It was lovely to be back in green Amsterdam, after empty Antwerp.
The setting of this milonga was wonderful. Video. For milonga attendees I heard there was free ice cream from a nearby vendor in the park.
The DJ was El Irresistible the same pleasant man I heard last time at De Plantage, or possibly his friend. A lot of the music was for me the same ropey B sides I heard before from ~1930-50s. Towards the end, I chatted briefly to an older man, a friend of my friend about music. He said - a kindred spirit I thought, in this respect - I don't know why DJs play less well known music. I accepted a tanda from him months later on the strength of this but he had forgotten. Afterwards, he clarified: "I think there are unknown tracks that can be nice but they have to be danceable." "But then if they are nice to dance I thought, how come they aren't well known?" DJs who play unknown tracks always say, Oh, but they didn't exist before companies found them and made them available, but when I hear this I can't shake the feeling that I'm watching someone who likes walking on thin ice. I find your instincts about these things improve with experience.
I was delighted to spot my friend on arrival. We sat together and caught up for a while, then as she always does she got quickly down to the real business: the lowdown on the guys. She knows what I look for. There was a lot of variety in dance and a few nice guy dancers. I danced with a man with a nice embrace and the unforgettable name Earl Grey. Despite his apparently fluent Dutch I could hear the London twang in his English. He was from the West Indies but had lived or grown up in London. I saw a guy with curly hair and especially an older man in a checked shirt I was interested in for dance. He looked more than once but did not invite.
The floor was quite awful, concrete, worse even than at the Waterlelie milonga and talc made no difference. I met Luciana, visiting for several weeks for work from Argentina. It was her first milonga in Amsterdam. She mentioned how the outdoor milonga at Plaza Dorrego in Buenos Aires is easier to dance on, being tiled. We danced open hold and even so I was surprised that she did. Why surprised? she said and with that question I realised that we probably went to different milongas in Buenos Aires.
I had my best tanda of the weekend here with a tall guy, Marko. I asked him not to pivot me and he did not at all for which I was as grateful then as I am now.
Because of the floor this for me would be more a nice place to watch, listen, hang out, chat and meet people before going on to e.g. La Bruja milonga in the evening. That said, there was more watching than chatting going on. There is the park of course for a walk. The Gardens De Hortus Botanicus and ARTIS, the zoo, are both nearby and would probably make a nice day out.
I lost the route on the way back, ending up in a kind of industrial area and car park. North Amsterdam I have thought before seems full of these so I have always been glad to be on a bike there. I asked two confident and surprised looking Dutch couples the way. Where?! They said. Molenwijk!, I said again, dismayed as I’d thought my pronunciation not half bad.
Oh, Molenwijk! they repeated with a completely different accent.
Felicity wrote: "DJs who play unknown tracks always say, Oh, but they didn't exist before companies found them and made them available"
ReplyDeleteThey are speaking utter rubbish.
These tracks existed since they were originally recorded way back when. Else they would not exist now. Subsequently (like the known tracks too) they languished with collectors for decades until rereleased recently when cheaper music publishing technology made this affordable. On the earliest such releases on CD, from BA DJs such as Osvaldo Nantucci sold in BA milongas, you don't find these third rate unknown "hidden gems"/"treasure tracks".
Most of the third-rate stuff has been rereleased very recently - in the last ten years - by Japanese producers using even cheaper technology, for a market outside Argentina, which I suspect consists of little more than a handful of DJs who are more interested in playing unpopular music than popular music. What these DJs think is good music only recently discovered is bad music that no-one bothered to try to sell before the emergence of DJs who mistook it for good music!
Chris wrote Most of the third-rate stuff has been rereleased very recently - in the last ten years - by Japanese producers using even cheaper technology, for a market outside Argentina, which I suspect consists of little more than a handful of DJs who are more interested in playing unpopular music than popular music
DeleteIf that "little more than handful" really were true then
a) perhaps I'm being too hard for you and many about DJ El Irresistible (or friend)
b) it's puzzling then that my "avoid" list is so very much longer than my "want to hear" list.
The main reason I have an avoid list is because of the following problems - in rough order of most frequently encountered:
1. Too many B sides
2. Too loud
3. Poor soundcraft / too much drama (usually vocal drama) come in about equal third.
I avoid DJs I know or have heard play nuevo/alternative/guardia vieja/are completely random/off-piste in terms of music for dancing so I rarely encounter these as problems in the milonga.
So the main problem on the avoid list which includes many DJs regularly booked for encuentros/marathons/festivals/milonga weekends is that so many seem to want to play the B sides/"hidden gems" which, incidentally, I never heard in the most traditional milongas in Buenos Aires.