Archive for September, 2008
After finally getting paid by the museum and deciding to skip the Xalapa portion of the trip I took off for Mexico City. I wanted to visit my friends from the Africa tour and Javier, the drummer in the group, and his wife Ale had invited me to stay with them. We ate some good Mexican cuisine and drank some good tequila and spent a peaceful day in Cuernavaca, a city about an hour and a half from Mexcio City that is famous for it’s beautiful climate. On Monday Javier and I recorded several tracks and Edgar Sanchez the bassist will record some bass parts to complete a trio recording. I can’t wait to hear the finished product - I’ll post some stuff on my site.
Then it was off to Paracho. It’s a six-hour bus trip from Mexico City to Paracho so it pretty well chewed up a day. Paracho is in the mountains of Michoacan about 2 1/2 hours from Morelia, the state capital. In a lot of ways it’s Mexico as people like to think of it. The older women still dress in traditional clothes and wear their hair in braids. 75% of the residents make their living off of the instrument building trade and the main street is like nothing I’ve ever seen before. Three out of every four shops is a guitar store! No joke. Paracho has to be the only place in the world where you can buy a guitar and a coffin in the same store (see the photo below). My mission was to find a mandolin for my brother and a guitarrón (the big bass guitar that the mariachis use) for my friend Jack McAuliffe. I found several mandolins, two of them were quite nice for around $200. I chose one because of it’s nice wood, it stayed in tune and the builder was a cool old fellow of 86 years (see photo below). I also found two nice guitarrons but eventually discovered that they were both by the same builder and the second one was merely more expensive because the reseller was tacking on some profit for himself. So I bought the one direct from the builder and saved Jack same cash. Unfortunately, he said he couldn’t ship it to the US, so I had to haul it back to Guanajuato with me to ship it from there since Paracho has no DHL office nor any other way to ship internationally.
During my time there I was the only non-Mexican in Paracho and after a couple days started feeling perhaps non unwelcome but certainly out of place so I headed back to Guanajuato a day early.
The Mexico City trio - Javier, Edgar and I
Giant Guitar at the entrance to Paracho
Would you like a coffin with your guitar?
Señor Rubio the mandolin builder
The guitarrón builder
September 7th, 2008
A few days after the concert at the Museo Iconogáfico I went to Armando Lopez Valdivia’s house to hang out, talk about music and celebrate his wife’s birthday. His studio in his house contains his collection of over 200 instruments, many of which are replicas of medieval and renaissance instruments. Others are from Africa, South America and Asia and include winds, percussion, bowed strings and plucked strings. Armando can play all of the instruments to some degree and can really play several very well.
We had a glass of wine and talked about the possibility of forming a duo to play more shows. While we chatted, he let me play some of the guitar-like instruments including a fantastic baroque guitar and a vihuela which is a 16th century Spanish instrument that was a direct precursor of the guitar. I’d love to have one of each but they don’t come cheap!
A part of Armando's collection
The Maestro with more of his collection
Me playing the baroque guitar
Playing the vihuela
September 4th, 2008
While I was communicating with the museum folks in the months before the concert they said that because I’m a foreigner and I don’t have a Mexican work permit (a Mexican green card) they can’t pay me directly. I’d need a Mexican citizen to sign the “recibo” so I could get paid. They said anyone could do it for me. However, after the concert I found out that not just anyone could do it. It needs to be someone who already has specially printer “recibos de honorarios”. Normally recibo means receipt but in this case it’s more like an invoice that has the user’s tax id printed in a bar code. Then that person basically has to pay my taxes for me on the income. Many musicians who can’t find much work end up selling their recibos for a profit to foreigners. It’s technically illegal but it’s so common that every musicina knows about the “Black Market”.
For my second concert at the Museo Deiguino they needed a recibo before they’d agree to the concert. I had to get one quick so someone hooked me up with this young woman who charged me a steep 15% plus the amount of the taxes (also about 15%). I didn’t have much choice so I agreed. Fortunately the next day I met a Cuban pianist living here in Guanajuato and she contacted a friend of hers, a percussionist in the symphony, who agreed to sell me one for my Museo Iconografico concert for only 5%. That’s great because it pays four times what the other one does and 15% of that would have hurt. He turned out to be a nice guys and I invited him to lunch and a beer after we dealt with all the money stuff. I’ll go to hear his blues-rock band at a club tonight.
Unfortunately, all the mess with the recibos plus the fact that the museum’s financial system crashed for three days meant a big delay in my leaving town. Additionally, I have to return earlier than planned to do the concert at the museo deiguino so it looks like I’m going to have to cancel the Xalapa portion of my trip. Oh well. A doctor in town says he’s putting on a bullfighting festival in September and he wants to fly me down to play at it. If that comes to pass, I’ll do the Xalapa thing on that trip.
September 3rd, 2008
