TRANSCRIPT ~ EPISODE 21

EPISODE 21: The ear, the heart, and the feet, with Michael Lavocah

Producer/Host: Liz Sabatiuk | Music: “Adiós, Pueblo,” written by Agustín Bardi and performed by Orquesta Típica Ricardo Tanturi, courtesy of Crackling Tunes; and "Tierrita," also written by Agustín Bardi with lyrics by Juan Andrés Caruso and performed by Alfredo Gobbi y su Orquesta Típica with Héctor Maciel | Image Credit: Veronika Korchak

MICHAEL:
Well, I'm Michael Lavocah and, um, I teach people how to listen to tango music. That's my job. I didn't apply for it anywhere - I created it. Or let me say more specifically, I teach dancers how to listen to tango music, and everything I do, because I am a dancer myself, is done through the lens of the tango dancer.

You know, sometimes in a band, anyone could do the particular job of a particular musician, but if you take a band like the Troilo Orchestra or the Pugliese Orchestra - even the early D'Arienzo Orchestra - there are certain individuals who are irreplaceable. They're creating that style. They're co-creating that style with the orchestra leader and you can hear their contributions on the records. And it's something, when we listen to music, that is in our present. Sure, the music is old. It's recorded in the 1930s or the '40s or the '50s. But when we listen to it, we're listening now and it enters our ears now, and we have our emotional reaction now and our response now. So for me, that's something that's alive and I want people to have a relationship with these great artists.

[MUSIC]

LIZ ID INTRO:
I'm Liz Sabatiuk, and this is Humans of Tango, where we explore what tango has to teach through the experiences of those who dance it.

LIZ SCRIPT:
Michael Lavocah discovered tango in his native England, way back in 1994, first studying with Christine Denniston, an internationally known tango expert and author, who you can learn more about through the show notes. In the 30 years and counting since Michael started dancing, he has become quite the tango expert and author himself. He has traveled many times to Buenos Aires - including in the late '90s, before the tango tourism boom there. He has learned Spanish, poured over the sleeve notes of tango albums and, perhaps most importantly, listened deeply to tango music.

In addition to lecturing and DJing throughout Europe and beyond, Michael has to date published seven books about the music and musicians of tango's golden age. Speaking of musicians, you may have already noticed that there are many, many names mentioned in this episode. You can find more information about every one of them in the show notes, which you can find at www.humansoftango.com

MICHAEL:
Shall we talk about how I started writing?

LIZ: Sure, of course.

MICHAEL:
Because there was no plan. I mean, what happened was there used to be a community tango event in Devon in the southwest of England called the Tango Mango, which I worked at for many, many years. And whenever I was DJing there, I'd start telling anybody in earshot, "Oh, listen to this. This is interesting. Now, here you can hear so-and-so on the piano, and uh- or whatever it might be. I would start telling stories about the music we were listening to. And Ruth, who ran that event, said, "well, don't just tell me. You should tell everyone. We'll organize a class for you."

So we started doing these classes and they were very popular. And apparently, although I've blanked out this memory, apparently lots of people used to say to me, "Oh, you should write a book." And I would then reply, "No way, I'm not writing a book." So that went on for many years. And then in 2011, at the end of 2011, I was in Istanbul for New Year. And I had many friends there. I've gone many times to that city. I love that city. And the people that I was visiting had a bereavement. And in Islamic culture, funerals take place very, very quickly, like within a day or two. So I was there on New Year's night in a foreign city and I was on my own because they'd had to go to a funeral. And the thought floated into my head, it's time to write your book. And I picked up my pen and wrote the introduction in freehand.

LIZ: Ah, good for you.

MICHAEL: And then it started.

LIZ: Isn't it crazy to think you could have just let that go and been like, "Ehh, I don't have a pen." Or- I mean, maybe you couldn't have, but that's amazing.

MICHAEL: Yes. And then- that was then nine months. The first book took nine months working 18 hours a day.

LIZ: Wow. So you were on fire. So, like, you wrote that first and you were like, wow, I'm going to do this and I'm going to do it fast. Were you working as an engineer at that time?

MICHAEL: No.

LIZ: Okay.

MICHAEL: I was still dipping in and out with the odd bit of freelance work, but I'd given that up quite some time previously.
I was 36, I think, when that happened. So, yeah, more than 20 years ago. And I remember sitting on my own in my flat at the weekend. And these words kind of bubbled up inside of me and erupted out of my mouth. And I remember saying, "I don't want to do this anymore!" like that. And it's like in those cartoons where the words hang in the air for a while and then turn into smoke and vanish. And I went into the office the next day - I was freelancing - and I said, you know, "I'm really sorry, but I'm leaving." And everyone assumed that I'd got another contract for more money, and they said, "Oh, so where are you going?" And I said, "No, I'm not going anywhere, I'm just stopping." And this was world-ending for people. Like, the idea that that was even on the list of, of possibilities that anyone could do. Very, very threatening.

LIZ: Right.

MICHAEL: So I just stopped because I didn't want to do it anymore and I had no plan. So I certainly didn't give up engineering in order to do tango. It was more organic - I, I gave up engineering, and then there was space and things grew into that space.

LIZ: And did you ever think that you would want to be a writer? Like as a child, were you ever like...

MICHAEL: No, no.

LIZ: Wow. But now- I mean, 18- writing 18 hours a day is about as writer as you get.

MICHAEL: I don't work like that now.

LIZ: Okay.

MICHAEL: But the first book was the distillation of 20 years of tango life.

LIZ: Right.

MICHAEL: And yeah, the energy was there to do it. I woke up at six o'clock every morning. I had a cup of tea. I worked until nine o'clock. I stopped and had breakfast. And then I went through until midnight. I mostly survived on pizza and rose. [LAUGHTER]

But you know, that book has, has really stood the test of time. One reviewer, he said it's got the goldilocks amount of information in it. Not so much that you just lose interest and get bored, but enough to tell you what you need to know. And sometimes if I have to prepare a new lecture on a new orchestra that I don't have a lecture finished, I go and read my own book and go, "Oh yeah, that's really good." And I'll tell you, if I wrote that book now, it wouldn't be as good, because I know too much now and I'd be tempted to put in too much information. So it was written at the right time, I think. And now, of course, you know, when I'm writing monographs on individual orchestras, it has to be much more detailed. So that's required a, a shift in the way that I work.

You know, I don't have children, but as soon as one writes a book, or produces any kind of artwork, any kind of work, it goes out into the world independently of oneself, and takes on a life of its own that you can't control. And that's been really beautiful to see, actually.

[MUSIC]

LIZ SCRIPT:
Since that first book, titled Tango Stories, Musical Secrets, Michael has written in-depth explorations of six great tango orchestras in a series called Tango Masters. The last of this series was published just two months before we spoke, but Michael is already on to new projects.

MICHAEL:
You know, in a way, I've written the easiest books first, because the artist is famous, but famous means they made a lot of recordings and there's... there's... there's more that's known about them. And now, if we get to an artist like Pedro Laurenz, he only recorded 80 tracks and there's much less known about him, much less written about him. So it's not possible to write a monograph on him, but we want to say something about him. So I think I'll cover Laurenz and Gobbi and Mafia in one work. They're related - they're, they're people coming out of what we call today the DeCarean school for making complex music. Now, I've already... I've already researched Laurenz and Gobbi in particular quite a lot. And Gobbi, I think his time is coming in the milonga.

When we first listen to Gobbi, we're looking to kind of place it within what we already know. That's natural. So the first reaction that people have to Gobbi is, well, it's a bit like Pugliese, but it's not Pugliese. And if you're a bit like something else, it's never going to be as good, right? So anything that's a bit like Pugliese but not Pugliese can only be second best. But of course, it's it's his own thing. Gobbi is his own thing. He's not trying to sound like anybody else. I mean, he's the ultimate non-commercial artist, really. And the music is extremely rich, but it- there's something about it that's the complete opposite to Troilo, which is there is no sentiment to Gobbi's music. He is a guy who stands on the edge of the abyss, peers down, has a look at what's inside, and then tells us about it. Doesn't dress it up, you know, it's raw. So. [LAUGHS] 

LIZ: I'm excited to listen to Gobbi now. I've listened to a little bit.

MICHAEL: It's really exciting music. I think we've overlooked it. And, you know, we're beginning to hear it, but mostly, and quite naturally, you're gonna play the more accessible stuff from the first few years, like "Racing Club" and "La Viruta," those ones. Well, they're very good.

[MUSIC FADING IN - LYRICS IN SPANISH]

[LIZ ASIDE] Tierrita, which you're hearing a clip of now, is also from that early period.

Para qué seguir mintiendo
Andá y buscate, m´hijita,
Quien te saque la tierrita
Que tenés en la cabeza.
Por delirios de grandeza
Ya no tenés ilusiones...

MICHAEL: There's some wonderful music in there, but it is often quite dark. And, you know, when we listen to Troilo, it's so beautiful that at times, the beauty carries us as much as the, the feeling within the music, because there's quite a lot of dark notes in Troilo as well, but it's always presented extremely beautifully. Gobbi doesn't have the- there's no sentimental veneer. Let's make 2025 international Gobbi year in the tango world!

LIZ: Wow, that's coming soon. [LAUGHS] You're ambitious! 

MICHAEL: Yeah, come on!

LIZ: So you mentioned you have at least three more, three more books in your mind. Is one of them a book about women in tango?

MICHAEL: Yes. I mean, I started on that during the pandemic, because so often...

LIZ: So you're working on it already? It's in the works...

MICHAEL: I am working on it already, but it's going to be the last one to get published, because it will take me, I think, two or three years to write. And again, I don't have any pretense to write a comprehensive work, but it's the most difficult one to write.

So often we hear, there are no women in tango, or we don't hear the women in tango. But you go back to the era of the sextets, the- to the late '20s, and they are as successful and as popular as the men. They're selling loads and loads of records, but they're selling to a different audience. They're performing to a different audience. They're performing to a seated audience in theaters. Uh, radio is bringing them... into people's homes, where women listening at home can hear them, as well as the men. Yeah, and it's societal norms that say that a woman can't go and sing in a cabaret till 4am. That societal norm, which was very common at that time, is what excluded them from orchestral work, although there were singers, there were female singers with the orchestras. I guess what I really want to show with a work like that is how the women had an equal but different role to the male singers through the late '20s and into the early '30s.

The earliest to be successful were figures who really emerged from the arrabal, like Rosita Quiroga and Azucena Maizani. And then, like, the film star diva types, like Libertad Lamarque and Ada Falcón, they come later and they are different types. And now we are dealing with archetypes, actually. We've got the Arrabalera, the woman from the Arrabal, from the tough upbringing. And then you've got more like the Diva. Although when you read the history, like, when you read the history of Libertad Lamarque, she started out also in quite some poverty - from an anarchist family. Very interesting childhood anecdotes. Which is very far from the glamorous film-star image that she then projects later on. So there are archetypes in play, but perhaps they're kind of being pressed upon them by the change in society from the '20s to the '30s to the '40s...

LIZ: Yeah.

MICHAEL: ...and the emergence of film in particular.

LIZ: Yeah, I was just thinking one of my goals when I started this podcast project was to debunk stereotypes, like, tango stereotypes drive me crazy. [LAUGHS] For whatever reason, I don't know, I don't know why, but I was just listening to you thinking that, you know, it's interesting to think about how much the stereotypes could have been sort of perpetuated actually by the marketing, right?

[LIZ ASIDE] As opposed to being projected onto tango by outsiders.

LIZ: Like the way that people wanted to get people to listen to tango by selling it as, you know, I mean, not, I don't mean to disparage it in any way, but you know, if you're saying these women were kind of packaged, right?

MICHAEL: They were. And music's not being made in a void. This, this is something that really came home to me doing Tango by Year.

[LIZ ASIDE] Tango by Year was a free online zoom show co-hosted by Michael and Dag Stenvall, which provided an immersion in Golden Age tango music, including cultural, political, and social context. You'll hear a bit of this context now, but if you find yourself wanting more, I highly recommend listening to recordings of Tango by Year through the link in the show notes.

MICHAEL: We can talk about the development of an orchestra and go, "Ah, well in the thirties, he sounds like this and in the forties, he sounds like this and in the fifties, he sounds like this." For example, the piano style becomes more and more elaborate and isn't that interesting? Well, it is interesting, but actually what you're listening to there is the signs of the times. The orchestras are expressing themselves within a zeitgeist that is not static, that is moving forwards. And you can't escape that. Nobody can escape that.

LIZ: And you probably don't want to, right? I mean, it's like the part of the growth, the evolution comes from that, right?
It's like a collective creation process.

MICHAEL: And there's more than one way to evolve. If we go to 1950, which is a very key year for tango when it kind of reinvigorates itself towards the end of its Golden Age, it's very clear that bands choose for one of two directions at that moment. There are bands who decide, okay, now it's the 1950s and we can innovate even more. Like Troilo, Pugliese, Fresedo.
But then you have other bands who decide, well, actually tango needs to return to its roots. D'Arienzo is the prime example of that, the- what D'Arienzo does in 1950 is essentially to return to 1935 and pretend that the '40s never happened. And Di Sarli, his evolution is just different to everyone else. But again, for him, there's something very much about remaining with tradition. So, within that, then, there are bands who are obviously evolving 'cause they're doing new stuff and then there are bands who try to do old stuff, but nevertheless, they're doing it in a modern way.

I don't know whether we should include this in the final edit or not, but I, I'll, I'll tell you something from the heart now. So it's a commonplace thing to say in Europe "yeah, during World War II, you know, social life was very intense 'cause you didn't know, you know, you could be at a dance hall and you didn't know if a bomb was literally gonna drop on the hall and blow you all to bits so every night felt like it was your last night on Earth - potentially." Yeah? And this creates a certain way of living that we can't possibly have now. So I've heard that and I've thought, yeah, that makes sense and I've even trotted it out in lectures. And then, at a tango event last year, there were four Ukrainian women there and I danced with all four of them in one afternoon, and suddenly this phrase became real to me. Because they danced differently. One of them I had danced with before the invasion and she danced differently now. So they really danced like it was the end of the world. Um... And I thought, oh, okay. Yeah, this idea, it's, it's real. And it's, you know, I can't fake that, you know? We're always told, oh, yeah, live for today. Live the day's, like, your last. But if it isn't your last, you can't fake that. We can try and be in the present moment, but we can't live with that kind of force on our heads. So I think that's a, that's a really real thing in those years, uh, '39 to '45.

And, you know, don't forget that that happens despite the ridiculous censorship that's imposed on tango lyrics.

LIZ: Tell me more about that.

MICHAEL: Well, Argentina is a country with an inferiority complex, and there's always been a strong element which is associated with the Roman Catholic Church and the right wing that's saying that the Spanish of Spain - Hispanic Spanish, if you will - is the pure and proper language. And that the normal way that people express themselves in Buenos Aires using lunfardo-

[LIZ ASIDE] More about lunfardo in the show notes

MICHAEL: -which is a criminal-derived manner of speaking, is morally degenerate and the language should be purified. And informally, this had been going on for a long, long time, for decades even. But then, um, 1942, 1943, it became codified. So, lyrics had to be changed if you wanted the record to be broadcast on the radio, which was the main medium of the time. So that's what happened. And even instrumentals had to have their titles changed. That's why "Mala Estampa" is also "Mala Pinta," and why "Shusheta," then- you can't say shusheta on the radio, so even though it's an instrumental, it becomes called "The Aristocrat," "El Aristocrata," because that's a name that you can say on the radio. So this is really limiting the creativity of the lyricists.

Then at the end of the war, you've got the shortage of shellac. Because shellac was a material very important to war production. It was used for, um, blackout paint. It was used as a material that was painted on bullets and shells. And it came from only one place. Shellac comes from the lac beetle, which only exists on trees in Thailand and Burma. So, you know, production was very, very limited and it was the same in Europe. You can easily find video of people going down the street with hand carts and shouting, "Bring out your records! Bring out your records!" And people would come and throw the records in the back of this cart and they'd go off to be crushed so that the shellac could be recycled for war production. So, that really limits tango production. When you look through the discographies, you see that so many bands in 1948 in particular, and also in 1949, either recorded very little or nothing at all when their popularity would have justified much, much more. Because there's only a very limited amount of shellac still available, so it's being allocated and if you're not on the list, too bad. You're not making any records. So, global factors and the war itself and then the ramifications of the war have a really huge consequence. They have huge consequences for tango music.

Don't forget the ma- vast majority of them are first or second generation Spanish and Italian migrants. What's happening in Europe is the front page news every single day. There are Spanish cafes and Italian cafes. We know for a fact during the Spanish Civil War there was a Republican cafe on one corner and on the opposite corner was a more traditional cafe that was supporting Franco and there were street fights between these two groups. So people were very, very much in touch with events back in Europe where they still had family and relatives, of course.

[MUSIC]

LIZ SCRIPT:
Despite his encyclopedic knowledge of Golden Age history, Michael's approach to tango isn't limited to the intellectual. In fact, his philosophy and practice are to listen and learn with his whole body.

LIZ: I'd like to read you a quote from another interview I did. You know Juan Cantone?

MICHAEL: I don't.

LIZ: Okay, well, he's a dancer from Buenos Aires and he was telling- has this idea of, um, the four questions of tango- are what - vocabulary; how - technique; when - music, and why, which is, you know, of course, [LAUGHING] the big question.

[LIZ ASIDE] By the way, you can hear more about Juan's four questions in episode six of this podcast.

LIZ: I asked him, like, I don't even remember exactly how I said it, but I was like, is this the why of tango? And he was like, "the why is many, many things." [LAUGHS] So, there's a lot going on with the why. But he gave me an example. And I'm just curious about whether this resonates with you. He said, "Let's say you have an accent, a musical accent, because you're listening to Canaro from the '30s. You have an accent, you know the boleo, you know how to do the boleo, and you do a great big new boleo in this Canaro music and it doesn't match. Because Canaro from the '30s is not asking for boleos."

And I'm just wondering, is this a part of how you teach? I mean, you don't seem like the type of person who's going to be like, "No matter what you do, never do a boleo when you're dancing to Canaro from the '30s"-

[LIZ ASIDE] And I feel I should note that Juan isn't that type of person either.

LIZ: -but do you experience the music this way? Is, like, is that a part of the study of the music that you've done that you feel intuitively what kind of movements can fit with different music?

MICHAEL: I resonate with this completely, because the first thing is there's a mood. The music has an overall mood, which creates a mode, an overall way that I'm gonna express myself, within which a boleo is a detail. And if I think, "Oh, now's the opportunity for me to do my boleo," I've got lost in the little details and I haven't stepped back and taken the time to say, how does the music feel? How does it feel to me? How do I feel? What mood do I have corporally? I'm touching my chest as I answer this question to you. How do I feel when I listen to this music? And that's the first thing... You know, between two songs, when you're standing still, I'm waiting for an impulse to arise in my body, which makes me want to move. It's not like I'm just pinging around like a ping-pong ball and waiting for music and then want to synchronize my movement to that. Stillness and movement are both good, but if I'm in stillness, then I'm in stillness and I wait for the thing that's gonna take me out of that stillness. And that's about responding to a mood, which is an emotional mood. So that's what we have to feel. You've got to feel that first and ask yourself how I feel. And then that puts a framework around what kind of expression that you want to make. So, yeah, totally. [LIZ LAUGHING] Totally. It doesn't mean this movement's bad and wrong. It means it just doesn't fit now, you know? We can do it on some other occasion.

LIZ: Right.

MICHAEL: Which, you know, comes back to another topic we were talking about, how we now have this option, dancing in this present day, to respond very, very differently to different orchestras and different eras in our dancing.

[LIZ ASIDE] As opposed to the early days of tango when people danced to one live orchestra for the whole night.

MICHAEL: So we can express ourselves with such variety now.

LIZ: And would you say that your framework, the way that you're teaching music, can foster that kind of discovery for people?

MICHAEL: Well, I think it does, but once again, there's no shortcuts. So, when people invite me to lecture in a new location, I say, well, we should definitely do the introductory lecture on listening to tango music. You know, and I've been refining that lecture year after year after year after year, so it's slightly different every time, and I'm really happy with this lecture. But there's one thing to be presented with this information and to agree with it, but it's another thing for it to have an impact on what we're doing with our body. Because the first thing, really, is separating the music into layers. There's music that's more beat-driven and music that's more melody-driven. All tango music has melody, all tango music has beats - it's not about either one or the other. And then deciding how you want to express yourself. And especially from the more experienced, the older generation of Argentines, they come over here and look at us and they kind of sigh internally and go, "You're dancing on the beats all the time. You're not listening to the melody, the cadencia"-

[LIZ ASIDE] More about cadencia in the show notes

MICHAEL: -the almost mythical, mystical cadencia that the Villa Urquiza dancers talk about. You're not listening for those phrases to organize your movements, to give them meaning. So I think, yeah, we can explain that concept - you know, we've just kind of explained it now, haven't we, in a couple of minutes - but to actually get that in the body... When I step, most of the time I'm stepping on a beat. But the how of that step, you know, the arc of the phrase, is another layer of information in the music.

Then, you know, we have to learn that we don't need to dance everything that's in the music. But again, maybe that's a journey that we just have to go through that- as our listening skills develop, we might get drawn to lots of details and trying to feel all these little details and then dance all these little details. But you don't need to dance all the little details. Just because you feel something doesn't mean you need to dance to it - I hope that makes sense. I, I've never done this, but I could imagine- maybe this will happen to me one day - Liz, here's a little tango fantasy I've got: that I'm with the right partner and the Pugliese tanda comes on, and we just stand there for three minutes without moving. [LIZ LAUGHING] In the embrace, feeling everything that's happening in the music and that the embrace is vibrating with all of that, you know, and the music comes to an end and we go, "Wow, that was amazing. Thank you." You know? Like standing in a thunderstorm.

LIZ: Yeah.

MICHAEL: You know? I think that's absolutely possible. Why not?

LIZ: And incredibly romantic.

MICHAEL: Yes. [LAUGHTER]

[MUSIC]

MICHAEL:
I first started Tai Chi around 1992, so it's the only thing I've done that I'd say is harder than tango.

LIZ: Really?

MICHAEL: [LAUGHING] You know, I'd say with Tai Chi that really I was a beginner for like 10, 15 years.

LIZ: Hmm. But is your beg- what's your definition of beginner? That's interesting. So you don't feel like you were a beginner with tango for so long.

MICHAEL: No.

LIZ: Like, you have a different sense of the progression in those two practices.

MICHAEL: Yeah, I do. Um, I mean... Oh, good gosh. I mean, with Tai Chi, one's trying to develop very organic movements or find a very organic way to move, and one of the little catch-phrases you hear is "it's simple, but it's not easy." So the beginning stage is about starting to feel that in your body, that this really is a natural movement. There are no individual-body-part movements. They're all whole-body movements and they're generated from inside the body and getting curious about where in the body that might be starting. So you just have to get through that. I think that's what the beginning stage is and it's kind of more clear.

I think it's rather less clear to define what a tango beginner is. Um, you're learning a certain vocabulary, I guess, so there's a certain vocabulary, which, when you can tick it off, you can kind of feel that you're past the beginning stage and you're learning lead-follow skills. So-

LIZ: But is there a world in which you could teach tango like you teach Tai Chi?

MICHAEL: I think it- um, gosh... I think it's fine to learn stuff we're not ready to learn, actually. That's, that's something that I've come to think during life. Because we need to be really excited by what we're learning, and sometimes that means going ahead to stuff we're not ready for. And if we're not ready for it, then the body won't get it, but it remains within as a lesson. You know, all of us can still hear things that teachers said to us years ago. But I also had the experience- I remember once, in one of those first trips to Buenos Aires, going to a milonga class with Manolo and he taught this nice little figure - I mean, not so complex by my perspective today, but at the time it was- I found it quite complex. So I remember I took the class and then I came back home to the UK and just forgot about it. And nine months later, it just appeared in my body - ding! - like it had taken nine months for my body to digest it and then suddenly it was fully digested and it appeared.

LIZ: How beautiful.

MICHAEL: Yeah, it was a lovely experience. But, I think that's... something about how we learn. So I think it's fine to learn stuff we're not ready to learn [LAUGHING] because the energy is going there and as a teacher, we have to be careful not to cut off people's energy. Okay, we can shape it, but um, yeah, if people's energy is going one way, then let them have a go and they'll find out if they're able to do it or not.

LIZ SCRIPT:
And to close, let's circle back to the deep listening I mentioned in the introduction to this episode.

MICHAEL:
I remember that the first time I heard a bandoneon played in front of me, the real shock was that I could also hear it with my belly. Because when those low grumbling tones came, it vib- went across the room and vibrated directly in my body. I mean, this is another thing that for me is so important and that I repeat endlessly and try to bring home to people, that the entire body is an organ of listening. And listening is a faculty, an organ that we grow, and it's not just in the ear - it's a whole body that listens to music. It's not a metaphor. I really believe that, you know? Some music makes your feet want to tap. Other music, it's another part of your body, like your shoulders start to move or you might start to sway. It still moves you, but in another way. So this is giving you information as well as feelings.

One of the ways that I do research for a new book is simply to spend a lot of time listening to the music and hearing what I hear. And that just takes time. Again, there's no shortcut. So I have to spend a lot of time doing that. It can be hard to, to carve out, for me, time just to enjoy the music. I guess going to the milonga actually is the time that I'm doing that. And it's often a, a noisier environment than being at home, so it's, it's less likely to be the place where I discover some new detail. Although I might discover some new detail through my partner. Because, uh, this is something that I notice. When things - I'm doing the inverted commas thing in the air here - "go wrong" in the dance, I've noticed very often it's because my partner listened to something else in the music to what I focused on. I thought, oh, well, this part is interesting, but they were thinking, oh, no, actually, the violin's very interesting. So we've kind of got an interpretative difference that kicks in. And sometimes it's something that I hadn't noticed it in the music. So it's- I'm listening to the music through my partner's body. Yeah. Which is a great privilege, of course. And we can all do that, you know? [LAUGHING] We can all do that.

LIZ SCRIPT:
Here's to passionately learning about what we love - and to listening with our whole bodies.

Thank you, Michael. And thanks to Crackling Tunes for the recording that accompanies this episode, "Adios Pueblo," written by Agustín Bardi and recorded by Orquesta Ricardo Tanturi in 1941.

[MUSIC]