Adelaide tanguero Roger found Enrique Fernandez’s thoughts on Piazzolla’s music struck a chord with his own feelings, and has asked us to share them with you all:

Strip to your underwear if you’re not in black tie. get obscene if you want, but never casual. you feel an urge? touch its pain, wrap yourself around it. don’t put on airs. what you seem must be what you are, and what you are is a mess, honey, but that’s okay, as long as you wear it inside. look sharp. don’t slouch. see anyone slouching here? stay poised, taut, hard. listen to your nerves. it’s zero hour. anxiety approaches, wave after wave, with every squeeze of the bandoneon. already twisted by the contraposto of uprightness and savagery, the tango turns the screw even tighter with its dissonance and truncated phrasing. no relief. no quarter. at zero hour only passion can save you. time is flowing backward and forward into the vortex. from the rooms come a warm air and a choked melody of syncopated gasps. something throbs. a vein, under your skin. it’s inside you now, this bordello virus, this pleasure that tastes so much of anger and grief. when you find pools of pure sweet light, bathe in their waters, balm for your lacerations, for the whiplash scars the bandoneon is leaving on your soul. if this were the old milonga of the slums, or one of those popular songs about painted faces or purloined love, you could let distance sketch a smile on your lips. cheap irony. you won’t get away that easy. this music is for you. it always had you in mind, your habits, your twitches, the tiny bloodvessels bursting inside you when you hide what you feel. so walk in the parlor, bring your friend or come alone. come hear the master as he unravels the wind inside the box, as he presses the growling tiger that threatens to embrace him, then shapes the beast into a purring kitten. and tiger again. and kitten. it’s all a game. you’re going to play it, too. you’re going to dance with the tiger. don’t worry, your life is in danger. remember your instructions. listen up. and suffer. text removed this is the tango.

Please note that this text was edited slightly to remove some colourful language.