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Neo
tango is here to stay Lately, there
has been a lot of movement in the world of
tango music. The best example is probably
the recent rise of neo tango. But also
more and more tango orchestras are formed
and appear on stage. It seems obvious that
there is a need for new tango music and
new tango compositions. The music
competition Concurso del Ocho, an
initiative of the Doble Ocho tango
festival, aims at stimulating new music,
independent whether it is orientated
towards traditional tango or neo
tango. Introduction In the last five years the
international tango scene has been flooded
by new sounds and those sounds are
something completely different from what
we were used to. The responses to the new
tango music are varied. This in not an
unusual situation. Almost every innovation
and fusion in music is greeted with
enthusiasm by some and treated with
contempt by others. However, tango music's history is full
of fusions and innovations. Think for
example of the slow and laborious
acceptation of the social phenomenon tango
in the beginning of the twentieth century,
Julio de Caro's decarean school of tango,
the other tango musician's criticisms to
Biagi and D'Arienzo's rhythmic and
energetic innovations in 1935 (which with
in a few years were adopted by those same
musicians) and Piazzolla's 'assassination'
of traditional tango music, when in the
sixties he fused tango, jazz and classical
music in a musical genre which nowadays is
known as tango nuevo. In the light of tango music's
controversial history, it isn't strange
that neo tango is regarded as a phenomenon
open to dispute, but it is also not
unlikely that within the next decades neo
tango will become as mainstream as tango
music from the forties and early fifties
is nowadays. In the beginning Tango music has always been subjected
to numerous cultural influences. The
enormous migratory movements of the late
nineteenth century caused worldwide
musical movements. In the Americas several
new musical genres were born, such as jazz
and blues in North America and tango,
habanera and maxixe in Latin
America. (The maxixe
brésilienne is the predecessor of
the Brazilian samba. It is a vivid and
merry folk dance, that originated in the
late nineteenth century in Rio de Janeiro.
For a short period (1912/13) the maxixe
was one of the most fashionable dances in
London, but it popularity soon was over
(Wicke, Ziegenrucker & Ziegenrucker,
Handbuch der Populairen Musik,
2005). There has always been a musical
interaction between the two Americas.
Numerous examples can be given; for
example: tango singers from the thirties
and forties who sang in Hollywood movies,
the line up of tango orchestras during the
forties and early fifties (the gran
orquestas) was a down right copy of the
North American big band and last but not
least Piazzolla's flirtation with jazz. In
the sixties and seventies tango was
forgotten by most people, but in the early
eighties it made a jubilant comeback, when
several musicians fled for the junta and
moved to Paris, where a new tango was
born. Tango is so much more a
international and intercultural phenomenon
than most people realize. Tango is Gotan, and Gotan is
tango! In 2001 the Gotan Project appeared out
of nowhere with their CD La Revancha del
Tango. In the years that followed several
musicians were inspired by this new
musical concept. Some were downright copy
cat bands, but others did contribute
something new and innovative to the new
genre, which soon came to be known as
neo tango. The concept
neotango was coined in 2003 by Sharna
Fabiano (see: Sharna Fabiano, The rise of
neo tango music, 2003, It seemed that the tango scene was
split in two camps; mostly younger
tangueros who admired neo tango artists
like the Gotan Project, Bajofondo
Tangoclub, Narcotango, Otros Aires and
Electrocutango, where others, mostly older
tangueros, were quick to label neo tango
as a hype which soon would pass. Well, neo tango is still here. The
discussions about what neo tango is and
what the future of tango music and dance
will be like, is still going on. Besides
neo tango, there are several other labels
in use, such as: electronic tango, tango
fusion, trance tango, hybrid tango, street
tango, but a strict definition of neo
tango is still absent. And with the new tango music, the dance
also changed. Elements of salsa, swing,
hip hop, street dance and numerous other
modern genres are adapted and incorporated
into tango. Sometimes it seems that there
is a new way of dancing tango: freestyle,
where individual expression combined with
team play and a more distant intimacy are
dominant, instead of the authentic way of
dancing tango, which dates mainly from the
forties and fifties. Jolanda Schörgers from
22tango (in Nijmegen) about this
new way of dancing tango: "One can wonder
if it is still tango. In essence it is the
same. There still is a leader and follower
and the basic steps are still the same."
Dancer Majied Bahrami adds: "As a matter
of fact, nobody really knows what neo
tango is. It is an all inclusive concept
for a synthesis between modern music and
classical tango argentino." Info about
22tango at: www.22tango.nl Go to top of next
column What is neo tango? So what neo tango is and how it will
develop in coming years, remains vague. A
good definition of neo tango is not yet
possible, since this social phenomenon
hasn't really crystallized yet. What can
one say in general about neo tango? First of all, it is produced by
nowadays musicians of all sorts, who have
firm roots in contemporary music and who,
based on their own music and musical
experience, attempt to innovate tango
music, in which they often (but not
always) are influenced and inspired by
tango from la epoca de oro and/or
Piazzolla's tango nuevo. The second characteristic of neo tango
is the immensely diverse way of
approaching tango, where numerous fusions
are made with other musical genres, such
as klezmer, jazz, chansons, opera, hip hop
(rap), classical music, world music and
many other genres. Thirdly, the neo tango musicians use an
instrumentation witch is partly the
traditional tango instruments (such as:
bandoneon, violin, bass and piano), but
also partly new for tango, such as digital
sampling techniques and instruments
normally associated with world music or
other non tango genres. Finally the line up of the modern neo
tango ensembles is usually very different
from the traditional tango orchestras. A
typical tango line up in the twenties and
thirties was the orquesta tipica and in
the forties and fifties the typical line
up was a gran orquesta. For neo tango
bands there no typical line up. And last but not least, a lot of people
tend to confuse neo tango and alternative
tango. Alternative tango (or special
tango) refers to non tango music, which is
tango danceable. Some well know examples
of alternative tango are: Tango To Evora
(Haris Alexiou), Roda Vida (Teofilo
Chantre), Time (Kroke), Chaloupée
(René Aubry), Youkali (Ute Lemper)
and La Valse d'Amélie (Yann
Tiersen). Dancing freestyle The last few years there is a trend
that during some milongas only traditional
tangos from the forties is played, while
others concentrate fully on modern tango
or aim at a mix of traditional and modern
tango. For dancers this is favourable
development, for there is so much more to
choose from. If you compare it with ten or
even five years ago, the musical flavours
to choose from have expanded enormously.
Dancers nowadays choose more consciously
for a certain milonga, because of the
music being played. In the field of music, traditional
tango and modern tango can function as a
inspiration for each other. Tango is a
living musical genre and also an evolving
form of dance. Although the future of
tango is difficult to foresee, one can
wonder if tango as a musical genre would
survive without new input. Sharna Fabiano made a nice observation
on this topic: "No one can say this for
sure, but based on the past 100 years, I
would guess that within another 50 to 100
years, something will evolve that is
different from what we know now, to become
"the tango" that everyone recognizes as
tango. What I mean is, today what we call
"traditional" is really the tango of the
epoca de oro. The tango of the 1900s and
1920s has been lost, the golden era tango
replaced it. Possibly something will
someday replace the golden age tango. Or
maybe not, maybe the golden age tango is
the only tango strong enough to endure.
Only time will tell." Concurso del Ocho With the arrival of no less than two
tango music prizes, the Dutch tango scene
shows its need for stimulation of tango
music. Recently tango magazine La Cadena
announced the Choclo, a tango music
competition for new compositions within
the scope of traditional tango music. A few weeks later, the Doble Ocho
festival launched the Concurso del Ocho,
another music competition in honour of El
Corte's twentieth birthday and Doble
Ocho's first lustrum. During the next
edition of the Doble Ocho festival from
Wednesday March 19 till Sunday March
23, a music competition is held for
both amateur and semi-professional (tango)
musicians. The Doble Ocho
festival 2008: www.doble-ocho.com The competition aims at two categories:
arrangements (traditional; rearranging
Carel Kraayenhof's El Corte) and new
projects (modern tango; emphasis on 'tango
fusions'). The goal of Doble Ocho's
Concurso del Ocho is to stimulate both
traditional and innovative (tango)
musicians to compose new tango
(orientated) music. Compositions in both
categories are judged by an international
jury , which consists among others of
Gustavo Beytelmann, Katrien Karimoen and
Maria Jose Ortiz. The winner gets to play
at the Doble Ocho festival. Gustavo
Beytelmann (piano, violinist, arranger
and composer) is momentarily associated
with the Rotterdam Conservatory. Katrien
Karimoen plays the piano with Quinteto
Zarate But there is more. There will also be a
musicians workshop during the Doble Ocho
festival, which is led by Iwan Harlan.
This workshop aims at tango fusion and neo
tango musicians. This workshop will
culminate in a tango fusion jam on
Thursday afternoon in café Odessa.
Tango is alive and kicking. So be
there! More info on Iwan
Harlan:www.soundtovision.de January 2008 Zie ook: |
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