I returned to Guanajuato on Friday the 22nd for the concert at the Museo Dieguino on Saturday evening. I’m not sure exactly what the function of the museum is but it appears to have something to do with history, although not just Mexican history. It’s located below ground right on the edge of the zocalo or town square. They put on concerts in the main exhibit space which has a glass roof that opens onto one side of the church that borders the zocalo. Unfortunately, it’s so near the area where the mariachis play that the sound kind of bleeds into the museum and caused me some problems during the concert.
The museum didn’t do near the promotion that the Iconográfico did for the first show so this concert wasn’t as well attended but it was still about 80% full. Many folks from the first concert came to this one as well which made me happy. The glass roof had a leak and so they rearranged the seats from 4 rows of 20 chairs in a semicircle into 15 rows of 5 seats across which made most of the audience rather far away while I played.
I wasn’t as pleased with the way I played because I was trying to push the sound of the guitar over the street noise and all the way to the back of the seats. I over-played and tensed up which affects the smoothness of the delivery. Watching the videos really brought home that point to me. Despite my nitpicking, things went pretty well all in all and the show was well received by the audience. I’d certainly play there again if the opportunity arises. You’ll have to listen to me chat a bit in Spanish before each tune… it only lasts a few seconds then the music starts!
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.
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!
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.
As it turns out Armando López Valdivia was able to reschedule and play in the concert after all and it turned out to be just great. We got together on Wednesday night and cooked up some settings to improvise on. He decided to bring two violas de gamba (one a treble viol and the other a bass viol), a Hurdy Gurdy and two flutes.
Thursday evening I arrived at the museum an hour before the concert to get myself set up and acclimated to the space. Armando showed up shortly after me. At 6:30 they came and told me that there was a crowd waiting outside the museum and they wanted to let them in to avoid congestion in the street. I said, “fine” - it would be silly to leave them outside when they could come in and sit down. Like a dummy, I had forgotten my cds in the hotel and ran back to get them. It’s only 2 blocks away so it wasn’t a big deal. By the time I returned the seats were all filled and people were filing in to the standing room areas. I went into a room that functions as a dressing room (it’s really one of the exhibit galleries) to wait for showtime and collect my thoughts. When I came out at 7:00 the standing room area was elbow to elbow with people. I could hardly believe it! I played a set of nine solo pieces, eight on the guitar and one (”Reuben’s Train”) on the dulcimer. I played one of my brand new pieces that is yet untitled. It’s fast and blends some flamenco rasgueado strums with swirling pulloffs. I asked the audience to come up with any ideas for a title. At least a dozen people raised their hands at the end of the tune with suggestions. There were several good ones but one gentleman suggested “Caravana Espiral” (Spiral Caravan) which I kind of like.
The humidity was changing rapidly as a storm was rolling in and I had a heck of a time keeping the guitar in tune. By the last solo tune the rain had started to fall on the glass roof over the patio and made it difficult to hear myself. Since I was playing unamplifiied I imagine those in the back could barely hear anything. I invited Armando to the stage and we played our first piece which was very well received. Unfortunately, by the end of the tune the rain had turned into a torrential downpour and we couldn’t even hear our own instruments. We told the audience that we were going to wait a minute for the rain to abate before continuing but it turned into a 20 minute delay - the rain just kept pounding. I don’t think that even one person left during the delay. I’d like to think it was because they were digging the music so much (which they really seemed to be) but it also may have been because no one wanted to go out into the storm! In either case we had a full and very attentive house as we finished the concert. At the end we got a very warm ovation that surprised Armando as much as it did me. At the end of the show many people came up to talk and ask for autographs among them two little kids 6 and 9 years old who had sat with rapt attention through the entire concert and wanted me to sign their programs. The fellow who suggested the title “Caravana Espiral” came up to talk to me. It turns out he is from Columbia and is a big music fan and apparently well connected. He told me that if I were to come to Columbia he could organize a concert in a theater in Bogotá. Many people talk about things like that and are basically full of it but somehow I think this gentleman is for real. I hope so because Columbia is on my list of places to go. Many Americans think Columbia is some horribly dangerous place but if you don’t wander into the remote jungles where the FARC hangs out or stumble into bad neighborhoods in Bogotá, you’re not really in much danger. It’s just another load of BS that the American media continues to foist upon us.
Below are some photos from the show as well as three videos that a local painter shot. There’s some camera angles that may cause a bit of vertigo, but I’m glad she took the video. The roaring you hear in the background on the duet videos is the rain on the roof. Right after the videos were shot we had to stop the concert for a bit. The first of the duet videos is the piece “Small Boy” with Armando playing the viola de gamba. The second is a celtic flavored tune with Armando playing two recorders. The instrument in his lap is the hurdy gurdy but, unfortunately, he doesn’t play it during the video. The video of me playing solo is the previously unnamed piece that is now officially called “Caravana Espiral”.
Armando playing 2 recorders simultaneously, me on dulcimer.
A view from the second floor of the museum
Explaining the story behind the piece Small Boy before we play it.
I arrived without incident and my flights were all on time, which is amazing during the summer travel season. I got settled into the house of Lucila Castillo who runs a kind of guest house. She’s the mother of one of my former Spanish teachers and also helped me to get my first gig here in Guanajuato. Her house definitely has “una buena vibra” - a good vibe and there are always good people staying there. I had to give an impromptu concert my first evening here because my friend Chuck Umsted had stayed in the house the previous week and told one of the other boarders that she should stay an extra day in Guanajuato to hear me play. She was a young energetic Korean woman and she convinced me to do a little mini-concert, telling me that she had delayed her departure one day just to hear me play. How could I refuse? Chuck was also kind enough to leave some beer in the refrigerator and we all sat around sipping a cold one afterwards. All in all, a mellow way to spend my first night in town.
It’s nice to walk around the downtown area and see the concert posters in the windows and doors of local businesses. Last time I played here the posters didn’t come out until the day before the concert. This time they’re up the weekend before, so hopefully they’ll do their job of bringing folks to the show. The museum did save me a couple copies so I’ll be glad to have those in my collection. It really is a nice poster. Unfortunately, it looks like Armando has a commitment with his own group “Los Tiempos Pasados” on Thursday evening and won’t be able to play, so I’ll be playing solo. I’m heading to his house tonight to do some playing just for fun which will be a blast but it would have been great to have him be part of the concert.
View of Guanajuato
Lucila and Miriam, a girl who was staying in the house.
