Simba tango

by  hdeb89

I was dancing a nice tanda with a friend of a friend, and while it was not exactly my favorite music, we were doing fine. We were having a good time. There were lots of people dancing, nobody got hurt, and we were dancing peacefully among the other couples. So far so good…

I appreciated the festival organizers’ effort to give some extra credit to the djs. I belive they wanted to send a message. But as much as I love that the art of djing is seen as more important than it used to on the northern hemisphere, there is a flip side to it.  They had hired one of the most famous djs in Europe at the time, probably the most famous. He should know what he was doing.

Then it happened. I sensed something was wrong. This was several years back, so I didn’t instantly recognize it, but there was something strange with the music. It didn’t inspire. It didn’t fit in.

It wasn’t tango.

The dj was being clever. He had played a tango which has some kind of train imitating sounds, much like you find in some blues tunes. Funny. Why not match it with another song with similar sound?

Because it is a foxtrot, maybe?

Hello!? We are dancing tango, and you throw in a foxtrot? W.. T.. F..?

After dutifully finishing the tanda, I went for the exit. Completely threw me off the flow. On the way out, I saw the dj waving to the crowd, the crowd returned the gesture, doing the wave in return. I shivered, and went alone out in the rain, leaving my last festival behind.

El “Turco” José — as he is commonly known — was born in Buenos Aires, in the neighborhood of Saavedra, July 17 1931. He was a dedicated bicycle rider when he was a kid, until his mother (who was a tango singer) suggested that he learn to dance “to get to know some girls”. At the age of 16, he started to practice with his friends from his neighborhood in the house of one of them, where they had a gramophone player.

They had only one shellac disc with two Pugliese recordings: “La Yumba” on one side, and the milonga “Andá que te cure Lola” on the other. They were practicing what they remembered from the dance from the movies or what they had seen at the neighborhood dances. When he knew a little, he started to go to the dances and carnivals in the club “Ausonia Montañeses” in Colegiales.

El Turco worked with wicker, making fine objects like purses. As he wished to learn more dancing, a friend from his work, who already danced, recommended him to go to the practices where people usually learned to dance. Thus, for some time he went with his uncle in the neighborhood of Martelli to the practices in the clubs, among them the “Huracán” (The hurricane).

The practices were held in the basket courts and they were full of men learning to follow, how to lead, the salida (basic step) and lots of others figures of tango. Later, he returned to the neighborhood of Urquiza, and since he liked that elegant style especially, he studied how “Milonguita” danced in particular, and adapted to his way of dancing.

José’s style can be described as a tango of the floor, with a great variety of original figures and a smooth and elegant way of moving with energy and precision, the figures always in harmony with the music. Presently he is dedicated to teaching private lessons and group lessons all over the country as well as abroad.

Humbly translated by yours truly. This is the original text as posted on  the now defunct website of the Academia de Estilos de Tango Argentino (ACETA):

El “Turco” José — como habitualmente se lo conoce — nació en Buenos Aires, en el barrio de Saavedra, el 17 de julio de 1931. De dedicó desde chico al ciclismo hasta que su madre (que cantaba tangos) le sugiró que aprendiese a bailar “para relacionarse con las chicas”. A los 16 años, junto a los amigos del barrio, empezaron a practicar en la casa de uno de ellos que tenía fonola.

Tenían un solo disco de pasta que conenía dos grabaciones de Pugliese: “La Yumba” de un lado y la milonga “Andá que te cure Lola” del otro. Practicaban según lo que recordaban del baile de alguna película o lo que veían en los bailes de barrio. Ya sabiendo un poco, empezó a frecuentar bailes en los carnavales del club “Ausonia Montañeses” en el barrio de Colegiales.

El Turco trabajó haciendo bomboneras de mimbre y más adelante armando carteras y otros objetos finos en mimbre. Como tenía intención de aprender a bailar más, un amigo de ese trabajo (que ya bailaba) le recomendó ir a las prácticas que en ese entonces se solían hacer. Así que durante algun tiempo frecuentó junto a su tío en Villa Martelli las prácticas que se realizaban en los clubes, entre ellos “Huracán”.

José cuenta que se hacían en las canchas de básket y que estaban repletas de varones aprendiendo a ser llevados, cómo llevar, la marca, la salida, y tantas otras figuras del tango. Más adelante volvió al barrio de Urquiza y gustándole sobre todo ese estilo elegante, estudió en particular el modo de bailar de “Milonguita”, adaptándalo a su manera.

Su estilo puede definirse como un tango al piso, con una gran variedad de figuras originales y un modo de moverse suave y elegante con energía y precisión, armonizando las figuras con la música. Actualmente se dedica a enseñar en clases particulares y a grupos tanto en el país como en el exterior.

Thanks to Janis for saving and sharing it. As always, I appreciate any contribution to improve the translation. Especially the part about the wicker bombonera (it only rings a bell as the CABJ stadium to me) and the llevados/llevar/marca part.

The fourth seminar with José is March 14, so if you are in Bs As at that time, you know what to do…

Tango music was recorded with equipment much inferior to what is available today. Adding to that, the record companies threw away the master’s leaving us with reproductions based on the shellac records that further deteriate the sound.

For many of the commercial releases of tango music, the Reliquias series, the 78RPM series etc, the transfers have been cleaned and the noises removed for the music to become more clear and easy to listen to. And believe me, if you haven’t listened to a shellac record from the 1920s, you probably have no idea how much noise and hiss there can be on those.

The problem is, in some cases the audio engineer cleaning the sound gets too excited about his capabilities and applies too much filtering, effectively throwing out some of the music along with the noises he is trying to remove. Because once the signal (the music) is mixed with the noise, there is no way to reliably separate the two completely again.

The industry state of the art has been the Cedar noise removal systems, which are very expensive, professional equipment. Enter the revolution of digital sound and digital signal processing (DSP).  Now the same tasks can be performed with much cheaper equipment, often with better results. Adobe Audition is an example of a product that gives you a lot of possibilities in this area, much cheaper, but still rather pricey for an amateur that wants to clean up some old tango recordings.

You see, the great thing about the CTA series of Mr. Akihito Baba is that they are close to raw transfers from the shellac records.

P & M: You can clean some noises during the process of recording CDs these days.

Baba: Yes , but on the other hand I don’t want to cut the noise when I reproduce SPs. I like to reproduce SPs without cutting down hig waves to reduce the noises. You can use an equaliser to cut the noises down well, but I decided not to do so. There are others who make clean sound reproductions in Japan. But there are good SP´s not containing any so-called noises, so you don’t have to cut any noises. When you cut the noises, quite often it loses the other sounds as well at the same time. That’s a shame as well.

From interview with Mr. Akihito Baba

The great thing about that is that you can take the old records of Mr. Baba and apply today’s computer tools that use sophisticated algorithms to clean up the sound, often with very impressive results. I wanted to check the capabilities of the free software tools Audacity and Gnome Wave Cleaner. While researching them, I saw references in various forums to a shareware software called Click Repair. It can be tried for free for 21 days, and the results are quite encouraging, even with the default settings, both for Click Repair, and DeNoise by the same author. That they produce good results with little manual intervention is important, as manual audio restoration is a very time consuming process.

I prefer a little noise to over processed sound, but I also prefer no noise to the noise of the old 78 rpms. In the continuum between these extremes, I think the sweet spot for me is more like 80%-90% clean, limiting the probability of audible distortion to the signal of interest, i.e. the music. And I have hope it can be achieved by batch processing the cta discs and others.

The thing I like almost more than the impressive results, is that the software lends itself to automation. There are some adjustments that would ideally be made for each track, and I will make those for each cd instead, and reprocess single files if they turn out problematic. From my experiments so far, the noise profiles of records seem fairly similar, and the amount of noise more or less the same on records from the same years.

To check that you are not removing any important information, you can easily switch between three listening modes, the input signal (unprocessed music), the output signal (the processed music) and the difference (the noise that is removed). By checking the noise, you can be fairly sure you’re not removing any actual musical content by applying too aggressive processing.

It is possible to get better results by doing it manually, but I have no time for  redrawing waveforms manually on hundreds or thousands of tracks. Well, not until when I retire

Here are a few samples:

This first one is a nice orchestra with recordings from the 1940s with clicks and pops that were annoying me. The software doesn’t output the noise, but I made a simulation (taking the difference between the original and the processed) to give you an idea of how it sounds:

Manuel Buzon – Al verla pasar – original

Manuel Buzon – Al verla pasar – processed

Manuel Buzon – Al verla pasar – noise

Then some material from the 1920s:

Juan Maglio(Pacho) – Alma tanguera – original

Juan Maglio(Pacho) – Alma tanguera – processed

And a nice D’Arienzo from the 1930s:

Juan D’Arienzo – La bruja – original

Juan D’Arienzo – La bruja – processed

All these are (to my knowledge) unavailable in pre cleaned versions, so a little restoration will be worthwhile. The next question is: Can the results be even better than some of the commercially processed releases? We’ll get back to that in an upcoming post.

Some readers reported difficulties with playing the mp3 files from the web player, you can download all the samples in one zip file .

by  themanwithsalthair

–You have to realize, Simba, that there are great non-Argentine teachers, too! This argument came up in a heated debate, and while I agree in principle, the teachers she had in mind were mediocre at best, so it didn’t really change my opinion much. In an online debate along similar lines, I once noticed an attempt to ridicule the ones pointing out the Argentines’ comparative advantage in tango by comparing them to people holding the view that the ‘negroes had it in their blood’ (when talking about rhythm, obviously).

Easy to agree in principle, but is it supported by evidence? Anyone who has seen African dance performed by Africans alongside their Northern European caucasian imitators would be tempted to conclude otherwise. As in the case with the Argentines and tango, mind you.

Don’t get me wrong, I am not saying they actually have it in their blood, that it is something genetical. Still, there is a difference, and it shouldn’t come as a surprise that I think it is cultural. Getting cultural impulses since birth makes quite a difference. It is  tango by osmosis. Hearing the music, knowing the places, the language, the way they walk… It goes on and on. Seeing dancers in the milongas that actually know what they are doing, and being able to take lessons with great teachers regularly over time.

While in the U.S. I once witnessed a mother of African heritage and her son just a few years old. The son suddenly burst out into a spontaneous dance. The mother cheered with joy: –Yeah baby, do your dance!

So if not in their blood, possibly in their mother’s milk?

Which led me to think: Then, when will we see someone that grew up with tango fanatics outside of Argentina? Admittedly, it would still not be quite the same as growing up in Argentina, but growing up with tango parents would reduce the gap considerably, being exposed to music and dance from an early age.

The resurgence of tango started in the early eighties, and they would have needed some time to learn tango confidently themselves, so say babies born in the late eighties or early nineties… should be around twenty by now. It wouldn’t surprise me if a hot shot couple from the old world entered the scene soon.

by  mag3737

There seems to be a common misunderstanding that you are not supposed to use your arms when dancing tango.

That is wrong on so many levels. I can see where it comes from, as it is a common mistake among beginners to do try leading with their hands, and not using the rest of their bodies. But one thing is to make point to beginners and quite another to elevate it to a universal truth. Yes, it is possible to lead and follow without using your arms and hands. So what? It is possible to lead and follow with no physical contact, too. It just isn’t what I would think of as tango.

Remember the homenaje a los milongueros? “The milongueros are soft and precise in their lead, using their entire body to lead” Last time I checked, both arms and hands were part of the body, at least it is still true for me.

Also, you know what the spanish word for embrace is? Abrazo.  Ever thought about what brazo means? ( It means arm.)

When we watched the milongueros dancing years ago, we could perceive the mystery behind what they did, no matter if it was easy or difficult. Therefore, technique has to be understood first, then it can be copied, but the goal is to get to its essence. If you use the word “technique” less in class, and instead use words like “essence” and “sensation”, students can perform the movement with a more natural attitude and will learn faster than if you speak about numbers, diagonals or muscles.

Javier Rodríguez

Good advice from the maestros. They also talk about the decline of the European tango scene and our fear of the embrace. Read the entire interview at El tangauta (#184 Feb 2010).

This will not, of course, settle the agelong debate of whether to walk toe first or heel first in tango. Still, I found it interesting that there has recently been  published research on the efficiency of the human walk, specifically investigating walking heel first versus walking toe first.  If you are striving for the most efficient walk, their conclusion might be worth noting:

When human subjects walked with their heels slightly elevated in a ‘low-digitigrade’[toe first] posture, COT [cost of transport] increased by 53% above that of normal plantigrade [heel first] walking.

Cunningham, C. B., Schilling, N., Anders, C. andCarrier, D. R. (2010).
The influence of foot posture onthe cost of transport in humans.
J. Exp. Biol. 213, 790-797

The researchers were wondering why we are not walking and running toe first like many other animals and wanted to test the hypothesis that walking heel first is more efficient. They did experiments with different walks and runs on a treadmill where they could measure the oxygen consumption of their subjects at normal walking speed. They also did experiments with running subjects, where this difference does not exist.

In short, the reasons for the increased efficiency of walking heel first are (p. 796):

1. lower collisional losses of the body as a whole
2. increased recovery of kinetic and potential energy
3. lower ground reaction force moments specifically at the ankle joint.

Not very surprising, maybe, to anyone who has tried both ways, but now you’ve got the reference

Their paper says nothing about style, of course…

Illustration taken from the original paper.

I have only one great regret in tango, and that it not taking classes with Gavito. Of course there are others as well, but with Gavito we had the opportunity, we passed, and shame on us for it. Of course, at the time we simply didn’t know better.

Determined not to make same mistake again, we decided to take our teachers’ advice and try to get in touch with the legendary ‘El Turco’ José. Master of ‘Estilo Villa Urquiza’. I originally thought he did not teach anymore, but in fact Jorge Dispari was hosting a workshop with his old master just days before we arrived in Buenos Aires. Then another one days after we left. Que mala suerte!

We were not really planning on taking much lessons at all, but we couldn’t just let it go with that, so I got his number, called him up, and made an appointment with his lovely wife. And off we went.

You will often hear the term maestro of maestros in the tango world. But rarely does it apply as well as with José. In my case, you could say he’s the maestro del maestro del maestro..

Unfortunately, he can’t dance himself anymore, but that doesn’t stop him. When you see how he demonstrates with his feet, caressing the floor like no one else I’ve seen, you realize what an amazing dancer is in front of you. Simply a privilege to have the opportunity to learn from such an extraordinary man.

One of the first things he asked was: Which music do you like to dance to? No hesitation, straight to the core: the music. Whenever I hear the song Cascabelito, I think of José. It was on all three cds we used while practicing on his living room floor. Vargas. Di Sarli. Pugliese.

José is famous for his sublime subtlety, and would not stop until we got it exactly right. We demonstrated. –No. he would say. Again. –No. Until we finally got it. –You have to practice this a lot, he would say. –Make sure to take notes or film it.

José would sit in his chair, smiling, but with the sharp eyes cultivated to reveal the finer points of tango since he was young, learning to dance mainly by watching the more experienced dancers. We would talk about the tango before and now, and his passion for this dance would lighten his eyes, eager to bring the tango he loves on to new generations.

All the things he showed us were absolutely gorgeous. Yielding very nice sentiments as well as elegance and finesse. The first day we did corrections.–You want to learn the Villa Urquiza style? he asked. –Then you cannot do like that. It should be like this. Despacio.. (do it slowly). The last day we did nothing but walking exercises. It will take a lot of practice to internalize it all, but it will be well worth the extra effort. Dancing the tango of José is far from easy. Oh, do I hope there will be more opportunities to learn from this great master again.

This rare footage of José dancing was published by his daughter Laura on facebook. It is from the Sunday milonga upstairs at Sunderland, organized by the late Lampazo. Jorge Dispari was giving the introduction as well as djing there.

Jorge Dispari is hosting another class with José in Buenos Aires February 21st.

Now, this may be only remotely relevant to tango, but tango music and hence its reproduction is important for dancers and djs in particular, so here it goes. I think the lessons from this video are most relevant when it comes to making decisions about equipment such as sound cards for djing, lossless versus lossy encoding of music and quality of transfers and restorations.

If you hang out at hydrogenaudio, this will all be familiar, but I have to say actually performing an abx was a humbling experience with regards to what I can and can’t hear. I really lost all confidence in the audio equipment pushers when I returned a radio with a really annoying high frequency noise and the guys in the store found nothing wrong with it, then gave me another one with the exact same problem… And I don’t claim to have golden ears.

People around the web and other places frequently make completely nonsensical statements about mp3 files and vinyl versus cd sound, which makes me somewhat skeptical to reviews of the quality of various transfers and restorations. Do they really know what they are talking about? Especially when you realize that just a small increase in volume will make the music ’sound better’. More on that in a later post.

Some maybe surprising results when taking a scientific approach to sound quality:

Q: Is digital sound really better than vinyl?: A: Yes. Yes, really. We are talking orders of magnitude less distortion.

Q: Is playing from cds better than playing from a pc? A: No. If there is a difference, it is most likely in favor of the pc, which is both more practical and more reliable.

Q: Do I need to buy an expensive sound card to dj?: A:No. Even the cheap on board ones are usually very good these days. If you want to prelisten, you can get a usb headset.

Q: Do I have to use lossless files for djing?:  A: No. At reasonable bitrates, most people will never notice. Do an ABX test if you believe otherwise. If you are doing dsp, having the original is much better, and there are practical reasons for archiving using lossless audio)

Of course the trouble with tango is that we get the worst of all worlds, first shellac/78 distortions, then transferred to LP adding additional distortion, then possibly converting to mp3, then your music is subject to the lousy acoustics of the milonga/practica. Of which the least significant degradation is the mp3 conversion unless you choose ridiculously low bitrates. (mp3 gives good results around 128kbps and is found to be generally transparent around 192kbps,  somewhat lower for golden age tango music which is mono with low fidelity).