1894  Meta-stylistics

Date: Tue, 14 Oct 2003 15:14:37 -0700
From: Carlos Lima <amilsolrac@YAHOO.COM>
Subject: Meta-stylistics

After a long separation, due to more pressing matters, I started to take
quick peeks at the current archive of the L (well, the more promising parts,
claro) and among the threads what do I find? A good old fashioned
controversy on styles ---a subject that, some think, has grown, er,
thread bare.

I do not blame them; but I did find, side by side with the familiar religious
dread of hearing a spade called a spade, and why should we risk blasphemy and
the perdition of our souls by thinking disquieting thoughts, or fiddling with
the scriptural words in prayers, and whatnot ... side by side, I was saying,
I did find some nice vigorous sedition. Well, quantity does engender variety,
sometimes even quality. But, let s face it, organized religion has it, still.
Theirs (the clergy s) is a nearly insurmountable advantage to face. They can,
with a few words, summon the weight of all the sacred writings, while we, the
lay people, drown ourselves in words.

I had a big disappointment, though. I might call it my monogrammaton
disappointment. I had thought of the single-letter labeling idea myself many
moons ago. (Only, my letters were C and A, in this order, and the details a
bit different.) I though it might work. It did not. Tango differences of
opinion are definitely more serious than those in the area of provoked
abortions. There the pro-choicers (well, here in the USA, at least) can go
along with the pro-lifers own label without feeling that a reasoned polemic
has been preempted. But in tango? Come on, no one for whom their tanguiness
is godliness is going to fall for that elementary single-letter trick. In
hard core tango culture the idea is to encapsulate the foregone conclusion in
the naming. No, better: to make sure that enlightening controversy will not
start, by making sure that nobody needs to know what anybody else is talking
about. As one well-known tango professor once wrote, Castilian Spanish is
rich (I am quoting) in words with a wealth of different meanings. Like
tango . Come now, let us not be profligate.

Since I will seriously endanger my mental, possibly even physical, well being
by actually go off talking about styles myself, I will write only about the
stylistics of talking about tango stylistics. This science is called
meta-stylistics, and it is NOT a joke. (OK, the tongue will not be removed
from the cheek entirely, but let us see how serious this can get.)

It did not take me many weeks after I started dabbling in tango como (I
hope) mandan algunas de las leyes ---sort of, in some kind of tango real
McCoy---to realize that the issue of multiple traditions, among scores of
other issues, is steeped in self-serving considerations and the products of
over-active imaginations. (I am prudently omitting some other major
contaminants.) After discounting all of that, though, I was still puzzled by
the ideological meanders associated with what should be, to most tango
aficionados, a pretty peaceful question of current fact and recent history.
People whose judgment had proven excellent otherwise, would lapse into brain
fibrillation when addressing this subject. But what can be so difficult?

Instead of chalking it all up to religious faith, oracles, mistakenly imputed
expertise, being start struck, being told things that aren t so, or weren t
so, and so on, I reserved part of the blame for the word style itself.
Sounds a little lame, a little nai:ve, this appeal to semantic difficulties;
but I really believe that a good part of the reason for the styles
cacophony is that. No tongue in cheek here.

Let me try to count some of the uses given to the word style in social
dancing. One hears, for instance, that cha-cha-cha and mambo, or even swing
and waltz, are styles . (Mostly, but not only, in the ball room
competition sub-culture.) The better word is, of course, dances: different
musical and choreographic propositions; but styles makes sense too,
particularly within broad categories, e.g., Latin styles, vintage styles,
etc.

Then there is free style, which may count as a dance, though it is more like
an approach.

We hear also style as a designation for the broad category itself, as in
country-style dancing, the Latin style, BAs-style dancing, the Cuban style
(of everything), European-style ball room (as a very long tradition to be
contrasted with others). Back at the competition ball room corner, they talk
about the American style and the standard (English technique ) style. This
is style as determined by a general manner across different specific
dances, perhaps something vaguer, such as the way a country dances, or an
epoch danced, as an external manifestation of their presumed ... character.

Right next door, there is style as a quality, the character itself.
Informally, something one may have or not have, or have more or less of.
(Something generally desirable, but one can do the thing both not in style
and in bad style.) Style may even be used to mean just good quality in
general, simple goodness of dancing, or good taste. What style, what class!

Another common use of style and styling is as a technical near-synonym
for polish: the details that make a piece of dancing just right , or give
life and beauty to a skeleton move.

Next comes style as in Casino-style salsa, Gafieira (a kind, or style, of
samba), the style of the caqueros, Palladium-style mambo, or Savoy-style
swing. Here we have style with the meaning of variant. Perhaps a lot of
people come to feel that the ways of a barrio, or social group, at a given
time, develop a certain commonality, certain shared characteristics amidst
all the inevitable personal diversity, that distinguish them from the ways of
other communities (but not to the extent of suggesting that theirs is now a
different dance altogether). When that happens, people will often want the
convenience of referring to the variant by name. It is a legitimate
aspiration, I dare say. Nothing weird, I dare say. What would be weird would
be to brow beat the citizenry into depriving themselves of the convenience.
It seems that some things that are viewed as legitimate and sane most
everywhere in the world are viewed as outrageous, laughable, or weird in the
capital city of tango. And vice-versa ... perhaps.

Finally, there is style as in personal style . A personal style, just as a
variant, are made of possibly many different touches , from major
differences in vocabulary choice and technique to just an un-describable ,
subtle, ... feel. Of course the boundaries among dance, variant, personal
styles, etc, are not sharp. For instance, there are personal styles that
could well be called variants; however, to say that everyone who is anyone
has one s own variant is obviously useless hair splitting, even though
diversity goes much beyond just one style per person. One style per couple? A
little better, but no cigar.

I will just suggest that sensible discussion of stylistic variation in tango
is difficult because different discussants are thinking of different kinds of
variation, operating at different levels of detail, etc. Someone will be
thinking of personal feel (of a leader, usually) when another is talking
about major idiomatic variation. Then someone will chime in with the
observation that there are only three styles: tango, vals and milonga. (Oh,
boy.) Another is thinking about the three styles down at his chain studio:
American, International , and Argentine. (The more literary-minded in the
list may still remember the Chinese classification of animals per
J.L.Borges.) Meanwhile the establishment ideologue weighs in with tango for
the salo n, versus exhibition tango, being the only distinction they will
allow us to make or name. (Curiously, it is one that I will not allow as a
valid dichotomy. Borges again.) When it comes to this, it is time to give up
and go dance salsa. Any style.

Cheers,