What are the differences between Murga, Candombe and Milonga?

RE: habanera

Excuse my english, just a raw word-by-word translation from the book of Jorgen Torp:

p 118
Since 1920 the AT was marked by 4 constant beats and would have better be characterized in a 4/4 signature (resp. 4/8 ) than in 2/4. The relationship of the early rioplatensic T with the Habanera makes the 2/4 notation easy to understand.

p160
Concerning the piece "Tu madre es conga" (1856), ... Carpentier (1940) argues, that the tresillo pattern originates from the ritmo de habanera, or the ritmo de tango, resp.

(see for detail here )

p167
When the impact of Habanera ( ? on AT) in the 1890s is taken into consideration, not automatically the afroamerican ( ? i.e. cuban) examples are of importance. .. "Tú" (1982) of ( the european) Eduardo Sanchez was a style-forming composition which wiped out the memory of the early ( ? cuban) Habaneras. ... It could be, that the impact on tango criollo sprang right out from this kind of Habanera.

p171
There is an early Habanera which was likely used for rioplatensish Salón dance, "La Pecadora" (1872) of Dalmiro Costa (1838-1901). This Habanera for piano is of special interest because the typical bass figure of the Habanera pattern is alternating with the so called tresillo variant. In both variants the second eighth is sometimes eliminated, so that the rhythm seems to be based on 4 eighth rather than on the paradigm of 3-3-2.

http://books.google.com/books?id=R3...rontcover&hl=de&source=gbs_v2_summary_r&cad=0
 
Came across this biography while listening to Carlos DiSarli radio on last.fm, it mentions a few Candombes:

Alberto Castillo
Biography


Alberto Castillo
(December 7, 1914 - July 23, 2002)
True name: Alberto Salvador De Lucca
"...after splitting with Tanturi somewhere in 1943. A little bit later, he included candombe in his repertory, and included black dancers in his shows. The first was “Charol” (by Osvaldo Sosa Cordero), which became a boom, either in Buenos Aires or in Montevideo, what made him go on including numbers with that rhythm: “Siga el baile” (by Carlos Warren and Edgardo Donato), “Baile de los morenos”, “El cachivachero” and, among others, “Candonga”, written by him."

Baile De Los Morenos is on Amazon for download @ http://www.amazon.com/dp/B002ED8O5E/?tag=lastfmmp3-20
 
Milongón and Candombe argentina

Can we expand to the term Milongón, I formerly knew it as a slow milonga rhythm.

Just read Christian´s post on Canaro and Milongón, that it is a style of its own. Do you know something else?
http://www.cyber-tango.com/art/mil.html#christian

Another topic: "..Candombe not to be confused with Brazilian Candomblé .."
https://wiki.umn.edu/view/WorldInTwoCities/TonyAndPabloGlossary#Candombe

But, if you compare this brazilian clip (f.i from 2:45 on)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9dlSVHZtQ_A

.. with this argentinian, I cannot find fundamental differences
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JlxVh8umiis
 
clave

opendoor said:
But, if you compare this brazilian clip (f.i from 2:45 on)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9dlSVHZtQ_A

.. with this argentinian, I cannot find fundamental differences
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JlxVh8umiis
Click to expand...

Not sure if you feel the same, but I feel the fundamental similarity is that the drums have the rhythmic feel that the Cubans call "clave" when describing Afro-Cuban music.

In this vid, the 2nd example - which he calls clave de rumba (I learned it as clave guaguanco) comes close to the traspie rhythm that Facundo Posadas dances to when dancing Milonga Candombe.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MJf5biyXgr4

a strpped down version is here
http://www.songtrellis.com/sounds/viewer$2879

with it's musical notation here
http://www.chriswashburne.com/articles.html

OOPS - the above link does not show the notation for the 2-3 clave whick you hear in the examples. This one does:
http://www.rockdrummingsystem.com/underground/drum-beats/clave-rhumba.php
 
Had dropped this, but a few weeks ago when we were discussin it, a good friend of mine, who is considered one of the leading tango vilinstas of our time, sent me this.....

MILONGA is characterized by a Havanera-type of bass line (dotted quarter - eight - quarter - quarter) and fast tempo.

CANDOMBE is, nowadays (I underscore this!), confined to the surviving Afro-Uruguayan musical style. The tempo in Candombe tends to be faster than milonga, but more importantly, the INSTRUMENTATION of the candombe includes, I believe without exceptions, drums. Dancing may or may not accompany Candombe.

MURGA is also a genre that only recently gained popularity in Argentina, being considered primarily as an Afro-Uruguayan music manifestation. Murga is, more than a music genre, a particular kind of gathering or playing arrangement, designed for collective dancing and marching, one that may include Candombe rhythms. One thing, however, is clear - murga choreography is so far from tango, milonga or even the most historically ancient forms of milonga, that in no way you can dance tango style to it.

Furthermore, to the best of my knowledge, there is NO embraced couple dancing in murga, this latter being closer to the Brazilian carnival parades. Rhythmically, it is more like this, and very unlike the milonga beat.
 
Where is the line?

Just read about a german DJ, and what happend to him when he was dj´ing in BsAs for the first time:

...in 2004 I went with my german experiences and playlists in mind to BsAs and played f.i. Carnavalito (Lucio Demare) which is a widely accepted Milonga piece here in Germany. But in BsAs it is regarded as a folk tune. So the people thought that the cortina would come and marched off the dancefloor...

Here is a link to Carnavalito http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JcDuNSdiQZU

If not the rhythm, what makes a piece a true Milonga, or Candombe, or folk music, or música de carnaval, or.. ?
 
Please forgive the lengthy post, but here is a reposting of a writing by Jose Contreras.

Actually, candombe has its origin in Uruguay, neighbor country of Argentina, to
the north. Uruguay has north borders with Brasil, where there exists a big black
population, and so there is the relationship with the african rythm and
percusion. Argentina has no black people, as well as in Chile (well... may be
some here and there ...).

Anyhow, despite its origin, Argentina took the milonga and candombe and made them
popular. Uruguay is a small country, and Argentina is one south american giant...
so Argentina has weight enough to make them known...

Talking about musicality, candombe and milonga are definitely "folk music",
popular, a creation of many people, so there are not musical rules to define
"this is milonga", "this is milonga candombada", or "this is candombe". The most
you could do is to establish a kind of "trends" for each one, more or less as
Leonardo did. Definitely there are wide "gray areas" in the possible definitions
that we could try about milonga, candombe and mixes...

When you see a label on a CD "milonga candombada", or any other, that's the
feeling of the author about his job, that's not a strict definition... only a
feeling, as in many folk music...

In tango it is different. If it is true that in the first origins it was
absolutely popular, tango was deeply studied by many professional musicians who
agreed and established a series of rules for the music, starting from the
original "trends". These rules are now accepted by most of tango musicians and
composers, and you can recognize those rules in every tango you hear...
basically that rules are : musical phrases ruled on "multiples of 4 times,
starting in 8". You can find also phrases of 12 and 16 times and more... very
rare 16 or more, but they exist... here is the origin of that definition of
tango "the rythm of 2x4" (i.e.: 2x4=8 times... or beats)

Saludos

Jose A. Contreras

For more of a dichotmy of milonga, look at the differences between 2 great songs, Milonga Triste and Libertango... both milongas.
 
Thanks a lot Angel, that fits exactly my question. But who is actually Jose Contreras, a DF member, or footballer, or baseballer?
 
Argentina has no black people
Click to expand...

Ask 10 people in LA what the most popular music for dancing was in their city in the 40s, and I'll bet not one of them answers entirely correctly.
The myth that "Lindy Hop" disappeared after WWII, until the revival in the 80s is just that - a myth.
My point is that Argentina isn't the only country that doesn't fully recognize its past.

At one time there were (proportionally) "many" blacks in Buenos Aires. I've seen the figures, but don't have time to hunt them down (again) and post them.
This quotes from a web site will do.

"War heroism, in fact, is one reason Argentina lags so far behind in recognizing its people of African descent. Even after the official abolition of slavery, many blacks were still slaves and were granted manumission only by fighting in Argentina's wars, serving disproportionately in the war of independence against Spanish rule and border wars against Paraguay from 1865 to 1870. Blacks were also granted their freedom if they joined the army, but they were deliberately placed on the front line and used as cannon fodder. Historian Ysabelle Rennie notes that the government deliberately placed as many blacks as possible in "dangerous military service" and were sent into batte, "where they got killed off fighting Indians (another race Argentines were interested in exterminating.)"

"There is a silence about the participation of Afro-Argentines in the history and building of Argentina, a silence about the enslavement and poverty," adds Paula Brufman. "The denial and disdain for the Afro community shows the racism of an elite that sees Africans as undeveloped and uncivilized....The poverty in the Afro community was terrible. Although slavery was abolished in 1813, the death rate of freed blacks was always higher than that of white people and of slaves. Why is that? Because in Buenos Aires, slaves were very expensive, so the masters took real good care of them. Once a black got his freedom, his living standards collapsed even further."

Argentine sociologist Gino Germani chalks up the "disappearance" to racist immigration policies, saying that the nation's "primary and explicit objective" was to "modify substantially the composition of the population," to "Europeanize the Argentine population, produce a regeneration of races." Marvin A. Lewis, author of Afro-Argentine Discourse: Another Dimension of the Black Diaspora, concurs, saying that "there was an official, concerted effort to eliminate the blacks from Argentine society."

See the entire page here.
http://www.cwo.com/~lucumi/argentina.html
 
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