Tango mango y tequila

On Sunday, there was a milonga scheduled at the Cha-3 near the Paseo de Florida. I made my way there, by metro and by foot, but already as I exited the metro station, it was clear to me that this perfect Sunday afternoon was no time to be spending indoors. The Paseo de Florida itself is a nice pleasant avenue to stroll along, despite the ongoing obras (construction). It was approaching lunchtime, and the many cervecerias and restaurants were beginning to fill up. I enjoyed seeing the artwork celebrating beer that ornamented these establishments, such as those shown here.


I decided to head from the Estación del Norte, which stands next to the Princípe Pío subway at the beginning of Florida, toward the Ópera. I made my way through some nice parks and gardens, and ended up at an enormous plaza that stood before a monumental structure, which the map indicated was the Palácio Reál. I was delighted to hear the strains of tango music--it was Danzarín by Troilo--coming from not too far ahead. Four young Argentines were giving a Sunday afternoon tango display just opposite the Palace. In the photo below, my back is to the Palace, and behind the dancers, on the right, you can see the Madrid opera house.

Near the Ópera, I came across Reál Musical, a well-known music shop in Madrid. In its windows, the guitars were naturally prominently featured. Iberian culture (and by extension, Latin American culture) is the most guitar-rich in the world, and the Iberian fascination with lutes (that is the family to which the guitar belongs to) seems to have its origin during the Moorish period, when Middle Eastern stringed instruments were introduced and took hold. The guitar itself was a development over a number of centuries, from the original laúd (a variant of the Arabic al 'ud) to the Renaissance vihuela to the modern Spanish guitar, which reached its present form in the early 19th century. The rich varieties of guitar (or lute) in Latin America, from the diminutive Brazilian cavaquinho to the enormous Mexican guitarrón, are a living part of this cultural heritage.

Walking further, I arrived at the Plaza de Isabel II, where I was able to capture the felicitous juxtaposition of old and new symbols below.

My walk took me through more charming squares and finally to the Gran Via. I decided to make my way toward the northeast, where there was a curio shop I had read about. It was Sunday, and most shops were of course closed. I nonetheless wanted to continue the walk. In the vicinity of the shop I found another nice square where people were having their lunch outdoors. There were several interesting restaurants in the area, and I decided on one of the several Mexican restaurants, mainly because of the interesting decor--the walls were filled with colorful murals, of which I show a section here:

The food offerings were interesting, and good. For dessert, I had the mango + tequila sorbet:

Which will conclude the report on this particular domingo in Madrid. The next entry will include photos from Valladolid. Stay tuned.

Noches de Madrid

My Spanish trip started with a Friday night out with A. and A.'s friends S. and G. The idea was to go to a tapas bar. We stopped at a place in their neighborhood, in central Madrid, just a bit north of downtown. The ambience of the small bar-restaurant was good, imo. Because we were early--it was only about 10 p.m.--we were able to get a table.

This is a photo of our group. A reason for all the smiles was the rather extraordinary coincidence that just occurred. While rehearsing my Spanish on the group, by giving them a vernacular summary of the lecture I was preparing on African film music, a young woman from the next table tapped me on the shoulder. "Were you in Reykjavik?" she asked. I was taken aback when I saw that I knew this person. How could I forget her? It was I., one of only a couple of Spanish students in the music and cinema course I taught at the University of Iceland in January 2003. She had turned in a nice paper on Bernard Herrmann's score to Psycho. She was with a small group of friends, and all were laughing in amazement at our serendipity. The prof and the ex-student are below:

I hope that she checks this out and drops a note!

We moved on to another restaurant--the first was apparently just for appetizers--and we ended up at a Moroccan restaurant. The food was nice; in the photograph at left, I caught the smoke rising from the tea as it was poured by our lovely server.

When we finished at the restaurant, it must have been around midnight or so. My plans were to go the milonga at the Plaza Santa Ana. So we headed out walking in that direction. I'm including some scenes we passed on the way.

I was interested in this tiled mural (on the right), because it is dedicated to two stars of the coplas, a Spanish popular musical form. Coplas refers to poetic couplets, and is an old musical-poetic form. But G. had said that he had wanted to leave the first restaurant, because they were playing coplas. He said that it was a style much repeated in old Spanish movies, and I guess it just wasn't his cup of tea. I barely noticed the music, for all the loud conversation, glasses clinking, etc. A quick google search has not revealed much about the role of coplas in Spanish cinema, but I did find this quotation: "They are women songs, particularly popular during Francoism and with a contradictory relationship with feminist theory and practice in Spain" (this from a website discussing the work of Dr Mercedes Carbayo-Abengozar--for those interest, here is the url:(http://www.ntu.ac.uk/research/schoolofartscommunicationsandculture/academic%20profiles/6987.html). To discover more information, one might look up about the women portrayed in the mural. They are, on the left, Marlee de Triana, and on the right, Juanita Reina.

Those of you who have read some of my previous entries, know that I like to document music posters. Among the many I took in Madrid, all of which reflect the diverse musical life of a major European city and its wide-ranging vocabulary of genres, from African to Zamba--I liked this pairing, of operatic and funkadelic offerings.

Also one passes, whether it is at 10 p.m., midnight, 2 a.m., or I am told 4 a.m., crowds of people enjoying themselves in restaurants, bars, and discotheques. People dine late in Spain every night of the week, generally speaking, but the weekends are for all-night-long revelry. I also had revelry in mind--I wanted to check out the Bien porteña, one of several milongas (tango salons) mentioned in online guides to tango in Spain. This particular one was recommended to me by H. of Helsinki, to whom I owe thanks.

We arrived somewhere between midnight and 1 a.m. The milonga takes place on the second floor of a building on one corner of the Plaza Santa Ana, which is called Casa de Guadalajara. It is a very pleasant space, with a nice wooden floor, medium-sized, tables at one end where there is also a stage, and along one of the long walls to the side of the dance floor. When we arrived, my favorite milonga, "Azabache," in Miguel Caló's version, was playing. (The term milonga signifies a musical genre as well as a place where one dances tango. As a musical genre, it is faster than the tango, and has a distinctive dotted rhythm; it is a dance that can make one giddy). The song ended by the time I paid the 7 euro entry fee, got inside, and put on my dance shoes. This bit of poor timing was a signature for the evening, which was only so-so (not for any reason, just for the karma of tango--some nights are great, others are less than standard). This was made up for by Saturday night, which was spectacular. It began with a class in chacarera, followed by non-stop dancing beginning at 11 p.m. and lasting until 2:30 a.m. (for some reason, milongas in Madrid do not run until the 3:00 or 4:00 a.m. that is common on weekend nights in Buenos Aires). My favorite was dancing with P., who described herself as a poet, and was a wonderfully unpredictable dancer, completely into the music and spirit, but unorthodox about the whole thing, which I found refreshing. Tango was in her blood, and it seemed that she knew the lyrics to any song that was played (she broke into song not infrequently!).

On leaving the Bien porteña on Friday night / Saturday morning, on our way to find a taxi at the Plaza del Sol (not an easy task with all the competition at 3 in the morning, and do watch out for pickpockets!), we passed a bar with character and a sense of art, the Bodegas Melibea.

The art on the inside lives up to the promise of the water-bearer in the front.

The young ladies at the table laughed, and the bartenders insisted that their photo be taken, too. In gratitude, I include it here.

We made it to the Plaza del Sol, and glowed under the lights of Tio Pepe. We sank into our taxi, and made it back home by 3:30 am for a good 8 hours of sleep.

Una semana en España

I arrived in Madrid on Friday morning, the 23rd of Sept (2005). It was nice to be back in Spain after such a long absence. My last visit was in March 1976. I was 19, and traveling with S. and M., a couple from down under I had met in Paris. That was early on during my first trip to Europe. I had arrived in February, on the famously cheap route via Reykjavik to Luxembourg offered by Icelandic airlines. I had a lovely few days in Belgium (Bruxelles, Ghent, and Brugge); saw Chaplin's City Lights for the first time, which was a revelation; and had a pleasant visit with a French family in Metz. The couple I met in Paris had bought a VW van with plans to "do Europe" in six months. I joined them for a month, during their Spanish sojourn. The idea was that I'd contribute to the cost of gas, helping them economize. It was kind of a disaster--that is, my relationship with the couple. We lost each other for an hour in San Sebastián, which got S. really pissed off; they bickered and argued (the initials S. and M. are appropriate here), and this reached its climax when S. slapped M. She gave him a real dressing-down and an ultimatum; this was very educational for a 19-year old. The ne plus ultra came when S. refused his wife's pleas for him to stop and fill up the gas tank. It was a Sunday, we were in a sparsely populated area to the south of Toledo, on our way further south, and this (stopping for gas) would have been an absolutely splendid idea. But for S., it was always "later" because apparently in his mind we were supposed to be in a hurry to get somewhere, and had no time for silly things like stopping for gas. He ended up destroying the brakes of the van, trying to coast down the mountainous roads of the region. S. and M. camped out on the side of the road, while I hitched a lift to Villa del Rio, a tiny, dusty town some 30 miles short of Cordoba. When I returned with the mechanic the next morning, S. had forgotten that in continental Europe people drive on the right side of the road. So once he got started, he took off on the left. I was with the mechanic, and we went in pursuit. As we rounded a mountain curve, there we saw the VW van face to face with a large truck, which dwarfed it. In my memory, I see S. close enough to be kissing the truck. The comedy continued when we arrived in town. We were all curiosities to the villagers, especially S., who was strapping and rotund, with a large head of reddish-brown curly hair (a quasi-Afro) and a beard. The children of the town all gaped and laughed. S. didn't like it a bit. There is so much more to this story...and my month-long adventure in Spain. Perhaps I'll have a chance to share that on another occasion.

Back to the present. Spain. The weather is beautiful, it is warm and sunny, and this would be wonderful if not for the fact that the country has been suffering a terrible drought. It is supposed to be raining this time of year, and it hasn't been doing so for a long, long time. My Spanish friends also tell me that it is unusually warm for this time of the year. They have an expression in Spain--I had never heard it before, but it is in the guidebooks--that there are nine months of invierno (winter) and three months of infierno (hell), meaning that the summers here are very very hot--a friend compared it to Phoenix--and then there is a jump directly to cool or cold weather. (They apparently don't distinguish spring and fall from winter, but I am in no position to judge; I remember that March of 30 some years ago, to have been very pleasant!)

The strong colors, the deep blue sky, all of it blessed by the sun. It is a pleasure to walk in Spanish cities. In addition to much splendid architecture, the typical cities are graced with parks and greenery. Because of the pressures of time--I need to go out and enjoy another beautiful day--I am going to dispense with further story-telling for the moment. I plan to publish (on this blog)some additional photos with captions, that I hope the curious and lovers of travel will enjoy. In the meantime, saludos!

p.s. For those with some facility in Spanish, I invite you to check out http://www.buendia.uva.es/2005BoletinEstio/ (click on link for 28 Septiembre) for an interview published by the Centro Buendía, Universidad de Valladolid (who are responsible for my being here in Spain).