Buenos Aires

I emailed the Mutek BA folks, and a couple of artists who I found links for.

No replies yet.

Not that I'm crying too loudly. If there's nothing to do but sit in a cafe for 2 weeks in the South American Summer...

Everyone should read the "Argentina On Two Steaks A Day", then book your trip. It looks like a bag of coffee beans, a French press, and a grinder, will be travelling with me.

I'm too lazy to remember how to post a proper link, so... here.

http://www.idlewords.com/2006/04/argentina_on_two_steaks_a_day.htm

Tango: The Art History of Love
by Robert Farris Thompson

From Publishers Weekly
Starred Review. Here at last is an antidote to those trite coffee-table books that treat the tango with purple prose. In language no doubt inspired by the lyrics of its subject, this serious volume examines and celebrates the cultural history of the famed Argentine dance, conveying its real passion and the author's passion for it. Thompson, the renowned Yale Africanist and art historian, convincingly evokes the often-obscured African roots of the dance, whose name comes from the Ki-Kongo word for "moving in time to a beat." He then explores the tango's relationship to cakewalk and ragtime, Cuba's habanera and Rossini's operas, along with the mutual admiration between the father of tango, Carlos Gardel, and the tenor Enrico Caruso. Thompson tells the stories of tango's composers and performers, from the female composer Eladia Blázquez to poet and lyricist Jorge Luis Borges. Hollywood versions of the dance pale once Thompson begins to mine the riches of tango's rhythms, lyrics, philosophy and steps. He explains the sinuous figure-eight footwork of ochos, the boleo circular leg thrusts and the dramatic corte y quebrada cut-and-break steps that mimic the real-life emotional combat of relationships. There may be too much detail for generalist readers, and even devotees will need to pause to digest all of the information given. Still, for fans of dance, music and cultural history, this is the real deal. B&w illus

Call her. She likes boys. She's smart and cool and awesome. And she lives in Chicago, too.

Oh god, she's going to kill me.