Today began by exiting my hospedaje into the middle of a lively art fair! This is a regular sunday thing in San Telmo and it is something that people from all over the place scramble to be a part of. Colorful and varied, it´s myriad objets d árte do nothing to take away from that feeling so uniquely belonging to sundays. The air seems lighter and the murmur of the crowd implies a lack of stress and maybe a hint of hangover. The first thing that caught my attention today was a pair of nylon string guitarists playing the old classics of Handel and Bach in tandem. Thier fingers flew and thier eyes held the intensity of bullfighters. One man wore a black beret that matched his beard and the other looked to be a little bit of a gypsy. They played with furrowed brows and concentrated movements and it seemed as though to them, all the people present weren´t close to them at all. I strolled from there down Defensa through a series of mimes doing this and that. A pair of vaudeville types with suitcases standing up on a crate, a silver haired "modern man", and most strange amongst them, a woman of at least seventy years of age, posing as a woman of ill repute from our own prohibition era. I had my daily cortado and miga tostada and proceeded on through the fair. The things they sell here make a backpacker like me wish he had a bigger backpack. I will not be buying any of these things now, it still being the beginning of the trip and all, but if I were to, I could decorate a house the size of a museum with these things. There is some random shit here for sure, and I guess that is what makes a lot of it so cool. There seems to be some sort of fascination with grammaphones...don´t ask, I don´t know, but they are groovy. On the subject of music...it seems as though whereever you go in the world, shitty american music has beaten you there. When I was living in france, I remember the first question I got in the kitchen where I was working...(in a thick french accent)"What does, ´Oops I Did It Again´ mean?" I said, "Ummm..." So that was then. You go to Africa and it is the same old bubblegum crap, (and some good Dre and Tupac, they like West Coast) Australia it is whatever pop machina animé that is happening, just a few months later. So in Argentina, it is hardly a surprise to hear American tracks playing. What is surprising in the selection. Usually it is current pop shite, here it is out of date pop shite!!! Now I know that the 80´s are suddenly cool again...(a mystery that the music was every popular even the first time! Sorry Cuppies. You can correct me later.) you hear that shit more and more in the US too...but here it is NOTHING BUT the 80s!!! I am hearing Linda Ronstadt and Madonna all day long! All sorts of other shite that I have fought for over a decade and a half to forget is all rushing back out of the crappy little speakers of seemingly every radio in the land! The irony of this flushing of shite american music into every system in the world is that in almost every locality in which this is happening, the local music is hundreds of times better. Africa; why would you listen to the teenie bopper of the minute from a place like the USA when you had Paul Hanmer and Hugh Masakela and Ladysmith Black Mambazo??? New Zealand; Trinity Roots, Salmonella Dub, anything Maori?!? Argentina...? Forget about it. The music culture of this continent is off the charts. And yet, we have music from people who should have been shot, or at least flogged, the first time they subjected us to thier racket twenty years ago. (I know a lot of people living now were too young at the time to be forever scarred by the music back then, but don´t make us do this bullshit again! Please!) Yesterday I went to a concert they were having in my favorite park in San Telmo, Lezama. The band was set up on the basketball court and they were rockin it. They were doing four part harmonies and jamming on all these latino rythmes. It was rad. In the intermission they had a breakdancing competition that was equally impressive. These little dudes, they must have been about 16, rocking out in thier urban wear and bandanas. That was actually the first decent American music I´ve heard yet...big hip hop beats blasted over a huge sound system, you could hear it a long ways off. The energy in the youth here is also impressive. Nothing like watching a huge field of a couple thousand teenagers bouncing in unison while watching two dudes face-off in a breakdancing battle. I was kinda hoping they would take a page out of the Zoolander book and start actually breakdance fighting! But they didn´t. So anyway, bottom line, the mix here is heavy with American tunes, just like everywhere else. That is just gotta piss off the local musicians. I guess that is the point of this rant. I was recently told about an essay on the subject of the West´s unfair monopoly on modernity. The export of our culture, our fashion, our pop values, etc. Because we wield so much money and technology and trade power, all the nooks and crannies of the developing world are filled with the hubris of western modernity and all present are told how to go about creating it for themselves, whether they want it or not. Capitalism, christianity, cigarettes and all manner of pop culture glitz. So I guess that this is just another face of that. Our music on everyone else´s stereos. Then again, Madonna did play Evita, and Evita is still a major sensation here long after her death. Maybe old Madonna does have some royalty claim down here. I dunno. I am gonna get going now...I am moving in with a family this afternoon, where I will spend a couple weeks living while going to language school in Recoleta. I may be a tad bit old to be getting a new set of parents, but we soon shall see what comedy dawns from this newest cauldron of cultural stew...there is never a dull moment.
No comments:
Post a Comment