Way back in 1995, my bride was embarrassed. It was our wedding night in Milwaukee, it was our wedding dance, and we didn't know how to dance. We faked it. Shuffle shuffle shuffle, kind of like two junior high school kids draped on one another like leaning trees. Megan declared at that time that we would learn to how to dance.
Fast forward a few months. We have moved to Texas, and Megan came home from work and told me that she'd enrolled us in ballroom dancing lessons. No discussion. We went to the classes, where a nice couple told us that they would teach us foxtrot, box step, waltz, two-step, swing, and even a little tango. I learned that I didn't have two left feet, could do the steps, and even look reasonably good doing them. Megan had to learn not to lead me, but to let me lead.
The hardest one was the tango. We only had time to learn a few moves, and I've since forgotten them. Those I didn't feel like I was very good at doing. I've spoken to my co-worker Adam, who has taken tango lessons and attended tango dances on a weekly basis. He assured me that it takes a LONG time to learn tango, and that at the dances, it is difficult to get practice because the good tango dancers don't want to dance with the beginners, and therefore the beginners are stuck trying to teach each other, like the blind leading the blind. I can still tear up the floor on a swing dance, though I'd like to learn some more moves, and I enjoy waltzing also. In fact, I try to tell all of my younger, single guy friends that if they want to have more dates than they know what to do with, they should learn how to dance, but they don't believe me. That's fine...I don't mind being the rooster in the henhouse that all the hens admire!
Today's song, Estrela da Tarde (Evening Star) is an interesting hybrid between a fado and a tango. You may remember the fado from past posts as being a melancholy song about longing for the sea or about those who are poor. Fado has a particular structure and therefore resembles tango in that way, which also has a particular structure. Both tango and fado can be associated with the underclass, in the case of the longing of fado for the simplicity of the poor life and in tango, the rise of the music and dance from the poorest sections of society, into organized crime, and finally into its association with sexual sophistication.
The person who sings Estrela da Tarde goes by the name of Liana, a young and rising singer in Portugal who started singing fado professionally at age 9 and has won 11 first prizes in fado competitions. In 2004 she released her first professional album, Fado.pt and followed it up in 2005 with her second, Sombra, in 2005. In 2007, she teamed up with Reem Kelani in a concert titled From Palestine to Portugal where she sang in Portuguese and Arabic. Not only a singer, she is also an award winning stage actress. She sponsors a child in Mozambique, is an animal rights activist and vegetarian and volunteers with the elderly in Lisbon. She currently has released five albums. Estrela da Tarde blends the very similar elements of fado and tango with electronica into a song of longing:
My love, my love
my evening star
The moon is rising and my body is waiting for you
My love
I am not certain
if you are my joy or my sorrow
Estrela da Tarde can be found on Liana's 2004 release Fado.pt, and is included on Putumayo Presents: Tango Around the World (2007). This video is from her appearance on a Portuguese television show.
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