Classes cancelled April 7th (Traveling to see the eclipse :). Classes cancelled April 21st (Tucson Tango Festival). ×

Acquiring and Learning About Music

Building a Tango Library

When you first start, we'd suggest that you visit the blog at Mandragora Tango's website, and download their practice music. A great way to get your first tango music.

After that, there are 2 places where you can get your "next" music:

1. Tejas tango has some great resources that will help you build your library, especially as relates to traditional tango. Note that we don't believe this is regularly updated, but traditional music doesn't change :). The actual purchase would probably be from a place like Tango CD.

2. Also, you can go to our Music page, which has a list of great musicians who play tango music and who are alive today. A large number have been kind enough to give us permission to use their music. It's often very good, very hi-fidelily, and very creative.

If you are interested in alternative tango music, there are 2 great resources listing potential songs. Homer Ladas has a great list of DJ playlists which have nice music including a lot of alternative music. Also, you can get a massive playlist of Alternative Tango music from Veronika Fischer.

Learning More about Music

Here's a video that Steve posted in the forum ... let's start with some video watching fun :)

The Mandragora website has a lot of really good stuff. In particular, as you are learning more about the music, their Musicality Lecture is fascinating. They also have sheet music, and a blog with very interesting content. And! they have a number of great CDs you can purchase.

Todo Tango is also a fabulous site with lots of info about traditional tango music, including the music itself, lyrics, sheet music, and articles about both composers/musicians and dancers. It lists thousands of songs you can listen to, scores, searchable by composer, musician, singer. It has articles and vibrant (Spanish) forums.

Derrick Del Pilar has a huge listing of tango songs with lyrics in spanish then translated (qutie well!) to English. He also has a few quite interesting articles.

The below video clip (watch the Asian girl, starting at 48 minutes & 33 seconds for about 10 minutes) is remarkable in that he starts with someone who is amazing, and in a very short time, makes her even more amazing. Clearly, there are understandings we can all get about music which are real and profound.

Finally, we also have videos about musicality, so give them a look too :)


Do you have questions or have things you'd like to say? Please post on our forum.