It's the Music, Che!

On our way to dinner tonight, my honey was playing a Tango CD in the car. With the very first flourish of the bandoneon, I suddenly realized - as if after over 10 years of listening I hadn't realized - that the music is incredibly emotional. As I listened, there was bravado, and tenderness, and coyness, and shyness. Every human emotion played out in less than 5 bars, and I could feel how my body wanted to move to each and every one of those emotions, gently, ferociously, tenderly.

So much is being written about the steps, and the new music, and the embrace, and all these technical things which really have nothing to do specifically with them being Tango. Every dance has steps of some sort. And every genre has several styles. But Tango - the Old School Tango - rounds up every human emotion and somehow manages to propel them through the air, into my head, under my skin, and cause my entire body to be moved through its various emotional journeys.

I write this even as I have been unable, for several months now, to indulge in the divine embrace. A part of me fears that it will forget everything, that the feet will turn to sludge, and the body to clay. And yet, as soon as those first strains met my senses, I knew that my body would remember, that the feet would follow, because the heart was touched, and moved greatly by the glorious sounds of Tango.

Do Tango steps to whatever other music you wish. Why not. It's fun. I've done it, and will in all likelihood do it again. But do not call it Tango. Because Tango, the real thing, is when that music, and your partner, and your body, are all expressing the same elated, desolate, profound, tender roller coaster of sound emanating from that little squeeze box.