Original tango music is complex, it is beautiful to listen to and it feels great to dance to. However, how to dance to the music? For example, finding the basic pulse or underlying beat is already tricky if you are a beginning tango dancer. Let’s not start about the phrasing of the music and/ or following a certain part of music e.g. base, middle or higher tones that can be created by the same instrument or change instruments during the song. Also there can be different rhythms or meters being played in the same song! Never mind all that, to begin with be aware of the bass or basic beat or walking beat, try to hear, feel and walk/ step to the underlying pulse. Enjoy your listening and learning journey!

1/  Listen to Argentine Tango music often

Here are five famous Argentine Tango orchestra leaders and arrangers:

• Roberto Firpo 1884-1969
• Francisco Canaro 1888-1964
• Juan D’Arienzo 1900-1976
• Carlos Di Sarli 1903-1960
• Osvaldo Pugliese 1905-1995

They made thousands of recordings. So, search for recordings by them.

Very famous tracks include:

• ‘La Cumparsita’,       [The little procession]
• ‘El Choclo’,               [The corn cob]
• ‘A la gran muñeca’.  [To the big doll]

Tango differs from Jazz in that the orchestra leaders made their own arrangements of a piece, whereas Jazz more readily allows individual players to improvise.  So with these tracks, listen to different interpretations by different orchestras.

Carlos Di Sarli is often used as a starting point for people to understand Argentine Tango. He usually has a clear steady basic walking beat, but with different instruments adding variations. So we have a clear ‘musical framework’, and on top the opportunity to add quicker or more rhythmical movements, or to slow down or pause and savour a moment, then to come back into and re-enter that ‘framework’.

Listen to Di Sarli. Can you hear bars of 8 slow walking steps. Can you identify musical ‘phrases’ of four lots of 8; ie 32 beats. There are often five lots of ’32’, giving 160 beats. There can be more or less, but 160 beats at a slow walking pace can take about three minutes, which is a nice length for a dance, and worked well for the recording technology of the time.

Once you get a feel for the musical framework and construction of tango it helps enormously how you ‘feel the music’ to dance together.

Now listen to the other orchestras playing the same piece. Can you start to get a feel for their constructions.

2/ Listen to tango on the radio

You can also listen to Argentine Tango on the internet, for example try :
http://www.ArgentineTangoRadio.com
http://tunein.com/radio/Tango-g3149/
http://www.todotango.com/english has a very large index of both Music and Artists listed alphabetically. They do not have everything, but they have a lot of original recordings, and it is all free.

If you search for ‘Radio Garden’ you can zoom in to anywhere in the world, and pick a station you want to listen to. For example, if you focussed on Buenos Aires you would find over a hundred stations. But nowadays most do not regularly play Tango. Two that do are:- ‘Radio General Belgrano’ am 840; and – ‘Tango Radio CAFF’.      Rosario (another city in Argentina) has ‘FM Tango’.

3/ Listen to tango on the internet

Or, just search the internet yourself to see what you can find, either by for example the name of  the tango orchestra leader, or ‘Youtube’ followed by the artist you want. eg:

YouTube-Francisco Canaro-Roberto Maida-12 Grandes Exitos (Vol 1-1935/1937)

Here are some examples I found easily of couples dancing to  Juan D’Arienzo:

‘El Flete’ by the Orquesta Tipica, Juan D’Arienzo as used in Sally Potter’s film ‘The Tango Lesson’.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O-gHJ1HRjoQ

‘Valsecito Criollo’ by Juan D’Arienzo (I call this a ‘Tango Vals’ rather than a Vals Criollo) danced by Kalganova Eleonora and Michael Nadtochi, New York, 2015.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GieiFMcjpD4

‘Milonga, Vieja Milonga’ by Juan D’Arienzo danced by Luna Palacios and Pablo Garcia at Biezenmortel, 2010.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FbY4TdbZoLE   

Did listening to those three, and watching the way people danced to a regular tango, a tango vals, and a milonga help you see how tango dancers listen to and interpret the music ?