tango violin: tango violin: style, history and performance

Caroline Pearsall Winston Churchill Fellow 2014 1

TANGO VIOLIN:

Tango Violin: style, history and performance practice

Winston Churchill Memorial Trust Report 2014

CAROLINE PEARSALL MA

A picture of Winston Churchill in an old bookshop – there were pictures of him throughout Buenos

Aires!

Key

Words: tango, violin, workshops, Argentina, teaching, style, performance, research, Buenos

Aires, history

Caroline Pearsall Winston Churchill Fellow 2014

CONTENTS Page

1 – Itinerary 3

2 – Introduction of Aims, Objectives & Background 3

3 – Details on Who I Saw and Met 4

4 – Music Courses and Institutions 5

5 – Tango Community in Buenos Aires & New York 10

6 – Promoting Tango in the UK Plans 11

7 – Conclusions & Recommendations 12

8 – Bibliography & Discography 15

9 – Appendix 1: Recommendations for Travellers 16

10 – Appendix 2: Case Study of a Tango Violinist: Elvino Vardaro 17

ITINERARY


June 27 Flight to Columbus, Ohio, USA to take part in Creative Strings Workshop 2014

July 5 Flight to Buenos Aires. Participation in Tango Para Musicos and interviews/research

August 31 Flight to New York for interviews

September 13 Flight to London

INTRODUCTION OF AIMS, OBJECTIVES & BACKGROUND

My project with the Winston Churchill Memorial Trust is to write a book on Tango Violin:

style, history and performance practise, and to develop Tango Violin Music Workshops. The

purpose of my travel was to interview tango violinists and other musicians of interest,

collect books and magazine articles, recordings and any other information I could find.

I have been working in the tango music milieu for 11 years, but there is very little

information available in English. I have such enjoyment from playing this music, and

discovering it has always been such an enriching journey that I wish now to teach others to

play it and to educate people in general about this wonderful musical genre. I intend to do

this through workshops, lectures, written articles, my book, videos, concerts and any other

method I can think of that reaches a larger audience.

There is also no book even in Spanish that collects together the biographies and lives of all

the most important tango violinists, hence my desire to create a kind of compendium for

those interested in this music. I also wish to include anecdotes and other stories to give

more of a feel for the personalities involved that created this fascinating music.

My choice of destinations were based on the fact that tango music was born in Buenos Aires

and even today is the main cultural base of this music. In the rest of Argentina the musical

style preferred is rock and folklore. I also chose New York too because of Piazzolla’s time

there, I wanted to see if he had left any legacy there among the musicians. I chose to do a

Creative Strings Workshop in Ohio to see how Christian Howes, a jazz violinst, has

developed his teaching program to get ideas for my own. I also participated in a course in

Buenos Aires called Tango Para Musicos with Ramiro Gallo to see how he taught tango

violin to classical musicians.

Aims of the trip

- to learn about the history of tango violin in its context

- to interview as many violinists as possible

- to buy or copy as many books and articles as possible about tango violinists

- to gather enough information on the most famous tango violinists in order to write

accurate biographies about them for my book

- to gain a broader understanding of the role of the violin in tango and how it is

viewed by Buenos Aires musicians

- to ask what the future of tango violin is and what classical violinists could gain from

studying this music


- to get ideas for developing my own tango violin workshops in the UK

- to gain a better cultural understanding of tango music in general

Who I saw and met

I met violinists, musicologists, radio producers, pianists, bassists and singers.

Here is a list of some of the people I met:

Luis Tarantino – Radio Producer

Guillermo Rubino – Violinist

Gustavo Beytelmann – Composer & pianist

Mauricio Marcelli – Violinist & Composer

Fabian Bertero – Violinist

Ramiro Gallo – Violinist & Composer

Alejandro Schaikis – Violinist

Perla Flores – Violinist from Mexico living in Buenos Aires now

Javier Weintraub – Violinist & Arranger

Leonardo Ferreyra – Violinist

Lucas Furno – Violinist & Director of Elvino Vardaro Orquesta de Cuerdas

Pablo Aslan – Bassist & Composer

Pablo Moistero – Singer

Sebastain Prusak – Violinist

Christine Brebes – Violinist from the USA living in Buenos Aires now

Leonardo Suarez Paz- Violinist & Arranger

Carlos Franetti – Composer

Susana Azzi – Writer

Miguel Angel Bertero – Violinist

Juan Jose Mosalini - Bandoneonist

Fernando Suarez Paz – Violinist (with Piazzolla’s quintet)


There were others I wanted to interview so I hope to return next year or to do some more

interviews by Skype:

Ramiro Gallo – Violinist & Composer

Mario Abramovich (however, I just discovered he died on Dec 1st this year)

Damian Bolotin - Violinist

Horacio Ferrer – Librettist and Author (he has since died too)

Juan Pablo Navarro – Bassist and Composer

Ignacio Varchausky - – Bassist, radio producer, Director of the Orquesta Escuela and El

Arranque

Music Courses and Institutions

I shall write a brief description of some of the institutions and courses I went to during my

trip.

CREATIVE STRINGS WORKSHOP

This took place in the Ohio Wesleyan University Campus. For one week I was surrounded by

very high level inspiring violinists who played jazz, blues, folk, bluegrass and soul. This

course has been developed by Christian Howes and has been running for 14 years. Students

were divided according to their improvising and general proficiency level and given groups

to work with on selected repertoire as well as having open classes in different styles or

elements of improvisation in which they wanted to participate. At the end of the week there

was a series of concerts in cafes, libraries, old people’s homes and so on in order that every

student could use their new knowledge in real-life settings. Howes also advises people

throughout the week on what they can do to improve their music careers. I was, as usual,

the only tango violinist there, but people were very open to learning some tangos with me

and performing them at the end of the week. I want to take tango out of its usual rather

closed environment and show people everywhere how great it is! He also runs an online

course which accompanies his course in the summer camp and I would like to use this

model for my own tango workshop and online classes, which I am now developing. I can see


that there is a model of entrepreneurship for musicians, sometimes called musi-

preneurship, which is very inspiring for me in my desire to take tango music to new

audiences in new ways.

As my project is the first of its kind on tango violin there is no one obvious place to go or

route to follow. I will therefore be taking inspiration from violinists in other fields.

BIBLIOTECA NACIONAL

Buenos Aires is one of the few places where you can buy books about tango music, but

some older books and magazines are out of print so I went to the Biblioteca Nacional hoping

to find a lot more but was sadly disappointed. I found three old books in their book lists but

these were out of print and sadly I wasn’t allowed to look at them: I needed special

permission from an institution there and also two old magazine series. I was allowed access

to the magazines and although the library does not allow photocopies they do allow photos

so I photographed anything I could find about tango violinists! There was some information

but not as much as I had hoped. Argentina has a very bad record of trying to keep

documentation about its history and culture. Often due to lack of money they reuse

materials and wipe over old tango film/ concert recordings and so on, and sometimes new

governments come in and throw out all the material stored in archives, or new record

companies take over old ones and dispose of all the unreleased material in the vaults. The

new generation are actively trying to collect information together to keep it but it’s a

difficult and long-winded process, with some families of artists being very generous, but

others unwilling to share information that they have. As a result I discovered during my two

months there, that the best information is only available through such things as stories,

anecdotes, or conversations during rehearsals and is generally not printed! Tango is an aural

music culture, documentation forms only a small percentage of the way in which

information is transmitted.

INSTITUTO DE MUSCOLOGIA

This was another institution that I had hoped would be full of interesting information, but

once again I was sadly disappointed. There were no visible archives, books or articles, or at

least I was not offered access if there are any. I interviewed Omar Garcia Brunelli, who

works there and has published a book on tango recordings. He helpfully sent me copies of

two books on Elvino Vardaro that are out of print now, but that was all he could offer me.

He did not consider tango violin as a style to be of any particular interest and did not have

much to say about tango violin or violinists that couldn’t be found in the books.

TANGO PARA MUSICOS (music course)

This course was the first of its kind in Argentina. It was five days long and held in a building

with a dark past. ESMA (Espacio Memoria y Derechos Humanos) is the place where the

military junta of the 1970s took its hostages and tortured them. In an effort to improve the

image of this building and give it a positive lease of life the current government have turned

it into a cultural centre with lots of activities. It is a pretty place and the facilities are very

good. This course was interesting to me for several reasons. It was the first time musicians


in Buenos Aires had gathered together to create a course like this and I was very curious to

see how they had constructed it and what they wanted to transmit. They chose to focus on

contemporary tango, not wanting to go over the old styles again (something that it is not so

popular to play in Buenos Aires these days) so they commissioned new works from

composers to be played by the student ensembles. The levels of students was very mixed,

some having had a lot of tango experience already, and others none at all. There were

mostly students from Argentina, only a few from abroad like myself. I was particularly

interested in how the violinist Ramiro Gallo was going to teach a class of 70 students with

such varied levels. He is one of the first violinists to write a tango violin technique method,

which he published a few years ago but which is unfortunately difficult to get hold of by

people in Europe(I got my copy from Buenos Aires). It was fascinating to see what he

considered most important for the students to learn and how he took them to the next

level— I got quite a few ideas concerning how I will develop my own method. There were

many concerts and I made contacts with other non-Argentine tango musicians from

countries such as Australia and the USA, which was great.

RAMIRO GALLO VIOLIN WORKSHOP

I will describe in detail the first day workshop to demonstrate how he took 70 classical

violinists through the most important first steps of tango playing.

He began by talking about how there is an argument that tango music is undefinable. Many

people seem to like the idea that it is too mysterious to define: he totally disagrees and

claims that if it exists it must be definable. Some musicians apparently feel that if you define

it you start taking away its creative freedom. He discussed what a musical genre was and

said that it is the sum of a variety of styles. He then demonstrated that there are two ways

of playing a famous tango El Choclo: one that is tango and the other that is unspecific

popular music. He wanted to make it clear that tango music is all about how it is performed

and not about the melodies. This makes the goal of playing tango a very clear one. He spoke

of the stylistic tools of tango as being essential to tango performance. Then he defined the

two main areas of study a tango musician must work on – the rhythmic aspects and the

expressive aspects: how you play these two aspects define the style of the genre.

He had sent us a PDF booklet filled with tango studies, just as in Classical violin, and we had

all brought this to the class. We then started on Study 1 which was all about the special

bowing technique marcato, which is the essence of rhythmic playing in tango. He reminded

us constantly that tango music was created for dancing and that we must never forget that,

no matter how complicated we make our arrangements or compositions. So we played the

percussive marcato and he explained from a technical point of view how to obtain it — not

obvious for classical violinists — and we spent a great deal of time on this, trying to get the

right sound and playing it together without rushing. After that he wanted us to play some

notes louder and some softer to start to get the swing of tango feeling. This too was very

hard for the classical violinists. He talked about needing a different mental attitude, playing

the violin now was about pretending to be a percussion instrument and not a solo or


melodic one, he even suggested we should forget we were violinists and instead imagine a

big drum in front of us to be hit with the bow. There was also the tendency to feel the beat

too much ahead, whereas he wanted a more laid back feeling, deep into the beat.

He then showed us there are two main rhythmic ways of playing— one which works as a

harmonic accompaniment and the other which works as a rhythmic melody. He spoke

briefly about the history of the orquestas tipicas and said that there are not generally

percussion instruments in tango music — one of the few dance musics in the world without

it— which is why all tango musicians must learn to play percussively in order to make up for

it. So inside the percussive playing is a whole world of expression too, in the articulations.

He wanted the group to feel the rhythm more physically and said we were thinking about it

too much, so he had us stamping our feet in time and then playing along with that.

We then moved on to the more expressive side where we worked on two kinds of phrasing,

within what is called “fraseo basico”. There is fraseo cerrado (closed) and fraseo abierto

(open). Again we spent a long time on getting the feeling of the different ways of playing a

phrase. The music is written as four straight quavers but with fraseo abierto is played more

like three crotchets and in fraseo cerrado— more like quaver, crotchet, two semiquavers.

He then gave us an exercise where we had to alternate between playing straight quavers

and a fraseo and also to do this with different dynamics.

After working on a few more of his specially written studies he asked us all to play El Choclo

from memory. He then asked us to do it in three different keys— which was not easy! He

wanted to show us that you can only say that you really know a melody when you can do it

in several different keys without a problem! We then played El Choclo with expressive

phrasing and as a rhythmic melody and he asked us to alternate. This alternation between

expression and rhythm is the most basic element of tango and all tango orchestras and

groups use it, even today. He said this is the first thing to know about good tango

performance.

His workshop gave me quite a few ideas on what approach I could have, but also on some

things I would do differently. I think having a group of such a large size with such different

levels was a bad idea and people should be split up into groups of similar level. I agree that

it is very important to give people an idea of musical context, so talking about the

percussive and rhythmic role is essential in learning this style. I can’t use the studies he

wrote for copyright reasons but it gave me a structure for showing people what to learn

first, and how to add new techniques bit by bit. It was interesting to see his insiders

approach and I think mixing that with my outsiders approach will be interesting. The way he

explained the physical gestures is something I would like to include in my workshops, as the

technique is different from classical playing and sometimes pointing out a small detail can

really help players understand what to do. He also split the group up into smaller groups

playing different parts, which was a great idea and something I would like to repeat, as well

as offering some players solos later on in the week. Tango involves both, tutti and solo

playing so it would be important to offer the latter to any interested musicians, as it is in the

solos that one develops one’s personal style. I got a lot of ideas that I can adapt to my

classes in the UK, and I think his explanation at the beginning was a very important one, as


learning what tango music actually is, instead of the clichés we all know, makes a world of

difference in our perception of how it is being played. Learning tango is also about opening

up one’s ears and noticing subtle differences.

ORQUESTA ESCUELA

Me playing with the Orquesta Escuela in the Buenos Aires Tango Festival

Ignacio Varchausky invited me to participate in the Orquesta Escuela which was an

interesting and valuable experience. This student training orchestra has existed for 14 years

and was Ignacio’s idea as a way of connecting the old tango generation with the new one.

He invites famous tango musicians to come and work on a concert program with the

students and to teach them everything they know about tango and their experiences. They

play many regular concerts and are now in residency in the beautiful new concert building

called La Usina del Arte in the famous tourist area, La Boca. I had the wonderful experience

of playing in the Buenos Aires Tango festival with the orchestra. The invited musician was

Miguel Angel Bertero, a violinist, so the timing was very lucky for me! It was an enriching

experience and the concert was wonderful: such a lovely feeling on stage between all the

musicians. In the orchestra there are people from Japan, Israel, Australia and Argentina.

Many of the tango musicians working today in Buenos Aires learnt tango through this

orchestra.

However in Buenos Aires tango musicians have mixed feelings about this, mainly because

tango was always taught aurally, through recordings and through playing in professional

bands. This orchestra has a team of transcribers who transcribe old recordings so that the

students can learn how to play the old famous styles and some consider this environment

not to be conducive to the traditional way of learning tango, which was much more like

being part of a popular music world than a more institutional one. However, tango music

experienced a deep decline from the 1970s onwards, and when this orchestra started it was

a way of reinvigorating and bringing new life into the tango scene. It has achieved this very

well and has become an important point of contact between the young and old generations

of tango musicians.


TANGO COMMUNITY IN BUENOS AIRES

After having spoken to so many tango violinists, I realised for the first time how varied the

different tango communities are in Buenos Aires. People say you have various tango mafias,

and in general the musicians do not change from one mafia to another! Some people are

more involved in institutional tango, supported by the Academia del Tango, or the

government or the Piazzolla Foundation, whilst others are into creating grassroots tango

communities with a totally different approach. Some musicians believe in a more open and

inclusive network where people of all levels and ages join together to play for fun and just

some money whilst others believe in creating tango shows and concerts and in international

touring, thus earning a good living abroad from tango. Tango clearly remains a popular style

of music in Argentina, something which is very different from tango in other countries

where it is essentially confined to tango balls or tango shows. Tango outside of Buenos Aires

is much more serious and intellectual in many ways and less creative at the moment (to my

mind). Musicians spend more time trying to learn how to play old styles but the musicians in

Buenos Aires really only want to make their own newer version of tango — and as a result

there really is no place like Buenos Aires for tango: it remains very much the source. There

have been times in tango history when it wasn’t popular in Buenos Aires and Paris has

traditionally played the role of “housing” tango until it becomes popular again (for example

in the 1920s and 1970s/80s). Tango music is exploding with creativity in Buenos Aires these

days.

It seems therefore that tango violinists choose their aesthetics of style. Some study classical

in order to be able to play to a high-level and also perform with classical orchestras,

whereas others prefer to improvise and not to study too much technique, to keep it more

‘raw’. In Europe we have the tendency to think there are many rules in tango music, but

time and time again people would tell me it was a question of ‘good taste’ and personal

choice. Everyone recommended listening to recordings as much as possible — and that that

is the only real way to learn tango. Tango music has not developed the same level of rigid

stylistic tradition as classical, in the sense that, because it remains popular music, you chose

to copy a style or you chose to make your own, neither is wrong or right, but depending on

what you do, different tangueros will either love it or hate it! This was very liberating news

for me!

WOMEN & TANGO

I decided to put in this short paragraph about women and tango because there are so few

who work as bandleaders or directors. Tango remains largely a masculine world and the

only woman bandleader I found, who was a violinist, was Erica di Salvo. She runs a big tango

show Tango Porteno, in downtown Buenos Aires. It seems that the few women who do

direct take on the image of the ‘Lady of the House’ and generally don’t employ other

women! The number of female composers is very small, but does increase slowly. Women

feel that sexism still dominates the scene and that although there are many women

instrumentalists, they generally never get the top jobs, so some feel rather excluded or

disappointed. However in the grassroots orchestras there were many women playing.


TANGO COMMUNITY IN NEW YORK

In New York I met Leonardo Suarez Paz, the son of the famous Fernando Suarez Paz. He was

very kind, helpful and welcoming and told me several stories about Piazzolla, whom he

knew well. He told me that the tango scene in New York is actually very small with only

about 15 regular tango musicians. It seems that although Piazzolla spent his teenage years

in New York and also a few years as an adult, he never had much success there and went

back to Buenos Aires to work and live. Leonardo regularly performs with his father and also

teaches tango dancing. It seems that tango musical culture is not so popular in the USA,

whereas the dance circuit is huge.

I also met Pablo Aslan, a bass player who has been living and working there for many years

and he said what has the most success there is tango mixed with jazz. He believes that the

time Piazzolla spent in New York was essential in helping him to develop his style, in that he

was forced to write in a way that was so clear and precise for classical musicians that the

music worked even if they knew nothing about tango. In fact when he was in New York as

an adult he ended up doing very little tango because it wasn’t popular. He spent much more

time writing arrangements for the Latin music scene in general. When he went back to

Buenos Aires and formed his quintet, he had now acquired a compositional technique to

which musicians from any genre could relate. I was happy to have been there and met six of

the tango musicians who work there regularly. There were another four more I was hoping

to meet but one of them had recently died (Octavio Brunetti, a very important figure in the

NY tango scene) and his fellow tangueros were in mourning so it wasn’t appropriate to

disturb them when I saw a tribute concert they did for him.

PROMOTING TANGO IN THE UK PLANS (conclusions & recommendations for my

organisation and for the UK

Tango music as a genre is not yet valued in the UK. It’s still connected to the dance and

doesn’t have much space outside of that. Musicians in the UK have not yet had the

opportunity to discover its richness and I am determined to change that through my book,

workshops and articles and by inviting prominent tango musicians to the UK to give talks

and workshops. As Ignacio Varchausky says “Tango music is a genre with many different

styles” and this difference in the perception of the music is very significant.

It is true that tango music and the tango world are not as easily accessible as those of Salsa,

or Indian music, partly due to language problems but largely due to the lack of published

material. The tide is turning with the young generation who are currently publishing books

on style but there is still has a long way to go before non-Argentinians will notice what the

tango genre means. I think some of this has come about also because of questions of

identity and intellectual property and the rather underground movement in tango in

general. For many years Argentinians were fiercely protective, and some still are, claiming

that if you don’t come from Buenos Aires you can never play tango music. There is also the

question of distance – Buenos Aires is very far away and the nearest city is around 8 hours

travel. However many of the musicians who do travel the world and teach believe that

tango is a language that must be learnt, even if different places bring a different dialect to


the music. Jazz and Classical music are played all over the world now, proving that a genre

and style can be learnt even if adapted slightly for new environments.

What is needed:

- tango music workshops all over the UK

- my book available on-line and in print, possibly in smaller sections too

- tango music lectures in Universities, Schools, Festivals and Music Courses

- written articles for music magazines, websites, research journals, my blog, possibly

facebook groups

- collaborate with other groups of people interested in Latin American Music like

LAMS

- invite tango musicians to come and perform and talk and demonstrate in open

workshops

- on-line videos which teach tango and possibly interviews with musicians too

- eventually I would like to organise a Tango Music Festival

- training tango orchestra in which musicians from the UK can learn about tango over

the period of a year or two, preferably in the syllabus of a music

school/conservatoire

I am also considering doing a PhD on how to teach music like tango, outside of the tango

environment, of examining how you can include cultural aspects in a musical education

doing more than just teaching the notes, but investigating the whole cultural stand point as

well. The whole environment of Buenos Aires creates tango music, it is not an artistic

expression that is separated from its society. The role of place and setting or surroundings

plays an important part too.

CONCLUSION/RECOMMENDATIONS

Asking strangers for information and stories can be a sensitive area, particularly if there is a

history of people coming in and copying things to sell or profit from back home. The kind of

work I was doing was a mixture of being an ethnomusicologist, violinist and researcher. I

was aware that some people were interested in participating because they were curious and

open minded people, some to help promote themselves and others because they thought it

sounded like a good project. But within those ‘relationships’ it was still clear to me that to

get to the essence of it, you needed to spend a great deal of time there. Nothing can ever

replace that commitment to ‘being there’ and integrating oneself as much as possible into

that world. Even though I collected a lot of information and did some great interviews, many

of the people in the tango world do not see this music as being a sellable product or a

simple story to be told (either through workshops, books, DVDs and so on) as it represents a

way of life, or an attitude of life if you will. Some seemed to feel that tango was so closely

connected to the streets of Buenos Aires that taking it out of this context made it

meaningless. Others see tango as a money-spinner and create big dance shows that tour the

world, promoting a form of tango that actually has nothing to do with what is going on in

the clubs of Buenos Aires. Many interviewees did not have immediate and constructed

answers to my questions - they were taken by surprise sometimes! I noticed a big difference


between people I have interviewed in Europe and the USA, and most of those I interviewed

in Buenos Aires. In Europe and the USA it seems the tango musicians are very used to talking

about tango music in a way that is clear for interviewers, radio, TV, journalists and anyone

who doesn’t know the genre, to understand. I felt that it was much more jumbled and

haphazard in Argentina! Sometimes I would meet people again later and they would have

thought of other things to add to what they had already told me. In many ways what I was

asking for was the knowledge you get after being accepted into the circuit there, so some

information remains elusive to me – I found this interesting. The way the tango world

functions means it easily remains a mystery to outsiders. I see many codes of appropriate

behaviour that are not mentioned but must be respected if you wish to take part in this

world. I meet musicians in England who are not aware of these unwritten rules and who end

up offending tango musicians without even being aware of it.

An unexpected discovery from trying to reveal more about tango violin also revealed to me

an aspect of the tanguero culture I had not fully appreciated before among some circles —

that of the desire of its musicians to be respected in the classical music world. I think the

new generation who see tango more as a community activity than one of hierarchical status,

or who share a more rock music mentality, are not at all concerned with this, but those who

have a more traditional approach or publically prominent position seem to be much more

so, as if looking for validation or recognition. Yet others are very comfortable with their

tanguero status and are interested in promoting tango music as it is, without looking for

outside support. It is a hugely mixed world. The history of tango has always involved an

endorsement coming from Europe and I think for some, this still exists, an old legacy

running through the genre. But the more that people world-wide become educated about

this music, the more seriously many people will start to take the genre too. Tango music is

very hard to play really well, and is really worthy of the time necessary to become a good

tango musician.

Every interviewee said at some point, that each tango musician must listen obsessively to

the recordings but after that they must step out and find their own path. Tango remains a

creative popular music imbued with the identity of a particular place. This was something

that had not been as clear to me before - the weight of culture hanging on the shoulders of

tango music expressed itself in a myriad of ways, from the kinds of stories people tell each

other, to musical expectations, to codes of behaviour to what was considered good taste. I

had not realised before to what an extent being a tanguero in the 30s, 40s, 50s and 60s had

literally been a way of life. The working musicians in those days would play from 10am until

3am in the next morning, in recording sessions, radio shows, TV shows, concerts and

milongas (tango clubs for dancing). One musician I interviewed was doing five or six

recording sessions a week. This is unheard of these days in tango. Its golden era was over in

the 70s and has never got back to the same levels. I believe that any sexism remaining is due

to the fact that women simply were not present as instrumentalists as they were at home

bringing up the children. Women took part in tango as dancers (and call girls) and as singers.

There were a few female only bands but due to the way society was structured it was hard

for women to participate. This is clearly going to change as society changes.


The way music is created there follows two main directions. One is with an official

arranger/composer who decides everything and the other is in the same way as rock groups

create music, where everyone gets together with ideas and spends hours figuring it out.

Tango music is a fascinating combination of both classical and popular music histories. This

is also what makes it difficult to class in the world music market. It has its own category.

Although my experiences in the tango world can be mixed with some very warm and

wonderful experiences and other more difficult ones, the value of those experiences and of

the music are enormous to me. I find that through tango I have also learnt a lot about life

and art and different cultural mentalities. This is tremendously enriching and has changed

the way I see things. There has always been a desire for direct emotional communication in

tango which has helped open me up expressively in many ways, both personally and

musically. I find tango expresses a range of human emotions with a rawness that is rare for

classical string players; the music is a mixture of romance, rock, anger, tenderness,

nostalgia, cynicism, realism… the list is endless and because of its popular music side, where

each performer must find their own voice, the result is intoxicating and challenging.

Being in Buenos Aires places you in the context of this music and by seeing the rhythm of

life there and the creative approach people have as well as getting closer to understanding

the aesthetics and cultural norms of the society help you understand more about the music

and what it represents. And although I will never know what it means to be Argentinian or

porteno, some of those city energies and life/identity questions, I believe, are present in all

urban environments and so we can connect through the expression of these shared, but

differently expressed, emotions and experiences.

The overall impact of this trip has several parts, these being mainly

1 – a new understanding of the role of the creative individual in tango music and the

importance of investing in one’s creative output, experimentation and research

2 – new connections with musicians which will lead to future collaborations in concerts,

conferences, workshops and other creative activities

3 – an enlarged international tango network

4 – a deepened knowledge of tango music which allows me to share my love of tango music

with others in a more informed and detailed way

5 – a desire to continue my research into this music examining the social and creative

aspects of musical composition

6 - a framework for the creation of my tango violin workshops


BIBLIOGRAPHY

Tango in General

Omar Garcia Brunelli – Discografia Basica Del Tango, Buenos Aires: Gourmet Musical

Ediciones 2010

Luis Adolfo Sierra – Historia de la Orquesta Tipica, Buenos Aires:Ediciones Corregidor 1997

Horacio Ferrer – El Tango Su Historia y Evolucion, Buenos Aires : Ediciones Continente SRL

1999

José Maria Otero – ABC Del Tango, Buenos Aires : Ediciones Corregidor 2011

Elvino Vardaro

Domingo Duran - Vardarito, Lo Musicos junto a Piazzolla (IV), El encanto de su violin,

Tanguedia 22

Nicolas Pepe & Nestor Casco – El Violin en el Tango, Cuaderno No. 3 de Tangueando, El Club

de le Guardia Nueva, Montevideo, Uruguay

Luis Adolfo Sierra – Elvino Vardaro, La Historia Del Tango Vol. 15, Buenos Aires : Ediciones

Corregidor 1998

DISCOGRAPHY

Grandes del tango 36 – Julio De Caro y su orquesta tipica y su sexteto tipica (itunes)

Vinyl Replica : Su Sonido del 70 – Enrique Mario Francini y Su sexteto (itunes)

The History of Tango : The Great Violin of Tango Elvino Vardaro – Recordings 1928 – 1943:

Black Round Records 2009

Los Astros Del Tango Vol. 1 (With Francini and Vardaro): Lantower 2009

Anthology of Vintage Recordings 1912 – 1924: Blackround Records 2010


APPENDIX 1

RECOMMENDATIONS FOR TRAVELLERS

The most obvious recommendations for traveling research that come to mind are the

following:

- don’t travel with American Airlines (they lost my luggage and offered no help until I

got reimbursed for part of my luggage in September after I came back. Their whole

system for claiming lost luggage is a nightmare for anyone outside of the USA)

- Learn the language where you go – it opens doors up in new ways

- Don’t be pressured to get everything you want immediately – allow the time for a

relationship to develop and for people to offer things without you always asking, it

can be exhausting for them

- Offer some kind of exchange for any help, like translating a CV or biography,

promoting their concert, paying for the coffee, and so on

- Be on time

- Listen

- In networks where the musical tradition is more aural than academic or printed,

human relationships will be the only key to finding out more and people will need to

see your commitment and integrity

- Tell them you will show them what you write and that they can proof read it and

check it before putting it out there – they may trust you more and say more and it’s

only fair!

- Be ready to take any sudden opportunities that present themselves, don’t have too

rigid a timetable or you might miss out on something interesting!


APPENDIX 2 - Case Study of a Tango Violinist: Elvino Vardaro

CASE STUDY of a VIOLINIST

One of the most famous violinists I will be writing about in my book is Elvino Vardaro. I shall

present here an outline of the chapter I will have on him (each section is not complete).

BIOGRAPHY & ANECDOTES

Elvino Vardaro was born on 18 of June 1905 in the neighbourhood Almagro in Buenos Aires,

Argentina and died in 1971 in Cordoba. His was a musical family, with a father who played

the mandolin and an older sister, Margarita who played the piano. At the age of three he

had an accident in which his right thumb was cut so deeply he lost the first joint but this

eventually made no difference to his violin playing and he became one of tango’s most

loved violinists. All tango musicians agree he was one of the stars, although it seems that he

was a very humble person not given to showing off or trying to prove how great he was. But

his playing is recognisable in very single recording he made, even when he’s in a group of

violins! People say he incorporated the romanticism of Alfredo Gobbi (another famous

violinist) and the pure sound of Enrique Francini (yet another famous violinist). Vardaro

worked for 40 years in the tango world with musicians from the Guardia Vieja until the time

of musicians from Nuevo Tango like Astor Piazzolla. In that period it was not common for

violinists to have a really good technique or to be able to play classical music really well

from a young age. He first performed the Mendelssohn violin concerto when he was nine

years old in the Salon La Argentina and, if he had chosen, he could have had a great Classical

career. However he chose to play tango, which made his father cry, as he had hoped for

bigger and better things for his son.

Vardaro’s first teachers were Fioravanti Brugni, his father and later George Baré (from

Belgium) and Doro Gorgatti. Vardaro’s first paid work, which was common employment at


that time, came from the Colon cinema in Buenos Aires. He was paid 10 pesos a month but

because he was so gifted his employers quickly changed that to 80 and put him into groups

with pianists like Luis Visca and Rodolfo Biagi (who later had his own famous tango

orchestra). When the famous bandoneon player Juan Maglio Pacho heard these two

musicians (Vardaro & Biagi) he invited them to join his orchestra. Pacho was so famous in

Argentina because he made and sold lots of records, so many that after a while when

people went to a record store to buy any record they would ask for a ‘pacho’. When Vardaro

joined this orchestra he was 17 and Biagi was 14.

Vardaro was known to practise for hours every day of his life, and his association with Pacho

led him deeply into the tango world and into the approval of all tangueros there. As a result

he was asked to play with numerous other tango orchestras, like that of Roberto Firpo,

where he met the celebrated violinist Cayetano Puglisi. When he was 21 the famous

bandoneonist Pedro Maffia asked him to join his sextet, and they recorded for the record

company Victor. Vardaro had now officially made it in the tango scene. A few years later

Vardaro made his own sextet with the pianist Pugliese, which had much artistic success but

was a financial failure after a tour they did. So much so that Vardaro left his expensive

Sartori violin bow with someone, who lent them the money (40 pesos) to return back to

Buenos Aires. It took Vardaro a year and a half to get the money together to go and get his

bow back! There is only one recording of this group as no record company considered them

commercial enough to record, much to the regret of all tango musicians today. (……)

TRANSCRIPTION


STYLE ANALYSIS of El Presumido. By Angel Villoldo.

Vardaro was influenced by Julio De Caro but his playing style was very different. He had such

an elegant and sweet sound that he always stood out in any group he played in. He also

wrote a number of tangos including Miedo and Te Llama Mi Violin.

I found 7 different types of glissando in this recording.

We have:

1 – Fast Semitone ascending portamento using same finger Like Julio DE CARO

2 – Slow long descending portamento

3 – Slided mordant

4 – Fast 3rd finger portamento

5 – Short descending portamento drop

6 – Arrastre slide Like Julio DE CARO

7 – Vibrato slide


So we can see that glissandos have a hugely expressive role in the individual sound of a

violinist. The first recordings we have of violin glissandos were with Julio De Caro in 1924,

and Vardaro imitates and expands upon some of those. Learning to imitate these glissandos

takes quite some time. Some violinists believe there should only be one per phrase, but we

can see here Vardaro didn’t believe that! The use of glissandos is very much tied to personal

taste.

Ornamentation & Articulation

Vardaro often uses mordants, combining them sometimes with a glissando. However he

also creates more musical expression by using different kinds of articulation. In tango there

is a technique called marcato, which is used a lot by all instruments and comes from

orchestral playing. It is played right by the heel of a well-rosined bow to get a rough and

gritty sound. The violin must copy the dry short sharp sounds of percussion (which doesn’t

exist in tango), so all the instruments have a percussive approach to make up for the missing

drums. As a result articulation is the key to tango playing. This idea is used here by Vardaro

when he plays the section at bar 17. An essential component in the composition of a tango

is the idea of contrasts: a rich singing melody followed by a rhythmic section. Vardaro’s

performance illustrates this beautifully. All tangos still use this idea. He also uses some very

strong accents on off-beats at the beginning of melodies and the second section starts with

what is called a celula acefala (when the melody is rhythmic and starts off the beat). He

makes extensive use of accents and often accentuates them with slides or mordants. He

only experiments a little with rhythmic phrasing in the melodic section in the middle of the

piece so we can conclude the expression came mostly from vibrato, ornamentation,

glissandos and accents.

Vardaro was known for his beautiful vibrato and the elegance of his phrasing. In this

transcription he was the only violinist, playing with two guitars. In the score I have written in

the ornaments, embellishments and glissandos he played. He also used a great contrast in

timbres, from sweet singing to rough and scratchy in the more rhythmic parts. This kind of

contrast in sound colours is essential in tango music, from the horrible to the beautiful!

Vardaro shows us how a classical technique helps a violinist be as creative and expressive in

tango as in Classical music. He was also listening a great deal to the famous classical

violinists of his times, like Kreisler who had a big influence on tango violinists. It is clear that

the sweet vibrato of classical violin was being imitated in tango violin.

(LINK on Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4qlDtdDZdco)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4qlDtdDZdco

tango violin: tango violin: style, history and performance

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