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What did it sound like when a tango was recorded in the 30s or 40s of the last century? For several years Matthias Kroll has been dedicating a lot of time to  get closer and closer to the original recording in his sound restorations.Recently he has founded his own label. “Matthias Kroll Records” (MKR), which is distributed exclusively by Danza y Movimiento. In the following text Matthias Kroll himself tells how he became a tango restorer:
The Argentine Tango has a distinctive charm and once you have succumbed to it, you can usually never get away from it again. Like many, I first came into contact with it in the 90s when the Gotan Project started in Paris and hybrids like Tanghetto were played in the clubs. The free way of dancing to this music fascinated my wife and me and we had to learn it. After a longer break we got back into the milonga scene and I became more and more involved with the tango music of the past. I started to search for old recordings and to translate the lyrics. Once you are immersed in the world of the 20s/30s and 40s, there are so many forgotten tangos/texts and people to discover. Our dance style changed quite fast and we actually only dance in close embrace, where both partners feel and dance the music together as an inseparable unity.

Sometimes music and dancing also have something to do with politics. This is rare, but music can only be created if the social conditions are in place. And this includes musicians, authors, producers, publishers and many others who create music getting something for their work. These days the waves are boiling, because the vote is about a new copyright law in the EU. Let me start by saying that I can only congratulate any Member who dares, in view of the mobilisation against this reform, to give his vote to this draft law!

I run a small music label myself. Since the turn of the millennium my income has gone down the drain. A major reason for this was the use of music on the Internet. Since there were (and still are) no legal regulations in the field of copyright adapted to the digital age, the large Internet platforms¹⁾ on which you can listen to music have dictated their own rules for the use of music. On many platforms this meant that for a long time nothing (!) was paid to those who created this music. Until today, minimal amounts are paid with several zeros behind the comma for streaming. No musician can live on it, no music label can live on it.

The CD Tango 9 is the n.9 in the Tango production of the Hyperion ensemble. The project of this new release is strictly following the two previous CDs, Epoca de oro (2011) and Remembranzas (2014) wishing to bring to a new life the music of the historical orchestras of the 40s and 50s; it contains a lot of great hits in the classical Tango repertoire, as Los Mareados, Cachirulo, Esta noche de luna, famous milongas as La Punalada and Mano brava, refined valses as Temo, etc.

The recording has been done 50% live and 50% in studio, with the two bandoneonists Josè Luis Betancor and Antonio Ippolito. Actually this CD is an adequate photo of the Hyperion ensemble in this moment of its life and activity, developing itself mainly in Festivals or in Shows with dancers, moving hundreds of people with the rhythm of the music by D’Arienzo, Pugliese, Biagi etc. reinterpretated with a modern concept of sound and orchestration. The CD contains also a new interpretation of the milonga Morena by Esteban Morgado and of the foxtrot Por las calles de Estambul, and a special arrangement of the Modugno’s song Le donne belle, featuring a Trio of female voices: Creartis Trio.

Today, we are giving you a short overview concerning the upcoming changes at “Danza y Movimiento”. We will keep offering music and travels in the future – still, there will be a lot of changes…

Music department – CD sales and downloads in our own shop
We withdraw from this department. After many other legal adjustments, which had already made survival really hard for small suppliers, the new directive on the VAT system* that became effective on January 1st 2015, determined our end. This concerns our Club, which is influenced by the new tax regulations just like the download titles we offer. Until April 30th it will still be possible to order CDs in our shop. From then on, the ordering function will be deleted in our shop. However, we will still produce music and provide it via other online portals like for example iTunes. So our ambitious work will continue especially regarding tango…

Music department – music rights
We will develop this department further. This is interesting for everybody wanting to acquire music rights for their own productions. And nowadays this concerns especially audio-visual productions. We can offer a huge selection regarding tango music. No matter if you need music for a movie, a dance instruction DVD or just as the background music for a short video clip on Facebook, YouTube or your own website – we can offer thousands of titles. As we can also grant the right of use for more than 350 copyright-free tango tracks, our offer is highly interesting for producers of small or large films as well as for organizers of tango events. Quite often “copyright-free” is mistaken for music free of any other rights. Thus, we offer the possibility to use music legally and to guarantee that you will not have any legal problem on the basis of our contracts.