Music heals the brain.

Alzheimer’s and Parkison’s disease involves the same protein in the brain. Aricept and Rytaryl drugs alleviate the symptoms of these brain disorders but music and massage and the company of love ones do more healing.

Below are my chosen music for our aging brain. We can regrow our brain cells by learning dance movements coupled with soft music (piano, other beats).

Siete Tandas is meant first and foremost for dancing. It is an interpretation of an idealized evening of tango dancing. http://www.mandragoratango.com/standard/flash/01/xspf_player.swf?playlist_url=http://www.mandragoratango.com/music/2009/06/18/samples.xspf&autoload=true&player_title=Mandragora_RadioIt starts early (11PM or so) with tandas of traditional, highly rhythmic Argentine tangos and gets more and more lush and passionate as the night progresses. To keep things from getting too hot, it breaks up the evening with a tanda of .Vals. (Argentine Waltzes) and .Milongas. (an Argentine 2-step). But as the night goes on, the temperature continues to rise and Mandragora takes the dancers into more and more sensual and exotic soundscapes. In the small hours of the morning, Mandragora plays a tanda of heart-achingly beautiful slow dances by Astor Piazzolla. The dancers who are left on the nearly empty floor can enjoy an almost erotic interplay of sound and motion before they go their separate ways. Or not.

Here are several tracks that you can download for your listening pleasure. You can download them in a 46 MB RAR (7TandasSamples.rar) or ZIP (7TandasSamples.zip) file. You can also download them individually:

• Felicia (Saborida)
• El recodo (Junissi)
• Palomita blanca (Aieta)
• Los mareados (Cobian)
• Silueta Porteña (Canaro)
• La payanca (Berto)
• Poema valseado (Piazzolla)

From the Tango Los Mareados (Track 11):

Hoy vas a entrar en el pasado de mi vida…
Tres cosas lleva mi alma herida: ¡Amor. Pesar. Dolor.!

Today you are going to enter the past of my life.
Three things are carried by my wounded heart: Love. Despair. Pain!

Free Online-Only Mini-Album of Live Tracks: “Mandragora Tango Live 2007”

We’ve taken some of the best tracks that we’ve recorded this spring and put together a little freebie album for you to enjoy.http://www.mandragoratango.com/standard/flash/01/xspf_player.swf?playlist_url=http://www.mandragoratango.com/sounds/Spring2007/playlist.xspf&autoload=true&player_title=Mandragora_Radio These are all live tracks recorded in April and May 2007. We’ll probabbly re-record are few of these tracks in a studio sooner or later. We’re planing on our next CD release to be much more studio-oriented and to feature more original, danceable alt-tangos. So we’ve taken 13 of our best new tracks and made a little album to give away. 7 of these tracks have videos that you can view on YouTube. This is just like a real album, except that it’s shorter and free. You also can download all of Mandrágora Tango Live 2007 as a ZIP file or as a RAR file. You can also listen to it in a pop-up window
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 License.

Homecoming Concert after our Spring 2007 Tour

In May 2007 we made our big East Coast Tour. When we returned, we played a homecoming gig at the Cedar Cultural Center that we recorded for posterity. Here are some tracks from that show:

• Silueta Porteña (Live) (Canaro) one of our most danceable milongas with Bob on Bandoneon
• Gota de lluvia (Live) (Manzi) a vals with Bob on the Bandoneon
• La payanca (Live) One of our longtime favorites that we finally got a change to record.
• Taquito militar (Live) a modern style milonga with a catchy beat
• Melancolico A Julian Plaza tango that stradles the line between tango for listening and dango for dance.
• La cumparcita (Live) everyone’s favorite tango. This is the way we end our milongas.

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Mandragora Tango at Baby Blue Arts and Youtube (2007)

In April, 2007 we performed for the cameras of Baby Blue Arts in a half-hour concert taped for broadcast. We’ve posted all of those tunes to YouTube and made the audio tracks available for listening or download below.

• Café con limón (Barnes): Watch or Listen/Download Bob’s original vals about our friend Alan Kagan’s odd habit of putting a lemon in his coffee.
• Michelangelo ’70 (Piazzolla): Watch or Listen/Download Our favorite concert encore. A rolicking 3 minutes of undanceable Piazzolla goodness.
• Tango Triste (Troilo): Watch or Watch or Download/Listen Canaro’s milonga made famous by Tita Merello. An adaptation of this was the theme song to the original “Ugly Betty”, a Columbian telenovella called “Yo soy Betty, la fea”.
• Danzarín (Plaza): Watch or Download/Listen Another Julian Plaza concert favorite that can be danceable when the moment is right.
• Soledad (Piazzolla): Watch or Download/Listen The most hauntingly beautiful piece that we play, featuring a heart-breakingly sad violin solo by Christian Zamora
• La yumba (Pugliese): Watch or Download/Listen Pugliese’s great onomonopoeic theme song. (“Yumba” is made-up word that sounds like the short, 2-note rhythm that the bass player plays throughout)

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Let’s Have Dinner and Go Dancing! (2005)

In 2005 we released our current CD, Let’s Have Dinner and Go Dancing with the Mandrágora Tango Orchestra. You can buy it at CD Baby or at any of our shows.

Here are some tracks from the CD

• La Cumparsita Mixing everybody’s favorite tango with a cool bass riff from Jesus Christ Superstar
• Haciendose la del Zamora (“Doing What Zamora Does”: One of my originals. Christian Zamora is the violinist in the band and you really don’t want to know what he does)
• Smells like Teen Spirit (A tango cover of Nirvana’s greatest hit)
• Tempranillo (another original. Tempranillo is the name of the grape from which Rioja wine is made

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Cafe Europa (2005)

Here are some tracks that we recorded for an MPR Radio Show with Dan Chouinard called Café Europa

• Besame Mucho, An instrumental that is on our CD Let’s Have Dinner and Go Dancing with the Mandrágora Tango Orchestra
• La Strada del Bosco An Italian “Do-wop” song from the 50s, featuring Jordan Sramek from the Rose Ensemble
• Ochi Chornie (Dark Eyes) A Russian Folk Song featuring Sima Shumalevsky.

Some cuts we recorded with our Argentine Musical Godfather, Max Valentinuzzi (2005)

• El garon with Max Valentinuzzi on piano. Recorded in Kathy Vessel’s living room in Minneapolis, where Max did his house concert in May, 2005. This is on on our CD Let’s Have Dinner and Go Dancing with the Mandrágora Tango Orchestra
• La cumparsita Another one with Max, recorded at the same time as our CD, but not included, since we already recorded a different version asTangoChrist SuperStar ReMix

Mandragora Plays Tangos and Sad Waltzes (2003)

Our first CD, Mandragora Plays Tangos and Sad Waltzes”, is still available online at Mixonic.com or can be bought in person at any of our shows.

• Cancion del Olvido
• Krakovia
• El Acomodo

Our Original Demo Tape (2001)

For the obsessive Mandragoraphile, here are cuts from our original demo tape from December, 2001. Notice that I said demo “tape”. This was recorded to a cassette tape in my living room. I had almost no concept of Argentine tango at the time and played mostly in a Euro-jazz swing style. All these tracks are a good deal faster than I would play these songs today. This tape features Bob Barnes on accordion, Gordy Abel on Bass and Mark Herr on percussion.

• A swinging version of El choclo
• A really nice, low key version of Krakovia
• A mellow version of Piazzolla’s Jacinto Chiclana

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Motherhealth Caregivers in the bayarea since 2004 has been providing caregivers to homebound bayarea seniors using holistic healing ways and supportive environments. Text 408-854-1883 motherhealth@gmail.com