Rhyme and Reason to Tango Music

When you attend your first milonga or ten you will begin to notice a pattern in the music and you would be correct! There is a rhyme and reason to the music that is playing. So for those who are starting their social dancing and anyone who wants a bit of clarification, here is a little bit about the music from collected knowledge, experience, and input from teachers.

Music at milongas follows a general formula, in tandas which is a grouping of either three or four songs of the same style and musical era(1930's, 1940's, 1950s), or orchestra(some of which are Pugliese, D'Arienzo, Canaro). They will follow a pattern of a tango-tango-valse(tango waltz) and then tango-tango-milonga(fast-paced 2/4 beat where every beat is emphasized). You will be able to separate tandas by the "cortina" or "curtain" where the DJ will play 30 seconds of non-tango music to "cleanse the palette" and for couples to find new partners or take a break from the floor.

You will begin to meet dancers who have preferences for certain styles of music, orchestra, or eras and have patterns of dancing. Some dancers prefer dancing only to milongas, some prefer valse or tango. In your tango community, you can try to observe which people sit out certain types of tandas, and what they immediately jump to to find a partner to dance with. One avenue to enhance your dance experience and improvement will be to listen to tango music often and try to analyze what kind of tango music it is; tango, valse, milonga. Then try to identify the orchestra and composer; Pugliese, D'Arienzo, and such. After that, they try to narrow down the music's era, and so forth.

Tips & Tricks for Analyzing Music

Begin by trying to identify the type of music a song is - milonga, tango, or valse

Once you can do that reliably, move on to matching each song with its composer - D'Arienzo, Pugliese, Canaro, Rodriquez, Tanturi, etc...

Once this is fairly stable, try matching each song to its musical era - for example, "Pensalo Bien" by D'Arienzo from the 1930s vs "Seguime de podes" by D'Arienzo from the 1950s

These are the first steps but if it interests you or you feel like it will benefit your dancing you can delve deeper by trying to identify by individual year and performing orchestra.

Why Analyze the Music?

Analyzing the music helps a dancer move more fluidly and with confidence the music

Helps the dancer create a framework(leads) and helps the follower understand the musical phrases the leader is trying to hit or to contribute to the dance by indicating the desire to move to a certain part of the music.

Can help builds a dancer's musicality - a dancer cannot know what part of the music to hit if they don't know the music at all

A conversation point with other dancers like preferences for music and such

A what to identify your own favorite music and what you want to dance to and what to sit out to.

A way to identify what kind of music your favorite lead or follower may enjoy dancing in order to try and cabecco them during that tanda if you share the same musical taste and avoid ones that do not appeal to you or your desired dance partner.