Astor Piazzolla

[blajay]

Not every style or form that has deep "folk" roots (again a loose term for the sake of argument) has an equivalent musical/emotional richness and/or can successfully bear the weight of expansion/sophistication. In that vein, my introduction a few years ago (via our old friend Clem) to Rembitekka (sp?) was a revelation -- akin to the blues in its ability to generate varied individuality and hair-raisingly intense dramatic impact within seemingly narrow stylistic boundaries.

You know, saying that in Argentina could get you killed. (I'm not kidding.) it's an urban "folk" style (like rembetika!) that came into being before jazz, and it's got a very complex history. Whether you see/hear that or not is another thing entirely.

Yeah. Regardless of what I personally think about this, having lived in AR, that's all I've been thinking reading this thread, haha. It's absolute blasphemy there, far worse than poo-pooing Maradona, but maybe not quite on a level with hating on Borges. I think it's fair to compare Astor Piazzolla to Charlie Parker for the profound effect each had on his respective genre. People just need to be less American-exceptionalist to appreciate that--not meant as a jab.

Stanley Crouch likes a lot of music that I like.

Edited June 17, 2009 by zanonesdelpueblo

[seeline]

zanones - yep!

An Argentinean acquaintance who's really into jazz compares Piazzolla's early work to what Miles Davis did with albums like Kind of Blue.

I'm not a big tango fan, but it seems to me that it's foolish (at best) to go around pronouncing judgments on music from other cultures without having taken the time to do anything more than superficial investigation (based on 2-3 recordings...). I doubt anyone here would be very forgiving if I made a pronouncement on American music - of any kind - based on this kind of impression. (Y'know, like 1 Clifford Brown album, a few songs by Billie Holiday, and that's it.)

Just my .02-worth.

Edited June 17, 2009 by seeline

[Larry Kart]

You know, saying that in Argentina could get you killed - or, at very least, into really messy physical fights.

OK -- cancel my flight to Buenos Aires.

Argentina, the land of practical criticism. Would it help if I said I'd once interviewed Borges?

[AllenLowe]

I hope you brought a knife (why is it that all of his stories seem to end in knife fights?)

I will say that Tango Zero Hour was an absolutely life-changing album for me; I actually recorded an entire CD inspired by it -

[A Lark Ascending]

I'm looking forward to Howard Alden's Piazzolla album.

Thanks for the Piazzolla recommendations all. Very much enjoying the few things I have and will branch outward.

[seeline]

Bev (and all), you might like some other tango nuevo musicians and composers - most of them kept playing for dancers, unlike Piazzolla. Osvaldo Pugliese would be a good start (a contemporary of Piazzolla's). Piazzolla has been presented as being *the* tango nuevo innovator/demigod in the English-language press, but that's only partly true.

I think zanonedelpueblo might have some recs, since he lived in Argentina. I haven't really done much listening to tango for the past number of years, and (with the difficulty involved in finding Argentinean import discs), I've been somewhat discouraged about hunting down new material. (European issues excepted. That covers a lot of the expats in France, Juan Jose Mosalini being one of them. He used to record for Label Bleu and has done a couple of outstanding jazz-tango albums that are pretty hard to find. Some of his other albums are very Piazzolla-like, and I'm not crazy about those, although they're beautifully played and recorded.)

I think it's really unfortunate that Piazzolla has been lionized at the expense of some of his contemporaries and successors, but hey - as a former reviewer, I can see how and why that happened here in the US.

Edited June 17, 2009 by seeline

[Late]

Piazzolla Interpreta A Piazzolla

[Late]

Is it possible to move this thread to the "Artists" forum? Thanks, mods!