Thank you so much Keith!

I was just preparing my playlist for my own milonga to-morrow. It's here in The Hague where I live. On the 16th I will have my monthly milonga in the city of Utrecht, in the middle of this small country.

What I wanted to say is that when I work with the music you have put together I cannot stop being astonished. Almost every combination I make is a hit. I can merge with your feeling of musical honesty and people keep dancing. They never get bored.

Hey Keith THANKS!!!

Got it today. Very cool. That is a big collection of tangos, milongas and valses. Wow. With this I will have more than enough... I cannot fathom that so many tangos were made in that era... I would imagine that with this you have it all.

Anyway, I am sooo impressed! I will have lots of fun with this... How in the world did you find them all and had the time to restore them all multiple times? That is really a tribute to tango.

All the best,

Johan

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Ok Keith

Thank you ver much The more I'm learning about Argentine tango music and the different recordings from all over the world with different speeds and quality the more that I am certain that I have found the right expert with the best quality....

Thank you again...

Robert

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Hi Keith,

My Tango DJ career has really blossomed since I purchased your collection of restored music! It is a big hit and most people don't really know why my music sounds so much better than others.

Chuck

Hi Keith,

Firstly, I wanted to thank you for the music.

I have been using your selection with great success at a number of Milongas to date... I have already began to be a sought after DJ in my area... all thanks to your lovely restored music!

I DJ'd on Friday night, a St Valentines Day Milonga complete with mushy love song cortinas. It was a success, however, a couple of danceers had come over and said that I shouldn't play songs with vocals in it. They said that they had come from BA recently, and people sit down and listen to vocals and dance only to only instrumental songs.

I would really like to get you opinion on this...

Again, thanks for the music... I plan to buy the rest of our collection (once I save up the money!)

Alex

Alex;

Any person new to tango is quite likely to much prefer instrumentals to vocals for some time, until they become acclimatized and learn more. So I recommend helping them acclimatize by doing things the right way (via good choices) and pretty much ignoring their stated request. But there are a lot of fabulous instrumentals which work nicely in tandas (D'Arienzo/Biagi, for instance) so make sure you aren't overloaded on continuous vocals. Often one instrumental in a tanda is enough to release some tension for people who haven't "got it" yet. It's good to constantly check to make sure you've haven't gone too long without hot instrumentals.

Dear Keith;

I'm ordering more music because I've been using what I have from you for years and get nothing but great comments when I dj. I go to B.A. a couple of times every year, so I know that nothing compares to your restorations. Nothing!

Michael

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Hi Keith,

I'm working on correcting a couple of my transcriptions of songs and the restorations of yours that I've worked with were much easier to transcribe than the source material I have from CDs. Can I now get this list of songs ...

Ben Bogart

Ben Bogart.com / Cuarteto Tanguero

Quirino Cristiani
Inspiration for Animation

From Listverse.com:

Walt Disney is usually associated with early animated films, but Disney is said to have been inspired by the Argentine filmmaker Quirino Cristiani. An Argentine born in Italy, Cristiani was a young and enthusiastic animator who pioneered the animation technique of cardboard cutouts. Cutout animation is a faster and easier way to create animation by using cutouts of figures rather than individual drawings for each frame.

Collaborating with producer Frederico Valle, the two of them ambitiously took on the task of creating the very first feature-length animated film. Called El Apóstol, the film was a political satire and premiered to rave reviews on November 9, 1917. Just nine years later, all known copies of the first feature-length animated film were destroyed when Vallés film studio burnt to the ground in 1926. However, Cristaini continued to pioneer work in animation. In 1931, he created the very first animated film with sound. Peludópolis was another political satire made with Cristianis' trademark cardboard cutout technique.

Quirino Cristiani on YouTube

And like everything else tango, the more you surrender, the more fantastic the trance.

It is a rare night indeed if Keith the dj doesn't play Maglio. He's too beautiful, too important - because there was no one better. As-good-as, depending on one's point of view - but not "better-than." He made so many unbelievably great recordings. In them today, you can still feel the waves of excitement rolling out from his imagination and fingers to all the other musicians and band leaders and then to the dancers.

In my professional life, I've always used this measuring device when considering relative contributions of artists: if you took this individual away from the history of the genre, what would you lose?

There is always your answer. Some artists are just more deserving of reverence than others in the long-run. My own personal list of who I consider to be a god of tango music is just that: a list. There is a top-tier. Where I see Pacho.

In the modern era of tango recordings (roughly 1923 onwards), most roads lead to Pacho in a very real sense. For me, a majestic god on the dias. Loving watching dancers in love with tango almost at his feet.

One imagines him to be the kind of person who would shush, shush any such talk. He was a simple musican who lead a very, very good band, I'm sure he would say. He came from a generation of impossibly gifted musicans and none of them would claim to be #1. There is no such thing, of course.

But perish the thought of ever taking away the music of Juan Maglio. He just made so much possible. And still does.

The onset of one does tend to happen at this time of year. Dead of winter in Canada. Me locking-out the world and the weather and losing myself in tango restoration (where my heart finds it nice and warm).

It's a little mixed-up, looking back, whether my first crusade was about Di Sarli or Biagi or Donato. I was obsessed by them as I started my quest. Indeed - they were my main initial motivation.

In terms of profile, Di Sarli didn't "need" "my help"(!) as much as Eduardo or Rodolfo when I started more than 10 years ago. (In terms of audio quality of Carlos' recordings, I don't expect to ever be done with it to my satisfaction).

The quality of the recordings in tango sucked the big one. The moment I said to myself, "Well - can I do anything about that?" - all my next nights went sleepless.

I tackled Di Sarli and was very upset and discouraged. This was going to take a looong time.

Turning then to Biagi, I was rewarded way beyond expectations. Cleaning it my tedious way of re-drawing the waveforms by hand shocked me to my roots. Drove me crazy. Set me on a crusade to have people REALLY HEAR his music.

Those winter weeks of doing nothing but frying my brain by restoring Biagi's catalogue will always remain with me as seminal moments of my life. Here the possibilities of tango restoration made themselves known to me.

And I got too excited and tried too hard. It was only later when I had more experience and better tools that I could re-do Biagi's catalogue to my satisfaction.

Of course, that's the story of my journey. I had to start back then so I could grow and the technology could grow (did it ever) so my goals could be ever closer.

Then I did Donato. (While still pulling my hair out over Di Sarli).

But I'm not talking about my project here. The topic is my crusades.

The Donato campaign after restoration was simple and immediately gratifying. Make people listen to Ella Es Asi a few times. Success. Then, La Melodia del Corazon; Sinsabor; Con Tus Besos; Papas Calientes; El Lengue and the rest of the great catalogue.

It used to be rare that you would be played Donato in a milonga. Before 2003.

The Biagi crusade was more frustrating.

Donato hadn't been heard - so it was all new and exciting to people. Conversely, everybody had heard Biagi's scratchy, thin records hiding the subtlety and they had decided they didn't like him. They also didn't know that Biagi is the major reason anybody ever heard of D'Arienzo. All difficult to overcome in a hurry. But I would swear that my Biagi campaign had positive results in terms of how much he is played now.

So, what happened to my Di Sarli crusade(s)?

On the face of it, it's pretty challenging to expand people's awareness about one of the most (almost) over-exposed artists.

So I LOVE blowing people's minds with the Di Sarli they never hear; that is WAY under-appreciated.

The unbelievably sublime Pedro Laurenz music was next. I still can't understand why he isn't played more, but as soon as people fall knowlegabely in love with tango tango, they can't live without Laurenz.

Oboy. Let's stop here because we're getting into a list.