Tango Music in Japan / 일본의 땅고(탱고) 음악

I have been curious about the Tango music scene in Japan for quite a while.  Finally this past weekend I got the chance to go to Tokyo to see 2 orchestras play.

The occasion was the 2009 Asian Tango Championship in Tokyo.  For the final gala event, they invited 2 tango orchestras to perform.  The first one was the Orquesta Tango Waseda, which is the tango orchestra of Waseda University.  If I remember correctly, they played with 3 bandoneons, 2 violins, a piano and a contrabass.  The quality of their music was certainly very good, and the incredible part was that they switched musicians every song!  Later I found out that they have around 40 musicians, many of which got to play a few songs that night.  Maybe they only have 3 bandoneons in the orchestra, but it looked like 10 different bandoneon players played.  This orchestra has actually been around for 40 years, if you can read Japanese you can find out more here:

http://www.waseda.jp/L1-tango/

The second orchestra was Orquesta AurorA, which is probably on par with most (if not all) professional tango orchestras in the world.  Some of their musicians used to be members of the Waseda University band.  Here is their website:

http://www.latina.co.jp/html/aurora/

I think they use their own musical arrangement, and they even compose new tangos from time to time.  They just published their first CD called "Puerto a Puerto".

And I learned that there are not a small number of other high quality professional or semi-professional tango orchestras in Japan, and they play regularly in concerts around the country.  For me it is truly a blessing that Japan has a long history of tango music, and there is a high level of appreciation of this genre not just for tango dancers but among the general popluation as well.  I hope it will be possible to share this part of their culture in Korea in the future.