490  Curso de Tango, Salgan's new book+CD on tango music

Date: Sat, 30 Mar 2002 13:09:22 -0600
From: "A. Lester Buck III" <buck@COMPACT.COM>
Subject: Curso de Tango, Salgan's new book+CD on tango music

Houston hosted the first MetaTango festival over March 15-17.
The organizers of the event brought in a tango musical group lead
by Daniel Diaz on bandoneon, <https://www.intellinks.com/rioplata>.
Daniel brought in three musicians from Kansas City: Pablo Motta
on bass, Christine Brebes on violin, and Brad Cox on piano.
While the tango dance classes were being held at the hotel, Daniel
offered a master class in tango music on Saturday. He distributed
handouts of some principles of tango music written by Mauricio
Najt of the New York Tango Trio.

In 1996, at Stanford Tango Week, I attended a wonderful class in
musicality taught by Rebecca Shulman and Pablo Aslan (also with
New York Tango Trio), and Pablo handed out another shorter sheet
of information about tango rhythms. I am not a musician, and
ever since I have been looking for tango musicality information
that is written and/or recorded so it can be studied over time
and absorbed. A friend slipped me a copy of Pablo Aslan's UCLA
master's thesis on the history of tango (alas, without the musical
appendixes), and I presume that is still available in the UCLA
library, and later I heard Pablo is writing a book on the history
of tango music.

I asked my tango music questions in the master class and had
them answered very nicely, but without a written and recorded
record of the musical principles, I expressed my doubt that
much of the information would register permanently with me.
That was when Pablo Motta said, "Why don't you buy Salgan's book.
That explains it all and includes a CD?"

???HOLA??? A book and CD on tango music?

"It's on his web site: horaciosalgan.com," Pablo said.

Hot damn, it's there!

https://www.horaciosalgan.com/cursodetango.htm

The web site lists a number of BsAs bookstores that sell the book.
A Google search turned up one online store that sells the book,

https://www.tangostore.com/

which is the e-commerce side of Zival's, a large music store in
downtown BsAs with a very complete tango selection.

I tried to order a copy from their web site, but something in
their shopping cart was broken for me and I kept getting a total
order value of $0.00. Nevertheless, they responded very quickly
to an email (even offering to call me to complete the order)
and I was able to order via email. I sent half of my credit card
information in each of two emails. They will also want to know
the security code, the three digit number on the back of your card.

They sell in Argentine pesos, and I was quoted an approximate
delivered price of $61.50US via UPS Express, which, oddly enough,
is cheaper than regular postal mail. I completed the order on
March 22, Friday, and, incredibly, I had the book waiting for
me when I got home from work on Monday! In addition, my credit
card company reported a charge of $50.59, and I don't know where
the $11 savings came from. Even at $61.50, it is a great value.

Here are the email contacts at Zival's who can take your order
if their web page is not working for you:

"Fernando J. Laviz" <flaviz@zivals.com>
"Silvina" <silvina@zivals.com>

It appears that Fernando accepts the orders and Silvina fulfills
them, so you probably should just send your request to both.

In looking through the Tango-L archives, I found only a very
brief mention by Janis Kenyon back on November 10, 2001:

For those of you who are musicians of tango, Horacio Salgan
has published CURSO DE TANGO, the first book on the musical
technique of tango which he will present at Teatro Presidente
Alvear on November 14.

To give you some idea of what is included in the book, my next
two messages will share the table of contents and the list of
musical selections on the included CD.

Incidentally, Horacio Salgan is eighty-five years old. This is
an amazing work to be publishing at that age.


Best regards,

Lester

--
A. Lester Buck buck@compact.com