I’ve said before that I’ve never really understood how some tango DJs can (for my tastes) prove consistently amazing. While I’m sure they have a few tandas which they play frequently, for the most part their musical selection is different each time. And yet, somehow, I almost always love their choices.

I wrote this blog post a while back now, but had to delay publishing it to protect the guilty – which you’ll understand when reading the end of it … !

I have no doubt that part of this will always be a mystery, but my most recent trip to BsAs did shed some light.

Tango’s greatest hits

A significant part of the secret turns out to be ridiculously simple: they draw extensively from popular music many people know and love. By definition, that gets people smiling, and rushing to the dance floor.

This realisation came when I found myself consistently hearing many of the same songs in multiple milongas. Sometimes the same orchestras, sometimes different ones, but my level of familiarity with the music in BsAs was very high.

That was for sure true by the end of my trip, but it was to a significant degree the case from the start. The time I’d invested in familiarising myself with a broader selection of tango music – not just the orchestras and songs I loved – had paid off. That investment was itself the result of my previous time in BsAs.

Although I listened to tango music a lot, I mostly listened to the music I loved. After that trip, I decided what I needed to do was listen to the music most commonly played in milongas – whether or not it was to my taste. That way I’d be gaining familiarity with a good cross-section of the music to which I’d be dancing.

Fortunately, Clive Harrison had done half the work for me, in his book Tango 500: A suggested library of five hundred tango songs arranged into tandas for dancing. While primarily aimed at newbie tango DJs, it also told me the songs I should be listening to. At one point, he had a Spotify playlist too, but that later disappeared. I recreated a version of it which so far has all the tango songs, and to which I’ll later add the vals and milongas. I’ve been faithfully playing this ever since, and listening with a whole new level of attentiveness.

Of course, no TDJ is playing only the greatest hits. Many make their mark with their own exceptions to the familiar choices. But tandas of unfamiliar music are like adornos: best used relatively sparingly.

Layered music

Some of us adore lyrical songs, others love a torrent of rhythmical tunes. Different TDJs take different approaches here.

There are those DJs who unashamedly play the music they love personally. They take the view that milonga organisers know what they’re going to get, and dancers will quickly learn that if you share their tastes, go when they are DJing; if you don’t, don’t.

Others aim to provide a balance of the two. Sometimes that’s alternating the two types of tango tandas, sometimes it’s more rhythmical tandas earlier in the evening, more lyrical ones later.

But what the best ones do, in my view, is to play a lot of very layered music. Songs where the beat is sufficiently prominent to dance exclusively to it if desired, but where there’s a very danceable melody too. In particular, songs where the bandoneons do their thing with great vigour, but where the singer, violins, and piano all offer lots to play with.

Consistency within tandas

Some DJs say they aim to have their tandas tell a story. There’s a start, a middle, and an end. I’ll believe them, but what I appreciate personally is a consistent feel to the music throughout a tanda.

That way, I know from the first 30 seconds or so of the first song whether it’s a tanda I want to dance. I know that I can count on the remaining songs being true to the feel of the first one. This avoids two things I hate …

First, a mediocre song first, followed by three beautiful ones. Although you can theoretically cabeceo at any point in a tanda, most followers have stopped looking before the end of the first song. So that type of inconsistency means I miss the chance to dance some lovely songs.

Worse, a beautiful song first, followed by three so-so or obscure ones. In that case, I’m stuck in a tanda I’d rather not have danced.

Reading the room

This had always struck me as the darkest of dark DJing arts. How can a DJ sense what people want to dance at any given time? But a demonstration of how not to do it shed some light!

I was in a milonga where the DJ was playing non-stop rhythmical music, and a fair chunk of Guardia Vieja. Not necessarily a problem: there are of course dancers who love that. But not on that occasion …

The dance floor got emptier and emptier. As did the room. The DJ seemed somehow oblivious to both. With two hours left to go, the room was very empty indeed. With one hour left, no change in the music, and just two couples dancing, I gave up and went to bed.

So I realised that at least part of this is also less mysterious than it seems: note the percentage of people who are dancing, and change the musical style if it starts declining. Hopefully before people actually leave the milonga …

Photo: Sam van Bussel/Unsplash