The Teacher Who Trained My Ear

Recently, during a private lesson with Diego and Aldana, they told me that I had a good oído and musicalidad.

In English, perhaps, a good ear and musicality.

I had been complimented on my musicality before.

But no one had ever told me that I had a good ear.

Here, “ear” does not simply mean the ability to hear sounds clearly.

It means an ear that can catch rhythm, melody, and the changes within them.

I began to wonder why they had said that about me.

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I began tango in Buenos Aires in 2011.

My wife and I started taking private lessons from an Argentine woman named Stella.

She must have been in her late sixties at the time.

She was a very dedicated teacher.

Even when we could not do something, she never gave up on us.

She taught us patiently, again and again.

I was still a beginner, so she did not teach me much about musicality.

But she was very strict about rhythm.

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Tango has its own rhythm.

Vals has its own rhythm.

Milonga has its own rhythm.

If I could not mark it properly, she made me start again.

At first, I understood almost nothing.

I could hear the music.

But I did not know when to move my feet.

For the first year in particular, I could barely keep up.

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My wife had studied piano from an early age.

She could follow the rhythm.

She could hear the melody.

So whenever I lost the beat, she must have found it quite frustrating.

Many men stumble at this point when they begin tango.

Listen to the music.

Follow the rhythm.

Lead your partner.

Think about the next movement.

Be aware of your own feet.

All of this has to happen at the same time.

It is an enormous amount to manage.

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At one point, I asked Stella to choreograph an entire song for me.

Which step to take, and at what moment.

I asked her to decide everything in advance.

If I did not have to think about the movement, I could concentrate a little more on listening to the music.

The vague rhythm I could sense inside me gradually began to align with the movements she had given me.

That was when I finally started to follow the rhythm.

It took several more years before I could begin to hear the melody as well.

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About two years ago, I attended a tango festival in Switzerland.

Diego and Aldana had been invited, and since I had never visited Switzerland, I decided to go too.

There, I saw a man dancing and was surprised.

His movements did not match the rhythm at all.

He seemed to be stepping freely without listening to the music.

When I mentioned it to Aldana, she gave me a look that seemed to say,

“Yes. Exactly.”

Then she turned away, almost embarrassed.

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I also asked a woman I met there who had Nigerian and Swiss roots.

“What kind of dancing is that?”

She replied,

“I call it freestyle. It isn’t tango.”

It really was complete freestyle.

The idea of dancing tango without listening to the music had never occurred to me.

Perhaps that was because Stella had drilled rhythm into me for a year or two.

If I missed the beat, I started again.

Listen once more.

Walk once more.

That had become natural to me.

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Even now, I do not think I have any special musical talent.

I have never studied music seriously.

Still, I cannot dance while ignoring the rhythm.

When the music changes, the movement changes.

When the music stops, the body stops.

When the melody stretches, the movement becomes a little longer.

Somewhere along the way, these things entered my body.

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When Diego and Aldana told me that I had a good ear, at first I thought they were simply complimenting me.

But when I thought about it, Stella was the one who had first trained that ear.

What we are taught at the beginning, and what we repeat again and again, can appear in the body many years later.

Even now, Stella’s rhythm remains in my ear.