Happy Valentines X💚❤️🖤🤎💛
My mum Shirley had requested music at her funeral, one tune was her favourite rockabilly song ‘Shotgun Boogie’ by Tennessee Ford and, apart from the song I made for her, another choice was the tango ‘La Cumparsita’ one of the tangos played in the concert here. (LINK BELOW)
I love the battalion of bandoneons playing together in this old film footage here, a whole row. The animated conductor Juan d'Arienzo is so physical, with so much enthusiasm, the way he inhabits each tune with his whole body, his expansive arms keeping the tension,
I Love the way he comes up to each singer, almost holding them, he does touch them, his arms are physically herding the tunes, pushing and pulling the rhythms, guiding them…a tune often swells from a resounding strident volume.. down to the faintest whisper... pianissimo…
So many dramatic musical stops here
Like leaning over deep precipices, taking us to the sheer drop of the cliff face, the whole tune restrained, suspended in mid-air,
for a moment
you think it’s concluded…
till the conductor revives it again…it’s a rest, we’re listening to the quiet before the storm again, our journey interrupted, restrained…
we’re all hanging for a moment… full of expectancy…
many bated breaths in anticipation…a standstill then…
plunging back into the dancing fray…plummeting and swooping…a continuation of the dance.
I love the way the bandoneons play across the rhythm- accelerating dashing into lyrical arpeggios bubbling, spilling over… leaping in double time- extravagantly overflowing in unison.
The way they’re pumping those bellows pushing air through, energetically routing blasts of wind through those metal reeds I reckon they could pump up a flat tyre.
The fiddlers have their moments, they come out invited to the front onto the floor and play, their stretched fingers sliding up the neck in unison to the highest whistling whisper of a note with a long extended scrape of their violin bows in vibrato together.
The multiple singers are throwing themselves into each song...carried away by the tune, each giving voice to their story.
Happy Valentines. ❤️💚 Happy every day.
Happy birthday card manufacturer's day. 😐
Here’s some info about the wonderful bandleader, he is Juan d'Arienzo bandleader violinist pianist Bandoneon playere, composer.