In a milonga (tango social dance party), you can find three types of Argentine tango music: tango, milonga, and vals - each type has two forms: instrumental or vocal. In this series of introduction to Argentine tango music, we start with an all-time classic piece: Loca, composed by Manuel Jovés. The version in this video was performed by the orchestra led by Juan D’Arienzo, recorded in 1942. This is an instrumental piece without a singer, played by a "orquesta típica" composed of four bandoneons (similar to an accordion, the "soul" of Argentine tango music), four string instruments (mostly four violins, sometimes with one viola or one cello), one double bass, and one piano. This type of orquesta típica was the most common form of an orchestra during the so called "Golden Age" tango period (30s–40s). Dancers today refer a piece of tango music by the version interpreted by the name of the orchestra leader, among them the four major orchestras are: Juan D’Arienzo, Carlos Di Sarli, Anibal Troilo, and Osvaldo Pugliese. In the following weeks, we will introduce one tango piece performed by each of the four orchestras. 

Aníbal Troilo, nicknamed "Pichuco" ("cryboy"), is a bandoneon player, composer, arranger and orchestra leader. He began to play the bandoneon at age of 10, and like most of the tango musicians, he began his professional career early on when he was only 14. At age 17, he joined the famous Vardaro (violinist) – Pugliese (pianist, band leader) sextet followed by various tango orchestras. He later formed his own orquesta típica which soon became one of the most popular orchestras. Best known for the instrumental pieces, with the most loved recordings for dancers mostly made in the early 1940s, Troilo’s arrangements were challenging and innovative, yet still being completely danceable. Another great bandoneonist Astor Piazzolla played in Troilo’s orchestra in the early 1940s, which heavily influenced Piazzolla’s sound and composition style later on.

Bandoneon is a type of concertina which is held between hands, and played by pushing and pulling the bellows, with the sound made from the reeds by pushing the keys/buttons. Unlike an accordion, the keys/buttons on both sides of a bandoneon are arranged differently and in a sort of random manner (not according to the scale), on top of this, each button makes a different tone while pushing or pulling the bellows, which makes a total 4 different keyboard arrangements, rendering the playing extremely difficult. Originally developed in Germany, bandoneons were brought to Argentina and Uruguay by German and Italian emigrants around 1870, where it was soon adopted into the earliest genre of tango music. It is hard to find a bandoneon nowadays because the mass-production in Germany terminated during the Second World War. Despite being most loved and popular in Argentina, bandoneons were never manufactured there. The vintage bandoneons are extremely rare to find, yet the nostalgic sound from a bandoneon constitutes the melancholic soul of tango music, which cannot be reproduced by any other instruments. In the video of Quejas de Bandoneón, we can see Troilo himself playing this instrument with an iconic "variation" (solo passage) starting at 1:47.

Osvaldo Pugliese was a pianist, arranger, composer, and orchestra leader. He started his tango journey as a pianist, and wrote his first tango "Recuerdo" (which remains a tango classic) when he was 19. He started his own orchestra in 1939 in which he played the piano in concerts and recordings. His orchestra produced intense, dramatic, muscular dance music, much loved by the dancers in the southern Buenos Aires during the Golden Age, and toured around the world during 1980s. His recordings from the 1940s are challenging but still very danceable, with very heavy yet obvious beats for the dancers to demonstrate their beautiful long walks. Pugliese had a very long career spanning from the 1940s to late 1980s. In the late 1950s and 1960s he developed his own style which was completely avant-garde. He started experimenting with lots of different techniques, like playing with the rhythm, syncopation, very pretty violin solo lines in many pieces, and different sound effects like "Yumba" and "Arrastre". Due to the complexity and intensity of Pugliese’s musical style, tango DJs normally don’t play Pugliese tandas until later in the evening when the energy on the dance floor has been built up, and people are ready for more expressive and intimate dances.

In week 1 we mentioned the word “milonga”. For tango dancers nowadays it has two different meanings: either referring to a tango social dance party, or a type of dance/music among the three: tango, vals, and milonga. The song we introduce today is one of the most popular, delightful, and extremely fun milongas – Ella es así (“She is like that”), recorded in 1938 by the orquesta Edgardo Donato.

Milonga first appeared as the name of a type of folksong, very similar to blues that often has standard harmonic and rhythmic base over which lyrics are chanted in an almost tuneless way. In 1931, Sebastián Piana and Homero Manzi wrote Milonga Sentimental, attempting to recreate the sound of the old quick milongas yet with a new melody and harmonic structure more in the style of tango. Milonga Sentimental was the result of their experiment and immediately became a huge hit. In the late 1920s through early 1930s, tango dancing started to slowly falling out of favour. Since the new “tango milonga” idea started to rise, many other composers soon took up new ideas and started to create new danceable milonga songs that are faster, with more energy, yet still carry the essence of tango in the rhythm and melody. There were two forms of milongas: milonga campera (southern country milonga), and milonga ciudadana (city milonga). They bear different base rhythms – milonga campera is based on syncopated beats while milonga ciudadana has the time-keeping beats as a long first downbeat followed by a short second beat, and the same length of the third and the fourth beats. Like this example:

To tango dancers, the “milonga” we know is essentially just the milonga ciudadana. “Ella es así” has this base rhythm throughout the whole song, usually played by the pizzicato (plucking the strings instead of bowing) of a double bass, as well as most of the milongas we dance to nowadays. Essentially, a milonga has faster tempo, lighter vibe, more uplifting feel, and is absolutely fun and playful to dance to. This musical signature fits very well with the overall feel of Donato’s music, which is usually upbeat and fun, with great use of the violin pizzicato (Donato himself is a violinist). His rhythms are choppy, tones are bright, and with high energy for dancers. In some way, he should be credited as the forerunner of the D’Arienzo revolution in 1936.