This is my first newsletter in 2022. We all still fight the serious and difficult consequencies of COVID. The last two years have been a disaster regarding the organiziation of tango events and it still remains extremely difficult and insecure to plan future events. On one hand this was and still is a big hit in our tango activities and therefore also a huge issue to maintain and run my database project as this sadly can't finance itself via the supporting memberships yet. On the other hand there was more time to spend on the database project. Therefore I am excited to announce new cooperations and huge additions (90.000+ recordings!) and updates for the database!

But most importantly, before going into details, if you find this database project helpful, or worth being supported, please spread the word and let collectors, DJs, dancers know about this unique source of tango information. It's exciting to have more and more projects and collectors contributing to the archive, but we still have only a small group of supporters - we are in urgent need of more supporting members for this project to maintain and grow!

Topics of this newsletter:

- TANGO-DJ.AT DATABASE: 90.000 Milestone - Membership, Updates and Additions

- Cooperation with Danza y Movimiento

- Cooperation with Project Fresedo.de

- VCTM 2022 Spring Edition

Over the last months the TANGO-DJ.AT database received huge updates and additions, as well as multiple small updates every day. It currently features 90.000+ recordings from archive transfers of 78-RPM records and vinyls over professionally ripped CDs to basically a complete catalog of all digital tango projects and releases! It covers some of the earliest recordings from the beginning of 20th century up to contemporary tango orchestras recording today. All of which supporting members can pre-listen and compare with each other in order to find the prefered version of a given tango recording.

A lot of work also goes into adding, correcting, commenting and researching extensive meta data for those recordings. Since I also sometimes loose insight of all the recent major updates I set up a database changelog page where I am going to protocoll larger updates. With this it will be possible to follow major updates which normally are done for a whole complete discography of a given orchestra oder singer.

It is the largest digital accessible tango archive in the world and the only one which enables users to listen to this huge number of recordings across different media and recording dates down to the detail of the specific version on a given media/release.

This extend of maintenance and extension requires a huge amount of work. Sadly the project still can't be financed by the current number of supporting members. In order to keep it up and running at this level special funding, or significantly more supporting members are desperately needed. Also resources for future development and implementation of new features are needed.

Every single new membership helps running and improving this database project! So if you find this project helpfull, please let people know about it, talk about it, suggest to contribute and encourage them to sign up for a supporting membership option. Besides of supporting memberships various sorts of contributions do help us as well:

- every user sending us feedback about meta data errors (please try to check as thorough as possible beforehand, though)

- collectors making available missing CDs

- collectors making available high quality transfers of their records
 
- cooperations of digital record labels like TangoTunes, Tango Time Travel, Crackling Tunes making their digital catalog available to our archive

- comtemporary musicians and orchestras providing their recordings and releases

- donations

One of such cooperations started just recently with Danza y Movimiento. I am very happy and thankfull of finding this agreement with Matthias Möbius who is in charge of one of the oldest and largest digital tango labels there is. To my knowledge DyM was the last big digital tango label missing in the database and with starting this cooperation the TANGO-DJ.AT Database includes most of the existing digital tango releases available knowadays. A big thank you to Matthias for deciding to provide his digital catalog to our archive!

Another private project called Projekt Fresedo.de, run by Mark John, Camilo Gatica & Juan Manuel Araque also contributed its complete work recently. Projekt Fresedo.de mainly focuses on the work of Osvaldo Fresedo and provided their collection of Fresedo recordings as well as additional meta data and detailled information about the work of Osvaldo Fresedo. Thank you Mark John for initiating this cooperation.

I do hope that the TANGO-DJ.AT Database project continues to grow, draw attention from more and more people, implement more features and hopefully will also establish a financially stable existence in the future.

A big thank you again to all existing supporting members, you "rock our tango"!

As I mentioned in the introduction, this cooperation with Danza y Movimiento is a huge addition to the TANGO-DJ.AT Database and I am very happy that Matthias agreed to make this happen. But this also meant that adding the complete DyM catalog to the database was my daily full time job for the last weeks and months. Every single one of the almost 6000 recordings got manually reviewed, checked, tagged and added to the DB.

For the very unlikely case that you do not know Danza y Movimiento, I will include some information about DyM's activities. They started with tango CD releases, but nowadays I think they are most known for their digital tango releases featuring cover art people like to refer to as "this red cover art with the dancing couple". Their catalog features a huge variation of tango music. Sometimes it's not the best quality there is, sometimes the tagging information lacks some consistency and precision too, but it's easily available and the catalog does include some very rare recordings you won't find somewhere else. And as far as the tagging is concerned, if you are a member of the TANGO-DJ.AT Database, then this is taken care of from now on. You can find the complete DyM catalog with reviewed tagging in our database!

Danza y Movimiento (DyM) has been producing tango music since 1995. The catalog currently includes almost 6000 recordings, which are available for download or streaming on almost all major and minor platforms worldwide. Those looking for compression-free recordings will be offered them for download upon request from the label.

DyM's extensive infrastructure also includes a music publishing company that represents composers and creators. The largest part of the catalog consists of classical tangos. In addition, there are own productions or licensed albums, such as the complete discography of the Italian Hyperion Ensemble.

DYM is happy to get in touch with collectors who are interested in publishing their collection. This is of course done with financial participation. The label's latest project is a series in which tango DJs and promoters present a compilation of their 22 favorite tangos. Participation is free of charge at the current time.

More info at www.danzaymovimiento.com or by mail info@dym.de.

I am afraid I can't write too much informed details about Projekt Fresedo.de. My reach out for an in depth introduction of the project did not receive a reply in time for this newsletter.

Projekt Fresedo.de is run by Mark John, Camilo Gatica and Juan Manuel Araque. Mark approached me offering a cooperation for their project and my tango archive. As far as I understand they focus on the work of Osvaldo Fresedo (also a bit of Julio De Caro and Donato-Zerrillo) and collect pictures, documents, interviews and music, publishing information about it on their website fresedo.de.

They have probably collected one of the larges collections of Fresedo recordings (as far as the covered period 1926-1932 is concerned). Being musicans their attention is focused on the key the music is composed in. So they indentified the correct key of the music and tried to restore/remaster the recordings based on the identified key of the composition. They provided me with their complete work of 502 recordings which have been added to the db recently. I also included their noted key for every recording in the comment section of the DB for your information.

As with any large tango collection the quality of their work varies from rather bad, over quite different to any other existing recording, to outstanding good. But their apporach to focus on the key of the music quite often leads to an interesting alternativ version of already existing tango transfers. So it might be interesting for you to check them out and compare them to other existing recordings, or use it as research for your own transfers.

Please find so much more information about this project and the life and work of Osvaldo Fresedo on their website: www.fresedo.de!

Maybe we can produce a compilation of their most interesting work and make it available to our supporting members in the near future!

A short introduction of our latest release from TANGO RECORDS, exclusively available to full members:

- Best of Francisco Canaro 1927 Instrumentals Vol. 1 – TANGO RECORDS COMPILATION (TR-2004) (Shop Link)

- Prelisten Best of Francisco Canaro 1927 Instrumentals Vol. 1 (Database Link)

- Best of Francisco Canaro 1927 Instrumentals Vol. 2 – TANGO RECORDS COMPILATION (TR-2005) (Shop Link)

- Prelisten Best of Francisco Canaro 1927 Instrumentals Vol. 2 (Database Link)

A supporting member was looking for a rare instrumental tango by Francisco Canaro from 1927. By looking into it, I noticed that there actually were quite a lot of rare and interesting, hard to find instrumental tangos from 1927 which led to the selection of those two compilations featuring carefully restored and remastered versions of the best transfers available to us. Those are exclusively available to supporting full members only.

Vienna Calling Tango Marathon IS BACK! Finally, after 2 years of postponing, we are going to be back and dance at VCTM. The Vienna Calling Tango Marathon 2022 Spring Edition will take place
13-15 May 2022


Our DJs will be:

- Asya Moseeva
- Balázs Gyenis
- Sasa Vukelic
- Mik Avramenko

(for obvious reasons Mik's confirmed participation seems to be very unlikely at this point. Mik and his girlfriend Julia are still in Ukraine. We wish them all the best and to get through this madness safe and sound!)

- 1-2 DJs still to be announced.

Further information and updates about VCTM can be found on the VCTM-Website!


Aa far as our International Milongas are concerned, we have not decided on any fixed dates for 2022 yet.

Bernhard Gehberger

Vienna, 2022-04-03