Author: De Valentin Alsina Matias

The role of the DJ' S can be determining, not only for the success of a ball but also for the musical education of the dancers. And especially for the tango! Because, it enough is not said: the tango, one dances it with the ear! !
We invite the DJ' S to write on their point of view on this workand their musical approach of this kind which has already more than one century and as many stages.
Send your texts to: and we will be happy to diffuse them and - we do not doubt it - the ' tangueros' will be happy to read them.
Today we publish ' vision DJ' of Matias of Valentine Alsina.

The music on which we dance, the orchestras and itsinterpretations, are a fundamental part of the dance. It causes the movements and the dynamics which makes that the couple binds.

I started to pass from the music to Paris, and to make experiments. One asked me of Piazzolla, that I pass ' milonga LED angel'. And me I answered: not, thank you... one does it in other balls, but not here, here one makes as in Buenos Aires. But this position did not hold a long time.

Me I did not want to pass what others did already. Then I have to listen to all, reécouter again, to re-examine the discography, with other eyes and other ears.
I discovered a new universe. The fact of having divided many moments with dancers like Pablito, Victoria, to have seen dancingChicho, enabled me to penetrate of new musical spaces. After my discoveries ' piazzolliennes' I began with mixer my first topics.

I wonder how we listen to the music. Why we listen to the music? Which truth hides behind each topic? Why a certain order of listening?
At the time of a ball, the DJ reorganizes this speech, it proposes it; a kind of stream of consciousness starts.

In the milongas, I commençé to pass my music of Fernando Samalea, my Piazzollas mixed with other Piazzollas, because its speech, its sentences is repètent, been complementary without the topics taking an unspecified importance: the new music which it is possible to incorporate in the dance tango, because my principal preocupation remains the dance.

The fact of having found the bond between electronic music and tango is simply the result of the appropriation of a traditional musicby a new generation, which it must convey to reproduce it, to recreateit, retrogressing or while incorporating changes.
I believe that the function of each topic is that to generate a voyage, a road to live these seconds of pleasure. In all the ways, it is that which I seek with each time I dance, with my partner of the moment at the time of a demonstration or as DJ.

Why electronic music, the tango elctronic?

The public of Paris is in constant search for renewal, of innovation. This is not recent, it is enough to read some biographies of Argentinian which attended Paris to realize that there are few things which surprise the public of Paris.

In a ball, the demonstrations of the dancers of tango and the concerts of Gotan Project, opened a space of renewal which necessitates permanent creations, to the great show with each demonstration.

Undoubtedly that this request is a request advertizing, marketing, to fill of spaces, all the recesses, like a proof of the difficulty in fixing the attention on only one object. I think of the simplicity of interpretation of a playing bandoneonist of the tangos, Dino Saluzzi, almost ignored general public tanguero. I think of groups of talented musicians, often transitory, who have evilto fill a milonga of the circuit underground.

Today, the need for creativity through the music implies a need to incorporate the means of communication of mass to reach the public,which one believes that it awaits a chiquitin, chiquitan buckles some, a fugacious love, a little love to the Frenchwoman.

The search for a new sound, that Piazzolla initiated, is a springboard to produce another music which can release us from the rate/rhythm oppressing of the tango, so that one walks in another universe. Dimensions of this new universe will be conditioned bythe creative capacity of the dancers, the musicians and the DJ' S.

The point to be considered is the place of the DJ. To limit itself to pass from the topics with a certain criterion does notmean to have musical matter knowledge. But to seek and create new combinations with the music which one has. This said, need for knowing to dance remainder impossible to circumvent.

The place of Dj in creation appears in front of the need to organize all the music listened to give him a new dash in each programmed series.
This work is limited to the traditional music, since we take interpretations of Piazzolla or of the electronic music work becomes more interesting because we program new rhythmic bases then or we mix topics known with the other musics. It is here that the sound, or the style, specific to the DJ emerges and takes its personality.

Within this framework of creation, one should not forget the ' cortinas', the pauses necessary to give breath to the dancer, to change couple, not to forget that the tango is a social fact. Inthis space the possibilities of creation are almost unlimited, the music for this pause can touch all the registers, for, precisely, living another space.

The charts of our experimentation, today are cella-là. Not parce on Pugliese or D' Arienzo the possibilities is less, but because it acts of a its contemporary, a new inevitable copulationbetween heritage and new contribution.

Matias of Valentine Alsina
February 6, 2004
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