Category: Life

Thursday, September 30, 2004

Last Sunday I went to see the biggest selling New Mexican musical acts perform. One of the acts, Sparx, has sold over a million albums, and the other, Lorenzo Antonio (their chief songwriter and mentor, as well as a performer in his own right) isn’t far behind.

4000 people came out on Sunday night to the amphitheatre at Sandia casino on the edge of Albuquerque. And yet half the people in the state have never heard of them.

Welcome to the world of New Mexico music. For anglos like me, it’s something of a closed community, but Buendia has been here long enough and is interested enough to go exploring. We were possibly the only completely anglo couple there (’anglo’ here is a catch all phrase meaning non-Spanish or Indian. There’s a joke about a kid up in Las Vegas, New Mexico coming home after his first day at school. ‘How was it?’ asks his mum. ‘Fine,’ he says. ‘I knew almost everyone in class. There’s only one anglo in the class, and he’s black.’)

First up was Lorenzo Antonio – a baby-faced cross between Ricky Martin and Daniel O’Donnell. The grannies love him (as do the gay guys ahead of us in the queue), and he’s got a great voice and gives 110% on everything. Some of the songs are Latin-tinged pop with good hooks, while others are covers of classic ballads. He sings mostly in Spanish, backed by a tight band.

He’s smiley and at ease, as befits someone who was a child performer. After a while, he takes a break, and his sisters hit the stage.

They’re the New Mexican Spice Girls, and are huge in Mexico, too. Dressed in skimpy 80s-inspired glittery clothes, their dance routines are slick and there’s enough difference between the sisters for everyone to have their favourite, from the pre-teen girls, through the red-blooded men to the grannies.

There’s the cute little one, the one with the best voice, the friendly outgoing one, and the sexy one (with the shortest skirt and crop top). Actually, they’re a lot better than the Spice Girls because they can all sing and they’re all pretty. The songs are pretty simple ditties, but they range from salsa syncopation, through rock and roll classics (in English) to power ballads. But it’s hard not to like them, and when ten mariachi musicians come on stage, the crowd goes wild.

We detour into classic Mexican and New Mexican songs – like B’Witched going trad in the middle of a show – and then Lorenzo Antonio rejoins them, this time in a smart black suit, to wring every drop of emotion from some full-on tearjerkers.

By the time the finale comes round, we’ve had the mariachis, eight little girls in huge Spanish dresses, a flamenco couple, a cowboy doing lasso tricks, juggling stilt walkers and jitterbugging duos all on stage.

It was a great night, and it’s good to see the Spanish side of local culture is still strong enough that it can fill a huge auditorium. There was nothing dry or curatorial about this – the old standards and the new songs were mixed side by side, and everyone (except me) was singing along in Spanish.

I’m beginning to see that the Spanish language part of life here is much more vibrant than the Irish language side of life in Ireland (as befits a place where Spanish has been spoken since 1610, and which only became a US state in the 1920s). From the fiestas to Sparx, it’s something that everyone born here (and those coming here withe some Spanish, like Buendia) can draw on.

More information on Lorenzo Antonio, and Sparx.

Wednesday, September 22, 2004

Autumn arrived in northern New Mexico at the weekend. We were heading up the road to Taos – the smaller and more hippy-influenced version of Santa Fe (Albuquerquans make fun of us for being too out there; we make fun of the Taosenos).

Taking the High Road up towards Chimayo we passed a lone pilgrim, walking on an empty but beautiful stretch of road carrying a bottle of water with an Our Lady of Guadalupe on the back of his jacket .

Pilgrims from all over New Mexico walk to the church at Chimayo (especially at Easter time), and arriving at the small chapel, there were crosses made of twigs woven into the chain-link fence by the arriving walkers.

The shaded chapel is small and very peaceful, with a little stream running past in front. Maybe we’ll do the pilgrim’s walk one year – at least from Espanola (only a dozen or so miles down the road).

Continuing on through handsome high country – complete with real grass (great for an expat Englishman to see), we eventually meandered our way into Taos and stayed at the Taos Inn – centre of literary and musical life in the town for around a century. Even D H Lawrence used to hang out there while he was living up the road being grumpy.

On Saturday evening it started to rain hard, and everyone started smiling – now the monsoons have passed, any rain is welcome round here. And it stayed rainy and overcast until Monday afternoon.

Then the sun reappeared, but there’s been a snap to the temperatures, and we’ve closed the windows at night for the first time since we’ve been back.

Stepping out the door this morning – a customarily bright and sunny one – I neary gasped as the cold hit me. Apparently this is how autumn is the whole time – like those classic Dublin days where the sky is blue and clear, but the cold makes you wrap up warm. Lovely.

(During our Taos visit we went up to Taos Pueblo – the 1000-year old town that’s still lived in by the descendants of the original Indian builders – more on that later.)

Friday, September 10, 2004

Santa Fe is entering the time of the fiestas – the tourists have all but left, the monsoons are over, and it’s getting a little more chilly overnight, but still lovely and warm during the day.

The fiestas celebrate the 1692 recapturing of Santa Fe from the indians (local native Americans describe themselves as indians, so I’m going with that), who had driven the Spaniards out of the town 12 years before.

Before the battle, the leader of the Spanish, Don Diego de Vargas (full title: Don Diego de Vargas Zapata y Lujan Ponce de Leon y Contreras), prayed to an effigy of the Virgin Mary (’La Conquistadora’) that had been rescued from the burning church when the indians took the town.

He vowed that if there was a bloodless battle (well, bloodless on the Spanish side, anyway), there would always be a celebration to remember the event. And since 1712 there always has been.

A lot of the partying is in true Spanish style – Catholic relics are paraded through the streets, there’s a children and pets parade too (which is too cute to describe). But 80 years ago an artist named Will Shuster added a twist to his own celebration, creating a tall white figure with big ears and bowtie, and setting fire to him.

This was the start of Zozobra – the burning of old man gloom, and this year’s version took place last night. More than 30,0000 people head into town to see bands playing as a prelude to the incendiary finale. As it gets dark, the 50’ tall effigy (stuffed with glooms written on bits of paper that people have submitted) starts to move and grown.

A weirdly pagan ritual ensues, involving fire dancers, little kids dressed as ghostly glooms and other weird stuff. Meanwhile the crowd on the field, and on the surrounding hills (as we were) start bellowing: ‘Burn him, burn him!’, ‘It doesn’t matter what he says, he’s going to burn!’. This from pensioners, little kids, and groups of architects, real esate agents, soil testing engineers and ex-pat writers.

Eventually with fireworks and much fanfare, Old Man Gloom goes up in flames to great delight. Just an average thursday night in the city of the holy faith.