DO NOT listen to this tanda when quarantined at home and having nobody to embrace. It will crush your heart.
I featured a tanda of Di Sarli c. Durán about two months ago. I love their collaboration from the 40s but my heart lies in the 50s. The quality of the material they recorded between 1956-1958 is astounding.
Nobody could match Di Sarli at his game. The enormous space he creates with each phrase and the steady slow beat gives the patient dancer the ultimate freedom of movement.
I cringe when I see leaders rush it. This music is to be indulged with slow, deliberate movements, flowing through the ronda as if each milimeter of the space you have available had a special meaning and you wanted to acknowledge it.
Yeah, I am certainly hallucinating now that I have not danced for almost four weeks because of the fucking coronavirus.
Anyways... enjoy this any way you can. Hugs!
Structure
- No la maldigas por Dios (G minor)
- Si nos queremos todavía (B minor)
- Nubes de humo | Fume compadre (A major/minor)
- Sonatina (G minor)
I've done a few mixes late Di Sarli with Durán and this one is heavier and melancholic. Originally, I planned to have songs in a major key in the middle but the arch did not feel right. You can make an upbeat tanda from their work... I just didn't feel like it today.
No la maldigas por Dios is my absolute favorite. The recording I have comes from the wonderful transfer by Bernhard Gehberger, available to members of his Tango-DJ.at website. Its lyrical potential is unmatched.
I think that Sonatina comes a very close second, and hence its placement at the end. Reasonable people could come forward with a reverse ordering and I would not blame them. Both are masterpieces.
Neither Si nos queremos todavía nor Nubes de humo lag far behind. Especially the formed could make for a serious closer of a similar tanda. The latter is meant to temporarily lift up the mood before the last song comes to finish the (sad) story.
Usage
I would deploy this tanda when the dancers have spent a fair amount of energy and want to hug.
This is unlikely to happen before the first hour or two have gone by.
At a traditional event, I might plan the set such that this would be the lyrical peak. When organizing my own night, I would play a few more tandas like this... many more.
image credit by Alexander Popov