"When you attend a milonga (or apractica for that matter) what proportion of the music do you want to hear with lyrics?"
I definitely, and almost exclusively prefer instrumental renditions over the sang versions for two main reasons: 1) Lyrics. Although the melodic lines may be beautifully appealing, the predominant thematic consist of mostly melancholic and even depressive broken love stories, sour betrayals, deep deceptions, bitter memories, suicidal urges, heavy drinking to cope, forget, and escape from the consequences of bad luck or wrong decisions, murder and death. However, a percentage of these heartbreaking, tragic and agonizing "confessions" are indeed poetic, and have been artistically crafted and well inspired with some original creativity (Carlos Gardel's examples), so, I accept them well. Please, consider that I grew up in the Rio de la Plata, I perfectly understand el Castellano (Spanish), and I'm quite familiar with the "porteño" slang (lunfardo). 2) Singer's voices. I have some reservations regarding the poor voice, low quality and high timber, lack of vocal training, and excess of sentimental commotion, hyperemotional and ultra-tragic fatalism in their sometimes even "crying" versions of many tango singers. Of course, all of these conclusions elicited by the perspective of a classical professional musician. Ruben _______________________________________________ Tango-L mailing list Tango-L@mit.edu http://mailman.mit.edu/mailman/listinfo/tango-l
