Música and The Grand México City

“The heart of México beats en this space. The mariachis of the Garibaldi plaza welcome your visit. Here, all the towns of the world are part of the grand México City.”

I got up really early on the last Saturday of my trip and took the bus to México D.F. The DF stands for Federal District (districto federal en español). It’s the capital of México and one of the largest cities in the world.

Like I said, I took the bus into the city and then took the subway (which is very clean and only costs 2 pesos - that’s $.20!) into El Zocalo. I exited the subway at about 10:30 and it looked like this. Impressive, huh? But not as many people as I had been lead to believe. “That’s not so many people,” I thought.

Here’s a picture of that same spot about 3 hours later. It doesn’t do justice to just ho many people there were. It was like the crush walking through the corridors after a Cubs game. But instead of just one hallway, it was a whole huge city center. I can’t believe there were that many people!

I had a great time. Here’s a short video of all the music I caught when I was there. I didn’t get to go to the Ballet Folkloricó which was too bad, this is the Palacio de Belle Arts (Fine Arts Building) where they perform.

I also got to see a Sunday Afternoon in the Alameda Fresco, another beautiful and historical mural by Diego Rivera. The mural is a “typical day” in El Zocalo of Mexico City with very untypical characters - politicians, activists, Hernado Cortez, Frida Kahlo, Rivera himself and others.

I spent most of the day walking back and forth around the Centro neighborhood. Here’s another shot of the people in the street. It was street after street of this!





At about 5:00 I finally headed for the famed Plaza Garibaldi! An experience I’ll never forget. SO MANY MARIACHI’S. Plaza Garibaldi is the plaza where all the mariachi groups hang out, waiting to get hired. At first it was really similar to El Zocalo in Cuarenavaca. Everyone was just kind of standing around and once and and while a group would play.

But then, as night fell, the place began to burst with excitement and music. It got to the point where there where so many groups playing that you couldn’t even hear them any more.

Here’s a video compilation that of my experience in Plaza Garibaldi. It’s very shaky, I know. I just couldn’t hold still! I was just having too much fun. Amazing. There where mariachis everywhere!

My camera battery died at the end of that last clip to that’s all I could record. It’s too bad because I think that was the hottest group that I heard that night.

I walked back to El Zocalo at about 11:00 that night and sat under that flag pole right there (This is a picture of El Zocalo from earlier in the day). The people had dispersed again, but there was still a lot of bustling going on. It’s was a great feeling to sit there and contemplate my trip. I took the midnight bus back to Cuernavaca that night.

I woke up on Sunday morning knowing that I only had 3 days left in Cuernavaca and it was time to start collecting myself and saying my goodbyes. Estuve muy triste.

Malagueña - Jesús "Chucho" Peredo

The very next night Chucho played a concert downtown at the univeristy. It was great. Here is a recording of him playing Magueña.

Here's the text from the program. While I understand that basic "concept" of what he was talking about, I wish I understood more of the specifics.

Mi Amiga Maria Estuvo Aquí.

** Only a couple days left in México (and no more in Cuernavaca) and I must admit I'm feeling a little burnt out. I don't have quite the energy for this entry that I wish I had, but I want to get it down. So here I go. **

I had the sincere pleasure of hosting one of my closest friend, Maria McCullough for a few days this week! How about that?

Maria and her boyfriend, Yahvi, had been traveling all over México this sumer; playing music and visiting Yahvi's family. Last Lunes, Martes y Miercoles Maria came to visit me in Cuernavaca. Unfortunately, Yahvi wasn't feeling well so he stayed in México City with his mom (lucky!)

It was great to be in Cuernavaca with someone who knows what my life is like back in Chicago. Having her here changed my perspective a little bit regarding how different, or how similar, my life here is to my life in Chicago.

Maria had a friend in Cuernvaca, Chucho Peredo Flores, who is an incredible musician and scholar of Mexican music. Oddly enough, he worked on a CD called Dos Tradicíones, which I own and listen to all the time! Again, it's a very small world.

We played a ton of music when Maria was here. The first night was just hanging around at Chucho's beautiful music space. Maria and Chucho had a lot of catching up to do and Chucho and I got to know each other. I had some recordings of this evening, but I accidentally erased them! But here is a short video of Maria and Chucho playing.


The next day Maria and I went to the Zocalo and walked all around. We found the market where they sell the food and went to El Palacio de Cortes and saw the Diego Rivera mural. It was the second time I so it and I'm glad I did because the time before I was a little sick and I had a hard time appreciating the museum.







Then we went to Chucho's to play some music. His wife, Estela, runs a factory making tiles for mosaics and she is quite an accomplished artist. Chucho showed us all around their new house (which they designed) and the tile factory/workshop that is right next door. This tour was an unexpected treat. That's no rug. That's mosaic!

















Then we had a gig at Starbucks! ¿Qué padre, no? Yeah, it was billed as Maria and I, but Chucho joined us on a couple tunes and Maria and Chucho played some stuff. It was great fun. Not too many of my friends and neighbors were able to make it on short notice, but some did which was awesome. I felt so proud to be able to share a bit more of my life in Chicago. Again, I had recorded the show, but I erased it. Dang!

The next day we went back to Chucho's to chat and play. We met up with a bunch more of their family and ate dinner and played a ton of music. I do have some recordings of that luckily. They all had pizza and they were very accomidating to my wheat intolerance. Also, I ate a steamed artichoke for the first time. At first I wasn't so sure, but the . . . sambroso.

I have a couple recordings of this that I'll post later.

Maria had to go the next day and it was a strange moment. She's been to México a bunch of times and has traveled all over. This is all still kind of new to me. It felt great that we were able to find each other here. It's strange to have part of my "real life" enter my life here. I guess . . . well, I don't know what I'm trying to say. It was strange. It was wonderful.

Friends - we're really making it happen, huh? ¡Qué chido!

Tocamos Cielito Lindo, Y'all

One thing that I didn’t realize until I got here is that, while there are a ton of mariachis and singers hanging around in El Zocalo (the city center) they don’t really play much. Or I guess I should say, they don’t give it away for free. They wait for someone to hire them. (How they can sit there, with their instruments in their hands for that long and not play is beyond me.)

I was always so disappointed when I’d go downtown. There was musicians everywhere but no music! How strange.

Now, you know me and you know that I like to play. But I hardly ever play for money. But, I went down to el zocalo on Friday afternoon to try my hand at some busking. I’d never “busked” before, even in Chicago, but I decided that I need to give it a try. So I did it. I sat right down in the center of the whole scene, put my Tigers hat out, and started to play. I got a pretty good crowd for Oh Susanna and made my first 7 pesos (the most money I’d made in 7 weeks). I was on my way!

Then, of coarse, a gringo hired a group of mariachis to play about 100 ft from me! I had been in Cuernavaca for seven weeks and not once did I hear a mariachi group actually play. And I they day I try to break out . . . “Guadalajara, Guadalajara . . . “

The banjo is loud, but it’s not that loud. So me my friend Ryan, who had come to lend his moral support, packed up and we moved to a different part of el zocalo. I was feeling fairly defeated.

We were standing by a fountain, just chatting when a trumpet playing mariachi, Mario, came up to me and asked me about the banjo. We started talking and a couple others came over. Then a few more.

Before long I had a pretty good crowd around me; all mariachis.

Now, like I said, the mariachis don’t play until they’re hired. And here I am showing up, banjo in hand, ready to play for nothing. So I played a little bit. I think I played Fish on a Hook and Angeline the Baker.

Ryan noticed the mariachies give each other a hard time if they play without being hired, so the whole situation was a little weird. I could tell they were dying to play, but they were trying not to.

Finally, Santiago, who plays the vihuela, started to sing; just a little bit, kind of under his breath. But we sang and played Cielito Lindo and by the end a bunch of others had joined. It was hilarious because they where all singing so quietly and kind of looking around like they didn’t want to be noticed.

Eventually a few of them warmed up. Manuel, who I was told plays everything and is considered the best musician in the group, didn’t seem to mind and played for real. We played Oh Susanna (of coarse), Will the Circle Be Unbroken, and This Land is Your Land. They helped me sing Volver, Volver (which I’m working pretty hard on) and they showed me a couple other songs.

My favorite moment was when one of the singers busted into Guantanamera. Everyone sang and they really sang it, too! Oh man. I just kept thinking about Pete Seeger and wishing I could have recorded it and sent it to him. I think he would be so proud.

P.S.
My friend Ryan (who took the photos that I'm in) has a blog posting about this event, too. Ryan became a very good friend during this trip. Check out his blog. It's hilarious and very interesting.

African Drumming at Ludovica

My friend Toño, from Starbucks, took me to an African drumming class. It was really interesting.

You know, I teach drumming at Rogers Park and really, I haven’t studied drumming, only teaching. So a lot of times I’m just king of winging it as I figure out how to teach drumming as I’m learning myself.

But after seeing this class, I was pretty happy that my class is fairly similar. It’s not nearly as complex, but the structure is about the same.

There where seven drummers; four playing djembe (including the teacher) and three playing dun-duns.

Here’s a recording of the class. This is the rhythm that they spent the most time on. I wish I knew what it was called. They worked really hard on it. The solo part is the teacher but at roughly 2:10 Toño takes the solo part.

After I had a dinner of al pastor, cervezas and good conversation with Toño and his wife.AA

Gorditas en Bernal

Saturday was devoted to Peña de Bernal, the second largest monolith in THE WORLD. Check this out! Pretty impressive rock, huh?

We kind of screwed up our schedule. Well, we didn’t screw it up, we just could have paid better attention.

The day started with a Trumpet Showcase at space where the band rehearses. Eight trumpets blasting away. It was pretty cool.

Then we made our way back to Sandy’s to pick up Friend (Nicole) and headed to Bernal, which is a town with a beautiful rock formation, I quess you would call it.

We got to the bus station a little late so we had to wait around, and then the bus took longer than we though so we only got to spend 90 minutes or so in Bernal. That was too bad because it took over an hour to get there.

The center of the town is a little tourist village at the base of the rock. She streets curve all around and you never know what's around the next corner. Probably another winding road.

Earlier that day I had asked one of Sandy’s students “What do you do when you go to Bernal?”

She said, “Eat.”

I asked, “Eat what?”

She said, “Gorditas.”

So that’s what we did. Gorditas are my new favorite food. They’re pockets of maza, stuffed with cheese, beans or meat and then fried.

Anyway, we ate some great Gorditas and then had to head back to Querétaro. ¡Sambroso!

----

Someday I’m going to go back and climb all the way to the top of that rock. Then I’ll play, “My Home’s Across the Smokey Mountains”.

On the Town in the Land of Mexican Independence

Querétaro is a beautiful, charming city. This is a statue of Josefa Ortiz de Domíngo, who is one of the heros of the Mexican War for Independence. The initial planning for the war happened in Querétaro. Querétaro is the capital of the state of Querétaro. I arrived in on Thursday and checked out the band and caught up with Sandy’s family.

Thursday was “tourist day”. Sandy and her daughter, Nicole, took me on quite a tour. I was kind of tired of taking pictures so I gave my camera to Nicole and she took over for me. All these pictures are by Nicole, unless she’s in them. Then I took it.

We went everywhere. Went to a huge church and saw some statues of important people from the Mexican Revolution.








We saw the aqueduct (in the background) and checked out the beautiful view from the top of the city.








We walked up an down a lot of streets, eating tacos and checking everything out.







Eventually we had to sit down for a little bit.








We went to a great candy shop and bought a ton of dulces. Yum.








We went through the downtown section with all the artists selling jewelry. They had a cool “Frog Walk” which I think is the same idea as the Chicago Cows. The green one was my favorite.






We had to stop by Sandy’s office. While Sandy was taking care of some business we took we took portraits on the terrace. Nicole likes Americas Next Top Model, too!









Check out this flame statue. I’m guessing it’s my the same artist as the one in Chicago.










The afternoon ended with . . . more sweets! This is at an chain of coffee shops called “Italian Coffee”. It’s pretty good coffee.







I don’t have any pictures of it, but the day ended with some and a couple cervezas (for Sandy, her Mom and I only) and we played a couple games of Dora the Explorer themed Memory.

That’s when Nicole told me that I was her best friend. I was really touched by that. She is one sweet kid.

Boy, by the end of the day I was REALLY wore out. Nicole is a great walker. I was very impressed.

Festivo: Visiting Sandy Kessler

First a little background on Sandy Kessler.

This is Sandy. I hadn’t seen her in, at least, 10 years before I visited with her and her family in Querétaro. We went to high school together. She was a year ahead of me. She was First Chair Trombone and Drum Major of marching band for 2 years. Then she went on to great success as Drum Major at Western Michigan University. That’s where we lost touch.

Now, on with the story. You may know that it took me a while to sign up on Facebook, but I did it, finally, in preparation for this trip. Within an hour of signing up Sandy found me!

I said, “Guess what! I’m heading to México for two months.”

She said, “Guess what! I live in México.”

I couldn’t believe it.

She’s been here for 8 years. She’s the director of a juvinal orchestra in Querétaro, which is the capital of the state of Querétaro. Here’s a picture and here’s a short video of Sandy conducting the intermediate ensemble.

If you were in middle school band with Sandy or I you might recognize that piece. It’s Festivo! Hearing it was just one of may great moments of this trip. I'm sorry I missed recording those trumpets blast it out at the beginning! Memories of Novi Middle School flew past in a flurry of eighth notes.

It was so awesome to see and hear Sandy in action. I can tell by the stories she tells, the success she’s had, and the way the parents and students talk to her that she has a great amount of respect. That couldn’t have been easy to come by. I was quite honored to be her guest at these rehearsals and to be able to say, en español, “I knew her when . . .”

More on my trip to Querétaro and my new amiga Nicole in the following posts.

P.S.
Sandy is on Facebook. I highly suggest you look her up.

¿Qué es eso?

This is Jesus. He calls himself Jessie en inglés. Tiene sies años. (He's six-years-old.) We met on the five hour bus ride from Cuernavaca to Querétaro.

Jesus and his mom where sitting in the seats in front of me. No one was next to me. I must have "I'm good with kids," written across my forehead in Spanish as well as English. We weren't on the bus for 10 minutes before Jesus had found his way to the seat next to me.

We had a great time on the bus, and I was quite happy for some friendly company. He didn't stop talking, in Spanish, THE WHOLE TRIP. He didn't seem to mind that I didn't understand much of anything, although once and a while he did mutter "Ay, ay, ay," under his breath. We were able to share our favorite animals, our favorite movies and our favorite foods. His favorite food is mango. I just happened to have some mango with me. We're sharing it in that picture. That's why we're so happy.

I also taught him play Crazy Eights or Ochos Loco en español. That was pretty cool. I highly recommend trying to teach a card game with minimal language skills. Other than that we watched the cartoon Open Season and drew pictures of all kinds of stuff. We also played the game ¿"Qué es eso"? ("What is that?"), in Spanish. I was very bad at that.

The bus ride back on Sunday was much less enjoyable. The bus was jam packed, I was in the aisle seat, I was 2 rows from the bathroom and they showed a very depressing movie about governmental spying in East Germany. I was so happy to be "home".

A Haircut in Tlaquiltenango

So, like I said, I met Mercedes and Karla at the Jazzmientos show and we got to know each other at the Alejandro Flores show at El Manojo the next night.

On Tuesday of last week I took the bus out to their hometown of Tlaquiltenango, which is about an hour outside of Cuernavaca. It was a really nice little pueblo; much smaller than Cuernavaca, but their was still a lot of action. I can't believe it didn't get more pictures of it.

Yeah, so Karla owns a salon and she agreed to cut my hair. I said I wanted to look more Mexican, but she said my hair was too thin. Que lastima.

Next we went on quite an adventure. Honestly I have no idea what happened the whole rest of the day. We started getting on busses and taking taxis. They are both photographers and there was a bunch of talk about "taking my picture" but I was never reall ys sure why until much later. One problem with not understanding the language is that everyone makes plans, but they don't tell me what they are. They just say "Vamanos" and I follow them wherever they're going.

Tlaquiltenango is way out in the country and it was really great to get out of the city. We went and picked up a guitar from their friend Pete (who plays heavy metal) and then Pete came with us to an Emilio Zapata museum where they the clothes he was killed in and his sombraro. It was very interesting, but honestly, I can't be around that many guns anymore. It makes me sad.

But I cheered up a great deal when Karla and I had a guitar lesson using no English, other tan the words to Pay Me My Money Down. I can't tell you how fulfilled I am when I teach someone who doesn't know how to play the guitar, how to play Pay Me My Money Down. My español gets a work out and so does my teaching.

From there we went god knows where and found a festival that the city was hosting called Feria Zacatepec 2008. It celebrates St. Santiago. It was the craziest fair I'd ever been too. There where rides and games and a ton of booths selling bootleg DVDs and crafts and toys and all kinds of stuff, and a huge bandshell. The band that night was playing "banda" which isn't any of our favorites, so we didn't stay there too long. There was music blaring from every corner of the fair, so it was impossible to hear anything anyone was saying, let alone for me to understand a thing.

We found a relatively quite tent to have some cervezas. The beer in Mexico comes sencillo (simple) or prepared. There are several different preparations. I like mine with salt and lime (límon en español), but Pete and Karla drank their's with what looked to me to be about half a bottle of chili power. I like chili, don't get me wrong, but que es muchísimo.

We left the fair after a couple of giant cervezas and headed off to another bar. Again, more taxi's and buses and a ton of walking. All I did was follow along and try to keep up. Eventually we found that the bar we were looking for was closed so we bought some beers and headed off to find some tacos. This is my last picture of the night and I think it summarizes it beautifully.

What a Great Day - Taxco

Sunday, July 27, will go down as one of my favorite days (as I'm sure so many will) of my 2008 Trip to Mexico.

Stephan and I went to Taxco, which is famous as a silver mining town and shopping mecca. Now, if you know me you know that "shopping" isn't my favorite thing in the world, but we had such a great time just kicking around that it really didn't matter.

The day started off by us missing our first bus to Taxco so we walked down to El Zocalo and had some coffee (that picture is the view from the coffee shop) and kicked around the Jardin Borda, a for awhile. Jardin Borda is a beautiful gardn with fountains and very old trees; just the kind of place I would have hated going as a kid. We fed the duck, checked out some really tall trees and walked back to the bus station to make our way to Taxco.

It was a great trip out into the country. We were lucky enough to have the very front seats. Here's a view out of the bus window.






Taxco is all about buying and selling silver. We didn't go into many shops but we did see this beautiful church. We also hunted down a restaurant called Restaurante Tia Calla. I had read in a guide book that the Polzone at Tia Calla was especially good. Polzone is a very common corn soup from Mexico. I had exactly what the guide book recommended; a bowl of Polzone and a shot of Mezcal. While I wouldn't go all the way to Taxco just for polzone, it was fun to find our way through the streets and the food was very good.

We messed up our travel plans for a second time, so we had only 3 hours or so in Taxco which turned out to be fine. We stopped by a big silver market. Stephan bought a necklace for his girl and I bought a simple bracelet for myself. We caught the bus and headed back to Cuernavaca.

We got back at about 7:00 and nothing to do. So we made our way back to El Zocalo and found a hole in the wall bar to have some cervezas. It was time for some dinner and we made our way north to La Gringa for some tacos al pastor. La Gringa is infamous for it's al pastor, which is a spicy pork that is cooked on a spicket skewer and garnished with pineapple.

That was just the same as the rest of the day; nothing so special, but it was great to be there with a good friend, eating great food and not having a care in the world.

It was just a great day.

Mas Amigos y Música at El Manojo

Last Friday I met some friends out at the same bar, El Manojo. We had another great time, although it wasn't the grand fiesta of the week before. I can't remember the name of the band but the leader of the group was Alejandro Flores of Cafe Tacuba.

The show was good, but my favorite part was that I had so many friends there. It was great to hang out with Stephan, Ryan and even Marile, one of the conversation teachers at Uninter. There was a couple other people I knew and then, quite to my surprise Mercedes and Karla, the two young ladies I met at Jazzmientos showed up!

We hung out quite late into the night, having beers and talking. Karla is a huge music fan so we traded "Recommended Artist" after recommended artist. Turns out she loves heavy metal and prog rock, especially Joe Satriani. What a world! Mercedes is an English teacher for niños. They live just an hour away from Cuernavaca in a pueblo called Tlaquiltenango.

Karla owns a hair salon in Tlaquiltenango, and I needed a hair cut. We we made rough plans for me to visit Tlaquiltenango later in the week and they'd show me around town. I'd give Karla a guitar lesson and she'd give me a hair cut.

Que padre.