Café de los Brujos

As it has been over one year since I’ve been here in Buenos Aires, I started to think about some of the things I miss about the SF Bay Area. Aside from New York City, San Francisco is one of the most diverse places I have lived. According to the 2006 census, 29.6 percent of the population of the Bay Area (the 9 counties surrounding the SF Bay) were foreign born. I think that being exposed to different cultures as a child affects how you think and view the world. Usually it allows you to think with a more open-minded mentality. For me foreign born demographics information is more interesting than ethnic demographics information and it’s the next best indicator to whether people have been exposed to different cultures.

Keeping with the diversity is the access to so many great cuisines of various nationalities. I had my favorite Thai, Indian, Sushi, Ethiopian, Fusion, etc, places. Places where I go for ice cream, deep dish pizza, crepes, noodle soup, kabob, and even the mobile tacco stand across from the climbing gym. About the only thing that I couldn’t find in my time living there was a good Portuguese restaurant. So, if you know of one, please send me an e-mail.

With diversity of world class cuisine comes the access to parts of various cultures through music, dance, and art. Free concerts in Stern Grove, Golden Gate Park, Dolores Park, etc. Various clubs and bars hosting local and traveling artists. The dance scene ranks among the top in the country in terms of argentine tango and salsa. Access to great martial arts instructions including capoeira. Various festivals going on throughout the year. The list goes on.

Of course everything comes with a price and not all is rosy. It’s practically cost prohibitive to actually live and own a property in San Francisco. And there are lots of other drawbacks too. But the one thing I miss the most is the access to diversity. Having lived in several places throughout the world I realize how unique that is and it’s something that should be embraced and celebrated.  

I had been subconsciously wondering what qualities makes a person beautiful. Yes I know, my mind is funny in that it wonders about things without me being consciously aware that I am wondering about it. But that’s another story. Anyways, the answer came to me at an open air milonga. Generally speaking, you seldom see people expressing their happiness at milongas, regardless of whether they are truly/genuinely happy or not. It’s difficult to describe the general atmosphere of a milonga if you’ve never been to one in Buenos Aires. It’s a mix of searching for that deep connection, projecting your status of coolness, trying to pick up unsuspecting ladies, working the tourist circuit, trying to get a fix if you haven’t had a good dance in a while, playing the game - waiting for the right moment to ask someone or waiting for that someone to ask you (depending on your gender), and a mix of whole lots of other stuff. Anyways, for whatever reason you seldom see a genuinely happy face that doesn’t try to conceal the happiness inside. So when I saw one on the dance floor, it quickly caught my attention and after a few seconds I came to realize that truly happy people are truly beautiful people. The light and energy coming out of their eyes and smile is something that is amazingly beautiful. I guess the difficult part is to find it within yourself to love yourself and be genuinely happy with who you are and where you are in life.

One of the many reasons that I have always been captivated by Argentine Tango is the strong relationship between connection and movement. As a dancer I have always tried to unite the two so that they are completely indistinguishable. But like the chicken and the egg dilemma, which one comes first? Or rather which one do you focus on to enable the other. Do you use connection to facilitate movement or movement to facilitate connection? Before I was aware that there were two approaches I had always practiced the former. But as I thought about how and why it was easier for me to connect with some dancers rather than others I realized that most people choose the latter. Having this awareness has allowed me to adapt my approach and increase my enjoyment of a given night. 

A friend of mine who was visiting Buenos Aires commented how my tango dancing had changed and how I was playing with certain kinds of elements more than others. The comment made me realize that some things I do is out of necessity due to the lack of space and the complete unpredictability of the dance floor of the milongas and practicas I attend. It made me look at other people’s dancing in a different light. Particularly, the collective way of dancing of the younger generation in Buenos Aires. It’s interesting to think that maybe a major factor that people dance the way they do is out of necessity. Elsewhere in the world the environment may be different (in terms of music selection, space, and ambiance). These teachers then have a huge impact & influence on the general poplulation who take classes from them or aspire to dance like them.

From a dancer’s perspective, it’s interesting because of the added constraints to how you can interpret the music. For example, if you interpret the music to be flowy but the floor doesn’t flow then you need to find another way to make your dance flow, etc. Or from a viewer’s perspective of watching a performance of true social dancers and wondering why someone chooses to interpret certain pieces of music a certain way. Maybe they are just accustomed to dancing with a certain constraint that it’s in their blood. With the constraint taken away, it still affects how they interpret the music (or simply, some just aren’t aware that the constraint is not there anymore?).

As more tango communities emerge in the US & existing ones become more mature, there have been a rise of discussions regarding tango DJing. It’s a great thing that people are becoming more aware and talking about music. In passing through different communities I have heard many points of view regarding these discussions. Most seemed to stress that the primary focus of the DJ is to please the dancers (customers). Personally, I think that pleasing the dancers is simply a result of a good job DJing and should not be the primary focus point.

Seldom do DJ discussions take into account the audience in which the advices should apply. Most seemed to be focused on aspiring DJs who are new to tango and either trying to start a community or trying to get more involved in an existing community. For those new to tango who want to DJ, I think the advices from most of these discussions would be useful & helpful.

Having been a part of a more matured tango community I see another group that is often neglected in the DJ discussions. As a tango community matures, sometimes there are those who have been dancing for 10 or 15 years and are interested in becoming more involved with their community by DJing. I’ve also seen musicians who have gotten into tango and after a few years of getting into the music, they have expressed an interest in DJing. For those people who truly love the music and are confident in thier taste of music, I would encourage them (as they become DJs) to also play what they love. Share your love and share what you love!

It would be tragic if every single new DJ plays the same tandas. There seems to be a phenomenon happening where people are sharing more MP3s but most tandas played at milongas are usually the same songs sometimes in different orders. Getting 20 GBs of music from someone, no one has the time to comb through it to see what’s new and what they would like. Instead new DJs seem to be relying on what works and plays the same tandas. I think that this may be fine for new communities, but for the older ones to keep growing and evolving, I think it’s important to have some fresh perspectives and tastes. This is where the DJs who have been involved in tango music for a long time come in. Don’t forget to play what you love. Share your love. You might be surprise how many people out there also love what you love.

In preparing for our upcoming concerts I came to realized that confidence is a key part in expressing how you feel, which will ultimately deliver your best performance. If you lack confidence in your ability to express yourself, your message will be unclear and incoherent. No matter how unskilled your delivery is, if you believe in your message, with unwavering confidence, this message will come through. I believe that this is true in any performance - music, dance, theatre, etc. But more than that it is true in delivering a message either to another person or to an audience.

Who would have thought that something so quintessential and natural in life, like breathing would require more attention and awareness? Perhaps it is the conditioning of the stressful adult lifestyle that has lead us astray. There are so many benefits to Yoga but by far the most important lesson I have learned from my studies is being more aware of my breathing and learning to breath more fully, deeply, and naturally. It is amazing how much easier and more natural each movement is when you are breathing naturally and moving in coordination with your breath. Or using your breath to properly move. I have always known this in my bodybuilding days as all lifting needs to be properly coordinated with your breathing. But I was never fully aware that it was applicable to every activity in life until I was exposed to Yoga. After that, it changed the way I climbed, dance, and just about every other facets in my life. The latest that I have yet to figure out is how to properly apply breathing to playing the bandoneón and playing music. I have my theories, like breathing with musical passages, etc, but these still need to be verified. It still amazes me that I need to continually remind myself about breathing in the various activities that I do. But it is by far one of the most important elements in all of the activities that I pursue.

I have always been a closet anthropologist. The relationships between people, society, cultures, and even the collective experiences of a culture spanning many generations have always intrigued me. This includes people and cultures from different time periods and regions. There is something to be said about learning from past experiences, and I believe that individual human beings can learn a tremendous amount from the collective knowledge of society (past and present).

One of the greatest things about music and dance is that it can be a medium for preserving and passing along experiences, stories, emotions, etc that are unique to a particular culture, society, and time period. Exploring music and dance is akin to exploring and connecting with the collective memories and experiences of another culture. The amazing thing is that these collective experiences can be from a distant time & place and thus allowing us to transcend time and space. On the flip side, it allows us to pass our collective experiences to future generations. It is a truly profound medium for exploring connections on many levels.

I was taking a shower the other day and started thinking about how the most difficult part of a task or activity always turns out to be something you wouldn’t have expected. For example, I have been programming for most of my adult life, and for me the most difficult part about programming is finding the appropriate names for variables, classes, methods, etc. It’s the nomenclature aspect of programming that requires most of my time & effort.

Something I picked up recently is Web Design. Surprisingly, the most time consuming and difficult task for me is coming up with the appropriate color scheme. One that best expresses my ideas and vision of the project.

For Argentine Tango, it is timing. Timing is something that cannot be easily taught but must be felt, and absorbed through experience. Timing in regards to leading, following, body relationship, and movements. Not timing in regards to music.

My experiences thus far have told me that the hardest thing to master in life is also timing. Although timing in life is a bit different than timing in dancing, it is timing nonetheless. This realization was quite ironic given that I am very apprehesive about adding to the list of trite anologies between tango and life. In life, it is seldom that you will know the perfect time to do something. This quest to find the perfect time is elusive and may be impossible to ever know.

To get a better understanding of this pattern, but also out of pure curiosity I began asking friends about what they had found to be the most difficult thing for activities that they cared deeply about and have been doing for quite some time.

A friend of mine who is a tango teacher finally said that it was the task of trying to convey what tango means to him to his students. To be more specific, the love of the music, the meaning of the lyrics, and the feelings the song and the culture evokes. To try to communicate this with the students and enable them to experience this is utterly difficult. I have to agree with his assessment.

About being a parent, a friend of mine said that it was finding enough time to be with your child. In the United States culture and the current modern society, it is very difficult to find free time if you have to earn a living, especially in an expensive city such as San Francisco.