the going gets good

It would be difficult to draw a picture of present-day Madrid (or most likely any major West European city) without placing significant emphasis on the large and growing immigrant population. In Madrid, people from West Africa, South and Central America, and Asia are all part of the fabric of the city. A couple of weeks ago a friend who interns at a children's music school introduced me to Senegalese immigrant named Cherif. He plays the kora, a 20-something stringed instrument with the lute being its closest western equivalent. After being introduced I happened to run into him a few more times at different bars and jam sessions in La Latina. We got to talking and he invited me to play my guitar with him.

Friday afternoon we played for about an hour in his apartment, feeling out each other's styles and seeing if we could come up with something compatible and more importantly, de la puta madre (no exact English equivalent, but I guess "awesome" will suffice). After seeing - and hearing - that this was the case, we walked over to his girlfriend Viviana's bar in Lavapies where we met up with a tuba player from Japan named Chiaki who, as far as I can tell, lives across the narrow street from the bar. Chiaki and Cherif (both of whom I'd say are in their early 30s) had already played a couple of times and we headed to a performance / art space in the basement of the bar to see what it would sound like with all three of us playing together. With Cherif leading with complicated rhythmic melodies on his kora - the instrument is unique in the innate ethereality of its sound - Chiaki and I found ways to complement Cherif's playing. I tried to incorporate finger-picked country blues themes underneath the beautiful primary themes Cherif brought to the songs; Chiaki, a professional dixieland jazz musician, held down the lower register with a mix of traditional and funked up jazzy bass lines on both his tuba and serpent - a medieval predecessor of the tuba that he told me is now having a resurgence in its popularity.

Needless to say, this was an experience memorable for both the challenge of working with these musicians and the sheer beauty of the music we were making. I cannot describe how lucky I feel to have played this music that I have listened to for years with my dad and never imagined I would have a chance to play. After over an hour of this, we decided to meet again on Saturday to play some more and possibly record through a single room mic onto a minidisc (recordings possibly forthcoming). I went back to the bar in Lavapies on Saturday and we worked on the same songs we'd played the day before as well as a couple of new ones closer to their embryonic stages; this gave us the opportunity to work on even more of a mezcla than the previous day. We sat down for a cup of coffee afterwards and discussed music in general, life in Madrid for a musician, and the girls that were passing by the window. Before we parted ways we spoke of putting on a concert at Viviana's bar (called Lavartebar) sometime in April. ¡Eso sería de la puta madre!

It is a sign of the magic and reality of Madrid that just 20 minutes away tens of thousands or right-wing and conservative-leaning Spaniards bussed in from all over the country were at the Puerta de Alcala to protest the release of an ETA leader convicted of being responsible for the deaths of 15 people in bomb attacks to a his home town to recuperate. Organized by the right-wing Partido Popular, the demonstrations have a distinct nationalist tenor, with many protestors using the Spanish flag, generally rarely seen in this country, as an equivalent to a poster registering their dissatisfaction with the government. The constant bickering - the rhetoric of this ongoing spat regarding ETA is filled with words challenging the fundamentals of the state - is in many ways classic Spanish passion. I'm currently making my way through Ghosts of Spain: Travels through a country's hidden past written by Giles Tremlett, a correspondent for The Guardian. In the book he remarks on the way that current political conflicts often replicate and develop the rarely-spoken debates of the Franco years and the transición. At the very least, these intertwined stories of fierce, inflammatory political debate, immigration and art are a reflection of the reality of a modern Spain that is in some ways all too similar to those years and at the same time a world all of its own. While the pijos (rough translation: pretentious elites) were ruffling their feathers at the Puerta de Alcala, the bums were drinking from boxes of wine in the Plaza de Lavapies, locals were enjoying the sun and eating food outside the tiny ethnic restaurants and bars that line the streets of Lavapies, and I was fully engaged in the musical exchange of my life.

holy hell

Alright, I really dropped the ball and stopped posting for nearly a month. Apologies to my millions of loyal readers. Of note, I spent a weekend on the island of Tenerife in the Canary Islands during the international celebration of carnaval with my program footing the bill. Pretty amazing. I have a bunch of really great pictures of the parade that I will put up on my still-in-its-embryonic-stages-flickr account. Long overdue pictures from Andalucia will also be up shortly.

This weekend was undoubtedly the best of my time in Spain so far. Spent Friday night checking out a few different classic Spanish flamenco bars. There weren't any espectaculos, it was more just flamenco music coming from the speakers and a bunch of Spanish flamenco fans hanging out. On Saturday I began my two-day (thus far) residency in the Parque de Buen Retiro, the main park in the city. I played and sang for almost three hours, joined by a friend on saxophone for the second half of that time. Between Saturday and a return engagement earlier today I managed to earn close to a much-needed 40 euros.

On Saturday I was approached by a guy who had been listening to me play and he invited me to some sort of jam session in a garage in the neighborhood of Lavapies. Knowing that the usual suspects who I might bring along would be occupied, and having planned on staying in to relax and do some homework, my more conservative instincts were overwhelmed by curiosity. Needless to say, I ended up in what is an illegal bar (the owners were constantly looking out for police) talking a colorful cast of characters including an older American expatriate who asked to be called "Rusty" with whom I watched the full lunar eclipse, the former harmonica player for Manu Chao's original band, Mano Negra, and the Zimbabwean son of Oliver Mtukudzi's manager. Managed to play a few songs of my own and listen to a few different groups play a bunch of fun, laid back, latin-tinged rock. Music and merriment for all involved (until the owners got scared that the police were around and started shutting down the place).

In other musical news, I may be playing bass with a Senegalese kora player I've run into a couple different nights and I'm in touch with a group that puts on monthly open mic nights in the neighborhood of La Latina.

I'm currently in the midst of midterms and booking lodging for the most incredible spring break ever - two weeks in Paris, Morocco (Marrakech, Essaouira, Fez, Rabat and Casablanca) and Lisbon.

I've continued to write music reviews for Big Yawn. Here are links to my two most recent reviews:
Lucinda Williams - West
The High Llamas - Can Cladders