Se me piantó un lagrimón (English version)

It felt like a sing-along version of The Sound of Music, my last milonga before the Christmas holidays. A man was singing out loud all the lyrics as he shoved his partner across the dance floor. Except for some raised eyebrows and stifled hilarity, everyone seemed to continue dancing rather unperturbedly. Everyone save me, I was put out of tune quite disgracefully by this cheerful wag.

In uttermost concentration while dancing, I'm blind and deaf for an excess of information and unable to endorse my dance partners’ comments on beautiful melodies or texts. Both simply escape my attention. While dancing I feel the rhythm and I follow every move, but don’t ask me afterwards to talk about the music. It did not penetrate to a high enough level of consciousness. The singing jammer frustrated my concentration this time. Fortunately, the dance floor was big enough...

To me, profoundly enjoying tango music is not done while dancing. I need to sit down. Listen. And feel. The first time I was moved to tears. It was May 2008; I was traveling for half a year in South America. Peru was on the program, Bolivia, Brazil and Argentina. Rio de Janeiro, Buenos Aires... legendary places where I wanted to have been. On the Friday night of arrival in Buenos Aires my host disappeared to a party for which I had not been invited. Forced to find my own entertainment, I decided I wanted to go dancing till dawn.

The salsa club, sparkling with cheerful Caribbean tones provided enough candidates for some sublime hip shaking. A guy named Alberto asked me to dance a couple of times and introduced himself afterwards as an Argentine-Spanish gypsy and musician. Bandoneon and contrabass he played, at Tango Porteño, one of the biggest tango shows in Buenos Aires. I had no idea, and doubted between pick-up line and grandiloquence. He offered to bring me home on his motorbike. I had no idea where I was or where exactly I stayed and I was going to hop on the back of an unknown in a city like Buenos Aires... Mamma mia - I had done less silly things in my life! All the more intensely I enjoyed the unexpected adventurous ride through the dark city. Alberto was a true gentleman, brought me home safely and invited me to the show the next night. He would have the evening off, but his brother - enough musical genes in the family – would play the violin. I presented myself that night at Cerrito 570 in the most elegant clothing my travel wardrobe could bring forth. There was not a word untrue: I was indeed welcome as a guest at the musicians’ table and was treated like a princess.

It became an unprecedented but slightly melancholic evening. The tango touched me. Spellbound, I could just sit still and let the marvel saturate my senses. Alberto wiped an occasional tear from my cheek. That evening - though I did not realize it back then - the first little seed for one of the most important decisions of my life germinated. The gypsy musician disappeared without a trace, but Buenos Aires and her tango were going to stay forever.

(This column was published in the winter edition 2011 of the Dutch tango magazine La Cadena).