing is new under the sun.  Here we have the old African roots, now (or still) being danced like condombe/tango and with the same rhythm. Interesting. ¿No?





For those who see this as a mix of sensual Latin and tango dances combined, do not forget where kizomba  comes from:   Africa.  The heart of our tango, and the Afro-Argintine music that forces you to get up and dance.

Finally, ask yourself why you feel impelled to dance when tango plays?  Is that the European influence or the African that does that?  I really cannot answer that question for you, but for me, it is NOT the European influence.

PS:
My next blog will be on the great dancing and people I have met in Germany.  Thanks for sticking with me.

When a Tanguero Falls in Love

The Harbor

When I discovered the harbor ofyour heart,

It was after a long voyage fromacross the ocean,

I did not know I was even gettingclose to discovering you

Until I first spotted gulls thatguided me

To the continent of yourcharacter.

I saw your smile, a waterfall onyour coastline,

And the sound of its soothingpower

Was the first time I heard yourvoice.

On I sailed and I saw the curvesof your mountains,

The flowing rivers of your longhair.

Suddenly a breath-robbing viewovertook me –

Your harbor, your heart.

I felt immediately safe there.

I could see your harbor had nohidden shoals,

No murky waters and unknowndangers.

Your harbor is clear.

I can see to the bottom.

I am hypnotized by theplayfulness

Of the dolphins that play inthe waters of your soul.

I see that they are youryouthful spontaneity.

Your harbor lulls me with waves of hope.

Your harbor is my place of refuge,

A weary vagabond sailor on aship,
Once a captain, but now alone, afloat,

With tattered sails and no crew.


When I discovered the harbor ofyou heart,

I watched in wonder, and thenimpulsively,

I dove into the waters of yoursoul,

And played with the dolphins.

I was not a Cortez who came toconquer a continent.

Your continent, waterfalls,terrain, rivers, clear waters –

And especially your harbor –conquered me.

Returning from War in my Tango Uniform

The following story is fiction with a high percentage of truth.  Find what seems to be true to you. This is a story about finding liberation from jealousy and possessiveness.  (I originally wrote this in 2009 while living near Ft. Hood, Texas).

It wasn't the prettiest tree,
but we guarded it well

The hardest thing for me to be deployed was not getting shot at. Having near-miss IED explosions that dazed me were horrifying too, but the hardest thing was to be away from my fiancé. I wanted to believe that she was being faithful, but there were so many stories of women cheating on their men. “Teresa was different,” I would tell myself. “She has true class and culture. She wouldn't do that.” But over and over we would hear about affairs that were being firmly denied, and the facts came in that were undeniable. Although it was against regulations, we even had access at S-2 to use satellites to go look at our homes. I had heard stories of guys who could see the pickup trucks parked out in front of our homes, and later the denials over the phone. Soldiers went home for two weeks of home leave, and they had their stories too. Infidelity was our obsession.

Although it was against regulations, Specialist Gaffney in the S-2 shop went and took real-time photos of everyone's home near Fort Hood.  He was in our platoon, and decided to do us all a favor.  One evening he handed out "pictures of home" to everyone in the platoon.  I told him that he could be busted to private for that.  "The intelligence satellites are to keep us alive from deadly threats, not to see who is sitting on your porch at home, Specialist!"  But then, I couldn't help but look at the photo.  Teresa's car was there.  No pickup truck in sight.  I didn't bust Gaffney to private, but he had extra duty and a counseling statement.  If the captain had known about it, he would have had an Article 15 and lost rank for sure.  I was easy on him because he just was being stupid and wanted to help everyone in his own 19-year old way.  

The winter sun on Teresa's car near Fort Hood made
 it look like a pickup truck at first glance. 

Since learning tango with Teresa, my fiancé, I noticed the word "tango" being said all the time in Iraq.  In the military if you are spelling something out on the radio or even in person, you don't say "t" but "tango."  Also, everyday I would hear someone saying “Tango Uniform” for this or that, meaning "broken."  For example, over the radio, we would hear that a vehicle had broken down and was irreparable: “Call out the wrecker, it’s Tango Uniform.” In reality “Tango Uniform” means "T.U." for “tits up” (that is, flat on your back).  Radios, vehicles, even relationships were "Tango Uniform" -- ruined by infidelity or some other thing.  The first sergeant even said at chow, “My marriage is Tango Uniform."   I would have thought that the young marriages would be the most fragile, but officers and senior enlisted soldiers had the highest statistics for relationship casualties.  The rear detachment commander had checked the First Sergeant's fears of fidelity.  At chow Top lowered his head and told me, "Yeah, she's cheating on me.  My kids even know the guy, and he’s sleeping in my bed.” He told me that he didn't want to go back because he was afraid he’d kill them both, leaving his children without parents – one dead and one in prison.  I felt sorry for Top because he would never confide in the chaplain or -- God forbid -- go to the behavioral health tent.  He'd just suffer on his own, and maybe he'd join the other soldiers on the growing list of soldiers at Fort Hood who had consummated their deep pain with a murder/suicide.  I didn't let my mind wonder about this.  I couldn't report the top NCO for pondering murdering his wife, but if it happened, I knew that I would never be able to get that out of my mind.


Instead, I preferred to think about good reunions.  I preferred to imagine having Teresa in my arms again.  Before I left for Iraq, Teresa and I had taken some dance classes and we loved it. First we loved salsa the most. But then we discovered Argentine tango.  We were getting pretty good at it before I left.  To keep me up on my tango, Teresa has been sending me videos of “tangueros” dancing, and I even practiced by myself whenever I had a moment by myself. I loved to watch, but again, the atmosphere of distrust made it very hard for me not to feel jealous and wonder if some sultry tanguero was slipping off with her after a dance. I wondered if she were happily “Tango Uniform” with him in bed and that our engagement also might be sadly "Tango Uniform."


Next to my cot, I always had a stack of her letters that always started, “Dearest Tanguero Adorable…”  She often wrote about being true to me.  She affirmed her maturity, her own self-worth and of course, our love. I hated that I still had my doubts. But I did.  The negative thoughts would come to me and whisper, “A lot of women were saying this, and they were off doing the wild thing.”  But one thing she said really made me believe her. She told me over a crackling long distance conversation, “Sweetheart, you know, if a lot of these women had a way of getting their need for touch met, then they might find it easier to be faithful. Tango allows people to get an important need met—the need to be touched. And if they had any sense of culture and self-discipline they would feel no need to go beyond that.” That sounded genuine. I also was able to dance a few times and feel what Teresa was talking about. There was dancing at a large FOB not far from our sector in Baghdad, and they had salsa dancing there. I found myself feeling so much better after that dance, and even more committed to Teresa.  The magic of music, dance and human touch fulfilled me.  I didn't have to go beyond that.

This is where the driver should
maneuver with "back ochos."

Close to the end of our deployment after I came back from a mission with my platoon, the commander was standing there, and I thought there was bad news. We all fear last minute tragedies in theater or back at home at the last minute before returning.  It seems like shit happens all the time at the very last minute of a deployment.  We were supposed to come home on the 10th of January, and we didn’t have much time left in country. As I had suspected, the commander had bad news.  “The XO's team just missed running over an an IED, and he’s being MEDEVAC’d to the hospital in Baghdad.  He’s doing okay -- nothing really serious, but that means that you’re going back early as the rear-Detachment commander instead of the XO,” he told me. That meant that I’d lead the forward party to help prepare for the return of soldiers back home at Fort Hood. 


My emotions were properly dampened as the commander told me.  First of all, the XO and I were close friends.  We were in the officers' basic course together; so this was terrible news, but at the same time I knew that I would be home for Christmas.  It is probably impossible for most people to understand that this actually 99% bad news that I would be home for Christmas.  I felt like a traitor to my platoon, getting to go back early. I felt humiliated telling the soldiers under me, and all the while I was so happy to be leaving that hell hole and see Teresa. I was totally conflicted in my feelings.  But if I had been given the chance I would have stayed.  Like it or not, I was going back in time for Christmas.  I also decided that I would not tell my family or even Teresa.  I felt sort of ashamed that I was coming back. I was also dreading my return to my fear of what I might find remaining of my hope of marrying Teresa.


What would I find? Intellectually, I knew that everything would be okay, but I had these great fears in my gut too -- fears that seemed deeper in my gut than the the dangers of going "outside the wire" on a mission.


When I arrived I had to go through lots of briefings and medical screens like everyone else would have to do in January. But on Christmas Eve, I would be free. I knew where Teresa would be from our conversations -- at a Christmas Eve tango party. So I put on my dress blue uniform – the only thing I had at my locker at work. I drove down to the University of Texas in Austin.  The UT Ball Room was down I-35, sixty-something miles from Fort Hood, where the milonga was being held. I put on an overcoat so as not to cause a scene when people saw me in uniform at the dance. 


It took a while for me to spot Teresa. She was dancing with a handsome man, and I felt my face turning red. I stood in the back, and no one seemed to even notice me. I realized that I was spying on her like Specialist Gaffney's eagle-eye from through the stratosphere.  I knew it was wrong for spying, and I deserved extra duty like I had given Gaffney.  Also, I felt this mad jealousy well up in me because they were chest to chest, and he danced so well. She looked so satisfied in his arms. I had a feeling of great sadness at first: Like a little boy who was watching his best friend run off with someone else. Then I fought back the rage and jealousy. I tried to stay in the shadows of a far corner but I was sure that my red hot face would surely alert everyone that I was there.  Certainly someone would ask, "What's burning!"  The striped sides of my dress blue uniform pants surely would give me away if I tried to escape now as the tanda ended.
  
As people were leaving the dance floor, I spotted Teresa coming my way. My stomach twisted and my hands were sweaty. 

An older gentleman stopped her with a nod of his head. Another song started and they danced. She had not recognized me. The man was old enough to be her father. Wow, he was good. He made the younger man look like a klutz. Although they danced simply, people stopped to watch them.  Teresa and he looked as if the music controlled them, forcing them to dance so wonderfully. Teresa looked like she were in some sort of tango Nirvana, and I realized that it was the music, the touch, the moment that was filling her soul. I felt this … this … huge well-spring of emotion, of love, of trust.  She wasn't in heaven because of that old man but because of the power of the embrace, the music and joy of movement, just as she had said before.


As if I did not even choose to, I felt my overcoat fall to the floor around my feet. People were leaving the dance floor, and someone said, “Teresa! My God, he’s back!” 


Teresa's tanguera friend was pointing with one hand and the other was over her mouth, realizing how loud she had said it. The room went dead silent. Everyone started clapping, and Teresa came running to me, with a crowd behind her. She melted into my arms. She was crying. Others stood by and gave me hugs like I was their long lost friend. “Thank God you’re back. Teresa has told us so much about you; it’s as if we have known you forever,” an older woman told me, holding onto my hand like my mother would.

This is the tango community: A bunch of people who touch each other as if this were what human beings do best. 

The music started again, and she led me out onto the floor.  I felt so self-conscious at first.  It was like a wedding dance and we were the only ones on the dance floor.

I just tried to do what I had seen the older man doing, listening to the music and letting the music move my feet. I danced simply, but it felt like I was on a level that I had never had experienced. It was the embrace, Teresa melting into my soul.




My engagement and my love for her were all saved from my worries of catastrophe and hurt at that moment. 


Now when there is a military event, Teresa does no longer calls my uniform my "Dress Blues"; she calls them my "Tango Uniform" because of our reunion dance in Austin.   


I am reluctant to tell her what "Tango Uniform" really means.

Post Script:
This story is of course fiction, but so true about soldiers, love, trust and what tango has to offer the world.


Photo credits:
Link to IED explosion is here.
Older gentleman photo:  Visit  http://practimilonguero.wordpress.com/page/4/
The photo of Salado, TX was from Google Earth.
All photos with the "tango uniform":  Izabella Tabarovsky, Washington DC


Photo models:
Dina Dalipagic and some unknown tanguero in uniform.

Note:  The "Tango Therapist" now resides in Germany.  He is father of two sons who live in Germany.  Besides being a lover of Argenitine tango and a tango blog writer, he is a therapist for post traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and family problems (now in Germany) and is a lieutenant colonel in the US Army Reserves, Medical Service Corps.

Tango: Balm or Addiction?

I am Addicted to Air,Water and Tango


I am addicted to air.
I try not to breathe but I just cannot seem to stop.
I am addicted to tango.
She and I synchronize our breathing.
We find a breath that defines the music as us.
This breathing addiction consumes me.

I am addicted to water.
I can go for about a day, but I give up.
I am addicted to tango.
The fluidity of movement washes over my soul.
I feel like I am truly alive and this fluidity purifies me.
My addiction to fluidity of motion consumes me.

I am addicted to food.
I can go without food during a fast, but I become weak.
I am addicted to tango.
The community of tangueros and tangueras nourishes me.
I realize how much I am hungry for connection.
My tango-fast cannot last.  I am am addicted.

I am addicted to shelter.
I try to be out in the open and rely just on myself,
But I become cold and wet or too hot, and give up my quest.
I am addicted to tango.
The world pelts me with cold rain or I wilt under its stress.
I try to be just myself, but I find myself once again seeking shelter
In her embrace.  I admit it -- pure addiction.

The embrace is my air -- call it an obsession if you wish.
The musical fluidity of movement is my water, truly my weakness.
The community of dancers my nourishment -- my addiction, I guess.
Tango's gestalt is my fortress, in the great hall we dance.
I am addicted, you might say...

But I say I am surviving life -- if joy be "survival."
Join me in my "addiction."
Come get your fix.





Photo credit:  http://www.allbestwallpapers.com/waterfall_wallpapers.html

The Healing Embrace

Tango can be just a dance.  It can be much more.

West End Library Practica

When I am present, I feel a transfer of information.  More than just a transfer, I feel an understanding, an empathy.  But it's only when I am present. Listening.

I have experienced this myself, but it has been validated in movement therapy (tango therapy).  When I was working with a combat veteran and his wife, using the therapy protocol I am developing.  We worked on two psychological traumas.  One was with his father's abuse and the other nearly dying in combat.  In the first case, she felt the hatred leave his body.  "His body vibrated, and I knew that he had forgiven him," she said.  Immediately he felt sorry for his father who never got to know three grandchildren and his amazing wife.  In the combat trauma resolution, he felt that his wife fully understood his experience.  That is what many vets NEVER feel -- they do not feel anyone could understand them, especially their partners.

I feel this transfer of information only when I am listening for it.  It makes sense, right?  If someone is talking to you, and you are not listening, what do you hear?  Even if you half-way hear what they are saying, there will be misunderstandings.  So try listening.  I find it easy to forget to listen.  So I practice!  Non-auditory communication is an art, whether it is in "listening" for visual body communication or "listening" through the embrace.

Let me give you an important personal example:  A while ago when I got a new job, I organized a farewell luncheon at a salsa lounge, which provided a fajita buffet for us.  A semi-professional dance friend of mine came and taught my colleagues how to salsa, and we demonstrated a tango, a vals and a milonga.  After eating, I danced with many colleagues, but when nearly everyone was gone, I got a chance to dance with a person at work whom I did not trust -- a chance to dance with the enemy.  My work colleague was once a dance instructor.  We had endured a long difficult relationship, but after everyone had left and I was about to get in my car to leave on a 3-day drive to my new job, she suggested we dance a salsa.  I suggested a tango.  We danced well, although she had never danced tango.

The dance was very healing for me -- I think for both of us.  Dancing with her had a lasting effect on me because much was forgiven through our embrace.  It was as if I knew how she felt.  Immediately I felt an enemy had been destroyed through mutual compassion.

I cannot speak for her, but for me a lot of animosity melted at that moment.

Some say that tango is only a dance.  It can be much more.


Photo credit:  Eddie Arrossi, photographer and tanguero, Washington, DC

For friends in DC, here is Eddie's link to that event -- the anniversary practica celebration:  www.eaphoto.com/works/2011/library

In favor of bad technique

Ladies, you will need technique classes to wear these.
But why would you?

How important is technique?  As Dieter, a tango teacher in Germany once said, "In Tango, Technik ist alles. Alles!"  We would never say technique is everything for art or for making love, and so such a statement does not work in tango either.  The technique-is-everything notion is doubly erroneous for tango.  Isn't tango a combination of art and making love?

Maybe the question about technique's importance should not be how but rather why:
So why is technique important?  Technique as expressed in ballet and stage tango is for the wrong reasons and is a dead end.  Technique, I believe, is a way to enjoy our art throughout our lives.  Sure, without technique, a dancer or any artist becomes limited in their own expression, but if given a choice, I am in favor of bad technique over a lack of artistic expression or passion for the divine spark within one's partner.

Before the technique nuts hunt me down, torture me with high-flying boleos and gancho me to death, hear my story:

As a musician I was a technique nut.  My teacher was a technique nut.  Ron Falter was a clinician for Ludwig Drum company, and he would go all over the country giving drum clinics on technique.  So I was his disciple -- probably his most devoted disciple.  We were like Gnostic musicians, he and I.  The only portal into the Truth of Music was through technique.

The end of Gnostic-Musicianship
As a young teen, I was always hanging out on the university campus where I took music lessons.  One day, I walked into the University band room, and a cohort musician, Brian, was there playing very well with the varsity University Jazz Band.  I realized something at that moment.  His teacher was a learn-by-doing teacher.  Technique was secondary to playing a lot.  This was the moment of my musical enlightenment, my epiphany.  I was no longer a technique Gnostic.   I slowly broke away from my teacher.  I played with a lot of musicians.  That is where I really learned to be a musician and not a technician.

I moved to San Francisco, and joined the Eddie Money Band.  Everyone in Eddie's band took lessons.  It was the assumption.  At the time, I thought I had graduated from music lessons; so this was an important moment in the art school of life -- always have a coach.  Eddie's outgoing drummer recommended Chuck Brown, who was the most renowned teacher in the Bay Area.  But Chuck Brown seemed to be more of a technique freak than my first music guru.  However, since Chuck was sought out by famous drummers, I was resigned to believe technique-Gnosticism was a fact of life. 

However, unlike all the other students I knew, Chuck Brown did not have me focusing on technique so long.  I am not sure why.  His technique was remarkably different than Ron Falter's.  I was not eclectic.  I fully learned to devote myself to play with Chuck's powerful method.  But soon we went on to other things in fusion and jazz music.  Along the way, however I learned something about technique that I had never realized:  It is not to play faster or be more awesome; technique is to help with endurance and avoid injury.   I remembered that the drummer who had recommended Chuck Brown to me had told me said that he would have had to give up playing had he not learned Chuck's technique.  This was the essential lesson on technique!

Technique was indeed essential, but why!?  What I learned about music from him transformed the way I played.  I believe that Chuck Brown's influence may have made me the close embrace tanguero that I am.  Before Chuck Brown, I had double basses, flipped my sticks high into the air.  I had seven tom-toms and 6 cymbals.  I was a show drummer from a show-drummer gambling casino town.  After my lessons with him, I most often was playing on a small drum set -- both in size and the number of drums.  Through technique, I had a large sound but on small drums.  My transformation was towards music and less towards show, and I no longer had back pain.  I played powerfully, without pain and with endurance.

I still have the show-drummer in me.  And I sometimes feel like a racehorse inside of the milonguero outward covering.  But being "tasty" and going small takes discipline and a reverence for the music.  From Chuck, I learned that no note (or step) should be taken without it being essential.  Count Basie would say, "It is not what you play, man; it's what you don't play."

To a ballerina who has become a great tango dancer, she would define technique and "bad" technique differently than someone with no ballet background.  She gets her accolades from the moves most unlike tango and most like ballet and gymnastics.  But remember that as gymnast or a ballerina she must retire early because she will be broken by her technique for show.  The toe shoes must come off.  To me, tango is about life-long artistry and social connection, not about being awesome while you are young and able.

I learned that technique life long artistry until we die from Chuck Brown.  But even if technique helps us to preserve ourselves, that is not everything either!  Art and passion and making love always come first to the milonguero.

Sure, I have the highest value for technique.  But I am fully aware that "Technik ist nicht alles.  Nicht Alles!"



Photo credit for ballet tango stilletos -- yes ladies these shoes are for sale.  Buy them here but wear them only at home or over at his place. NEVER walk in them, okay?  ;-)

Wanted: Tango Percussionists

One example of using one's feet for percussion.

The word tango, like he word milonga, can mean several things.   Tango once meant a drum or a place where blacks would meet and dance to the drum beat.  Tango is still that.  But where are the percussionists now?  Every instrument in tango is used as a percussion instrument.  Name one that is not!

Okay, give up?  Every instrument is used at times in a tango orchestra to slap out a rhythm.  The string section tends to use the handle or back of their bow to do it.  Everyone else uses their hands except the pianist to tap on their instruments.  The piano itself is, of course, a percussion instrument because the strings are struck with hammers.  That accounts for all the percussionists, right?  No!

There are some percussionists who are often not recognized in the orchestra:

You are that percussionist in the tango orchestra!  A dancer is a percussionist, and the floor and partner is his or her instrument.  I do not mean this in a poetic way.  This is literally true.  Anyone striking any object to create or play along with music is a percussionist.

I invite you to stop dancing and join the tango orchestra as a musician!

A good place to start is to stop taking classes on musicality -- well, not quite.  How about at least thinking about these classes as musicianship classes?   Musicality classes are for people who are trying to understand music as outsiders.  How about being a musician?  Be an insider -- a musician, not a dancer hoping to understand music from the outside!

Musicianship is not for advanced dancers.  It is for everyone, because in reality you and I are not "just" dancers if we are tangueros/-as.  I think it is too easy to be a sloppy musician if we do not really join the band.  Don't leave it up to the pianist or bandoneónista to be musical!  It's your job too!  That is, it's your job to be musical if you have dedicated yourself to join the orchestra as a tango percussionist.  Maybe it is not a conscious thing, but I think the best social dancers are percussionists.

As a jazz drummer, I played many different objects with both feet and hands (see the photo above).  As a tanguero, I use only my feet and legs.  I sweep (barridas), make grace notes (toe taps), and establish clear rhythms in synchronization to the music.  Besides the floor, there is my tanguera.  She bushes me, taps the side of my foot, scadas me, ganchos me.  We are the cello and violin playing each other.  As instruments of music, I am hers and she in mine as living, breathing instruments.

When I embrace another tango percussionist on the dance floor (a tanguera), I hope our goal will be to join the orchestra as musicians and not as dancers.  Anyone can get up and move, but can we embody the music as musicians?  I imagine that she and I have joined the orchestra as percussionists in the orquesta que no es típica.  The floor is our percussion instrument.  We do not dance to the music, we play in the orchestra.  

Won't you join the orchestra?  When we all join the orchestra, we become the community tango orchestra.  All the milonga spirits -- African diaspora slave musicians, European immigrant tango musicians and composers -- will be smiling.  If you have joined the orchestra, then you have come home to what tango started as.  Tango is a drum.  Be a tango percussionist and join the orchestra.


Photo credit:
http://www.drummagazine.com/lessons/post/foot-pedal-fanatic/

Next blog:  As tango percussionists, we will explore why "percussion" technique has nothing to do with how good you look or how awesome you play.

Also planned:  Legato percussion -- tango percussion plays with and stretches time one moment and establishes the beat at another. This is what I call "time keeping" vs "lyrical percussion." It is important to know when to make these transitions within a song. And it is easy. It is not just the woman's job to be lyrical or the man's job to be the time keeper.

A-Theist Tanda

What is more powerful than an embrace?
 Words?

“People usually consider walking on water or in thin air a miracle. But I think the real miracle is not to walk either on water or in thin air, but to walk on earth. Every day we are engaged in a miracle which we don't even recognize: a blue sky, white clouds, green leaves, the black, curious eyes of a child -- our own two eyes. All is a miracle.” ― Thich Nhat Hanh



The vals played.  I always wonder what makes the vals feel so divine.  She snuggled up.  A familiar embrace.  I felt a difference.  We danced.  The first song ended.  I usually do not talk much between songs, but I asked, "Something is on your mind," I can feel it in your body.

"My good friend died in a car wreck."

"Oh no!  I am so sorry to hear that."

"And we were in an argument before she died. . . . I feel terrible . . . .  and I wish I could have told her that I loved her before she died.  I keep having nightmares about her."  She paused and then began to cry.

"Did you know her family?" I asked. 

"Yes, very well.  We lived near each other.  They are like second parents to me."

We danced again.  I held her now in a different way.  I danced in the simplest way I knew possible and embodied the music.  She cried in my arms.

The vals stopped.

"How well do you know her character?"

"She was like a sister."

"Then you know what her character would say to you now, is that right?"

"She would say that she loves me, and to go on with my life."

"Can you do that?"

"I don't know."

We danced again.  I held her again, leaving room for her friend's character to speak with her.  Her balance was sometimes a bit off, although that never happens with her.  I knew she was having a conversation.  The music stopped.

"Can you do what you know she is asking you to do -- to love her and go on with your life?"

"Yes."

"I suggest you pray for her parents.  It's harder for them than for you, I think."

"I know it is hard for them.  But you know I am an atheist."

"Of course I know that.  But that is the best prayer.  If you ask that God to be with her parents, God will hear your pray perhaps more than anyone who is a believer."

"How's that?"

"Because I have an idea that God tires of having so many friends who want his riches and eternal life.  God might feel like the rich kid on the block.  Everyone loves him because they want something from him.   If you don't want these things, I think your prayer goes on top of the pile to be answered.  Your friend would like this too."

"Yes, she would."

We danced.

This time I held her and a certain energy went between us.  I cannot explain it.  But I have an idea that her prayer had a lot of power that night.  No adoration. No riches.  No request for eternal life as a special favor for believing in God's holy Awesomeness.  Just "be with her parents, God, will you?"

And I said the atheist prayer too:  "No special bargains, God.  Be with these bereaved parents!  Be with my friend!  And if you won't be, I will be with them in my heart . . . because this is the way you made me and put room in my heart."


Cortina.




Afterword:  Events and details are changed to protect the identity of this person and her grief.  I cannot tell you if the parents felt God's presence, but the nightmares stopped.

The miracle is the embrace, the music, and the walk that embodies the music.  If these do not lead to peace and the miracle of life, I am not dancing tango.  Thich Naht Hanh said it so well.  Tangueros and tangueras know of the miracle and joy of life better than many.

This story appears today on Veterans' Day for a special reason.  The person who died was a young veteran.  The risk of death and serious injury of veterans is 10 times the risk than in a combat zone during the first six months after they return.  The price of war is far greater than what the general public knows.  And if we did know, I believe we would all be fierce Warriors for Peace.

Happy Veterans' Day.


Photo credit link.

Do not walk away! (poem)

Do not walk away from her.
Turn back! Ask her to dance!

You promised her you'd find her.
Yes, it took so long -- a whole life.

But if you hold her, she won't need her cane,
And you will drop yours.

The bandoneón will play
And restore the lost years.

Do not walk away.
Turn back! Ask her to dance!