Today’s Tango Word is ‘Musicality’.
Oh FFS Miles!!!! Again with this word business? Seriously ???
Hear me out, you may glean something today aside from the fact that I have a nasty case of OCD, or if I’m applying my OCD, … CDO!
The word ‘Musicality’ by definition means “to have a talent for or a sensitivity to music”.
Hmmm… ummm … well that doesn’t sound like what most tango dancers mean when they use the word, does it ?
No. It doesn’t.
So what does it mean when the tango world uses the word ‘Musicality’ ?
It means these three things at the same time:
1.) To be able to listen to and identify the orchestra, orchestral lead and/or composer, and/or singer(s), which will typically generate context for that orchestra in their catalogue of work with a particular piece of music in a particular time period or age of that orchestra within the context of their contemporaries.
2.)To identify the genre, style, and structure, usually based on the 8-count beat methodology, to discern any obvious patterns and/or subtle cues that may be present but not obvious to the casual listener that denotes a workable structure or lattice that may be usable to us.
And 3.) To derive some method of tango movement that matches, highlights, or accentuates the aforementioned patterns in the music.
Usually that movement invokes a vast variation on any of the 5 Social Figures of Argentine Tango. Typically it relies heavily on the 1st and 2nd of those things: Any of the 6 Ways of Walking and any of the 8 types of Ochos.
Capice ?
Usually by this point in the article you’d see me rip that definition to shreds and replace it with something much clearer IMO.
No shredding necessary here because that melange above did it for me.
In my CDO way of looking at Tango there’s a much simpler, clearer, concise altogether easier way of yapping about those 3 things with 1 simple phrase:
M U S I C A L I N T E R P R E T A T I O N!
Or Interpreting The Music.
I say that because that’s exactly what you’re doing, you’re attempting to interpret what you’re hearing, and to generate context and structure from it, and then generate movement from that structure.
I would love is it if the Tango world started using this phrase instead of misaligning and misappropriating the word ‘Musicality’ to mean something that it doesn’t. The reality is I have zero power, zero pull, and am mostly seen as a tango crank with a CDO problem. 
So my only recourse is to keep banging my drum until I’m dead. Which at that point, someone may start using the phrase because it’s more accurate and efficient.
So why am I yapping about this ?
Because it’s a precursor to Part 2 of the topic – ‘The Misnomer and Fallacy of Musicality’ Part 1.
Part 2 is coming….