You probably already know a little about the Tanda - that at an Argentine tango social dance ("milonga"), when you invite or accept a dance with someone, you dance for a full set of music called a "tanda." At a milonga, a tanda is most often a set of three or four tango music pieces from a given orchestra and era, often with the same vocalist (or possibly, purely instrumental pieces). Mixing different vocalists, eras or even orchestras is rare. Tandas are separated by non-tango music called cortinas (aka "curtains" or "separators") While these traditions are not followed for tango classes, workshops, or prácticas, the question is - why? Why does the tradition of the tanda continue at milongas?

The DJ often will craft the playlist's tandas in a repeating tanda order. Why is a particular sequence of tandas so prevalent?

The actual origins of some of these traditions have been a little opaqued over time. But tango historians who research these traditions have presented some probable reasons.

Setting Expectations with a Tanda

The approach of the tanda is chosen for the comfort of the dancers, setting the dancers' expectations with two main reasons

• When a new tanda starts, the dancers can listen to the beginning of the first piece to learn whether they like the music or not, and based on this decide to ask someone to dance this tanda, or take a break.
• The dancers can adjust to a type of music in the beginning song of the tanda, without having to readjust for each song.

Sometimes, in a minority of milongas in Argentina, non-tango tandas are also played, like Rock n roll, Cumbia or Chacarera, but rarely for more than one tanda. Why is this the case?

TTVTTM - an explanation

Tanda Order is the sequence of tandas at a milonga. For a traditional milonga, the tanda order usually follows the sequence of a Tango tanda, a Tango tanda, then a Vals tanda, a Tango tanda, then another Tango tanda, followed by a Milonga tanda (sometimes abbreviated TTVTTM.)

While there is general agreement that this sequence balances different dance rhythms and energies, why is this so common?

The story goes that in Buenos Aires, for a social dance to bear the name "milonga', its musical playlist had to be at least 65% tango music. Vals music didn't count as tango, and neither did Milonga music. As such, if two-sixths (or one-third) of the music played was non-tango, then tango music would be the qualifying 66%.

Pieces in a Tanda - why 4 (or 3)?

These origins are very murky - but two theories emerge as the reasons for tanda length.

Theory 1 - the Phonograph

Some people believe the tanda was from playing on a phonograph one side of a 10" EP/LP recording, which had capacity for about 12-15 minutes of music when shellac and vinyl were the materials used to produce record discs.

Those who crafted the music sequences played were called "discs jockeys ', which is where we get the term DJ.

Theory 2 - Radio technology

Arguably, the most important medium for the diffusion of tango during the 40s was neither records nor live performances, but radio. Only relatively affluent people could afford a record player and discs, and there weren’t many affluent people in Argentina at the time. It's been said by the late Ricardo Suarez that the smaller, neighborhood dances with recorded music sometimes had so few discs on hand that they played each song multiple times per night — not exactly a varied program. Live shows were relatively expensive to attend. Radio, however, delivered varied, top-quality music programming free - to a potentially limitless audience all over the country, morning, noon, and night.

We can view the daily radio schedules of the Golden Age as they were published in the El Mundo morning newspaper. From them, we see that a featured orchestra on the station’s sound stage would perform in three or four short musical segments, live, on the air, in what appears to be ~15 minute segments, with time for an ad after the segment.

So this “radio” view gives us a likely historical precursor of the modern four-song tanda sequence, a format that was utilized by radio programming day after day, for years, and the ad time became the "cortina". They did not obey the strict segregation of tandas by genre as is practiced in today’s milonga, but the format was familiar.

In our current state of tango, tango organizers often choose to have 3 song tandas over 4 song tandas when there is an imbalance between leads and follows attending, as it permits more dance partnering to occur.

This article was inspired by conversations with Mike Holcomb.

Further reading: https://tangodecoder.wordpress.com/2015/10/06/the-birth-of-the-tanda/