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Tango is a sad
thought that can be sung Tango Voices, a new songbook with CD came
out recently and this may interest most of the
readers of this Tango agenda, since they are the
ones this production is meant for. They now may
even pick up a guitar and learn to sing the tangos
they always listened to. " A kalte nakht, a nepldike, finster umetum, the first lines of 'Papirosn', the yiddish
'Papirusa', (Papirusa, cigarette paper, lunfardo
for cigarette) sung by Zully Godlfarb. One of the
rare non-'castillano' texts in the book may
illustrate the broadness of the research and the
story of the writer, Donald Cohen. The best introduction of the book to the readers
of this website, may be these lines in the
book: "This book is about tango, more specifically
it is about tango canción or tango song:
that is to say, about tangos and the people who
wrote them, played them and sang them. It was
written primarily for those who know little about
tango, and for those who may know much about the
dance, but little about the music or songs to which
it is performed. So far the writers' introduction of the
book. I think the writer, and the publisher who'd come
wih the idea for this book, were succesfull in
their attempt. The text is easy to read, and full
of interesting history around these songs and their
singers. There's lot of things to learn from it,
and I think it must indeed be appealing for the
people it's meant for. Dancers of tango often have
no clue what the lyrics are about, not speaking the
language, let alone the dialect lunfardo.
Great is, that all these tangos on the CD are very
danceable. One can play the CD and sing along with
the text in the book, read its translation (into
english, as the book is in english) and then even
dance to it, with a lot more knowledge about these
famous tangos than all the years before. One could
pick up the guitar, like Carlos Gardel, and look at
the drawings of the chords or follow the notes on
the sheet music. The distributor adds: There's one omission in this book: the names of
the dancers at the photos illustrating the book,
most of them famous, aren't mentioned anywhere
(except those of the couple on the cover). Maybe
the publisher thought: you probably know all of
them already, why mentioning their names again? About the cover: why a photograph of dancers
there? Allthough it's a photo of our friends Jorge
and Aurora, this book is about songs. Well, maybe
it is to appeal to the right audience: those who
dance tango but now little about the songs. Rob Nuijten TANGO VOICES book + CD
Songs La Cumparsita Published on Format Pages ISBN Price Price of delivery: |
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