Tango in Depth

  As tango lovers we all know the habanera rhythm, don’t we - pamm padam pam, pamm padam pam: We know that it was prevalent in  guardia vieja  tango before 1920, but after that it can only be found in milonga and European tango. How could it just vanish from  guardia nueva  tango in just a few years? Well, it didn’t, it was transformed into something else. But before tracing Habanera’s footprints into  guardia nueva , let’s go back to where it came from. The Origins As the name suggests, habanera has something to do with Havana and Cuba, but in Cuba, this music and dance style was called  contradanza , not habanera. As a dance,  contradanza  was derived from  English country dance  and came to Cuba through France and Spain. The music, however, was based on rhythms from another continent. Atlantic slave trade meant a mass-scale deprivation of human rights, but it also turned the New World into a melting pot of cultures. Many traits o...

It don't mean a thing if it ain't got that swing  was the credo of  Duke Ellington ’s orchestra, and that’s what we also could say about Orlando Goñi, one of the greatest tango pianists of all time whose influence on tango music has not been properly understood. Like Rodolfo Biagi on D’Arienzo and Osmar Maderna on Caló, Goñi made a permanent impact on  Aníbal Troilo ’s music. His swinging and groovy piano texture creates a resilient basis for bandoneons and violins giving them impetus to Troilo’s rhythmic extravaganza. Let’s listen first how Goñi plays with Troilo in 1942. I would say that the recording where Goñi’s pianism shines at its best is the one of  C.T.V.  (aka  Se te ve ) recorded on January 8, 1942. The tango was composed by Agustín Bardi in the early 1930s. Anibal Troilo - 1942 - C. T. V. Here Goñi plays mainly three kinds on texture: the melody in octaves with violins and bandoneons, e.g. beginning to 0:03 and 0:07 to 0:10, marcato accompa...