Tango Actual

Tuesday, February 27, 2007

This concert was the one show of the tango festival that was booked specifically to feature “the creators of today and tomorrow,” that is, new tango composers. The whole idea of writing original tangos these days is shrouded in a seemingly never-lifting but light fog of doubt and suspicion. I don’t know how many times I have heard things like “no one today can write a tango worth a damn,” “where are the new lyricists? Nowhere! They don’t exist,” and “tango is doomed because no one can write anything new.” I have heard these kinds severe statements declared with gusto, almost triumphantly, as if those who say them don’t want there to be any new composers, lyricists, etc. From my experience, I think these attitudes constitute a willful deafness on the part of tango listeners to a lot of new, great tango music that is being made right under their noses but completely off their radar screens, to mix metaphors. Looking no further than this year’s festival we can hear, among others: El Arranque, The Ramiro Gallo Quinteto, Malena Muyala, El Yotivenco, and Buenos Aires Negro; the Proyecto Ciudad Oculta (which focuses on new tango lyricists); electrotango groups Ultratango, Sudestada Tango Lounge, and Tanghetto (the last of which wins the award for the worst band name of all time); as well as many of the new Orquestas Típicas, including Imperial, La Furca, Cerda Negra, Fernández Fierro, Fervor de Buenos Aires, and La Brava. Each of these groups play at least some original music, and many of them play entirely original material. Beyond that, many of the artists I consider to be among the most significant compositional voices today were not represented in the festival at all. So, while one can arugue about the enduring value and overall contribution to the tango canon the work of these artists may or may not make over time, basta of the claim that there are no new or original voices out there. That is just not true.

But, you may be asking, if there is so much original music being played at the tango festival, what makes this concert stand apart as the composers concert? As far as I can tell, what made Jungman and Schwarz stand out as “creators” is that they create “serious” tango music, that is, the highly elaborate, through-composed, post-Piazzolla version of tango music that strives towards classicism. Both Jungman and Schwarz are protégées of Gustavo Beytelmann, a top-notch expat Argentine pianist who has lived in Paris for the past thirty years and who has apparently trained a small army of tango musicians over there. I heard Beytelmann give a talk as part of the festival and he came off as an exceptionally knowledgeable, bright and open minded musician and teacher. His students have clearly learned a lot: Jungman’s music was at once dense and crisp, utilizing the expanded forces of clarinet and ‘cello added to the somewhat standard quintet of bandoneón, piano, bass, violin, and guitar to nice effect on his piece “Concierto 3 + 4.” Schwarz, an Argentine guitarist who left the country for Europe after the 2001 economic crisis, also drew upon a somewhat extended instrumentation, featuring a tenor saxophone on his “Continuidad de los parques.” This was a semi-programmatic piece based on the Argentine writer Julio Cortazar’s famous short story of the same name. As a whole Schwarz’s music was more delicate and romantic.

Because of the resistance to new and original tango music mentioned above, I applaud the festival’s producers for booking this show and really forcing the issue. At the same time, a lot of this new music—much of which was having its debut this night—sounded uncannily familiar, as if I had heard it before (mostly on Piazzolla records). Following this concert, I think the real culprit regarding new tango is not the perceived lack of new tango music but how that music is recognized and acknowledged as such. If new tango is defined only as classically minded tango, which seems to be the case here, it seems like something important is lost. I hate to be the one saying this, but tango music is popular music. That does not mean that more “popular” minded groups can not or do not write highly complex and virtuosic original compositions—check out El Arranque, for instance. It means that those kinds of groups have people dancing in the back rows. At least on this night, the music of Jungman and Schwarz was not really moving in that or any other way.