Kiki, Bouba ed i contorni del tango

Fin dall’infanzia, non mi è mai piaciuto l’ovale
Fin dall’infanzia, ho sempre disegnato l’angolo
Pavel Kogan. “Tempesta”, 1936

A Murat Erdemsel, un maestro di tango con dieci anni d’esperienza, piace presentarsi come “prima di tutto un avido ballerino di tango ed un pensatore”. “Dipingere e condurre l’analisi di brani musicali è la mia seconda professione”, dice Murat, “e non ho progetti per il futuro che prevedano l’inversione dell’ordine di queste due professioni. Quindi, tutti i quadri che io produco, li produco per passione e per inspirare i ballerini ed i nostri studenti”. Ci si chiede perché Murat ponga al secondo posto questo non comune dono del dipingere la musica, visto che tutti sono sempre molto ansiosi di ascoltare le sue lezioni sulla musicalità attraverso la pittura… uno spettacolo mozzafiato che vede come protagonisti due simpatici assistenti di Murat, chiamati Kiki e Bouba.

Lasciate che vi presenti i nostri eroi, eccoli ritratti in questa fotografia. Di sicuro ognuno di voi può, con buone possibilità di successo, indovinare chi dei due si chiama Kiki e chi invece è Bouba!


La forma di una stella con gli angoli acuti (si, certo quello è Kiki) e il tondeggiante, a forma di yin-yang, chiamato Bouba traggono le proprie origini da un classico esperimento di psicologia che prova che la nostra capacità di ascoltare i suoni è intrinsecamente connessa alla nostra percezione delle forme geometriche. (I tangueros, che sono abituati a “disegnare la musica sulla pista da ballo”, potrebbero dire: “Bella scoperta!” Ma per gli psicologi ed i linguisti questa lo è stata davvero. Nella nota, più avanti gli appassionati di psicologia potranno trovare una esposizione più completa di questo concetto)

E’ estremamente facile riconoscere il profilo di Kiki e Bouba nel tango! I contorni spigolosi delle lettere “T”, “A” ed “N” trillano come le note di un pianoforte. Le lettere “G” e “O” si arrotolano come il suono dei violini e scorrono come la voce dei cantanti. E il bandoneon Può fare qualsiasi cosa, dal sottolineare il battito spigoloso del ritmo del tango o piangere come un uomo.

E’ ugualmente semplice riconoscere i contorni di Bouba e Kiki nelle forme che si creano sulla pista da ballo… Un semplice passo diritto, che di norma ci viene presentato come il pilastro fondamentale del tango, fornisce l’ossatura per la geometria lineare di Kiki… mentre gli ochos ed i giri dimostrano di essere ugualmente fondamentali nel descrivere la geometria curva di Bouba.


Sarebbe però molto riduttivo se tutta la varietà del tango fosse ridotta a forme così banalmente semplici. La spigolosità di Kiki e la rotondità di Bouba non si escludono l’un l’altra nella musica. Spesso, nella stessa frase musicale, è possibile sentirli entrambi, di solito cantati da diversi strumenti dell’orchestra. Il ballerino è libero di scegliere quale delle due coesistenti geometrie dell’emozione esprimere nella danza. Qualche volta è persino possibile ascoltare tanti piccoli Kiki guizzare tra le onde di Bouba. Il colore complessivo della melodia cambia così come cambia il suo contorno geometrico; i toni diventano più caldi e più freddi, le onde crescono più alte e si ritirano di nuovo. Il sito web di Murat e Michelle mostra la sequenza di passi che porta alla creazione dei dipinti di Murat (Organito de la tarde, S.O.S., Poema), iniziando dalla individuazione della struttura geometrica generale per poi proseguire con l’aggiunta sempre più ricca di dettagli che rappresentano i diversi suoni. (Puoi anche provare a farlo con le tue mani! Una recente aggiunta al sito si chiama “practical assignment” ed è una specie di mappa vuota da colorare per “Indio Manso” di Carlos Di Sarli. Murat ha promesso di pubblicare l’intero suo dipinto di “Indio Manso” dettagliato verso la metà di gennaio 2012, in questo modo hai tempo di provarlo prima di vedere l’esempio completo. :) )

Ovviamente esiste la possibilità di diverse variazioni nella traduzione dalla sensazione geometrica della musica al linguaggio dei passi. Persino un passo in linea retta può essere arrotondato, o comportarsi come un’onda e seguire interpretando Bouba; così come negli ochos l’accento può essere spostato fino a trasformare il flusso ininterrotto della rotondità del passo in una spigolosità.

Ma siamo andati molto avanti! Bouba e Kiki non sono solo parole stupende, così come la musica non è fatta solo di “parole”. Ci sono anche frasi, paragrafi, virgole, punti, ellissi... (Probabilmente hai visto il video di Benjamin Zander dove mostra un giovane studente di pianoforte che iniziando lo studio con il mettere l’accento su ogni nota… prosegue, se non abbandona prima il piano, con il comprendere la vera frase musicale.)

I testi, come quello che stai leggendo in questo momento, possono averci abituato ad un uso semplificato dei segni di interpunzione. Ma c’è stato un tempo. quando i punti e le virgole e persino gli spazi tra le parole erano scelti con profonda attenzione. Nell’anno 55 a.C., Cicerone condanna questi “segni di oratori senza virtù” che si permettono comunque di fare pause senza significato, quando devono ad esempio semplicemente respirare. Secondo Cicerone, solo la bellezza e lo scopo del discorso dovrebbero definire le pause e la velocità, così come il ritmo dei movimenti di due esseri umani è definito dalla loro bellezza fisica e dal proposito che essi hanno (quae non aut spiritu pronuntiantis aut interductu librarii sed numero coacta debet insistere). (No, a quei tempi non ballavano in coppia, Cicerone di riferisce ai movimenti di una coppia di… lottatori!)

I ballerini di tango sono costretti a restare nello stesso stadio antico del progresso, perché non vi sono speciali segni di interpunzione posti a nostro vantaggio nella musica, ma comunque, la bellezza e la progressione logica della melodia garantiscono il risultato. Inoltre possiamo spesso trarre vantaggio dai testi del tango, dai suoi versi. Ed è questo il motivo per cui io stesso preferisco sempre comprendere ed imparare i testi, e meglio ancora, tradurli per tutti, preservando la metrica dei versi. Così che la scomposizione della musica in ritmo e melodia prendano la forma più familiare di un testo con chiari segni di interpunzione. Se siete come me, e se i versi vi aiutano a cogliere il battere del ritmo, allora sono in grado di offrirvi poche semplici parole di aiuto riguardo alla struttura ritmica della poetica spagnola classica (che ancora mantiene la propria valenza nel suo amato figlio, il testo del tango). Prima di tutto è importantissima la sinalefe (la fusione di due vocali, usata sia in Spagnolo che in Italiano) se una parola finisce per vocale e la parola successiva inizia per vocale allora queste due vocali si uniscono e formano una sola “sillaba poetica”. In seconda battuta un verso non termina mai con una sillaba accentata ( se l’accento cade sull’ultima sillaba del verso allora quella non è la vera conclusione del verso ma viene seguita da una “sillaba poetica silenziosa” ovvero una pausa annessa ad un’ellissi.

E’ possibile anche continuare a seguire l’analisi visuale e dipingere la melodia con frasi di colore. Per esempio questo è come Murat dipinge le frasi e le pause del Tango Vals “Lejos de Ti” di Biagi:

LEJOS DE TI (VALS). Letra de Mauricio Rocha Sin rumbo fijo mi vida va quien sabe donde se detendrá tal vez el dia que mi vagar de nuevo amada te vuelva a hallar

Lontano da te (tango-vals) Parole di Mauricio Rocha Senza una rotta, la mia vita va Chi può sapere dove si fermerà Forse quel giorno, nel mio vagar Di nuovo, amata, ti incontrerà

Buona pittura a tutti!

Note su Kiki e Bouba:

La storia di Kiki e Bouba nacque da un esperimento di psicologia, eseguito per la prima volta più di 80 anni fa da Wolfgang Köhler un ricercatore tedesco. L’esperimento consistette nel mostrare ai propri soggetti le fotografie di due semplici disegni – uno arrotondato con la forma di una amoeba e l’altro dal contorno spigoloso con la forma di una stella – e quindi chiedere quali delle due parole di una lingua aliena corrispondevano a tali immagini. In seguito l’esperimento fu ripetuto in molteplici varianti. Venne quindi condotto nei confronti di soggetti di lingua e cultura profondamente differenti e con bambini di età diverse. Il risultato è che le parole “Kiki” e “Bouba” hanno lo stesso significato per virtualmente ognuno di noi. Ovviamente Kiki è associato all’immagine spigolosa mentre Bouba ha i contorni arrotondati e la forma simile ad uno yin-yang.

Perché ciò accade per ognuno di noi? La ragione può essere estremamente interessante, secondo gli psicologi moderni che si rifanno a V. Ramachandran. Ciò accade grazie alla nostra capacità di eseguire la sinestesia, “la fusione dei sensi”, che è anche direttamente connessa alla nostra musicalità nel tango, la nostra capacità di ascoltare la musica con tutto il nostro corpo.

La sinestesia è di solito riconosciuta come un raro dono che hanno ad esempio le persone in grado di vedere i colori dei suoni. Ramachandran cerca di dimostrare che queste insolite capacità della percezione sono causate da interconnessioni dei segnali nervosi tra le aree del cervello che sono responsabili di elaborare i segnali che arrivano da diversi sensi. Ad esempio quando il “canale” tra l’area destinata alla visone e l’area destinata all’udito è più aperto del normale allora lo stimolo sonoro può attraversare il cervello interessando l’area che elabora le immagini così che questo segnale potrà non solo essere riconosciuto come un suono ma anche come un colore! Almeno l’1 o 2% del genere umano è in grado di sfruttare questa sinestesia.

Ma una volta che gli psicologi hanno scoperto che il 98% delle persone riconosce che Bouba abbia una forma rotondeggiante mentre Kiki possiede una forma in angoli stretti (unendo la nostra capacità di comprendere suono e forme geometriche), si sono dovuti porre una domanda. E’ vero che quasi la totalità di noi esseri umani è in grado di sperimentare la sinestesia o fusione dei sensi? Da quel momento hanno solo trovato eccezioni del tipo che conferma la regola. L’esperimento di Kiki e Bouba fallisce solo con le persone che hanno problemi di interconnessione nelle aree del cervello fin dalla nascita. Ma perché questo specifico tipo di sinestesia è così comune?

I centri che soprassiedono al processo di ascolto nel cervello devono essere particolarmente vicini alle aree che partecipano alla comprensione delle forme geometriche. Così vicini che i segnali nervosi possono attraversare facilmente questi confini. Per esempio potrebbe accedere perché i nostri sensi di cambio di direzione, accelerazione, rotazione (le antiche funzioni del nostro orecchio interno) mantengono ancora una connessione con entrambi i centri dell’ascolto e della propriocezione (la sensazione della propria posizione nello spazio e della forza dei nostri muscoli).

Il dualismo Kiki-Bouba, fino ad oggi è stato utile a dilettare psicologi e teorici del proto-linguaggio umano, ma la sua sola applicazione pratica si è avuta nel campo delle ricerche di marketing (che è in grado di predire quali sono le associazioni che i suoni producono nella mente del acquirente). Da oggi non più! Andate a ballare e utilizzate gli stessi concetti in modo migliore!

Glossario del Tango

Terpsichoral Tango Addict’s glossary
Tejastango Guide to Tango Terminology

Tradotto da Salvatore Cataldi

Kiki, Bouba, and the contours of tango

Since childhood, I never liked the oval
Since childhood, I always drew the angle
Pavel Kogan. “Thunderstorm”, 1936

Murat Erdemsel, a tango teacher with 10 years of experience, likes to introduce himself as “an avid tango dancer and a thinker first”. “Painting and making musical analysis is my secondary profession”, says Murat, “And I have no future plans to replace the order of these professions. So, every art work I produce, I do it for love and to inspire dancers and our students.” There is little wonder why Murat has to put his unusual gift of a painter of music at the second place, given that everyone is so eager to listen to his lecture on graphic musicality… a breathtaking show where the main roles are played by Murat’s two funny assistants called Kiki and Bouba.

Let me introduce our TA heroes. Here they are, at this simple picture. Of course you can probably make a good guess, which of the two is called Kiki, and which one is Bouba!


The sharp-cornered star-shape (yes, of course that’s Kiki) and the rounded, yin-yangish Bouba trace their origins to a classic psychology experiment which proved that our ability to listen to sounds is intrinsically linked to our perception of geometric shapes. (The tangueros, who are accustomed to “drawing the music on the dance floor”, might say, “Big deal!” But for psychologists and linguists, it was quite an insight. In the footnote, the psychology aficionados may find a more detailed discussion)

It is so easy to start seeing the silhouettes of Kiki and Bouba in tango! The angular contours of letters T, A, N ring like the piano keys. Letters G and O curl like the sounds of violins, flow like the vocal. And the bandoneon – oh, it can do everything, from marking the angular beat of the tango compass to weeping like a human.

It is equally straightforward to reflect the overall contours of Bouba and Kiki on the canvas of the dance floor… A simple straight step, which is customarily described to us as the quintessential mainstay of the tango dance, provides the backbone of Kiki’s linear geometry… while ochos and giros turn out to be equally fundamental swirls of the Bouba.


But it would be inconceivable if if all the diversity of tango was restricted to such a strangely simple pattern! Angularity of the Kiki and roundness of the Bouba don’t exclude one another in the music. Often, in one and the same musical phrase, one can hear both of them, often sung by different instruments of the band. A tanguero is free to choose, which of the two coexisting emotional geometries to express in the dance. And sometimes there could be tiny little Kikis strewn across the waves of Bouba. The overall color of the melody changes along with its geometric contour too; the tones become warmer and colder, the waves rise taller and recede again. The website of Murat and Michelle illustrates the successive steps of creation of Murat’s tango paintings (Organito de la Tarde, S.O.S., Poema), starting from the markup of the overall geometric structure and progressing to ever more details vision of the sound. (You can try it yourself, too! A recent addition to the website is Murat’s “practical assignment”, a kind of a blank outline coloring map for “Indio Manso” of Carlos Di Sarli. Murat promises to post his own, fully detailed painting of “Indio Manso” by mid-January 2012, so you still have time to try your hand without open-book kind of help :) )

And of course, there is an inexhaustible diversity of varying ways of translation of the general “geometric flavor” into the language of steps. Even the straight steps could be made rounded, wave-like, flowing as befits Bouba; even in ochos, the accent could shift from uninterrupted flowing roundness to angularity.

But we’ve jumped too far ahead! Bouba and Kiki are wonderful words, but music isn’t just made out of “words”. There are phrases, sentences, commas, periods, ellipses… (You may have watched Benjamin Zander’s wonderful video in which he impersonates a young piano student, starting from putting an accent on each note… who, had he not abandoned piano, would have likely mastered understanding of true musical phrases :) )

The texts, like the one you are reading right now, may have spoiled us by their explicit use of punctuation signs. But there was time when periods and commas and even spaces between words were frowned upon. In year 55 AD, Cicero condemned these “marks for gift-less orators” who are bound to make meaningless pauses anyway, whenever they simply run of breath. According to Cicero, beauty and purposefullness alone should define pauses and accelerations of speech, in the same way as the rhythm of moves of a pair of human beings is defined by physical purposefullness and beauty (quae non aut spiritu pronuntiantis aut interductu librarii sed numero coacta debet insistere). (No, in those days they didn’t dance in pairs! Cicero wrote about the moves of a pair of… classic wrestlers!)

The tango dancers are bound to remain at the same ancient step of progress, because there aren’t any special punctuation symbols placed for our convenience into the music, but instead, the beauty and the internal logic of the melody saves the day. In addition, we may often get help from the “text version” of tango – from its verses. That’s why I always try to understand and to adsorb the letras, and better yet, to translate them for everybody, preserving the meter of the verse. Then, the rhythm and the phrase breakdown of the music take the more familiar shape of a plain, explicitly punctuated text. If you are like myself, and if the text of the verses helps you to hear the beat of the rhythm, then I can offer you a few simple words of advice about the rhythmical structure of the classic Spanish romance (which still hold true for its beloved child, the letras of tango). First of all, synalepha (the fusion of vowels) rules (if a word ends with vowels, and the following word begins with a vowel, then all of these vowels of adjacent syllables merge into a single “poetic syllable”). Secondly, a line of poetry never ends with a stressed syllable (if the stress does fall on the last syllable of a line, then it isn’t the true rhythmic end; instead, it is followed by a “silent poetic syllable”, a pause akin to ellipses).

Or you can continue to think visually, and to paint the melody with phrases of color. For example, this is how Murat depicts the phrases and the pauses of Biagi’s tango vals “Lejos de Ti”:

LEJOS DE TI (VALS). Letra de Mauricio Rocha Sin rumbo fijo mi vida va quien sabe donde se detendrá tal vez el dia que mi vagar de nuevo amada te vuelva a hallar

Far away from you (tango-vals). Lyrics by Mauricio Rocha My aimless life, you have gone astray; Who knows, where you’ll stop one day. Maybe my wandering’s not in vain… You, my beloved, would I find again?

Happy painting to you!

Footnote on Kiki and Bouba:

The story of Kiki and Bouba started from a psychological experiment, first conducted over 80 years ago by a German researcher Wolfgang Köhler. He showed his subjects the pictures of two simple doodles – a rounded, amoeba-like shape and a star-shaped, angular contour – and then asked, which of the two words from “Martian language” corresponded to each shape. Later on, the Köhler experiment has been repeated in numerous variations. It has been tested with the carriers of very different languages and cultures, with the children of different ages… It turns out that the words “Kiki” and “Bouba” have invariant meanings for virtually all of us. Of course, Kiki is the sharp-angled star-shape, and Bouba is the yin-yang-like rounded shape!

Why is it always so? The reason may be very interesting, according to the present-day psychologists, disciples of V. Ramachandran. It happens because of our ability to experience synesthesia, “the fusion of the senses”, which is also directly linked to our tango-musicality, to our ability to hear the music with our very bodies.

Synesthesia is usually understood as a rare gift of people who may see the colors of sounds or, for example, sense taste of colors. Ramachandran set out to prove that these unusual perceptual abilities are caused by tunneling of nerve signals betwen the areas of the human brain which are responsible for processing data from different sensory organs. For example, when the “information channel” between the visual and auditory areas is open wider than usually, then the auditory stimulus, with the “signal leak” into the visual areas, may possess not just a tone but also a color! At most, 1 or 2% of the human beings have this kind of ability of synesthetic perception.

But once the psychologists realized that fully 98% of people perceive Bouba as having the wavy shape, and Kiki as having the sharply angular shape (merging together our perceptions of sound and geometric shape), they had to ask a surprising question. Is it true that almost all of of us are actually capable of synesthesia, of the merger of senses? (They’ve since found exceptions, of a kind which only confirmed the rule. It turned out that Kiki-Bouba experiment fails with people with certain inborn brain connectivity problems). But why is specific type of synesthesia so common?

The brain auditory info processing centers must be so adjacent to the areas which participate in recognition of geometric shapes that the nerve signals can traverse their boundaries with ease. For example, it could happen because our senses of change of direction, of acceleration, of rotation (the ancient functions of our inner ear) still retain a connection with both hearing and proprioception (the inner sensation of the position and strength of our muscles).

The Kiki-Bouba dualism, until recently, served well to amuse the psychologists and theoreticians of human proto-language, but its only practical application has been in marketing / branding research (which is eager to predict which sounds inform what kinds of associations in a consumer’s mind). Not anymore! Go dancing, and use the same concept in a better way :)

Tango glossary links

Terpsichoral Tango Addict’s glossary
Tejastango Guide to Tango Terminology

Kiki, Buba y los contornos del tango

Desde mi niñez no me gusta el óvalo
desde mi niñez dibujo el angular
Pavel Kogan. «Tormenta», 1936

A Murat Erdemsel, un profesor de tango con 10 años de experiencia, le gusta presentarse como «ávido bailarín de tango y primero pensador». «Pintar y hacer comentarios musicales son mi segunda profesión.», dice Murat, «y no tengo planes de alterar el orden de estas ocupaciones. Por tanto, toda obra de arte que produzca será por amor y para inspirar a nuestros bailarines y estudiantes.» Podemos preguntarnos por qué Murat pone sus dotes poco comunes de pintor musical en segundo lugar, dado que todo el mundo está tan ansioso de escuchar su conferencia sobre musicalidad gráfica… un espectáculo impresionante donde los papeles principales los interpretan dos divertidos asistentes de Murat llamados Kiki y Buba.

Permítanme presentarles a estos héroes de la asistencia técnica. Helos aquí, en esta sencilla imagen. Seguro que adivinan quién es Kiki y quién Buba.


La estrella de puntas agudas (por supuesto, Kiki) y el redondeado y yin-yanguero Buba, se originan en un experimento de psicología clásica que demostró que nuestra capacidad de escuchar los sonidos va intrínsecamente ligada a nuestra percepción de las formas geométricas. (Los tangueros, que están acostumbrados a «dibujar la música en la pista de baile», exclamarán: «¡Vaya descubrimiento!» Pero para los psicólogos y los lingüistas sí que lo fue. En la nota, los interesados en la psicología encontrarán información más detallada)

Y así es fácil empezar a ver las siluetas de Kiki y Buba aplicadas al tango. Los contornos angulosos de las letras T, A, N como teclas de piano. Las letras G y O ondulándose como el sonido de los violines, fluyendo como vocales. Y el bandoneón… sí, éste puede hacer de todo, trazar el ritmo angular del compás del tango o llorar como un ser humano.

Es igualmente sencillo proyectar el contorno general de Buba y Kiki sobre el lienzo de la pista de baile… Un paso simple y recto, que habitualmente se nos describe como el pilar por excelencia de la danza del tango, es también la columna vertebral de la geometría lineal de Kiki… mientras que ochos y giros son los remolinos fundamentales de la anatomía de Buba.


Pero sería inaceptable reducir toda la diversidad del tango a este patrón tan simple. En música la angularidad de Kiki y la redondez de Buba no se excluyen mutuamente. Con frecuencia, en la misma frase musical se pueden oír ambos, a menudo tocados por diferentes instrumentos de la banda. Un tanguero es libre de elegir cuál de las dos geometrías emocionales coexistentes quiere expresar en el baile. Y a veces puede haber pequeñas Kikis esparcidas por entre las ondas de Buba. El color dominante de la melodía cambia también junto con su contorno geométrico; el tono se hace más cálido o más frío, las olas se levantan más y retroceden de nuevo. El sitio web de Murat y Michelle muestra los pasos sucesivos de la creación de las pinturas de tango que hace Murat (Organito de la Tarde, S.O.S., Poema), empezando por el marcado de la estructura geométrica global y avanzando hacia la visión cada vez más detallada del sonido. (y uno puede intentar hacerlo también por sí mismo: una novedad de esta página web es el «trabajo práctico» de Murat, una especie de mapa esquemático de color para «Indio Manso» de Carlos Di Sarli. Murat ha prometido publicar su propia pintura, completamente detallada, de «Indio Manso» a mediados de enero de 2012, por lo que el visitante aún tiene tiempo de probar su pericia sin la ayuda del maestro).

Y, por supuesto, hay una variedad infinita de formas de traducir un «sabor geométrico» general al lenguaje de los pasos. Incluso los pasos recto podrían ser redondeados, como la onda que fluye en correspondencia a Buba, incluso en los ochos, el acento podría pasar de la redondez que fluye sin interrupciones a la angulosidad.

Pero hemos saltado demasiado lejos. Buba y Kiki son palabras maravillosas, pero la música no está hecha sólo de «palabras». Hay frases, oraciones, comas, puntos, puntos suspensivos… (Es posible que hayan ustedes visto el maravilloso vídeo de Benjamin Zander donde representa a un joven estudiante de piano, empezando por dar acento cada nota aislada… quien, de no haber abandonado el piano, habría llegado a entender la maestría de las auténticas frases musicales)

Los textos como el que usted está leyendo ahora nos han acostumbrado al uso explícito de los signos de puntuacion. Pero hubo un tiempo en que los puntos y las comas, e incluso los espacios entre las palabras estaban mal vistos. En el año 55 aC, Cicerón condenó estos «signos para oradores poco dotados» que están obligados a hacer pausas sin sentido de todos modos cada vez que han de respirar. Según Cicerón, la belleza y el propósito deben definirlos las pausas y aceleraciones del discurso, del mismo modo que el ritmo de los movimientos de una pareja de seres humanos se define por su presencia y belleza física (quae non aut spiritu pronuntiantis aut interductu librarii sed numero coacta debet insistere). (¡No, entonces no bailaban emparejados! Cicerón escribía sobre los movimientos de una pareja de luchadores!)

Los bailarines de tango están obligados a permanecer en esta mismo paso, porque no hay símbolos especiales de puntuación colocados para su comodidad a lo largo de la música, pero en cambio, la belleza y la lógica interna de la melodía les da la pauta. Además, a menudo pueden obtener ayuda de la «versión textual» del tango —a partir de sus versos. Por eso siempre trato de entender y digerir bien las letras, y mejor aún, traducirlas a todos, conservando la métrica del verso. Entonces, el ritmo y la secuencia de la frase musical revelan la forma más familiar de un texto sencillo, puntuado de manera explícita. Si usted es como yo, y si el texto de los versos le ayuda a escuchar el latido del ritmo, entonces puedo darle alguna información básica sobre la estructura rítmica del romance clásico español (que todavía conserva su validez para su hijo amado, la letra de tango). En primer lugar, la regla de la sinalefa (la fusión de vocales: si una palabra termina en vocal y la palabra siguiente empieza por vocal, las sílabas implicadas se fusionan en una sola «sílaba poética»). En segundo lugar, nunca un verso termina con una sílaba acentuada (si el acento cae en la última sílaba de un verso, entonces no es este el final verdadero del ritmo, sino que se añade una «sílaba poética en silencio», una pausa similar a la elipsis).

O puede seguir pensando visualmente y pintar la melodía con frases de color. Por ejemplo, así es como Murat dibuja las frases y las pausas del tango vals de Biagi «Lejos de ti»:

LEJOS DE TI (VALS). Letra de Mauricio Rocha Sin rumbo fijo mi vida va quien sabe donde se detendrá tal vez el dia que mi vagar de nuevo amada te vuelva a hallar

Feliz pintura!

Nota sobre Kiki and Bouba:

La historia de Kiki y Buba comenzó a partir de un experimento psicológico, realizado por primera vez hace 80 años por un investigador alemán Wolfgang Köhler. Mostró a sus colaboradores las imágenes de dos garabatos simples —una redondeada, en forma de ameba, y una en forma de estrella, de contorno anguloso— y les preguntó cuál de esos dos nombres en «lengua marciana» correspondía a cada forma. Más tarde, el experimento de Köhler se ha repetido en numerosas variaciones. Se ha probado con hablantes de lenguas y culturas muy diferentes, con niños de diferentes edades… Resulta que las palabras «Kiki» y «Buba» tienen significados invariables para casi todos nosotros. Por supuesto, Kiki es siempre la estrella de ángulos agudos, y Buba es esa especie de ying-yang redondeado.

¿Por qué es siempre así? La razón tiene interés. Según los psicólogos discípulos de V. Ramachandran, se debe a nuestra capacidad de experimentar sinestesias, fusión de los sentidos, algo directamente relacionado con nuestra percepción musical del tango, la capacidad de escuchar la música implicando todo nuestro cuerpo.

La sinestesia es generalmente entendida como la rara facultad de ver los colores de los sonidos o de saborear las sensaciones de color. Ramachandran se propuso demostrar que estas capacidades perceptivas inusuales las causa un túnel de señales nerviosas que enlaza áreas del cerebro encargadas de procesar datos de diferentes órganos sensoriales. Por ejemplo, cuando el «canal de información» entre las áreas visuales y auditivas se abre más de lo normal, entonces el estímulo auditivo desliza una señal hacia las áreas visuales y el sonido no sólo poseerá un tono, sino también un color. A lo sumo, un 1 o 2% de los seres humanos tienen este tipo de capacidad real de percepción sinestésica.

Pero una vez que los psicólogos comprobaron que el 98% de la gente percibe a Buba como una forma ondulada, y llama Kiki a la forma marcadamente angular (donde se unen nuestra percepción del sonido y las formas geométricas), se hicieron una pregunta interesante: ¿no será que casi todos somos realmente capaces de sinestesia, de fusión de los sentidos? (se han encontrado excepciones, de una especie que sólo confirma la regla. Resultó que el experimento Kiki-Buba falla con personas con ciertos problemas congénitos de conectividad cerebral). Pero ¿por qué este tipo específico de sinestesia es tan común?

Los centros de procesamiento auditivo del cerebro deben estar tan próximos a las áreas que participan en el reconocimiento de las formas geométricas que las señales nerviosas atraviesan sus fronteras con facilidad. Por ejemplo, podría ser porque nuestros sentidos de cambio de dirección, de aceleración, de rotación (las funciones ancestrales de nuestro oído interno) siguen manteniendo una relación con la audición y la propiocepción (la sensación interna de la posición y la fuerza de nuestros músculos).

El dualismo Kiki-Buba hasta hace poco sirvió para entretener a los psicólogos y a los teóricos del proto-lenguaje humano, pero solo se ha encontrado aplicación práctica en la investigación de marketing o de marcas comerciales (ayuda a predecir qué sonidos proporcionan un tipo de asociaciones en la mente del consumidor). Bien. Basta. ¡A bailar y a utilizar estas posibilidades de una manera mejor!

Tango glossary links

Terpsichoral Tango Addict’s glossary
Tejastango Guide to Tango Terminology

Кики, Буба и контуры музыки танго

Я с детства не любил овал,
Я с детства угол рисовал!
Павел Коган, 1936

Мурат Эрдемсель, учитель танго с 10-летним стажем, представляется так: “В первую очередь я – танцующий и мыслящий тангеро, и только во вторую – художник и исследователь музыки ... и никаких планов поменять порядок этих профессий у меня нет. Я рисую музыку только из любви к танго и ради того, чтобы вдохновить танцоров, наших учеников”. Понятно, что Мурату неспроста приходится ставить свой необычный дар художника музыки на второе место, ведь все хотят услышать именно его захватывающую лекцию по изобразительной музыкальности, где в главных ролях участвуют два его веселых ассистента, Кики и Буба.

Вот они, наши герои, на этой картинке. Вы наверняка сможете догадаться, какая из этих фигурок Кики и какая – Буба.


Угловатая звездочка (конечно же Кики!) и округлая инь-янистая Буба – родом из классического психологического эксперимента, доказавшего, что наша способность слушать звуки тесно связана с нашим восприятием геометрических форм. (Тангерос, привыкшие к разрисовыванию танцпола музыкой, могут сказать “эка невидаль”, но для психологов и прикладных лингвистов это было настоящее откровение ... в примечании ниже, любители загадок психологии могут найти подробности)

Научиться видеть силуэты Кики и Бубы в танго так легко! Угловатые контуры букв T,A,N звенят клавишами фортепиано – G и О завиваются скрипкой, переливаются голосом певца – ну а бандеон-то может все, и отбивать углы ритма, и протяжно, по-человечески плакать. Отобразить общие контуры Бубы и Кики на танцполу так же нетрудно ... простой прямой шаг, про который нам твердят, что он-то и есть квинтессенция танго – дает костяк линейной геометрии ... а очос и хиро оказываются ничуть не менее фундаментальными завитками Бубы.


Конечно, если бы все разнообразие танго заканчивалось такой странной простотой ... Угловатость Кики и ронда Бубы не исключают друг друга в музыке; зачастую в одной и той же музыкальной фразе мы слышим и то и это, обычно напетое разными инструментами оркестра, и можем выбирать, какую эмоциональную геометрию выразить в танце. А могут быть Кикочки маленькие, рассыпанные там и сям по волнам Бубы. И общая расцветка мелодии меняется наряду с ее геометрическим контуром, тона теплеют и остывают, волны вздымаются все выше и отступают. На сайте Мурата и Мишели проиллюстрированы стадии создания его танго-картин (Органито де ла Тарде, С.О.С., Поэма), начиная от разметки общей геометрической структуры до все более детального видения звука. (Попробуйте и сами! На вебсайте Мурата недавно появилось “практическое занятие” – своего рода контурная карта “Индио Мансо” Карлоса Ди Сарли для раскраски. Свою версию, с полнотой деталей, Мурат обещает вывесить в середине января, так что еще есть время “попробовать перо” без подсказок).

Ну и, конечно, в переводе общего "геометрического вкуса" на язык шагов – также неисчерпаемое разнообразие вариаций. И прямые шаги можно сделать закругленными, волнообразными, перетекающими, подстать для Бубы; и в очо можно сдвинуть акцент с плавности на угловатость.

Но мы забежали вперед! Буба и Кики – замечательные слова, но только музыка состоит не просто из слов, а из фраз, предложений, запятых, точек, многоточий... (Вы, наверно, видели замечательное видео Бенджамина Зандера, где тот изображает развитие ребенка-пианиста, начинающего с акцентирования каждой ноты ... и если бы он не бросил занятия, то, наверно, добрался бы до настоящего понимания музыкальных фраз)

Тексты, наподобие того, что вы как раз сейчас читаете, избаловали нас разнообразием знаков препинания. А ведь когда-то ни точек, ни запятых, ни даже пробелов между словами не признавали. В 55-м году до н.э. Цицерон в De Oratore ругал эти "значки для бездарных ораторов", которые все равно сделают паузу там, где у них просто кончится дыхание (quae non aut spiritu pronuntiantis aut interductu librarii sed numero coacta debet insistere). По Цицерону, красота и целесообразность должна была определять паузы и ускорения, подобно тому, как ритм движений в паре определяется физической целесообразностью и красотой (нет, в те годы парных танцев не знали; Цицерон имел в виду движение ... пары борцов!).

Мы, тангеро, находимся на той же ступени прогресса; специальных значков для пунктуации в музыке танго для нас не расставили, но красота и внутренняя логика мелодии спасает положение. И, конечно, часто помогает и "текстовая форма записи" танго – его стихи (вот почему я всегда стремлюсь понять и впитать летрас, а еще лучше – перевести с сохранением стихотворного размера; тогда ритмика и разбивка на фразы приобретает такую привычную всем нам текстовую форму). Если вам, как и мне, текст стихов помогает услышать биение ритма, то имейте в виду несколько простых советов по ритмике испанского романса, породившего и наши любимые летрас на кастежано. Во-первых, синалефа (слияние гласных) рулит; если слово заканчивается на гласные, а следующее начинается с гласной, то все эти гласные соседних слогов сливаются в один "поэтический слог". Во-вторых, поэтическая строка не кончается ударным слогом; то если на последний слог строчки пало ударение, значит, это еще не самый конец – за ним обязательно подразумевается "немой слог", пауза наподобие многоточия.

Или можно – продолжать в графическом русле, и просто раскрасить мелодию разноцветными фразами. Вот так, например, показывает Мурат фразы и паузы вальса Бьяджи Лехос де Ти:

LEJOS DE TI (VALS). Letra de Mauricio Rocha Sin rumbo fijo mi vida va quien sabe donde se detendrá tal vez el dia que mi vagar de nuevo amada te vuelva a hallar

До тебя далеко (вальс) Слова Маурисио Роха. Мчится бесцельно судьба моя Знать бы, куда занесет меня Может быть, сбудется на пути Снова, родная, тебя найти

Удачного вам рисования!

Подробнее про Кики и Бубу…

История Кики и Бубы началась с психологического эксперимента, который впервые поставил более 80-ти лет назад немецкий профессор Вольфганг Кёлер. Он показывал людям две схематические нарисованные фигурки – округловатую амебу и звездчатый, угловатый контур – и просил их догадаться, какое из двух слов на "тарабарском языке" означает какую из фигур. С тех пор эксперимент Кёлера ставили в самых разнообразных вариантах, с носителями разных языков и культур, с детьми разных возрастов ... и оказывается, что слова "кики" и "буба" практически для всех из нас имеют устойчивые значения. Конечно, Кики – это та угловатая звездочка, а Буба – округлая инь-янистая фигура. Причиной этому является, по мнению современных психологов школы В. Рамачандрана, наша способность к синестезии, "слиянию чувств", которая имеет самое прямое отношение к нашей танго-музыкальности, к нашей способности слышать музыку телом.

Под синестезией обычно понимают редкую способность людей видеть цвет звуков или, например, чувстовать вкус цветовой гаммы. Рамачандран доказывает, что такие необычные способности вызваны туннелированием сигналов между областями головного мозга, ответственными за переработку информации от разных органов чувств. Когда "информационный канал" между зрительной и слуховой областями открыт шире, чем обычно, тогда и слуховые образы, с "утечкой сигнала" в зрительные регионы могут приобрести не только тональность, но и цвет. От силы 1-2 процента людей способно к синестетическим ощущениям такого рода.

Поэтому осознание того, что 98% людей считает Бубу волнистой, а Кику угловатой, соединяя воедино восприятие геометрической формы и звука, заставило психологов задать такой вопрос: неужели почти все из нас способны к синестезии, к слиянию чувств ? (Оказывается, да, за исключением людей с определенными врожденными нарушениями связности регионов мозга). Тогда как это можно обьяснить?

Центры головного мозга, участвующие в обработке слуховой информации, должны располагаться так близко к регионам, участвующим в распознавании геометрических форм, что нервные сигналы могли бы с легкостью пересекать границу между ними (например потому, что наше чувство смены направления, ускорения, вращения – древняя функция внутреннего уха – по-прежнему сохраняет связь как со слухом, так и с проприоцепцией (внутренним ощущением положения и силы мышц).

Дуализм Кики и Бубы до недавнего времени забавлял психологов и теоретиков прото-языка, но единственным практическим приложением для него были маркетинговые исследования и брендинг, попытки доказать, какие имена и какие звуки внушают потребителю какие ассоциации. Но у нас-то есть возможность использовать ту же концепцию в лучших целях!

Немного о терминологии танго:

• "Энциклопедия тангомана"
• обсуждение словаря танго на московском танго-форуме
• Бандонеон

для слов песен танго по-русски традиционно используется испанское “летрас”, буквально “буквы”; литературный язык летрас – кастежано (Castellano), то есть “кастильский”, но с фонетической спецификой Аргентины, “жакающей” при произношении двойного L.

Psychohorror

“Respect only what brings joy, energy and purpose into your life.
Then follow your way, the way of magic and dream.”

„Hypnotherapy and relaxation technics are attractive primarily to those clients
who are looking for trance experiences.”

(quotations from sites of psychologists recommended on pszichologia.lap.hu)

As a Christian psychologist, for a couple of years I have pursued a therapy which integrates the tradition of Christian spiritual guidance with the knowledge of modern psychology. In this September I have included a description of it (at the moment in Hungarian only) on my page, and on the 26th of September I have sent it as a recommended link to a dozen of pertinent psychological pages of the startlap.hu link portal.

When I had sent the links of my gardening pages to the respective subpages of the same portal, about 80% included them, while 20% refused them. The excuses of refusal were not very plausible, but well, not everyone must like my cheek and pages.

Now I expected more or less the same proportion. However, it turned to be quite different. A lot of page owners have not even replied, and among those eight who did, two included my link while the rest refused it.

First I did not understand the reason. And then I, like the vodka in the joke, decided to go out and check who is this Ivan Ivanovich who keeps refusing me.

I found the following:

Conflict management page: “Dear Kata, thank you very much, I have included the link!”	1 esoteric link on the page – Both here and in the rest I only counted the explicitly esoteric links.
Parents page: “Dear link recommender. Thank you for visiting my page and recommending your link. I have included it, but in terms of my editorial principles, I have placed it in a different box.”	5 - 10 esoteric links
Consultation page: “Dear link recommender! The editor, in tems of the guideline concerning link recommendation, preferred not to include the link recommended by you.”	17 esoteric page and portal links
Health page: “Dear link recommender! The content of the page recommended by you does not have the necessary amount or quality of information which would make it really useful for the users visiting the Health page. And as the Health page does not have in view to function as a complete and exhaustive link collection, therefore I am sorry to say that I cannot include your link between the already existing ones.”	16 esoteric page and portal links, with an emphasis on esotericism and homeopathy
Psychological aid page: “Thank you for your recommendation, but the page proposed by you is no site, only a document (sic) which, in terms of the rules of our system, cannot be included in my page.”	50 esoteric page and portal links
Stress page: “Dear link recommender! Thank you for your proposal. Although your web page is pleasant, however, I cannot accept it, because its topic does not match the page edited by me.”	58 esoteric page and portal links
Self-knowledge page: “Dear link recommender! Thank you for your proposal. Although your web page is pleasant, however, I cannot accept it, because its topic does not match the page edited by me.”	66 esoteric page and portal links

All right. Now we already see who Ivan Ivanovich is. It is noteworthy that the better position he has, the more sneaky and insolent he is.

In the Consultation page he still clearly declares that he does not wish to include my page. I understand it well: if I opened a special section for esotericism, I would also not wish to include the link of a Christian on my page.

The editor of the Health page was impertinent enough to write about my exceptionally informative and well edited page (I can justifiably affirm this, after having visited the pages of several hundreds of psychologists) that it does not have the necessary amount and quality of information which would make it useful for the visitors of his page. Of course, if someone is looking for esotericism, the focus of his page, then he or she will certainly not find it on mine.

The editor of the Psychological aid page is more astute, and covers himself by referring to a never seen rule that stands above him. And he has all reason to cover himself, as he promotes oracle pages, horoscope and brain control as psychological aids. The one recommending all this is Imre Farkas, the president of the Győr-Sopron county branch of the Hungarian Psychological Aid by Phone for Children and Youth organization. Let us send oracles on the cell phones of every Hungarian children!

Krisztián Füredi, the editor of the Stress and Self-knowledge pages also edits the Hypnosis, Cognitive, NLP, Psychoanalysis, Psychodrama, Psychology, Psychotherapy, Personality and Social psychology pages. This means that he nailed more or less the complete field of psychology. Whoever is not included in his pages will not enter on the psychological web market which is increasingly covering the whole market.

So he does not strain himself to write that the topic of my site does not match that of the page edited by him. And the topic of his page is not what its title suggests, but what he likes. And he likes esotericism very much. This is not only indicated by the more than a hundred and twenty esoteric links on the Stress and Self-knowledge pages.

After having refused my link on the Psychology page with this excuse:

The content of the recommended page is relevant in every aspect, nevertheless I am sorry to say that I cannot accept it, as this topic is already completely covered by the other links on the page, so your link would not add extra information to the readers,

I thought, how great, if they completely cover it then I will easily find here all the other Christian psychologists. What I found, however, was the following:

About 20% of the psychologists linked by him exclusively follow some traditional clinical method, principally Freudian psychoanalysis. This is that 20% where the patient will suffer probably no injury, apart from eventually paying a lot of money for absolutely nothing. In any case, he or she will encounter a systematic, controlled and transparent method that does not intend to manipulate him or her, but to promote the evolution of his or her personality.

In the case of about 30% of the therapeutes on the page no information is given about their method. They only communicate to their future patient that if he or she will go to them then everything will be very good.

About 40% of the psychologists applies – either exclusively, or as a supplement – some manipulative technique, some sort of autogene training, relaxation, hypnose, katatim imaginative psychotherapy (KIP), neurolinguistic programming (NLP).

These manipulative techniques are usually recommended for a quickly relaxation to people suffering of stress. However, the relaxation basically works like a mild tranquillizer. It does not resolve the problem, only helps one in worrying less about it. If one continuously resorts to this solution, then the unresolved problem will look for another outlet. The patient will change symptoms, and from then on will go see the psychologist not about stress but about indigestion or computer addiction. If the psychologist manages to cure this on the level of symptoms again, then he can perfectly gain his living on a few patients until the end of his life.

The relaxation techniques are similar to mild tranquillizers also in that aspects that they are of no worth in the case of great stress. My psychologist friend who had learned autogene training, replied to me when I asked her why she did not use it in some really hard situation, that she could not relax when she was so nervous…

This is, however, the smaller problem. The bigger one is that what begins with the manipulation of the body, soon becomes the manipulation of the mind. The patient communicates with something – inner images, the subconscious, etc. – like with a person. However, our inner images and subconscious are no persons. There is nothing in your subconscious which was not put there by yourself. The contents of the subconscious can be uncovered, and this has therapic effect indeed. But you cannot communicate with it.

You can only communicate with the psychologist to whom you delivered yourself and who, for example in the case of NLP, applies techniques to go round the conscious resistance of the patient and to bring him in a modified mental state where his subconscious opens to the suggestions of the psychologists. And in the so-called katatim imaginative psychotherapy (KIP) the psychologist moves the patient to directly deliver him- or herself to various spiritual forces.

This means that with about the 40% of the psychologists on the Psychology page you are lucky if you only pay a lot of money for techniques that you cannot use for anything and do not receive hard esotericism by right of “psychology”.

Finally, it is exactly hard esotericism that is offered by a bit more than 10% of the psychologists on the Psychology page. Esotericism in every form, astrology, tarot, gurus and masters.

Everything is clear. No Christian psychologist is necessary here,

“as this topic is already completely covered by the other links on the page.”