La Nuit Blanche

I don’t usually like dancing tango to music that is not tango music.

(Actually, I hate it).

But I want to dance tango to this one, though… :-D

by Bebe

Grâce à my Lover, something delicious has come to my attention. Make sure you visit the website — the “Icons” section provides a delightfully funny introduction to a few of the most important cultural assets of Argentina.

Sadly, the tango didn’t make it to the list… O_o

For those of you in New York, try to make it to the opening!

idarg: Identidad Argentina | Argentinian Identity

June 12–August 15, 2008 | Opening night June 11, 6-8 pm.
AIGA National Design Center | 164 fifth Avenue, New York, NY.

Desde el tango hasta el Che Guevara y desde el obelisco hasta la empanada, la identidad argentina es un concepto complejo y en constante evolución, en cuyo interior se expresa, con más o menos fuerza, un variopinto conjunto de íconos provenientes de la historia, el arte, la geografía, la naturaleza, la cocina y la tradición.

Somos comunicadores de un tiempo sin certezas en el cual la identidad tiende a desmaterializarse. Nuestro anhelo es ser comunicadores de una identidad nacional a la que aspiramos haber transformado en un universo abstracto de belleza y síntesis, que mejore la percepción de nuestra historia y nuestro imaginario en la generación de nuestros hoy pequeños hijos.

From tango to Che Guevara, and from the gaucho to Evita, Argentine identity is a constantly evolving, complex concept. By developing an iconography that rebrands and represents the country’s historical events, art, geography, cuisine and traditions, Buenos Aires designers Hernán Berdichevsky and Gustavo Stecher of imagenHB have created a new symbolism for Argentina, presented in this exhibition and also explored in a line of clothing called Nobrand.

As the designers state: “We are communicators in uncertain times, when identity tends to get lost. Our goal is to communicate a national identity using an abstract vocabulary of beauty and synthesis that conveys a perception of Argentina’s history as well as its present.”

Visit http://www.idarg.com/ for more information about this work.

The exhibition will be on display at the AIGA National Design Center, in the mezzanine.
164 Fifth Avenue (between 21st and 22nd Streets) in New York City.
For more information, call 212 807 1990/ 718 576 1925.

[Due to the sensitive nature of this topic, a disclaimer is in order (my first on this blog): the main character involved has been disguised by the imaginary name of X, no pronouns will be used to refer to this person's gender, and I will not answer any questions asked me, here in the blogosphere, or in my real life (hello, Friends!), as to this person's identity.]

It is a touchy subject… But I feel I must address it.

Yes, it’s true. There is malice in our dear Tangoland.

There are many instances of back-stabbing, name-calling, betrayal, ignorance, trickery, knife-thrusting, grumpy grump, stubborness, lying, and overall general drama in our beloved realm. And all this has been foreseeable, though regrettable, and in perfect accordance with the natural Order of the Universe. Afterall, our Tangoland is a part of the Real World, too.

But it hurts very much when a friend has gone over to the Dark Side, and this friend doesn’t even realize it.

I have such a friend, or, someone who used to be a friend, named X, who in the beginning of our story, seemed to be a vastly different person from the one revealed to me over time.

X has become a tiresome person. There are two things that make X tiresome… First, a persistent prejudice against certain members of our community, and second, the ignorance of racism. In the first offense, X is only harming X. And in the second offense, X is harming others.

This person X is quick to put certain members of the community into little categories all made up in X’s mind, and labelling one particular category with snide, unflattering appellations such as “The Group”, and “The Stuck-Ups”.

It is hurtful, since these kind, sweet people are fast becoming my friends.

These are the people who danced with me when no one else would. These are the people who watched me spin myself into a cocoon, and are continually delighting in my budding (albeit wrinkly) wings. These are the people who encourage me to continue, and take care of me when I am sitting alone at milongas or festivals. And who protect me from unwelcome advances. These are people who will dance with beginners and encourage them to keep coming back. And X refers to these people as “The Stuck-Ups”. Which is simply not the case, in my experience. The injustice of it makes me angry, especially when said to my face.

Don’t get me wrong — I, myself, have been terrorized by tan-egos and tan-egoistas, and horrible tangorillas, and individuals who are just so incredibly, consistently stuck up, that it is a torture to even have their glance turn in my direction. I still avoid these people. I run across one or two new ones, occasionally. Sadly, little does X know that X has become one of the people X claims to despise, and doubly sadly, I now find X just as horrible a tangorilla as this one, or this one, in male, or female form.

Another personality quirk that X has, is to dismiss the non-Argentine teachers, dancers, and milonga hosts in our community as unworthy of attention or praise. “I will stick to my Argentine teachers, if you please,” X says. Upon watching performances by revered non-Argentines, X exclaims, “What a crock of mierda. These Americans/Europeans have no idea what tango is about.” (Actually, the Argentines say “carajo”, not “mierda”, to refer to crap). And undoubedly, X, who also happens to be non-Argentine, feels that X is an expert in “what tango is all about.”

I don’t mean to sound so politically correct. I’m not trying to, honestly. But it is just common sense that just because a teacher/dancer is Argentine, doesn’t mean he is a great teacher/dancer. Conversely, just because a teacher/dancer is not Argentine, doesn’t mean he is not a great teacher/dancer. Just because the Chinese didn’t invent Western classical music, doesn’t mean Yo Yo Ma isn’t a great cellist. Just because DJ Krush is Japanese and hardly speaks English, doesn’t mean that he isn’t one of the greatest composers of hip hop the world has ever seen. Just because photography was invented by the French, doesn’t mean that Garry Winogrand isn’t a great photographer.

X works in the (insert any craft here) industry. I just want to scream at X: “Well, (insert any country here) didn’t invent the (insert any craft here) — what makes you think a (insert person of X’s nationality here) such as yourself can excel at it?”

Where is this blind racism coming from?

Let me be frank: I am fully aware of tangueros and tangueras who dance only for a couple of years, and then (to our chagrin) decide they are ready to teach and perform. But a clueless tango grasshopper is clueless no matter what nationality. And these non-Argentine teachers and dancers that X scoffs at, and passionately tells people to avoid, spend half their lives travelling away from home, to be immersed in Argentine culture. They learn the language. They study the dance, and the music. They may dance a different sort of tango that may not be agreeable to some, but it is not difficult to recognize excellence, genius, and emotion, when one is face-to-face with it, in a class, or a milonga. To dismiss artists such as Jennifer Bratt and Ney Melo, or Korey and Mila, just because they are non-Argentines — now, that is a crock of carajo.

This racism of X extends to the milongas and practicas hosted by non-Argentines in our community. I am sure the Argentine hosts and hostesses around the city appreciate X’s patronage, and undying loyalty to the people of Argentina. But it is unnerving to find that X loudly, and verbally discredits and disrepects the events held by others. And yet I see X often frequenting the milongas and practicas maintained and DJed, with painstaking effort, by these same non-Argentines who X despises.

Let me tell you about New York City: Unlike Buenos Aires, Dancing is not a natural state of being over here. I am living in continual fear that there will be no place to tango in my homwtown… That the gestapo city government will shut down these spaces… The city has already restricted the cabaret license into a choke-hold. For example, street photography is dying because the city regulates the use of tripods on the street, and photographers need a permit to photograph in many places where there is open sky — basically almost everywhere. What makes us think that the milongas are safe?

And does X even realise the difficulty of securing places for social dancing in a paranoid city such as this one, where the only way to even step on the beat in the street is to hold a massive peaceful demonstration so huge, that the police will give up and stand by watching?

These non-Argentines are the people who bring us some of the most beloved milongas this city has to offer. Sure, they may not be Argentine… Some may not even be incredible dancers – although some are. Some don’t even teach, some do, and are some of the most revered in the country. And they are responsible for the great effort it takes to keep tango alive in this city — not the revered Argentines who live in Buenos Aires, as much as we love them for their magic, and definitely not people like X who continually complain about the deplorable situation of the “Americans destroying Argentina’s tango.” Perhaps some are, but I know many are not. I’m just thankful there are places to dance, and that is more than one should expect from people who are doing all the work for us, so that people like X can go out and criticize what they’re doing. Sure, they are making some money by doing this, but I don’t know of a single milonga host who makes a living out of hosting milongas.

It’s as if a friend had died, or had moved to another country. No, worse — as if the person I had enoyed talking to and sharing some precious moments with, has never even existed — that the whole friendship was a figment of my imagination.

There is a saying in Argentina, I have learned recently — it is also in a tango called “Niño Bien”:

“Estás mostrando la hilacha.”

Which bascially means: “You are showing your true colors.”

It is heartbreaking when I discover that most everything I knew about a person was a lie, that someone I had once considered a dear friend, I had never known at all. I guess none of this is very new… Friends drift apart all the time, and the people who we think we know show their true characters with time.

But it’s still sickening, nontheless.

Last night, I went to a popular Sunday night milonga, only to find that my friends were sleepy and tired. They had all attended the All Night Milonga the night before (which I had skipped out on, to opt for yummy home-made Peruvian food and a farewell party across the river), so they were all changing their shoes by the time I arrived… That was 10:30pm.

My Lover was happy and relieved that I had come. He had called me, soon after he had arrived, saying my name just for the sake of saying my name… I think he had been missing me, a tiny bit. :-D

Our first tanda consisted of sweet lyrical tangos, the kind of songs that make it so easy to melt into thin air, especially if you are in the arms of a handsome porteño you happen to be madly in love in. As we were passing by a corner table seating some elderly gentlemen, one of them started to call out in castellano, with great gusto:

“¡Oooo! Something something…. rrrrrollo, estrrrrra, rrrrrilo… something something… ¡¡¡Buen provecho!!!”

My eyes were fluttering open and closed, in and out of a waking dream (Oh! That tango was so sweet! But I didn’t know what it was called), but I could feel my Lover’s initial surprise and confusion, and then a slight intake of breathe and a giggle.

At the end of that song, I asked my Lover what the man had said, and he replied that it was the equivalent of “Bon appetit.” I looked over at the table of elderly gents, and smiled. Which drew more exclamations of,

“¡¡Oooooo!!” and “¡Eeeeeee!” and the like.

Later on in the night, when I was grabbing huge chunks of vegetables and crackers by the refreshment table and stuffing them into my hungry mouth, the Oooo Man came over to me and started speaking to me in rapid Spanish.

“Ooooo…muy linda…hoho…heehee…¿cuánto cuesta…something something…todo?”

Erm…

“Yo no hablo español, perdón…” was all I could muster, in my carefully coached porteña accent, ofcourse.

“Oooo, something something… no nececita, something… Sos china? Japonesa?”

That I could understand.

“No, yo soy coreana.”

He then started speaking to me again in rapid Spanish, but I had to say again, helplessly,

“No hablo español…”

I felt like a dummy. There I was, a sweet Argentine gent trying to talk to me, saying (most likely) deliciously lewd things to me, and I couldn’t understand a word. :-(((

It was time to go home. I changed my shoes, and gently took possession of my raincoat (upon which, the Oooo Man happened to be sitting), said “Ciao, buenas noches”, and walked over to my Lover and linked arms.

In the elevator, I started wondering who the Oooo Man might be. My Lover answered,

“He’s a famous milonguero from Buenos Aires. His name is Tete.”

And then I felt like a super dummy.

I’ve started studying Spanish. I am learning castellano argentino, and will be shrilling my y’s and ll’s, using the “vos” tense, and trying to aspire my s’s.

My accent does not sound as hilariously horrible as the above video, thanks to my French and, yes, Korean (pure vowels, and the lucky ability to roll my r’s), but my vocabulary pretty much sucks, and well, so does my grammer.

Uno…dos…tres…
Enero…febrero…marzo…
Hace mucho frío en Nueva York…
El dulce de leche me gusta…
Quiero besar mi guapo novio…

Mil amores tuve yo y en ninguno yo encontraba la dulzura que soñé, ya que en cambio sólo hallé la falsía despreciable que mi alma endureció.

Ok, I totally googled that last one. ;)

I’m really excited. Some words in tango lyrics are already starting to open up to me, and there is a veritable blossoming in the music.

Yes, I can dance tango without understanding a word of what Gardel is gurgling on about. Donato’s crooning will be no less lovely. But I wonder how my dance will change when I will finally come to know the stories and poems and inflexions and double entendres and swear words in the lyrics of the songs that I already love? How many more tangos will I fall in love with because of what is being sung? How many songs will change their emotions for me when I realize that the singer has been crying, instead of laughing?

Right now, I am thinking of my favorite non-tango songs, and I cannot imagine loving them as much if I didn’t know what was being said. It would be like smiling at Buckley’s “Lover, you should’ve come over“, without being hynotized by the poetry. It would be like walking on the pavement to Gainsbourg’s “Je t’aime…moi non plus” without bursting out laughing. Like peacefully humming along to Bowie’s “Rock ‘n Roll Suicide” without swooning at its existential anguish. Or listening to Barbara’s “Ce matin là” without tasting the wild strawberries in my mouth…

I feel like I am about to open the door to the magic wardrobe. I have the key, and it’s just a matter of figuring out how to turn it…

R con R cigarro, R con R barril,
rápido corren los carros
cargados de azúcar al ferrocaril…

(sigh).

I’m going to write in Spanish a little bit in my blog everyday… in hopes that it will help my brain with speaking it. Feel free to correct me, my dear blogueros and blogueras, as I am sure I will be making many laughable mistakes!

Hay que estudiar mucho cada día… Pero yo estoy muy cansada, y tengo dolor de cabeza.

Bueno, chicos y chicas, hasta mañana!