Roman Road to Neotango

Elio Astor (2017)

We were in a way, more eccentric, a bit more elegant but always with great respect for each other and the nature of the dance, respecting each other’s physicality, and personal defects. Each could find their own spirit, enjoying the evening as a tanguera without hiding behind a mask, expressing the dance their own way of being.

This was the way tango was taught by many teachers. The slogan find your tango was an invitation to an inner and expressive search that we all welcomed with great enthusiasm.

I fell in love with the tango in 1993, and I’ve been DJing since 2003. I’m a bit nostalgic about the spirit of those days, when I started dancing. The masters invited the students to develop each their dance style. There was room for true sociality, where the world of Argentine Tango did not exist and where no one came telling you which tango you must or must not dance. Tango was alive and expressed in the character of each of us.

In the milongas, classical tunes alternated with some modern ones. Songs such as Tango tis Nefelis by Haris Alexiou, Oblivion by Astor Piazzolla, or milongas of Hugo Diaz were danced with pleasure at the Giardino del Tango, at La Peña of José Capuano, at Il Portici of Caesar Magrini, and many other places favored by us.

After a few years, milongas began to blossom throughout Rome, Il Barrio, Culturaltango, and Il Querer had musical programming that included 70% traditional tango and 30% modern music, mostly Argentina, such as Otros Aires, Bajofondo, Tanghetto, Narcotango, but also songs by Gianna Nannini, Kroke, Madonna, etc.

In 2009, there came a conservative turning point. It was then that Chicho Frumboli, in a famous interview, preached a return to traditional music. Although he was my idol, I never shared his reasons for that decision.

Two other important events happened in 2009 that contributed to making the milongas more and more traditional in Rome and Europe. One, UNESCO declared that the Argentinian and Uruguayan tradition of the tango as intangible heritage of world culture. Secondly, the expansion Tango Championships of the city of Buenos Aires into World Championships.

As a result of the first, the tango music of the thirty-two years (30s, 40s and 50s) were placed inside a golden teak casket to be preserved unchanged over the centuries. As a result, the second tango de piste was standardized in a model to be imitated by all dancers. Since they all adopted the same style, the artistic and creative part of this wonderful dance was lost, in which everyone can search for his own tango.

It was time to take another road. But how? The dance I love cannot be seen if it is relegated to a distant thirty years and will never come back again. It was strange for me to have to adapt to this retro behavior and cortinas. But, I accepted it sympathetically. But was it right to take away that spirited and current modern music from the evening, even though it was enthusiastically danced by many dancers? In the 1970s, as Alberto Podestà witnessed in the milongas of Buenos Aires, rock & roll and tropical music was banned. Could this be the reason for such obscurantism?

In 2008. for the first time in Rome. I organized a milonga in which the traditional tango was not even contemplated. Musically, the milonga ranged from the rhythms of electronic tango to musical contaminations. The evening had 180 participants at a bar in San Giovanni. There was some who loved it and some who hated it. It made me realize that this was really something new and beautiful.

Musically managing an evening dancing with the traditional dance of embrace with today’s music, was clearly something that violated the dance protocols. It was something that was uncomfortable with many, especially those who loved cultural tradition, folklore and retro aspect of Argentine tango. For them, the poetry of a vitrola que llora is the reason for their own life and often of their work.

In 2009, I also founded the Tangoeventi Association, which I continued along with Fatima Scialdone until 2016. I curated the musical programming providing for a strong openness to modern and social.

Felix Picherna, who was one of the last DJs to witnessed the golden age of the tango, argued rightly that he would no longer return to the past. No one will ever write tangos with the same words, with the same intensity, with the same poetry and the same feeling in the musical performance as they did then.

But many people became accustomed to dancing the the music of that thirty years. In the very beginning, the today’s music seems to be strange, unknown or undanceable. This counter-reaction will lead to to the dissolution of tango and impoverishment of tango musicians or potential tango musicians.

The greatest successes of modern tango orchestras, including electronic tango, are those that play new versions of classic songs. This is because the melodies are, in some way, known and familiar. There is also the familiar rhythms, the compa, the structure and the typical musical phrasing of tango that also allow a beginner dancer to dance to an unknown piece. In some cases, we know the song so well, having listened to it and assimilated it, that we can interpret it, in dance. Some of this depends on personal tastes and adaptability. this is the case, for example, of many compositions by Osvaldo Pugliese, Horacio Salgán and Astor Piazzolla. The great composition by Eduardo Rovira, A Evaristo Carriego, famously interpreted by Oswald Pugliese, is difficult to interpret in the biomechanics of tango. Astor Piazzolla’s Oblivion, Johann Sebastian Bach’s allegro of the Fourth Brandenburg Concerto and Nothing else Matters by Apocalyptica are similarly challenging to interpret into tango dance.

I’ve spent more than 5000 hours behind the console, both at traditional and alternative milongas, playing music in Buenos Aires and at international festivals. There is one episode that truly impressed me. It has, in some ways, become very illuminating to my path. I was playing music in a very traditional milonga. It was one of those milongas in which if you played Pugliese song, not everyone would welcome it. By mistake, I played a tango by Orquesta Fervor from Buenos Aires, a modern orchestra that plays traditional songs, such as 9 de Julio, Felicia, Meditation and Loca. The floor remained half-empty despite their beautiful interpretation. There was no reason for them not to dance. But, even by the more classy dancers did not dance.

With the aching heart of having played something unpleasant for dancers, but also with the longing to understand the causes, I spent weeks working on those songs adding electrostatic and mechanical rust, cutting audio frequencies and artificially deteriorating tracks to make them sound like scratchy old recordings spoiled by time. I played the same tangos in the same milonga and magically, the floor filled with dance couples thinking it was some orquesta olvidada.

Tango music does not come scratches and hisses. The orchestras of Carlos Di Sarli, Juan d’Arienzo, Edgardo Donato, Orquesta Tipica Victor, etc. had no scratches when they performed live on the radio or in the milongas during the golden age of tango. Live music is the only, true tradition, regardless of your musical prejudice. While dancing, it is great to hear sounds and words close to our world. The rest is a love for the retro. It is good to remember the traditional, conscientious milongas of the past, and their folk spirit, as part of a historical representation of a past, playing and dancing to the music of the golden age.

In recent years, I began investing a great deal of time and energy in a Neolonga project. With the support of great friends and masters Manuel Lodovici and Veronica Carbini of the Felinotangoclub, we developed a goal is to invite tango dancers to dance to music from around the world. The intention has been to make them known and interpreted with the same ease as any song of Pugliese, making them into old friends.

Although the project is ambivalent and countercurrent, the Neolonga has become the point of reference for many years in Rome for those who prefer modern music and do not feel the need to dance to tango in conformance to the customs of traditional Buenos Aires milongas, while still knowing and respecting its roots and sharing the dance. From the Neolonga community, two very interesting and popular avant-garde bands have been born to feature live music, Alma de Tango and the Bluestango Project.