That Reverse Tribute

QUITE AMUSING TO DISCOVER how the band's name is a vesre of Tango Project, an 80's tango compilation the band had aimed to pay tribute to. A form of wordplay used colloquially in Buenos Aires and is also found in the lyrics of many tango tracks, a vesre rearranges the syllables of a word, positioning the end syllable up at the beginning. So tango becomes gotan. Café becomes feca. Reves, which means "reverse", becomes vesre, which brings us back to the start of this paragraph!

The concept is not unfamiliar to me, being Filipino and employing the same type of wordplay in our colloquial speech. Padre becomes erpat. Chibog becomes bogchi. Even pare becomes erap, which eventually became a former president-slash-action-star's nickname. Too bad there's no reversing that bit of history.

Band name's etymology aside, I put on some Gotan and position myself back in an earlier time; of a younger me, devoid of any glamor except in longing. And I look back fondly, finding myself now at an age where the extreme awkwardness of youth had finally passed, and at a place where my environment echoes the music's speech, soul and sensuality much more than before.

And so I pay my own tribute to the tracks that played through the past decade of my life, not with a vesre but with a trip down to the local bar, where the wine is waiting and the foreigners are few.

¡A-dios! This dios-a has got to go.

Inspiración-Espiración, La Revancha del Tango, Tango 3.0 and Lunático by Gotan Project, www.gotanproject.com