2079  Yum-ba! re-visited

Date: Thu, 11 Dec 2003 08:09:10 -0800
From: Carlos Lima <amilsolrac@YAHOO.COM>
Subject: Yum-ba! re-visited

I messed up in my recent posting when commenting on OPugliese's yumba. As
usual, the truth is better.

Sleeping at the wheel I made his yumba to be a 1 3 in 4/4 (at ~60
counts/min). In reality (I believe) he meant it to be a 1 2 or a 3 4 (at ~120
counts/min).

So the yumba, with a very emphatic "yum" and a kind of echoing "ba" actually
subsumes the half-measure unary structure, directly and unequivocally. It
also acknowledges the secondary quaternary aspect (one measure = yum ba yum
ba). And it actually has nothing to say about a binary (cut time) structure,
since a yumba is a yumba, whether it is a 1 2 yumba or a 3 4 yumba. This is
not a small point: the most basic difference between the true tango Argentino
(rioplatense), the classical tango, the "guardia nueva", from 1920 on, and
the "Habanera by any other name" of the old guard is that the binary lilting
um-pa is gone, replaced by an almost relentless series of equally spaced, and
[almost] equal, and very strong, accents. (Not the only difference, of
course, not even the critical one, perhaps, but the most basic one.)

The "natural ambiguity" of the 4/ time signatures is more congenial to this
essentially original musical concept; while a 2/ tends to demand the
strong-weak alternation of accents that was being eschewed circa 1920. So,
the preference for 4/ signatures started, though 2/ continued for a long time
quite strongly, just as the tradition for the piano scores to be "old
(Habanera) style" even though orchestras did not play them that way. This,
however, is NothinG like saying that the "big change" characterizing the
"transition" from old to new was that 2/ was replaced by 4/. Versions of this
latter statement are still our daily bread of nonsense.

Here's another little scheme, with the usual high load of schematic
simplification, and minus the infinite variation.

Regular cut time (2/2, re-scaled 2/4), or divided 2/4, old guard:
ONE two Three four.

Quaternary (regular 4/4):
ONE twO THree fouR. (For example.)

Tango-tango:
ONE t THREE f ... at most ONE t THREe f ... with episodes of ONE two THREE
four and just about every other possibility.

Capital letters suggest accenting. There are many kinds of accents: dynamic,
textural, articulatory, agogic, timbral, by anticipation or ritard ... Tango
uses them all, and I have no name for the most important one! It needs them
all.

Cheers,