Thursday, May 14, 2009

Angel Vargas - A Pan y Agua

Oh, that incredible voice! That delivery that breathes and speaks of the streets of Buenos Aires! We can't get enough of Angel Vargas - preferably singing with the orchestra of Angel D'Agostino, but we'll take later Vargas with his own orchestra just as well. We already have most of the commercially available Vargas tracks - but we'll hunt down CDs that may have just one or two tracks with Vargas that we don't already have. We can't get enough of the singing of Angel Vargas.

That's why we were so excited when we found this vintage clip on Youtube of Angel Vargas singing "A Pan y Agua":



I know it is odd that they've filmed a whole bunch of people standing and watching Angel Vargas perform and then inserted cut scenes halfway through of people dancing tango at a milonga (so, were they dancing, or watching the show, or doing one, and then immediately switching to the other in perfect synchrony?). A little weird, but still, an interesting slice of "tango life" in the 40's or whenever this clip was filmed.

But guess what? Not a single couple dancing show tango, nuevo tango, or even those so-called "Milonguero", "Villa Urquiza" or "Tango Salon" styles commonly promoted in "El Mundo de Tango" today. Frankly, all these commercial and mass-produced "styles" are getting kind of old, we need a new flavour to keep the big tango economic engine running. Maybe if we study the video hard and long enough, we can distill the essence of this tango, bottle it and sell it to the masses. Just think about it: "People actually dancing tango to enjoy themselves, and not to make a spectacle of themselves or to recruit new devotees" - the newest trend!

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

TangoVia is organized by Ignacio Varchausky, who convinced Emilio Balcarce to come out of retirement and direct a school for musicians. The Orquesta Escuela del Tango Emilio Balcarce completed ten years. They are insuring the future of tango by training young musicians in the styles of Pugliese, Di Sarli, Troilo, D'Arienzo, and Piazzolla. Varchausky is the director of the program and founder of Orquesta El Arranque. His wife Caroline Neal filmed the documentary Si Sos Brujo, the story of the Escuela del Tango.

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