Andrew in Portland, Oregon :
I DJ the "mixed music" practica in Portland. As a disclaimer, this is not intended for argument about the purity of tango, it's written for people either curious about the concept or (better yet!) people interested in putting together something similar in their community.
The practica I have runs about 3 1/2 - 4 hours, with a 1 hour lesson at the beginning. I play mostly alternating sets of more traditional tango music and completely nontango music. The more traditional music is, almost entirely, higher fidelity newer music - some 50's/60's recordings, a lot of stuff from the last 10 years - color tango, el arranque, los reyes del tango, ny tango trio, hugo diaz, etc .. I don't hear a lot of candombes from newer groups, so I like putting in occasional old candombe sets, and I have a particular craving for tita merello every month or so, so she makes it in too on occasion. The time is probably slightly weighted toward the nontangos, particularly as some of the "tango" sets I play include Gotan Project, Carlos Libedinsky, Daniel Melingo, Piazzolla, and other "in-between" music.
I like traditional music - and am glad that there are venues to dance 5 nights a week here with traditional golden age music to dance to - but this is not all I like to dance to. I like both, and luckily, I can have both! My love of Chopin is unlikely to diminish my love of Beethoven ... why not love both? I had considered setting up the evening with almost all nontangos, but thought that there were a few advantages to mixing them: a) comfort of the familiar idiom after something more outre; b) the (touched on later) musicality-gaining benefits of nontangos can be immediately brought into the more traditional tangos if they're alternated; c) some of the folks who come who like the dance but don't like trad tango music - largely because they haven't gotten used to it - are sort of suckered into hearing a fair amount of traditional music regularly, so it gets them used to it and hopefully eventually out to the other milongas as well (thus actually expanding the pool of dancers for traditional milongas, not just "competing" with them for dancers!!); d) the infectious fun (touched on below) that that often gets infused from nontango sets comes back into the tangos, and they seem a little less serious and staid than they sometimes can start to become; and e) I never get to hear very much of the great, fantastic new tango music people keep coming out with ... Tango Camerata, Tango Lorca, Sexteto Mayor, Sexteto Canyengue, Los Cosos de al Lao, there's so much great stuff out there, I want to get a chance to dance to it! And trad milongas tend to avoid it.
I tend to still thematically arrange tandas - a set of funk, a set of sultry blues singers, a set of Manu Chao, a set Polish songs, a set of Fado or Klezmer songs. Probably in a similar vein to traditional DJs, I try also to alternate more "difficult" and easier music - if I have a tango set of Piazzolla, the nontango set afterward will probably be something more rhythmic, if I'm playing Dead Can Dance I'll have a fairly straight-rhythm tango set afterward. I (perhaps unnecessarily) rotate cortinas from week to week - having the same cortina all night, then a different one the next week - as a way of making it clear to people whether the next music is "cortina" music or "dance" music, though the consistent tanda usage and very presence of cortinas usually alread makes that fairly clear already. The nontango songs tend to be between 3 and 5 minutes .. if they're 3-4 minutes (most of them), I'll play 3-4 of them per tanda, if they're 5-6 minutes (not many) probably only 2 of them in a tanda. Nearer the beginning of the night, after the beginner's lesson, I'll also tend to play more straight-rhythmed (dubious grammar, I know) music less weird, and nearer the end some of the more difficult/weird/funky stuff.
So, some things I think are great about nontango music!
I think it's great for the younger side of community building, though I don't mean to say it's a "young person's" practica so much as a "young a heart" one ... a lot of the people being brought in through the college teaching, or from other dances like salsa or swing that have a bit more dynamic energy in a lot of the music seem to like having this kind of music as an option. I certainly do.
It infuses a lot of joy, gaiety, and humor into the dancing - if george clinton & parliament comes on, or dr. john, you can't help but laugh and have fun with it. There's a lot more laughing than you normally here at a milonga. It's also very conducive because of that to sociability and chatting .. something to chat about, have fun with. On a side note, the venue this practica is in has several couches - these are great! They also are very conducive to people just sitting around, chatting and being sociable between dances. Less of a feeling of separation, and it's an easy way of meeting someone.
Regarding the comment that people seem to leave the floor when the alternative music comes on .. I don't see that here, and it's probably partly because people are expecting it, and also because people have gotten used to it. It takes a little while to get used to dancing tango to tango music, and it takes a little while to get used to dancing tango to nontango music. We've seen a consistent rise in the number of people coming every week, we were in the mid seventies last week, and the floor doesn't clear out 'til around midnight (it's a weeknight).
One of the most valuable things about it, I think, is that it's easy to fall into habitual "listening" patterns to tango music ... people will dance on a particular part of the rhythm, usually not bothering with the melody so much except for the really heady parts of a pugliese tanda, but just in general not listening to the song with a "beginner's mind," as though it's new, and you're actually listening to it fresh and exploring it to dance to. Partly this happens easily if the recording we're dancing to is one we've heard 200 times before. Partly it's that the rhythms have become associated with old habits.
An advantage to the nontango music is that it forces you to listen again - perhaps initially discomfiting, but great - you have to listen for the rhythms, pick one to dance to, listen to the melodies .. some of the songs I'll play don't have a very strong rhythm, and only work well to dance to the melody of - so you're forced to work on dancing to the melody .. some of the songs .. which of the melodies? There's something else to listen for .. then you go back to pugliese and are dancing, and realize gosh - I could be dancing to the singer, I could dance to the bandoneon, I could dance to the violins, all these melodies and parts of the rhythm to play with.
I know I've heard tell of some other dj's doing this in other communities, and I'd love to hear where all this sort of thing is being tried .. I've been told about one in East SF Bay, and someone in DC, but doubtless there are others.
Another thing I do, which I like, is to DJ from a laptop. Not only does it allow for easy set rearrangement on the fly, but it also lets people walk up from the floor and peek at the screen to see both what that song that just played was that they loved, and to get a preview on what the next set is likely to be.
So, some randomly arranged examples of stuff I play to end the e-mail:
trad:
Color Tango, El Arranque, Tango Real, Los Reyes del Tango, NY Tango Trio, Hugo Diaz - the Japanese double-cd import album is particularly great for dance music, then there's the heart-rending stuff on the Homenaje de Carlos Gardel album, and Trio Hugo Diaz is also good, El Choclo, Tango Camerata, Troilo's Serie 20 Exitos, Tango Lorca, Sexteto Mayor, Tita Merello, Sexteto Canyengue, Los Cosos de al Lao, La Chicana, Nuevo Quinteto Real, Horacio Salgán, Florindo Sassone, tangos among friends from Barenboim & Co., Miguel Villasboas, some Pugliese, Vigencia, and then also some of the show tango stuff nearer the end of the night ... Forever Tango, etc. Oh, Artango, I love Artango's Un Soir album .. my favorite tango to dance to right now.
In-between:
Gotan Project, Carlos Libedinsky's Narcotango album, both Daniel Melingo albums .. Tangos Bajos and the one he did a few years later .. Piazzolla, Juan Carlos Caceres, waking life soundtrack, particuilarly El Cholulo, which I should actually put in trad tangos.
Nontango:
Lhasa - most of the La Llorona album; Goran Bregovic - lots of goran's music, particularly from his arrangements with Polish singer Kayah; some hip-hop - Jurassic 5, Blackalicious, Cuban band Orishas (both albums), Manau (breton), some of the rai-hiphop fusion stuff from Algeria and Paris; Manu Chao; Lenine's Na Pressao album (Brazilian); george clinton & parliament - particularly flashlight; beastie boys' funk album (in sound from way out); la tordue; sanseverino; sting; several pieces from the habla con ellas soundtrack, esp. raquel; edith piaf; cirque de soleil - particularly a few from the alegria album; cristina branco and amalia rodriguez (fado); cesaria evora & other cap verd morna artists; dr. john; tori amos - in particular, I like cornflake girl and god from "under the pink" and wednesday from "scarlet's walk"; supreme beings of leisure; natacha atlas - particularly mon amie la rose and you've got a spell on me; screamin' jay hawkins' you've got a spell on me; nina simone, esp. the blues album; leonard cohen; tom waits; nick cave; portishead, esp sour times; Natalie imbruglia's leave me alone song; rachid taha's yara yah (ya rayah?); norah jones; dublex inc's tango forte; some dead can dance; tango to evora; eva cassidy's wade in the water; john lee hooker; moby from play (honey, natural blues); muddy waters; morcheeba; poe's hey pretty; history repeating by propellerheads/shirley bassey; tin hat trio .. all their albums are great, current fav is duet with tom waits "helium"; amelie soundtrack
stevie wonder's superstition; fabrizio del andre; 3 leg torso; blind boys from alabama; macy gray; fatboy slim - right here, right now; rolling stones - esp. honky tonk women; queen's bohemian rhapsody; tricky; tmbg - istanbul; soundgarden - black hole sun; chris isaak - bad bad thing; annie lennox - missionary man; dido - thank you; paolo conte, particularly happy feet and via con me; quartango; yva las vegas; el tango de roxanne / moulin rouge soundtrack; alfredo zittarosa; samia ferah; tom petty - mary jane's last dance ...
Anyhow, there's some ideas from what I've tried and people seem to like on the floor .. encouraging people to bring in music for you is great, too - it becomes a sort of community effort, and people love hearing their music come on when you play it - I just copy them in when they lend them to me, then put them into sets for the next week usually.
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