Touching Tango

There are certain areas of the world intimately associated with music that I admire and love. Often this music is linked with humbler, even notorious, districts: ports with their bars and brothels, especially. I shall always treasure the time I spent in one of these places in the Piraeus, Athens’ port where spicily plangent Rebaki music was sung brilliantly by a languorous lady. The same emotionally-tinged strains infuse Portuguese Fado and one of the principal reasons for visiting Lisbon must be to hear it sung by the successors of the great Amalia Rodriguez. Blues, of course, especially Delta blues has underpinned rock bands ever since the likes of Robert Johnson were discovered by post-war pop artistes. Italy has its own brand of music comforting those stricken with the vagaries of passion especially Neapolitan song. It must be tunes from this country that influenced my favourite among the scenario of music reaching out to those who have impossible longings and aching hearts: Argentinian Tango, again a product of those seedy, down-trodden districts surrounding ports, sailors and their women.

As with other forms there have been many schools of Tango there’s even a Finnish one for instance. But so long as they derive from the Rio Del Plata region and so long as they descend from the classic Spanish habanera that found its way into Bizet’s ‘Carmen’ they are recognizably ‘tangoish’.

The marvellous concert given by a combination of accordion and guitar in Borgo a Mozzano’s public library last week was beautifully illustrated by the accordion player Massimo Signorini,who gave us an account of what tango is all about. Principally it is a song form, most famously sung by that victim of a thirties air crash, Carlos Gardel. Giacomo Brunini, who organises these concerts was the guitarist. Tango is both a joy and a lament – the frequent major-minor key changes see to that. It is both a sensual and a spiritual kind of music. To play, dance and sing it to the highest expressions requires an absolute sense of rhythm, impeccable virtuosity but above all a total feeling for the music. I thought, in fact , that the word ‘tango’ came from ‘touch’ (like Christ’s words ‘noli me tangere’ = don’t touch me) It does but it also derives from a Yoruba word for a festive gathering thus underlining the African influences through transported slaves into the new world.

In our concert the accordion took the place of the bandoneon – an instrument traditionally associated with the tango but actually invented by a German choral composer in the nineteenth century for the purposes of conducting Bach! ‘Comparing it with the bandoneon is like comparing an orange to a lemon’ expressed our instrumentalist who displayed a flexibility of expression I have rarely heard on that instrument. Both artistes were indeed superlative (although I could have wished a better balance between the instruments – the accordion is rather louder than the guitar…).

All facets of tango were played in our somewhat intimate concert. From the milonga variant, through classic Tango to the new tango of Piazzolla and his acolytes, Piazzolla whose family originated from this part of the world; Massa di Sassorosso in the Garfagnana to be exact where there is even a Piazzolla Tango trail.

If the quality of these concerts organized by master guitarist Giacomo Brunini is anything to go by I shall make the best efforts not to miss any of the succeeding ones.

This was the concert’s programme:

Carlos Gardel; Soledad

Pedro Laurenz: Como dos extranos

Juan Carlos Cobian; Nostalgias

Astor Piazzolla: Triunfal, per chitarra sola

Hector Stamponi: : Flor de lino

Anibal Troilo: : Sur

Eladia Blàzquez: : El corazon al sur

Richard Galliano: Tango pour Claude, per fisarmonica sola

Pedro Laurenz: Milonga de mis amores, per fisarmonica sola

Cacho Castaña: Café La Humedad

Astor Piazzolla: Café 1930, Libertango