He came to despise traditional tango arrangements as being too limiting, and he eventually ventured into the musical flights of tango nueveo playing. Piazzolla never returned to traditional tango and is today highly regarded in jazz circles as a brilliant innovator. Hardly anyone dances to his music today. It is reported that DJ s in Buenos Aires often play a Piazzolla song to clear the dance floor between sets of traditional tangos. Avoid buying tango nuevo CDs unless you like listening to jazz-like interpretations.
Traditional tangos are the ones to buy for dancing.
But even here there are choices to be made. Some tangos are slow and better suited for the salon style walking tango dancing, while others are faster in the orillero style. There are instrumentals and vocals to choose from. Some dancers who understand Spanish don t like to dance to vocals unless they make an effort to ignore the words and only pay attention to the music because many tango lyrics are sad or depressing. A lesser number recorded songs during the 1950 s and later.