If everyone else is dancing we should not compromise for the 1 person who claims it's undanceable, rather that 1 person should improve their own skills.
What are DJs doing wrong
- Thread starter itwillhappen
- Start date
If everyone else is dancing we should not compromise for the 1 person who claims it's undanceable, rather that 1 person should improve their own skills.
Mr. Moustachio
Active Member
Who's paying whom? When the DJ (you) starts paying the dancer (me), then the DJ can play music that annoys the dancer.
ArbeeNYC
Forum Master
Or switch milongas.
ArbeeNYC
Forum Master
Yes, that was weird. Hernando's Hideaway. It was widely played in the US, kind of a caricature of tango.
itwillhappen
Forum Master
Well, what does “good” mean in this context?
As a DJ, I usually play songs that I think are good or very good "danceable" - with average skills.
Not everyone has to like everything or even has to dance to it. If in doubt, I can justify my choice and, if necessary, change something in the future.
But it hasn't happened yet that others expressed the songs were "undanceable".
opendoor
Forum Master
The context was "mediocre" !
itwillhappen
Forum Master
Yes and no - realistically for most DJs the payment will only cover the material costs. In favorable cases this also includes travel costs, and only very rarely will a minimum wage be achieved.
So money usually won't be enough to control a DJ like a wage-earning employee.
itwillhappen
Forum Master
Regarding which domain?
Why are you conflating undanceable with lack of skills. Whether I say I want to sit out this song or I don’t want to dance to it or it is not fun to dance with or I don’t like dancing to it or there is nothing in it to dance or it is undanceable, it is all the same
. We are at a milonga. Not a court room.The people who need to improve their skills are those who want only to dance to familar songs because they have some vague choreographical idea in their head on how they would step to its phrases or sections. These sorts usually complain about live music or music they haven’t heard much.
The last category is those who don’t have enough tools in their box to dance the music though they may like it and would like to dance.
Each can claim the music is undanceable.
Except when I pay to get into milonga I am a customer. Everyone the host has contracted for service including the DJ is technically being paid by the customer, i.e. the milonga dancer. If the DJ is not getting paid and offered services for gratis to the organizer, the milonga dancer is still the customer. Otherwise anyone can DJ in their living room
Yes I and other dancers have skipped going to milonga depending on who was the DJ for the night. People do vote with their feet. The same DJ might be popular with a different segment of dancers. Sometimes you don’t like the DJ but lower expectations to dance less than usual.
To me a good DJ is someone who reads the crowd and plays accordingly. Obnoxious DJ is someone who only cares about foisting what he/she thinks the crowd should learn to appreciate.
Why are you conflating undanceable with lack of skills. Whether I say I want to sit out this song or I don’t want to dance to it or it is not fun to dance with or I don’t like dancing to it or there is nothing in it to dance or it is undanceable, it is all the same
It is not the same. maybe there is a translation issue here but "undanceable" is a universal evaluation that implies no one can dance to the music. "I don't like this music" is personal and can't be argued with.
itwillhappen
Forum Master
Absolutely correct. But here too the question arises as to whether you pay the organizer well enough so that he is even interested in your opinion. If it's just enough to rent the room and clean the toilet, he's also difficult to control.
For example, women might think that if they pay the same entrance fee as men for a milonga, then they also have the same rights, for example they are allowed to lead. I know one organizer of a private event who simply says “no” to that. And as we men have heard often from women, "no" is a complete sentence.
opendoor
Forum Master
Sorry, but this is black and white painting. There are many more DJing characters around, for example the die-hard dancer at the controls (me for example):
From my first tango step on I was annoyed by the monotony of the tango DJs' classical repertoire (and still I am). My tango library grew in a completely different way than by copying of tango CDs and tested playlists. I only wrote down that rare pieces that motivated me and enchanted me. My collection grew around these pieces of high quality recorded and well arranged tangos with a hook. Everything is 100% GA, rarely played and demanding in terms of dancing.
I am not a servant of the ronda, although I can certainly read the floor. The milonga dancer is NOT a customer, its just another dance partner, instead!
As a DJ, I make a (personal) offer, just like I always did as a leader. I offer the best tangos I have collected through my tango life!
Also, this thread always philosophizes about THE optimal DJ. But this approach is completely wrong. As long as there are still many tango DJs among us, we have to assume that "DJ" is a corporate entity. We all complement each other, the optimal tango DJ manifests itself in the totality of us all, not just in a single successful or unsuccessful set. Like many things in the world, tango DJing should also follow the statistical characteristics of a normal distribution. And if you, Dear dancer, don't like my playlist, then go dancing tomorrow when a colleague offers a different extract.
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opendoor
Forum Master
Your attitude is insulting! You are not informed and still want to interfere with banal humor?
All the DJs I know are paying the dancer !
The DJ pays with lonely nights in front of his PC, retagging hundreds of purchased audio files because the metadata contained incorrect information. They pay with endless hours in search for a particular piece of music that turns some titles into a consistent tanda. They pay with up-to-date technical equipment. And pay with the sweat of fear when a backup copy appears to be lost.
Your musical needs seem to have stopped developing at the level of Spotify. DJing is a total different animal, its historical research and a form of art at the same time. And like an iceberg, most of the work remains invisible.
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Exactly! If 75% of the music the DJ plays is outside the standard deviation, more likely he/she is playing for himself/herself rather than the crowd.
There are DJs who will play pleasantly surprising music not heard often which is a pleasure to dance. There are DJs who play music that makes you wonder what planet he/she is from. Generally the consensus of listeners or dancers converged. I don’t think it about playing mainstream GA music, or obscure GA music, or modern discoveries. It is more about how the music flows, how the tandas flow, whether it makes people want to dance more than usual.
Some can write clear concise prose. Others can write flowery flowing prose. Someone else can write sense using complicated sentence structure. A reader’s perspective and objective conveys what is suitable. I don’t want my newspaper articles to be written like a novel, or a scientific paper written like a newspaper report, or legal contract that reads like a letter. Same with the music, the dance, and the setting.