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Argentine Tango School

Tag: Buenos Aires

“La vida es una milonga” by Pedro Laurenz y su Orquesta Típica with Martín Podestá in vocals, 1941 (English translation of lyrics).

“La vida es una milonga” by Pedro Laurenz y su Orquesta Típica with Martín Podestá in vocals, 1941 (English translation of lyrics).

Marcelo Solis dancing Argentine Tango at a milonga in Buenos Aires.

Music and lyrics: Fernando Jose Juan Montoni and Rodolfo Sciammarella.

Everyone is waiting
Improving their situation,
All live sighing
Rightly or wrongly.

Everyone regrets
If in the good they are no longer,
No one can stand the storm
If the “contra” is given.

Life is a milonga
And you ought to know how to dance it.
The one who loses his rhythm
Is one too many on the dance floor.

Life is a milonga
And you ought to know how to dance it,
Because it’s sad to be sitting
While the others dance.

More Argentine Tango lyrics

Listen and buy:

  • Amazon music

  • iTunes music

  • Spotify

We are happy to have a collaboration with the people from tangotunes.com from whom some of you may have heard, they do high-quality transfers from original tango shellacs.

It is the number 1 source for professional Tango DJs all over the world.

  • Now they started a new project that addresses the dancers and the website is https://en.mytango.online
    You will find two compilations at the beginning, one tango and one vals compilation in amazing quality.
    The price is 50€ each (for 32 songs each compilation) and now the good news!

If you enter the promo code 8343 when you register at this site you will get a 20% discount!

Thanks for supporting this project, you will find other useful information on the site, a great initiative.

Letra original en castellano

More Argentine Tango music selected for you:

We have lots more music and history

How to dance to this music?

Tango is a walking social partner’s dance

Marcelo Solis dancing Argentine Tango with SofiaTango is a social and partner dance that originated in the city of Buenos Aires, where, together with its music, poetry and culture, the population consider it their identity.

To learn it, you will embrace not only your partner, but Tango itself, its music, culture, and home city.

In my classes, I will guide you into the beauty of Tango music, how to interpret this music with your body, how to enter the dance floor and stay there while you dance. I am going to guide you into the embrace of your partner, into the society of the milonga (Tango dance party), into the culture of Tango, and into the city of Buenos Aires.

In the second half of the eighteenth century, when Tango appeared for the first time, the main social dance was the waltz.  Tango continues and intensifies many of the elements already present in the waltz, for example, taking the proximity between partners to the limit and making them dance in close embrace. Another element already in the waltz is the line of dance, in which all the couples on the dance floor circulate in a counterclockwise direction. Tango also incorporated this, but now the couples do not have to be continuously moving. Now, dancing Tango, they have more freedom and more creative use of the space.

In order to make you understand “with your body” these characteristics of Tango, and educate your sensitivity in regard to these and many other elements that shape Tango to be what it is: “A unique manifestation of the human potential”, I will train you with exercises and concepts.

If you have the desire, the passion, the stamina, the perseverance, and the necessary patience, I will help you be a part of Tango, to be Tango yourself, to be a “milonguero” or “milonguera”.

In response to those who get disappointed because I insist on improving our walk and ask me with a disappointed tone:  Is then Tango “JUST” walking?

Yes! If you got nothing inside you:  no emotions, no passion, no feelings, if you are an empty shell, if you are a robot that only works and tries to take advantage of everybody… yes… it’s “JUST” walking, as you expressed.

But, if you are a HUMAN BEING, with capital letters, is not.

Your walk is yourself. The way you walk expresses who you are.

If your walk is only utilitarian, your whole life probably is the life of a tool.

Tango challenges you to make your walk -and your entire life- a work of Art. Learn to dance!!!

Culture, Buenos Aires and why Tango

Osvaldo y Coca Cartery. Maestros milongueros. Escuela de Tango de Buenos Aires.Let’s say you’re in Buenos Aires and you’re looking for a class or milonga.

Typically, you might do some research using the internet or follow the advice of someone you don’t know that well, which could lead you to missing out on what only Buenos Aires has to offer in relation to Tango.

This is because Tango is not a commodity.

Tango is an apprenticeship. You do not get Tango the way you get gasoline. It’s not like you can go to any place, or the cheapest place, pay, fill up, and leave having acquired Tango.

You learn Tango from a “Maestro”.

The responsibility of your Tango teacher is to be the bridge between your life before Tango and your transformation into a milonguera or milonguero.

You also have a responsibility on your journey, which will require passion, courage, commitment, discipline, stamina, focus and patience. You must be willing to jump wholeheartedly into Tango.

You want to learn to dance Tango.

Why? Because you are meant to do it.

The rest is either preparation or avoidance of it.

If you were in a place affected by war, you would either drop out by hiding away, or escaping; or you would choose a side and fight.

In peace we are able to be good and beautiful, and we should choose to be as such.

Tango is a language that allows you to speak with your whole being.

Your entire body is talking, in verses, or in a poetic prose, with an everyday colloquial conversational style that can speak in very deep and charming phrases.

Why should we choose to be charming?

As well as we are always learning, we are always educating others.

It is inherent to our human nature.

We must charm to bring others into the task of making this world the way we can be proud of it.

Why are we so insecure when we start dancing for the first time?

Because we are exposing ourselves.

We realize how transparent we become when dancing.

We could hide who we are to others by not dancing, even by learning and rehearsing a choreography, perhaps.

We can hide ourselves to others by acting as a character instead of being who we are.

But Tango is improvised. It requires spontaneity.

Tango is a way to educate you on how to be more like yourself, being proud of it, building on the pieces which are often ignored at work, at the gym, at the bar…

By exposing your weaknesses, you can begin to work on them objectively and improve.

Learning to be a milonguera or milonguero requires a sensitivity to its inherent value.

This is another area where a Maestro can be valuable.

Right now, Buenos Aires is the only city in the world in which there are certain milongas where this system of ethics and aesthetics is the norm accepted by all the participants. It starts with the hosts, the DJs, the wait staff, the regulars and all others who attend.

Are you willing to miss out?

Learn to dance Argentine Tango: make your life a work of Art…

Tango is a social and partner dance

Dance Argentine Tango in Buenos Aires with Marcelo solis at escuela de Tango de Buenos AiresTango is a social and partner dance that originated in the city of Buenos Aires, where, together with its music, poetry, and culture, the population considers it their identity.

To learn it, you will embrace not only your partner, but Tango itself, its music, culture, and home city.

In my classes, I will guide you into the beauty of Tango music, how to interpret this music with your body, and how to enter the dance floor and stay there while you dance. I am going to guide you into the embrace of your partner, into the society of the milonga (Tango dance party), into the culture of Tango, and the city of Buenos Aires.

In the second half of the eighteenth century, when Tango appeared for the first time, the leading social dance was the waltz.  Tango continues and intensifies many of the elements already present in the waltz, for example, taking the proximity between partners to the limit and making them dance in close embrace. Another element already present in the waltz is the line of dance, in which all the couples on the dance floor circulate in a counterclockwise direction. Tango also incorporated this, but now the couples do not have to continuously move. Now, dancing Tango, they have more freedom and more creative use of the space.

To make you understand “with your body” these characteristics of Tango and educate your sensitivity regarding these and many other elements that shape Tango to be what it is: “A unique manifestation of the human potential”, I will train you with exercises and concepts.

Suppose you have the desire, passion, stamina, perseverance, and the necessary patience. In that case, I will help you be a part of Tango, to be Tango yourself, to be a “milonguero” or “milonguera”.

In response to those who expect to learn patterns and fireworks in my classes, and get disappointed because I am not giving these kids such unhealthy candies, ask me with a disappointed tone:  Is then Tango “JUST” walking?

Yes! If you got nothing inside you:  no emotions, no passion, no feelings, if you are an empty shell, if you are a robot that only works and tries to take advantage of everybody… yes… it’s “JUST” walking, as you expressed.

But, if you are a HUMAN BEING with capital letters, is not.

Your walk is yourself. The way you walk expresses who you are.

If your walk is only utilitarian, your whole life probably is the life of a tool.

I am looking forward to seeing you and dancing with you soon!!!

If you are in the San Francisco Bay Area and want to learn to dance Tango, you can:

What can we do to contribute to the health and continued development of Bay Area Tango community?

Marcelo Solis with Myriam Pincen and Blas Catrenau in a milonga in Buenos AiresTango is fun.

It makes us happy.

But Tango is also responsibility.

What can we do to contribute to the health and continued development of Bay Area Tango community?

Here are my answers:

Milongueros and milongueras: 1- Dance better. 2- Behave better. 3- Dress better.

Milonga organizers:
1- Choose good DJs. 2- Give milongueros the necessary set up a milonga should have. 3- Pay attention to what actually happens on the dance floor. 4- Get to know, greet at the entrance, and say goodbye at the exit, to everyone coming to the milonga. 5- Introduce new people at the milonga to the regulars. 6- Travel to Buenos Aires and go to traditional milongas with high level of dancing to see how things are organized and run there.


DJs:
1- Go to Buenos Aires and visit milongas to learn how to do their job, not one time, but several times a year.

Teachers: 1- Stop trying to attract customers by showing them steps inappropriate to the milonga, and therefore, to Tango itself. 2- Go to the milongas, and show their students and the community that the way they teach is the way they dance at the milongas. 3- Go to Buenos Aires not one, but several times a year, study there with the milongueros, meaning: the ones that dance Tango. Prove themselves to have their place in the wide Tango community, and not to be mere local instructors without any connection to Buenos Aires, and therefore, to Tango.

To follow these guidelines, we will get together and put them in practice in all my classes and events through the Bay Area.
I am looking forward to seeing you and dancing with you.

Join our classes!!!