Upcoming MDC: 17 July 2010

We start to have Milonga del Corazón because our hearts are truly in tango. We'd like to offer a space where people in Hong Kong can experience the milongas in Buenos Aires - dancing in a cosy place with traditional tango music. We may not be able to offer grand and historical dance hall that like Salon Canning and Niño Bien, but we pay the greatest respect to the classical music like most milongas in Buenos Aires do. We carefully arrange and select the most danceable music in our milonga, as we believe that one of the keys to understand tango is to dance with the most sophisticated music in the tango history. We wish you enjoy dancing in our milonga, and experience the unique sensations that derived from embracing with the tango music from the golden era. 我們開始辨 Milonga del Corazón 是因為我們真的心愛探戈。我們希望在香港提供一個可以體驗布宜諾斯艾利斯milonga的地方﹣在有傳統探戈音樂的舒適氣氛下跳舞。我們或許不能提供像Salon Canning 或 Niño Bien那種有氣派有悠久歷史的舞池,但我們像布宜諾斯艾利斯大部份Milonga一樣十分尊重傳統的探戈音樂。我們精心安排和挑選最適合跳舞的音樂,因為我們深信要了解探戈其中之一的關鍵便是跟探戈歷史中最有深度的音樂跳舞。我們希望你喜歡在我們的Milonga跳舞,並體會到擁抱經典探戈音樂所帶來的奇妙感覺。 Emily and Coleman

Monday, February 05, 2007

Exploring Fresedo by Emily




Osvaldo Fresedo may not be as famous as other orchestra leaders such as Carlos Di Sarli, but Di Sarli might well have remained unknown if Fresedo had never existed. Di Sarli’s music, especially his early pieces from the late 1920s, were very much modelled on the style of Fresedo, who first formed his own orchestra in 1918.

Fresedo’s music, especially in the 1930s and early 1940s, is characterised by soft rhythms supporting elegant melodies to evoke a totally romantic atmosphere. Many DJs, myself included, like to play his music towards the end of a milonga when dancers, possibly a little weary after dancing for a good few hours, are looking for something a little softer and less demanding.

Fresedo’s most representative pieces come from between 1933 and 1941, with many of them featuring the singing of either Roberto Ray or Ricardo Ruiz.

Ray started working with Fresedo in 1933. Ray’s way of singing – soft and delicate, almost feminine – became a benchmark Fresedo’s later lyrical tunes. “Tangos De Salon” in the Reliquias series collects the most popular pieces of Fresedo with Ray, among them such classics as “Vida Mia”, “Yo No Se Llorar”, “Canto De Amor” and “El Mareo” One rarity is “Isla De Capri”, a tangoable foxtrot rarely featured on other albums that is also noteworthy for featuring a harp to ornament the melody.

Osvaldo Fresedo con Cantores” in the Solo Tango series has many of the same tunes as “Tangos De Salon”, but it also features some songs with Ruiz. Ruiz, who had a similar tenor range as Ray, was chosen by Fresedo to replace Ray after the latter left Fresedo in 1939. Ruiz’s voice is even softer and more feminine than Ray’s – quite easily mistakable for a woman’s. The highlights of this CDs include “Mas Alla”, “Niebla Del Riachuelo”, “Rosarina Linda” and “Vida Querida”; my favourite is Ruiz singing “Despues Del Carnaval” – a piece also adored by many other Hong Kong milongeros after they watched Javier and Geraldine perform to it in Taiwan.

To hear some of Fresedo’s finest instrumental pieces, try “1933/1948”, released last year as part of the Colección 78 RPM series. This album collects many previously unreleased tunes, many of which are popular with DJs in Buenos Aires who previously only owned poor quality bootleg recordings. Fresdeo’s instrumentals are similar in style to his sung tangos, witness his recordings of “La Clavada” and “Firulete”. Also worth listening out for is the subtle sound of the vibraphone in “Mariposita”.


Since the album collects recordings made from 1933 to 1948, it also offers a taste of Fresedo’s pieces from the late 1940s when he experimented with a more grandiose and dramatic sound than in his earlier days. Adding drums and other percussion, however, is not to everyone’s taste; certainly it makes for less tranquil, more abrupt sounding style of tango. For those looking to try a disk from this period, “Y La Perdí” is recommend.

For those looking to sample Fresedo through a single CD, “Años ’33 Al ’48” in the Buenos Aires Tango Club series features something in just about all of his different styles. The album collects instrumentals and lyrical pieces with a number of different singers. Its stand-out tunes – for me at least – are “Tigre Viejo”, “Cuartito Azul” and “Buscandote”.

Editted by Simon Cartledge © 2006 Hong Kong Tango Lab

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