Tandas

Tandas lie at the heart of the contemporary tango experience.

They underpin the etiquette of any milonga – you know (roughly) how many songs are coming, and what they will entail, helping you decide when and with whom to dance. At the same time they introduce the unknown. As the cortina fades, one’s pulse quickens in anticipation of the possibilities that could unfold in the next few seconds. What will the next set bring? Will I be quick enough to find the right partner whichever genre orchestra is chosen?

While I don’t believe that all tango should be played in tandas, or that cortinas are always necessary, I do believe that DJs need a good reason to depart from using either or both.

When DJing, I tend to stay with the most common tanda pattern – two tandas of tango followed by one of vals, two more tandas of tango then one of milonga, with each of the tango tandas comprising four songs, and each of the vals and milonga ones, just three.

A cycle of six such tandas has the added benefit of lasting around one hour.

For an evening – running, say, from 8pm until 3am – I generally leave the first hour cortinaless. This is when most people are arriving, greeting each other, eating and drinking. Those who want to dance can pick their own times to enter and leave the dancefloor. This leaves six hours of music – or approximately 24 tandas of tango, six of vals and six of milonga.

Possibly a little surprising, especially to those whose interest in tango revolves primarily around dancing, is just how few orchestras supply the music at most milongas. Putting electrontango aside, about 20 orchestras are likely to account for well more than nine-tenths of what is played, including vals and milonga tandas:

Carlos Di Sarli

Juan D’Arienzo

Osvaldo Pugliese

Francisco Canaro

Anibal Troilo

Edgardo Donato

Orquesta Tipica Victor

Osvaldo Fresedo

Angel D’Agostino & Angel Vargas

Rodolfo Biagi

Julio De Caro

Miguel Calo

Lucio Demare

Francisco Lomuto

Ricardo Tanturi & Alberto Castillo

Enrique Rodriguez

Pedro Laurenz

Roberto Firpo

Alfredo De Angelis

Ricardo Malerba

In threee pdf files I list various of the tango tandas, vals tandas and milonga tandas I use – including some by names not included above. Over time, I vary the contents of each tanda – I don’t want dancers to know exactly what’s coming from the first beat of the first song of each tanda. This doesn’t mean reworking each tanda for each event, but it does mean my playlist is in a constant state of evolution.

There is no reason for setting the tanda pattern in stone. If I play electrotango, it’s usually just two tracks – many of the songs are longer than most classic tangos, and often their rhythms become a little too insistent even for the most ardent of tango nuevo lovers.

Usually I play off an iPod (with the tracks encoded using Apple’s lossless format), with the songs set up in pre-arranged tandas, each with a cortina at the end. I also keep a printed list of all the tandas If it were an important evening, I would probably determine the playlist tanda by tanda as the night progressed. If it’s more routine event – say a quiet Monday evening, I would probably prepare a playlist for the night, then vary things as and when seemed appropriate.

Sometimes I note what I play as I go along, which can be useful both to make sure a tanda played earlier in the evening isn't repeated and to select what comes next. However, though I have playlists from most events where I have DJed, I have have rarely gone back and looked at them again, except when reviewing an event immediately afterwards.

I keep a list of special occasion songs and tandas – for birthday dances, the last tanda of the evening, just after midnight on new year’s eve, etc – plus a handful of novelty items – Chinese songs from the 1930s, one-off piano pieces, Melingo, etc – though I’ve noticed I tend to enjoy these more than most other people, so they are rarely played unless I want to empty the hall.

There are several interesting and useful discussions of tandas and the art of tango DJing available on the internet – see the links below – so I won’t reiterate points widely made elsewhere about the purpose of cortinas, different tanda structures, how to shape an evening’s music, etc.

Links

David Drake - Tango DJ Responsibility

Stephen Brown - An Annotated List of Tandas by Stephen Brown

Dan Boccia's two-page tanda handout, with recommended albums and other useful info

Melina Sedó - Heroes of the Silver Disc - Guidelines for successful DJing

And a key question - How many songs actually get played at milongas in Buenos Aires?

Last updated: 9 August 2008