612  "Gricel": A tango with "swing?"

Date: Thu, 13 Jun 2002 23:41:08 -0600
From: Brian Dunn <brianpdunn@EARTHLINK.NET>
Subject: Re: "Gricel": A tango with "swing?"

Jai:

>> Straight vs. swing has nothing to do with what rhythms
>> you select, but rather what feel you perform them
>> with, which is to say how you place the small time
>> values. Count Basie vs. Biagi.

Frank:

>It don't mean a thing if it ain't got that... dotted 16th note? ;-)
>Help me out here. Are we saying that a swing rhythm can't
>be annotated in a straight time signature?

I asked a drummer co-worker ( with no tango background ) to discern whether
Canaro's recording of "Gricel" has a swing feel in its opening bars; he said
that it definitely did, as the horns that come in echoing the opening
strings are lagging behind the beat in their attack, but not enough to cross
over into the next easily-notated triplet or doublet form...according to
him, it's a sort of non-mathematical "sliding attack" quality that resists
conventional notation. Actually, he said "Gricel" was more accurately
described as "swing-influenced" in its treatment of the attack...I believe
he used the phrase "white-boy swing." In listening to "Gricel," to those
opening horns and their slip-sliding lagging behind the beat, echoed by the
strings in later phrases, it seems VERY unlike any kind of tras-pie or
"rhythmic tango" eighth- or sixteenth-notes laid precisely within the
framework of standard 4/4 time.

But no other "swing-influenced" tangos jump to mind...and it seems "Gricel"
itself isn't consistent in this swing feel throughout, returning quickly to
a straight feel for most of the song.

Does anyone else know of other "swinging tangos"?

Brian Dunn
Boulder, Colorado USA
www.danceoftheheart.com