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.