The Adventures of Sydney & Her Accordion

The devil at the crossroads

2011-08-06T10:45:00.004-04:00

While doing research for my recent presentation on the limp as a motif in Caribbean music and movement, I looked into legends about the devil at the crossroads. This is a frequent folkloric motif around the Caribbean region (in which I include the US Gulf Coast region), and it's been tied to the West African deity Eshu (Fon) or Elegguá (Yoruba) - a very interesting character.

Since this section is too long to fit into my article on the topic, I'll post it here instead! Enjoy...

The devil at the crossroads

Eshu has been syncretized with or explained as the devil throughout the New Worl. This practice occurred even in the Old World through the influence of Christian missionization, so that Muslim and Christian Yoruba may also interpret Eleguua as being the devil (Cosentino 262). In Cuba too, Eshu, represented as a rather frightening old man with a cane, is sometimes believed to be the devil, and it is said that “he speaks backwards” (Benítez Rojo 227). The devil is therefore a common motif in Caribbean folk culture, and here it is important to consider African American culture of the Southern US as part of the greater Caribbean. All around this region, the devil is tied to the crossroads, which, as noted, is a place inhabited by Eleggua. IN this discussion, it is important to recall that although devil iconography appears in Afro-Caribbean relation as a representation of Eleggua, neither are interpreted as being “evil,” only ambivalent and sometimes scary.

The similarities between Legba and the devil are easy enough to see: they share the colors red and black, the symbols of the cross or its inversion, the presence of horns or other animal-like features, hypersexualization, tricksterism, perhaps even the limp. Europeans and Euro-Americans misinterpreted these symbols and the lwa’s playful, sexual movements. Spencer writes, “Just as early Christian missionaries to the Fon taught their African converts that Legba was Satan, so did the semi-dualism of Christianity, imposed upon the holistic cosmology of the Africans brought to America as captives, force Legba (in the minds of the enslaved who remembered him) into the satanic role” (Spencer 1993:28). And we must not forget that Caribbean carnival characters like the Dominican lechón are also "devils," although they may not look like one.

The syncretization of these two figures explains the widespread appearance of stories and beliefs involving the devil, or other frightening and morally suspect figures, at the crossroads throughout the Caribbean. In Haiti in the 1950s, a folklorist reported witnessing a magical rite in which a man goes with a bocor houngan, or magic practitioner, to the crossroads at midnight to sacrifice a chicken: “Soon they hear a great wind and suddenly in the middle of a whirlwind a man so tall that he seems to reach the sky appears. As he comes nearer he becomes smaller and smaller until he takes on dwarflike size” (Simpson 1954: 397). The union of opposites here invokes Eleggua’s oppositions. And writing of the Southern US equivalent religious practice, hoodoo, Spencer writes, “it was at the crossroads that one could find not the devil but Legba,” and thus the devil at the crossroads was “unquestionably an African religious retention” (Spencer 1993:28).

In music, too, Eshu as the trickster and the limping “devil” make frequent appearances. For instance, blues fans will be familiar with the tale of 1930s guitarist Robert Johnson, who reportedly gained his talent by selling his soul at a crossroads. One must note, however, that Johnson himself sang of meeting not the devil but God at the crossroads, which again underlines the ambivalent rather than evil character of this mythical figure (Thomas 2009:73). Yet the belief that a devil might teach music or other skills to aspirants who invoke him at a crossroads had a long history in the American South even prior to Johnson.[1] The “devil” who shows up is generally described as a “big black man” or a “rider,” indicating a perceived connection with African heritage as well as, perhaps, the way that spirits like Legba “mount” or “ride” their devotees at ceremonies through possession.

The connections may go deeper still. Smith argues that blues singers assume the trickster persona and its liminal characteristics in order to signify, or utilize indirect, figurative, or double speech (190), and that blues’ signifying hearkens back to Eshu’s mediating function in “the limen between text and interpretation” (183). Furthermore, blues, like many other African American styles, involves “troping” repetitions that comment on the original, which is never reproduced in exactly the same way. The intersection of the “original” and the new version is itself a kind of crossroads. Thus, Smith explains, “In the blues, the crossroads are …the locus of an American Esu. The interpretational uncertainty represented by the crossroads creates a spatial and temporal realm of ambiguity. This is the realm of the trickster figure. In the blues tradition, this trickster figure is often represented as the devil” (Smith 184).

Sometimes, the limping devil appears alone with no musical component. In the African-origin towns on Colombia’s Pacific coast, there are stories of a limping devil called “Patasola” with whom one can make pacts, although these are not generally connected with music (Pedrosa n.d.). Patasola is also known in Cuba (Pedrosa 73). It is noteworthy that Patasola sometimes appears as female, sometimes male, since Eshu him(?)self can also appear in art as male, female, or both (Gates). Also in Cuba, practitioners of African-derived religion tell stories of the limping San Lázaro, as well as of one-legged African deities including Aroni, Osain, Obatalá, Odudúa, and of course Elegguá. And in Haiti, beliefs about limping devils still exist: one states that a one-legged child will kill its parents (Pedrosa 74).

Elsewhere, the devil appears without a limp, but in conjunction with both music and the crossroads. I have already noted the well-known association of blues with the crossroads devil. Zydeco musicians in Louisiana also recount stories of a musician of yore who met the devil at the crossroads, the “tallest man he had seen in his life.” The devil asked the man to play a waltz, and in the morning, he could play all instruments beautifully (Tisserand 43-44).

Throughout the Spanish-speaking Caribbean, stories are told about devil-tricksters appearing in music competition, although either the limp or the crossroads may be missing as a motif. The recent Colombian film Los viajes del viento and the German- Colombian production El acordeón del diablo both depict current takes on an old story in which vallenato musician Francisco Moscote wins an accordion duel with the devil at a crossroads. The Dominican Republic offers its own story in this framework, as ethnomusicologists Aretz and Ramón y Rivera explained after a collection trip in 1963:

In La Vega, there is a tradition about a black singer who was the devil and who was vanquished by a celebrated improviser of the region. Francisco Trinidad was his name and he was famous for his agile mind. One time he sang with the black man and said:

Negrito, you are the devil

What do you think about that

And just in case you are:

Magnificat anima mea!

They say the black man ‘disappeared’ in a cloud stinking of sulfur. (Aretz and Ramón y Rivera 1963:204)

They further note that an identical story, even to the detail of the verse quoted above, is found in Venezuela, where it describes the improvising singer Florentino (ibid; also appearing in a recent film, Florentino y el Diablo, and a similarly-titled novel). These anecdotes echo both the Colombian tales and those from the Southern United States, although the crossroads themselves are missing from this retelling.[1] In Cuba, where, as mentioned, limping devils are common, Fernando Ortiz even wrote that the appearance of the scandalous colonial-era dances zarabanda (sarabande) and chacona (chaconne) was attributed to the limping devil (in Pedrosa 73).

These stories all serve to place Eshu-Eleggua in Caribbean music. He lives on today through the limp as a stylistic principle, a pleasing rhythmic unevenness in sound and movement, that unites music and dance practice in the region. Although outsiders may have trouble even detecting its existence, the importance of this aesthetic feature is clearly noticed and sometimes debated by merengue musicians and dancers as well as carnival participants, who frequently go so far as to come up with origin myths to explain its presence.

And you'll be able to read more about those in my article. :-)

WORKS CITED

Aretz, Isabel and Luis Felipe Ramón y Rivera. 1963. “Reseña de un viaje a la República Dominicana.” Boletín del Instituto de Folklore [Caracas] 4(4):157-204.

Benítez-Rojo, Antonio. 1996. The repeating island: The Caribbean and the postmodern perspective, 2^nd ed. James Maraniss, trans. Durham: Duke University Press.

Cosentino, Donald. 1987. “Who Is That Fellow in the Many-Colored Cap? Transformations of Eshu in Old and New World Mythologies .” Journal of American Folklore 100(397):261-275

Gates, Henry Louis. 1988. The signifying monkey: A theory of African American literary criticism. New York: Oxford University Press.

Pedrosa, José Manuel. S.d. “Leyendas de Timbiqui (Cauca, Colombia): Etnotextos y estudio comparativo.” Revista de Folklore [Fundacion Joaquin Diaz] 21a(245):168-175. Available online at http://www.funjdiaz.net/folklore/07ficha.cfm?id=1946 (Accessed June 1, 2011)

Pedrosa, Jose Manuel. 2001. “El Diablo cojuelo en América y Africa; de las mitologías nativas a Rubén Darío, Nicolás Guillén y Miguel Littin.” Revista de filología e letterature ispanische IV:69-84.

Smith, Ayana. 2005. “Blues, Criticism, and the Signifying Trickster.” Popular Music 24(2):179-191.

Tisserand, Michael. 1998. The kingdom of zydeco. Arcade Publishing.

[1] The Venezuelan and Dominican stories have another shared characteristic. In Dominican folklore, the devil is frequently depicted as having a gold tooth (Andrade); thus, a popular merengue called “El diente de oro” or “The gold tooth” probably refers to the devil. The diablo appearing in Florentino stories also appears with golden teeth, as in the following verse:

Entra callado y se apuesta

para el lado de la música.

Dos dientes de oro le aclaran

la sonrisa taciturna.

"Oiga vale, ese es el Diablo"

[He enters silently and positions himself/ near the music. Two golden teeth light up / his taciturn smile. / ‘Listen, that’s the devil.’] (Arvelo Torrealba)

[1] Newbell Puckett's "Folk Beliefs of the Southern Negro" (University of North Carolina Press, 1926; reprinted by Patterson Smith, 1968)

Accordiongirl needs your help!

2010-03-16T07:53:00.002-03:00

So perhaps you've all been wondering where I've been. I've mostly been right here in Berlin, working away, but last December I was also busy getting married!

Now that all that excitement is over, it's back to merengue tipico for me. And so I write to you, dear readers.

I am working on 2 things right now: an article on cultural tourism in the DR, and my merengue tipico book, which will include a chapter on fans (merengueros, seguidores, viejetes). Are you a merengue tipico fan? Then you could help me with my research, and if you want to, you may even get to see yourself in print!

Here's what to do: drop me a line to let me know you're interested and if you prefer to be interviewed by email or telephone, and if you prefer Spanish or English. Then I will either send you or ask you a short list of questions about your merengue tipico listening habits, and your travel experiences in the DR.

Thanks! And hope to hear from some of you soon!

Another web page

2009-07-04T16:28:00.002-04:00

Hi people,
Just wanted to let you know I also have another web page. It is kind of under construction still, but I also have a blog there (on issues basically unrelated to Dominican accordion music).
Visit me at: http://sydneyhutchinson.com/

Capital week, and the End

2009-03-16T13:05:00.001-04:00

2/16-2/28

Monday was mostly pointless: all day I was calling people who didn’t answer, or stopping by to interview people who weren’t home. So it was just as well, I thought, to get away for a night. Now that I didn’t have to go away for another job talk, I was freed up to accept an earlier invitation from my friend Dario to give another kind of talk at the Instituto de Estudios Caribeños in the capital, an all-expenses-paid one-night trip. Having decided to do it on Monday, I left on Tuesday and got there just in time – a half-hour late, due to the famous Santo Domingo traffic jams.

This was an event held in preparation for the upcoming third installment of the Conference on Music, Culture, and Identity in the Caribbean. I and one other participant in the first two had been invited to talk about our research processes, in order to give ideas to those who were busy preparing their papers for April. The first speaker was a Cuban researcher now living in the DR, who had done a discography of merengue in Cuba. The interesting aspect of that research, to my mind, was how genres were assigned to the various styles: in most cases, the genre was not specified on the recording itself, so it was up to her and her research partner to determine the categorization after listening to the record in question.

Having had about 24 hours to think about it, it wasn’t the most prepared I’d ever been for a talk, but I had done what I could on the bus ride down. Surprisingly, in the end people really liked my little description of my writing process, which I coupled with a short discussion of ethical issues in doing fieldwork (my friend Rossy had recently suggested this was a big problem for people doing field research without any training in an ethnographic discipline, so I just thought I’d throw it in there). Dario showed up just at the end, having just flown in from New York, and he and Rossy and I then went out for dinner. Since it was then an 11 PM dinner there weren’t many options – in fact, all that was open was a Chinese-criollo fast food joint. On our way, we ducked into the new Metro station to check it out. I haven’t ridden on it yet, but it certainly looks impressive and clean – quite a bit different from the ol’ New York subway system.

On Wednesday, I hurried back to Santiago to squeeze in a couple of interviews before I had to run back to the capital yet again. I’d decided I ought to speak with some carnival officials, so my first stop (straight from the bus station) was Channel 25, the headquarters of MUCI, Medios Unidos del Cibao, the organization in charge of the commercialization of carnival.

When I arrived, I was surprised to find Sergio, the Robalagallina of my program the other day, there with a couple of others signing up for the carnival competition. This was also the headquarters for that enterprise. When you signed in, you got a color-coded placard (according to categories like lechon, “personaje,” comparsa, individual, etc.) with a number on it to be affixed to your costume, or hung between the horns in the case of a lechon. After a few minutes, Angelo the maskmaker showed up as well, as did the person I was there to interview, a MUCI official who wished to remain anonymous. But this person then also put me immediately in touch with a carnival eminence of years past, a member of one of Santiago’s traditional families and of a cohort of folklore enthusiasts that had also included well-known locals like Tomas Morel and Tin Pichardo. After a long talk in his beautiful house in La Zurza, he gave me a further lead by mentioning that an old acquaintance, a composer and arranger who had produced El Prodigio’s last album, was the person who had been charged with creating a local carnival music style for Santiago. This gave me another interview to add to the list, as well as a possible paper topic!

The next day I had to go back to Santo Domingo yet again, but first I really had to do some more interviews, this time of the president of MOSACA, the carnival association to which my group belongs, and, since I would be in their joint place of work anyway, a follow-up with Carlos of Los Reyes, this time about his role in FELECSA, the federation of carnival groups. After that it was on the bus again, this time to attend the opening ceremony of the Red Cultural Dominicana. My friend Rossy had been working on this new project, funded by the EU, which is seeking to create a network and inventory of cultural resources in the country, as a step in developing cultural policy from the bottom up. In fact, this was why she’d been sent with me to Samana the week before.

While waiting for things to get rolling, Rossy and a college friend of hers went with me for a drink in the bar next door. On the way we ran into a Hunter College student doing a master’s thesis project on carnival who, as it so happened, had seen my tertulia the week before, so he came along too. Back at the ranch, we found Luc of Samana and his twin musician brother in attendance as well.

The first part of the event consisted of a mass of speeches, naturally enough, from a variety of dignitaries. These included the subsecretary of culture (an old acquaintance of mine), the secretary of sport, an EU representative, and I can’t remember who else besides the director of the Red himself, Roldan, a rock star type in a black guitar t-shirt, long flowing hair and a mustache. Afterwards came the good part, a musical performance by a variety of traditional and not-so-traditional musicians from all around the south. Eneroliza singing salves from Villa Mella, four men from Bani improvising chuines – many of them about fellow ethnomusicologist Martha Ellen Davis (who was right next to me), a group playing sarandunga from the same region, and finally a group combining ga-ga rhythms with reggae electric guitar in an idiosyncratic way.

Back again to Santiago in the morning. It was getting hard to keep track of the days with all this back and forth. At any rate, I was getting things done.

But now I enter into the realm of memory. As is usual, I didn’t manage to write up my blog notes at all during the last week. No matter how well organized I think I am, during the last week of my stay I always end up running around like a crazy person anyway, and hardly sleeping..

So here is my last week in short.
On that Friday I hurried back to Santiago, and was in time to do an interview with music producer Jochy. It was actually more of a follow-up interview to one I’d done five years earlier, but this time I wanted to focus on carnival. I got lost going there because in the five years the tiny shrubs I’d remembered in front of his gate had turned into big palm trees. After that things went well though, and we listened to a new track he’d put together as an ad jingle for a rum company. They’d rejected it because it had only percussion and whistling in it – a typical carnival sound, but apparently not rousing enough for them. Afterwards, La India Canela had invited me to dinner. I got there late, too, now because of a traffic jam, but that was ok. We still had two hours to talk and drink wine before dinner was ready. In the meantime, we listened to the product of our labor (the Folkways CD), shared memories and new experiences. She told me about her trip to Washington, DC, a city that greatly impressed her although she had no time to visit museums because her time was totally booked with interviews. And we discussed her upcoming gig in the Midwest, for which I’d been asked to write some program notes. I was happy to hear about how much her life had changed for the better, how many new doors had opened for her, since our marathon recording session almost 2 years earlier.

On Saturday I dragged myself out of bed with difficulty in order to hear a lecture by a visiting Catalan, about devils in Catalunyan celebrations. The footage of the firework-spewing devils dancing around fires inspired me to go over there and check out this living medieval tradition someday. Afterwards I shlepped over to Tonito’s to say my goodbyes, since I didn’t know when else I’d have a chance to, and then ran back to the CL once again for the “Tarde de Carnaval,” their annual event to which are invited carnival groups from all over the country. Some of the guests had attended the earlier lecture (they were easily identified by the whips slung casually over their shoulders). This year features the Toros y Civiles of Montecristi, the Mascaras del Diablo of Elias Pina, the Cachuas de Cabral, the Papeluses of Salcedo, Platanuses and Funduses of Cotui, and of course many local lechon groups. The two first named were new to me and quite impressive and scary – along with the Cachuas, these people still actually hit each other with whips, while we lechones only use them to make scary noises. There were also some local comparsas in attendance, including a bellydance comparsa! After this I was pretty tired but since I still in all this time hadn’t seen my old friend Claudia, I made the effort to stay awake long enough to see a movie with her – a silly new Dominican production called “Cristiano de la Secreta.” It wasn’t exactly brilliant, but it was entertaining enough to me in my sleep-deprived state.

On Sunday morning I realized I had no money so ran around looking for a functioning ATM, which I found only on the third try. I made it to Betania’s just in the nick of time to catch our “taxi” (actually a pickup truck) to the usual carnival holding area behind the monument. And we were there just in time to – you guessed it – wait around for five hours in our costumes in the sun. Somehow I managed to get burned even with a costume. I also didn’t have anything to eat except for popcorn and a beer all afternoon. But there was enough happening to break up the boredom: a Haitian stilt walker sitting on a high wall getting dressed and then dancing humorously but with an intense expression for the bystanders; endless streams of vendors selling ice cream, sunglasses, peanuts, confetti, beer, etc; groups of teenagers in matching t-shirts; the comparsa “Los Deportados” in matching checked pajama pants. I also chatted a bit with the mother of the new girl in our group – turns out she too used to dress up, quit when she had a baby, and is now passing the torch on to her daughter. She recalled that, when growing up in La Joya a couple of decades past, female lechones did not yet exist, at least ot her knowledge, so she and friends dressed up as gypsies, jardineras, or clowns instead.

Just like last year – although a change had been promised – we finally got on the road just as it was getting dark, parading down Las Carreras under the street lamps. there was a moment of fright when a panicked crowd started running towards us, reporting that someone had a gun, but nothing happened. Twice I got stopped by photographers attempting to photograph my obviously bluish eyes through the mask holes. I thought they were noting my foreignness, but one of them said, “Anyone can see they are a woman’s eyes.” Like before, I kept on dancing the whole time my mask was on, even when pouring sweat, and only noticed how tired I was and how much my knees hurt when I took it off. But my work wasn’t don’t even then. I had to make do with more fried street food (empanada and bola de yuca, or bola de grasa as I call it) for dinner so I could hurry off to catch Rafaelito’s gig at Las Vegas. It was my last chance to see him play this year, so carnival was no excuse to miss it. And afterwards there were more greaseballs to ease my sleep, this time the famous naboa.

Monday was spent at the CL reading some reports. Also went out for Chinese food with some of my colleagues there. Among other things, we discussed the experiences one of them had had in carnival as a young person, working on floats on the Calle del Sol. On Tuesday I dragged myself out of bed early enough to see a performance the Ballet Folklorico del Centro de la Cultura was putting on for highschool students. I went to videotape but found myself a surprise part of the show when Tony, the director, asked me up on stage to demonstrate merengue with him, apparently in a bid to shame the high schoolers into admitting they didn’t know how to dance a decent merengue themselves. Afterwards I did some gift shopping, then some more reading at the Centro, then went to interview ol’ Polanquito before the MOSACA meeting. In searching for an appropriate interview space, we also payed a visit to Dionisio, a maskmaker. Then it was home for an early farewell dinner with Arlette and Laura, where we shared tales of hypochondria.

On Wednesday morning I met with a couple of members of Los Reyes del Pueblo Nuevo, had a quick lunch of cheese sandwiches and coffee and a colmado, and then headed out to El Ingenio to do my annual, and long-overdue, round of visiting. El Buty found me before I found him, as he was coming by Rafaelito’s anyway. Then I saw Domingo and family, who had a new cat named La Rubia although she was actually a he, they had discovered belatedly, and a new, tiny puppy called Floppy. Floppy and La Rubia were the best of friends and abused each other mercilessly until they got tired and both went to sleep together. I suggested renaming La Rubio El Rubio instead, but when we tried it out the cat didn’t respond. Domingo presented me with a wacky güira he’d recently unearthed in a closet or something – an El Pinto work,vintage 2000, made out of a Johnny Walker can. Next I went to see Laura where we discussed the costs of education and then got poured on by an unexpected rainstorm, and then I hurried back to Rafaelito’s in time for the typically fabulous dinner Carmen prepared for my farewell. Finally, I rounded out the evening at the Casa de Arte hearing a talk about Moises Zouain and the bolero, with performances by local boleristas.

Thursday was taken up with more reading, more shopping, and more meetings, with a palos party at Casa de Arte as a variation. There I saw all the usual suspects and caught up a bit with Grupo Mello. I felt bad I hadn’t called them or visited all this time, but our schedules don’t really mesh during carnival time as I’m busy on all the days they are free, and I am parading while they are rehearsing. Someday I must come back at another time of year.

Friday, my last day, was also independence day. I still had lots of people I wanted to meet with or interview but no one was answering their phones. Instead I wrapped things up at the CL and met Claudia for lunch at the vegetarian Taiwanese restaurant. Then her boyfriend kindly offered to drive me to Los Ciruelitos, where I planned to go to observe the barrio carnival. Because the Catholic church had made a big stink this year about carnival on independence day – they are against it, although I’m not sure what independence day has to do with the church, nor am I clear about why they chose this year to complain when this tradition is many decades old – the official carnival parade had been moved to the prior Sunday and only unofficial events would take place today. Somehow, things had gotten split in two, and some groups were parading in Los Ciruelitos, others on Las Carreras again.. I was pretty sick of Las Carreras and my group wasn’t dressing up anyway, preferring to save their energies for the following day, when MOSACA had organized yet another barrio carnival as their final event (too bad I didn’t know this when I made my plane reservations – I would miss it). So I decided just to film.

As mentioned, Claudia’s boyfriend agreed to drive me there, but where “there” was was another matter. I thought I’d try to get together with Sergio, the Robalagallina of Los Ciruelitos, and his group of kids, but we couldn’t find them anywhere. Felt like a bit of a wild goose chase – or maybe more of a search for El Dorado - as we kept stopping to ask people and they kept pointing us down the road in a “he went thataway – you just missed him!” routine. Eventually someone told us that he usually left his stuff at the home base of Los Tuaregs, a group of lechones, and got dressed over there so I decided to wait it out with Los Tuaregs. The problem was I didn’t know any of them, only one made an effort to talk to me, and the rest of them looked busy, flitting in and out of the backyard of a little house whose living room was full of glittery masks. Since I didn’t know the homeowners I couldn’t exactly go back there myself, and as I waited to be able to introduce myself to their leader (who disappeared in a car shortly after I arrived) I watched the neighborhood kids get into carnival mood. Eventually some carnival groups from other areas started appearing on the street, carrying masks and costumes and dragging suitcases on their way to the staging area on the avenida One of them was Los Reyes del Mambo, led by my friend Carlos, so I decided to give up on Los Tuaregs and join them instead.

Up on the avenue everyone was milling around, most already in costume, some playing some music, in a kind of pre-carnival carnival. I saw Obama with his security detail: they let me shake his hand, and I told him I voted for him. They like that.There were Los Muertos Tambien Trabajan, whose float this year featured dead guys building their own coffins. Man, death is no picnic. There were some comparsas practicing dance routines and an Ali Baba group playing drums. I wandered around filming the groups until things got started, then took a spot down the block. From there I observed a group of dancing flight attendants and another of lottery ticket sellers, Sergio – at long last- with his kids, lots of lechones, an obscene flasher accompanied by a dwarf, and a scary group of half lechon/half lucha libre wrestlers (the costume of the former, the mask of the latter) who went around whacking everyone possible with their bladders, and hard. But I never did find El Papelon, the performer of a traditional carnival dance I’d been searching for for weeks. At least I made it out of there without bruises and on to do some final tasks – get a CD from Denio and borrow some historic videotapes of old merengue típico musicians from Gaspar, just long enough to make myself some copies. This I did for as long as I could take it, then went home to pack.

And that pretty much brings me back to here, Berlin, and my German classes, which have no place on this blog.

No dance for you!

2009-02-18T20:07:00.001-03:00

2/9-2/15
In the meantime, many things were happening. Many things. I got called to go for an interview at a southern California university, which would certainly be a good location for me, so of course I accepted even though I was in the middle of fieldwork and they wanted me to go on the very dates for which I had just, finally, scheduled my return trip to Samana. This fact necessitated some frantic phone calling in order to change things around. In the end, I did reschedule my Samana recording trip for this week, although it would have to be a very quick one in order to get back to Santiago in time for my carnival talk.

So, Monday morning found me setting out for Samana at an earlyish hour, and on a rather uncomfortable series of guaguas. Well, the first one, to San Francisco de Macoris, was large and pretty OK, but from there to Nagua it was just a pickup truck, and the last leg was in the kind of overcrowded minibus one finds in Santiago – no problem for short distances, but less than ideal for longer ones. The whole time I was mostly worried about my luggage (with all my recording equipment inside) getting squished, soaked, or dropped, especially when it appeared the guy in the bed of the pickup truck was about to sit on it.

At any rate, both the luggage and I got safely to Samana, where Rossy, Luc, and I met up and had some lunch, before installing ourselves and our equipment in Luc’s rather empty three-bedroom house, which he had kindly offered as free lodging to the two ethnomusicologists. It was still rainy, as it had been for a week and a half, but when it let up to a light drizzle Rossy and I thought we should make the best of it and headed off in search of either (a) Mártires, a local traditional music teacher, or (b) Yoyó, the old merengue redondo musician who was supposed to be preparing the bamboo tubes to be used for the recording. I had a vagueish idea of where they lived, so we took a guagua up the hill and started searching. Knowing they were on top of one of these hillsides, we took the first staircase up. On top of the hill we found a brick house under construction, a madly barking scruffy dog, and a fully-constructed wooden house in the back. There were also a couple of chairs and a wire clothesline under a tree, with which I just about took my head off in an incautious moment.

I was a little afraid to advance towards the angry dog, but then an old woman emerged from the house and I asked about Yoyó. Turned out he lived on the next hill over, so we’d have to go down, up the street, and back up some different stairs. Then I asked about Mártires, and was surprised to find out that this was his very house, and she was his mother! He wasn’t home, but she was sure he was somewhere in the neighborhood, working on a conuco. She shouted in the direction of one palm-tree-studded, mist-shrouded hill, then another. We were in luck. After a minute, Mártires appeared in a straw hat. He had been off conversing with a neighboring Italian whose land he sometimes worked.

Rossy and I were invited in to the pleasant little pink and blue house, which on the inside was typically festooned with frilly satin curtains over the Persian windows. Surprisingly, for this hilltop location, a television was on in the middle of the room showing sports, with the sound now turned off. We spent the next couple of hours in pleasant conversation with him, his mother occasionally joining in in appreciation of his singing snippets of songs for us, and his sister appearing somewhat later and making us coffee. At times, it rained so hard on the tin roof it was hard to hear anything. By the time we left it was dark and the stairs slippery, so Mártires accompanied us down to the road, where we caught a motoconcho (something I usually avoid but which was unavoidable on this drizzly, quiet night).

The next day we had planned to follow up on some of the leads we’d just gotten, for example, going to talk to the head of the Oli-Oli carnival group, or searching out some groups of palos players who lived nearby. I also wanted to hunt down the old tres player my mom and I had seen playing for tourists on Cayo Levantado during our last trip.

But none of this was destined to be. From the moment we got up to the moment we went to sleep, it poured rain without stopping. In fact, at the one moment it seemed to be slowing down, around 1 PM, I said “Looks like it’s letting up. Think I’ll go check my email now,” and this statement was immediately followed by a torrential downpour. The only thing missing was the thunderclap from heaven. We did venture out for lunch at some point, but came back very wet, bedraggled, and with a broken umbrella. At least while we were out we ran into Yogeny, one of the musicians slated for the recording session we’d scheduled for that afternoon and still entertained hopes of completing. He said they were still looking for Yoyó. I mentioned the tres player and it turned out he knew him very well, even said he’d try to look for him. That would save me a trip to the town of La Pascula, where I would have had to wander all around town asking anyway.

Eventually the slated hour of 3 PM rolled around. Rossy and I were still shut in the house, hoping in vain for the rain to stop since we didn’t have any more dry clothes. It didn’t, but I had to venture out with the broken umbrella anyway in order to look for the musicians in the park. I went and found Yogeny, El Zurdo, and Miguel the tres player in the gazebo or bandshell or whatever it was. Miguel was already entertaining everyone else who was waiting out the rain, inventing rhymes especially for the occasion. El Zurdo went off and came back shortly with a guitar with which he could accompany Miguel, and they began playing sones in duet. Soon Pai showed up as well, and then Virgilio was driving by in a friend’s van, returning shortly to sing and dance with us in our impromptu rainy day party. We were still hoping Yoyo would show but after an hour we figured we should get started. The next problem was getting a taxi, since no one was on the road and walking the instruments over to Luc’s house in all this rain was out of the question. Eventually an acquaintance of Virgilio’s (maybe all the townspeople are his acquaintances?) drove by with a van and agreed to take us in two loads. So we finally got started.

I’d expected another one-hour straight shot of recording like the last time, but it turned into quite the epic session. Miguel took over and just kept on playing one song after another, apparently enjoying the audience (consisting of the other musicians, Rossy, Luc, and myself) and the beverages (he and Yogeny drank Cuba Libres, the others only juice). We thought the noise was appropriate payback for the sleepless night we’d had at the hands of the neighbors who had played loud music until 2 AM or so, filling in the gaps caused by intermittent power outages with equally loud arguments. It was also interesting to see what he chose to play. It recalled to me those ethnomusicological accounts of researchers going off to record “real” gypsy music and finding that the gypsies wanted to play American country music tunes for them. Miguel played merengues and bachatas – many of them by the popular 1960s-70s musician Eladio Romero Santos, boleros and sones – many of them Cuban, and even corridos and rancheras – from Mexico. Naturally, this was the kind of music that was popular when he was young (he was born in 1936).

I didn’t really want to be the kind of ethnomusicologist that insisted on “authenticity,” and also it sounded really good, so I mostly let him play what he wanted. I did make a few requests, though. Once I suggested something “from here” – my most successful way so far of getting what might be considered “folk” music. To this, Yogeny helpfully added, “The older the better!” Here was someone who knew the folklorists’ ways. Another time I asked Miguel to play something of his own composition, which yielded an interesting call-and-response merengue. Later on, after Pai mentioned working in the fields as a kid, I asked if they had used cantos de hacha, or work songs. Of course they had, he replied. But they weren’t used anymore because, whereas before they had worked in large groups on land owned by others, now people worked in cooperatives, and in this system only two or three people ever had to work at once, obviating the need for communal work songs. However, they still remembered those work songs, and my request elicited a call-and-response song which they accompanied in a merengue style.

Miguel was really into things for a while, but when he lost interest he really lost it. At about 8 PM he was tired and just wanted to go home. We couldn’t manage to find a taxi for him, so instead walked him down to the main road for another motoconcho ride. When we got back from that, everyone else seemed kind of tired too. We had been at it for three hours, so actually I was a bit tired myself. We called it a night, then went off to eat bacalao at a comedor.

The next day at midmorning the weather cleared up and hot sun came out. Unfortunately, I had to head back to Santiago already in order to be ready for my tertulia the next day. An inquiry at Caribe Tours provided the strange information that, due to the construction of a brand-new highway linking the Samaná peninsula with Santo Domingo via Monte Plata, taking a bus to the capital and from there another to Santiago actually took about the same amount of time as going straight to Santiago, even though it was twice the distance. That shows you how great the roads are in the Cibao. It was more expensive this way but would also be much more comfortable, and involve fewer bus changes. Also, I could go with Rossy half the way, so I decided to give it a try. Indeed, it was a pretty easy way of doing it, although it was a bit boring after my computer and phone batteries ran out and it was too dark to read.

Back in Santiago, I spent the next day preparing for the evening’s event by looking over notes, looking up things in books, and making phone calls. By 6 PM I was as ready as I’d ever be so I could go hear the talk that preceded mine, one by noteworthy folklorist Dagoberto Tejeda Ortiz on his new carnival book. Because it started late, it also ended late, and thus my own talk was also late. The nice thing was the intermission between the two, during which time a group of lechones came in and danced us out to the patio, where they madly cracked whips as we drank a beer.

Well, my program went as well as could be expected, I think. It was an academic talk that started too late, and therefore finished too late, so some people were restless. It was great to have the performers themselves there. They all had interesting stories to tell. Sergio “Mochila” gave a funny and lively performance as Roba la Gallina, even getting the whole audience to sing the traditional chants. Papote had everyone cracking up; one memorable quote, in relation to my question if he didn’t get tired going dancing every night, was “No, I don’t get tired at the parties. When I go to work, though, that’s when I get tired.” Polanquito, the 70-something lechon, appeared to be somewhat drunk and fell on the floor during his performance – on purpose. He said he “wanted to show us how it was like in the old days. This is what the lechones would do after they’d been out all day and were finally heading home.” I also learned that lechones have their own way of talking – they make kind of grunting sounds, but I hadn’t known this before as they don’t do much good with the volume of music used in today’s carnival. Someone mentioned that some lechones used to use whistles, too. (Is this why some lechon costumes have whistles on them as decorative elements?) My talk was considerably less amusing than they were, although I did have a story about phallic symbols in there.

I had predicted that people would either love my talk or hate it. It had a part about social class, carnival and merengue típico, and it had a part about the symbolism of the carnival characters, particularly the lechon, which I connected to various African diaspora manifestations of Eleggua. A number of people told me afterwards that they loved it, including the dancers themselves. But one person in particular seemed to hate it. He shall remain nameless. Although a friend of mine, it is a friendship that requires work, because he is the sort who wants to be the person who knows everything. Therefore, nothing that he doesn’t know or hasn’t already thought of can be worth knowing or thinking of. Thus, he had a whole series of questions/criticisms for me in the (very short due to time) Q&A session.

One was justified: I had said that merengue típico dancing hadn’t been studied, and of course he pointed out the work of Fradique Lizardo. I should have been more specific. I should have stated that modern-day merengue típico dancing hadn’t been studied, and merengue dancing in general hadn’t been studied anthropologically or ethnographically. Lizardo’s work is useful, but mostly for staging the dances, since he went around collecting dance steps of yesteryear for practical use in his Ballet Folklorico Dominicano. Thus, his dance book consists of lists of information like steps, costumes, occasions on which performed, etc, but is not an ethnographic work.

Strangely, the thing this person most objected to was my calling what Roba La Gallina and the Lechon do “dance”. During the lecture, I had actually already explained this point, giving the definition of “dance” from the book Anthropology of Dance, a definition that fits well with what both of these characters do. In addition, I noted, these people themselves refer to their “dance,” so who am I to say it isn’t? He apparently didn’t find this explanation sufficient. So now I added that if he wanted to include “choreography” in the definition, as he apparently did, then merengue típico also couldn’t be called a dance, since it doesn’t have choreography or even specific steps, and yet we all seem to describe it as a dance. He conceded that the lechones do “rhythmic steps,” but not dance. I wonder what a dance like merengue is to him, then, if not rhythmic steps? (Also, why is everything not what I think it is? I remember when I started studying merengue tipico, someone told me, "it's not even music." remember that?)

In a separate conversation, it seemed that his objection was really that no one else had written about these dances as dances before, including Lizardo, so therefore they couldn’t possibly be dances. I think the other implication was that no American should be able to come in and point out that Dominican scholars had neglected to study this particular area of dance. Fair enough, and certainly I don’t need to have the last word on the subject, but isn’t the point to create new dialogues, new directions for scholarship? Not to repeat the same studies everyone else has already done of carnival or of dance, but to build on them? To lend a new viewpoint that may cause people to reconsider their assumptions? Maybe even to validate what the carnavaleros have been doing for decades, without receiving any recognition? Obviously, I found this objection rather annoying, not only because it seemed a somewhat personal attack, questioning the legitimacy of my work, but because it was of little use in achieving these goals.

I had two other questions, much less polemical. One person suggested that the limping movement only existed for a functional reason, for the purpose of making the bells on the costume ring. I disagreed with this, as many other kinds of movement could also make the bells ring. (I should have added that you can’t hear the bells at all anymore anyway, but the limp is still used by many lechones.) Another asked if the lechon dance hadn’t changed over the years, since now they dance to music and formerly only to the chants of observers. This was actually a good question, to which Polanquito gave a wacky answer but then we had to call it a night.

On Friday, I recovered from the experience by avoiding the CL in favor of doing loads of errands. I bought little costumes for my nephews, picked up my own costume from the tailor, and spent most of the afternoon gluing bells and mirrors on it. Did some shopping. Blah blah.

On Saturday, I was ready to go – a replacement carnival was planned for that day because of the previous Sunday’s rainy cancellation. So I got up early, did my email, picked up my costume from Tonito’s and hurried over to Betania’s…. where, naturally, we waited. Julio helped me fix up my morcilla (the cover the tailor had made was naturally too short, which necessitated a quick amputation of the original morcilla) in the meantime. Eventually everyone was ready to go so we piled our costumes, masks, bladders, and selves into two cars and headed to Ensanche Bermudez, the barrio that was supposed to be our carnival site for the day. I was looking forward to it, because I always like these barrio events more than the big parade on Las Carreras – less crowded, more comfortable, and seeing something different every time.

After driving around the neighborhood a couple of times and seeing no one, though, it seemed unlikely that any carnival was going on. I suggested maybe the wires had gotten crossed and it was really Ensanche Bolivar, so we checked there too on our way back, but nothing. So that was it: a big buildup and no payoff, just like last Sunday only sunnier. The next day someone told me they’d decided to cancel it because it fell on Valentine’s Day. What kind of a retarded reason is that?!

Anyway, there was nothing for it. Instead I went to the bookstore to check out the selection and enjoy a fancy coffee beverage. Then I went home to sleep it off and prepare for what would hopefully be an actual carnival the next day.

On Sunday, once the email had been read, I was ready to give it another go. But first, I had an appointment with Los Reyes del Mambo, the carnival group run out of Ensanche Bolivar by Carlos Batista. He claimed the kids in his group really knew the lechon kind of dance (or “rhythmic steps”, as some would prefer) so I was going to film them doing it. My instructions were to get dropped off at the “colmadon” and someone would meet me there. My fellow passengers expressed concern over this plan, after having ascertained that I wasn’t really going to the church nearby. “Now, you’re sure you have your friend’s number? Call him as soon as we get there!” I assured htem I would, and indeed I did, and a few minutes later Carlos’s son, also named Carlos but considerably smaller, showed up to accompany me to their house, which was actually less than a block away. Also, it was easy to recognize by the three yellow upside-down lechon masks propped on sticks in the front yard, and the whips, recently painted blue, drying on the clothesline. Also, everyone present was dressed in their team t-shirts, an attractive blue color with grey trim and the Reyes mascot on the back – a little man designed after an Incan mask.So the Kings of Mambo are really Incan kings!

In fact, Carlos the younger and a cousin of his did dance for me in two forms, which Carlos referred to as “traditional” and “modern,” and both with and without whips. Then Carlos gave me a little explanation on video of the limping movement and the changes in style. I took a look at their costumes, which also figure the little Incan guy on the back (later on they added a body to him, which is clothed in a Henry VIII type fur-trimmed robe). I would have liked to stay longer, but I was worried about keeping my own group waiting for me so I hitched a ride back down to Betania’s. Where, naturally, everyone was standing around waiting. Well, not exactly standing around: Julio was repainting and re-glittering masks, Betania was sewing something, Katiry’s boyfriend was gluing bells, our newest female member was dancing, and some teenagers were teaching others how to use the whip or to move like a lechon. This I filmed, and then one of them took over as narrator of my film and took me around to look at and explain all the carnival accountrements that could be found in and around the yard.

Eventually, somehow, we all got dressed and ready to go – well, six of us were in costume; the other two weren’t quite ready with theirs yet and will join next week Then we set off through the streets of Pueblo Nuevo, just like old times. The strange thing is, I can never quite remember how to move like a lechon until I put on the mask and hear some music. That, and seeing other lechones, somehow allows my body to find the right moves again. And once I start,. it’s actually hard to stop until I take the mask off again. There’s something comforting about having the mask on, even if it is stiflingly hot and sweaty inside, and something horribly lame about just standing around in the street with all this get-up on. I had one vejiga in each hand – the third one I’d bought had mysteriously deflated in the interim – which eeps my hands comfortably occupied and also reminds me to keep my elbows up (something I’d been told lechones should always do).

Wearing the mask gives you license to act a little wacky (granted, some lechones don’t need a mask, or license, for that). But some people like Julio, who are relatively staid in everyday life, become surprisingly energetic and funny inside the costume. Julio was coming up with all kinds of fancy footwork and even doing leg-only jumping jacks while dressed up, to the amusement of onlookers. My narrator usually does more comically sexual moves, like those one might see on a dance floot when reggeton is playing, and this is always a crowd favorite. I tend toward a more bouncy, skipping kind of merengue with a little bit of limp, although I often switch to typical palos movements when they play Eneroliza, which they always do. (It seems to me that the same exact carnival songs have been used every year that I’ve participated: Baile en la Calle, a medley of palos and salve sung by Eneroliza, a few other things. This year there was also a reggaeton number and a nonsense merengue approaching quebradita in its rhythm. And on the way home, with our masks off, they played some merengue típico and then a set of all reggaeton or hiphop, possibly to take us back down with slower beats.)

Once I get going, I eventually get into the zone, where you’re not quite sure how much time has passed and you’re not really thinking about anything in particular. It’s whenever I stop to think about it that I get tired and think about how much sweat is running down my shirt inside my costume, how hot the sun is and how my costume just soaks it right up, how my feet or my knee are kind of hurting, how the music is way too loud and it makes my head pound, and how it’s hard to breathe in there. Every so often, though, you get a short break when an assistant brings you a little plastic pouch of cold water from the bed of the “disco lite.” In past years, there would be some rum going around too, but this year only one person had any and not much, and one beer made the rounds at one point. You wouldn’t want to drink too much because of dehybration, but you do want to drink a little, to give yourself the energy to keep on going.

While I move along, I watch the spectators and they watch me. Many are taking films or photos with cell phones or cameras. If they want a photo, we’re supposed to pose in a typical lechon style. Sometimes they want us to hold babies, and the babies aren’t always too sure about this. Sometimes they want us to shake a kid’s hand, or to dance with them. I like the feeling of anonymity inside the mask. Most of the time, no one knows I’m not Dominican, although sometimes when someone gets a straight shot and can look straight into the mask and see my eyes, I notice a look of surprise. Also, it would help to have gloves to cover up my blindingly white and clearly female hands. I might work on that later. Some spectators are more malicious and want to through confetti straight into your mask, into your mouth if they can manage it, so you have to watch out for them too. I don’t usually whack people with the bladders, although this is the traditional thing to do, but some people specifically ask you to and then I try to oblige.

At any rate, this is how it is on Las Carreras. Before that, our spectators are peoplpe standing in the doorways of their houses or on streetcorners by the colmados, or even families packed onto little motorbikes and temporarily stopped to take a look. Old women sitting on the sidewalk raise up their arms and move to the music along with us as we pass. And afterwards, we make our way home through the same streets, now unmasked and relaxed as we cool off – by this time, night is just faling. Random people from the neighborhood join us, following along behind our isco lite and singing or dancing along. One nattily dressed transvestite comes along, standing right by the speakers. He is in a blue sequined dress that barely reached the tops of his thighs, a long wig and red heels. He is accompanied by a small girl in a lechon costume -- his daughter? At one point she asks me, wordlessly, to fix her stuck zipper. When I do, she runs back up to join him again.

So finally, with the month half over, we had one real carnival day. I’m a little worried by rumors that there may not be any carnival on Feb 27 this year. Apparently, some dorky church people are complaining that combining carnival with independence day ruins the “solemnity” of the latter, or some such ridiculous thing. No matter that this has been the tradition for a zillion years now, and that without it, independence day would just be any other boring state holiday, in which the people do not in any way participate. How is that what they want? And how is it up to the church how a national holiday should be celebrated? This is one of the stupidest things I’d ever heard and I’ll be really mad if they actually succeed.

In the meantime, I must report, I had to cancel my job interview in California - - because I got a job offer!! Details to come. All the better not to have to interrupt fieldwork or to prepare three talks. Unfortunately, I’d already been shopping for interview clothes, not an easy task for me. They did come in handy at the tertulia, though.

Carnival cancelled!!

2009-02-12T18:14:00.000-03:00

2/2-2/8

The next week went on much the same as the previous: meetings and reading at the Centro Leon interspersed with a few interviews. These interviews included follow-ups with some people I’d interviewed years before, but this time I needed to ask them questions specifically about the dances and movements of carnival in order to prepare for my upcoming tertulia on the topica. So I went back to talk with Sergio “Mochila Hijo” once again, now in an internet center where he sometimes works, and with Raudy Torres in his home. The two of them are the best-known Roba La Gallinas in Santiago – this being a typical transvestite character of carnival here – but the first falls within the “traditional” category and the second within the “fantasy.” Some say the first is the Roba La Gallina of the barrios, and the second, of the upper classes. I also interviewed Carlos, head of the group of lechones of Pueblo Nuevo called Los Reyes del Mambo, in his place of work: a sign- and banner-making shop behind the Pueblo Nuevo market.

The next task at hand was to prepare my costume for Sunday’s carnival. The tailor was supposed to have finished it by Saturday, giving me enough time to stick on all the bells and mirrors it still lacked. Naturally, things didn’t work out that way. On Friday, he still was not finished, so I couldn’t give it the final lookover. On Saturday, also no word. But I did hear from Luc, the Frenchman of Samaná, that he wanted to come to Santiago to experience some culture, so I invited him to join Los Confraternos for the day. (He didn’t know it yet, but he would certainly be put to work filming.)

Well, when I went to Tonito’s on Sunday around noon, it started pouring rain again, as it had been doing most of the week, and we couldn’t find the tailor. Tonito went out in search of the costume and brought it back, but there was just no way I was going to be able to wear it that day. There was no elastic at the wrists or ankles, the sloppy edges of the design were sticking out and needed to be trimmed, more trim was needed to fill in empty spots, and one design element was on upside down! Also, the top was cut way too big for me so I had football shoulders, but that is just the way it’s going to be, I guess. At least the design I’d come up with did indeed look cool – or it would when finished. I worked on some of the trimming as we waited for the tailor to come by so I could discuss this stuff with him, but by 3:30 he still hadn’t shown, I didn’t know where Tonito was, and I was worried the group would leave without me, so I hotfooted it down to Betanias.

Where they told me that carnival had been officially cancelled for the day.

First time that has happened in my four years of carnival. Bad luck for me, as it meant I’d lose one of my five research days, and bad luck for Luc, since he didn’t get to see any Santiago culture after all. I gave up, did some shopping, and ate my first yaroa – a kind of Santiago street food belly bomb made of mashed sweet plantains smothered in cheese and Dominican special sauce. Better luck next week…

Carnival begins!

2009-02-05T19:49:00.000-03:00

The next day was a holiday, Juan Pablo Duarte day, so there wasn’t much to be done but sleep in and do laundry. But after making a bunch of phone calls arranging appointments for the week, I decide to go visit my carnival group in the afternoon.

I find Betania at her sewing machine, sewing gold borders onto diamonds made of sequiny fabric, and the whole conjunction onto a foundation made of neon orange satin. This year things have changed, she says, and we can only go out in old costumes for one week. Thus my hopes of getting out of investing in a new one (I’m a bit broke myself) and revamping last year’s are dashed. Her daughter Katiry is going to dress up for the first time in my memory, although she tells me she did so the year before I joined, as well as her new boyfriend. Another teenage girl is joining as well, so our group seems to be becoming female-dominated, perhaps the only one to be so.

The sad part is that Tonito, who is probably our best lechon – a good dancer, enthusiastic, strong, and good with the whip – is not dressing up this year because of his own economic situation, he says. But it seems to be more than that, some internal politics perhaps. He refuses even to go out the first week in an old costume. Maurice suggests accidentally buying too much fabric when I go to buy the sequins for my own costume, but I’m not sure even this measure will solve the impasse.

After a conversation with Betania, I then head over to Tonito’s, where a surprise was in store: the streets had been paved in the entire barrio! This is really incredible, because I can never forget my poor little car getting entirely flooded there in the rain and mud one time, and all of us having to join together to bail it out and get the mud off the rugs. My own carnival finances seem to be in order, we find after going over the numbers for the money I sent versus the money spent on getting my mask made and my new costume cut out (I’d forgot we’d even done this last year). When I give out my meager gifts this year – since most of them were in the lost back – I accidentally incite a small riot among the neighborhood kids over the sharing of the Haribo gummies.

Tonito gives me a ride home in his newish car, the apparent cause of the current economic difficulties, and introduces me to the Yaroa, a related or possibly antecedent concept to the Naboa, only made of potato and more expensive. We didn’t stop to try it yet, though.

On Tuesday it was back to the grindstone. The rest of the week continued in mostly the same way: visits to the library at the Centro Leon to read about carnival or listen to recordings, meetings with various personnel at the Centro Leon about ethnomusicological projects in the works, phone calls to set up interviews or invite people to my upcoming program. On the dance front, I interviewed two well-regarded merengue típico dancers, and on the carnival front, I bought fabric for my costume and attended the MOSACA meeting – the organization to which my group of lechones, Los Confraternos, belong. There I saw many of the usual suspects I knew from past years of carnival: delegates from Los Reyes and Los Comanches, the strange woman with too much makeup who dresses up as the bear Nicolas Den-Den, Angelo the mask-maker, and Polanquito, the 70+ bundle of energy. I invited him to participate in my program as a representative lechon and he acquiesced. I just hope he remembers since he apparently has no phone and never even stays in one place, so can’t be reached by phone or even sought out, unless he’s wanting to be found.

So on and so on until Saturday, when I took a break from the Mediateca in order to work on my costume. All afternoon, poor Tonito helped me iron backing onto shiny sequined fabric and cut it into the squares and triangles demanded by my design, which I based on a Cuban abakua dancer’s costume. Then again on Sunday, more of the same, as the tailor asked us to stick all the pieces of the design on the costume before giving it to him. it turned out to be just as well to have something to do: it was pouring rain all morning and the early afternoon, so many groups had decided not to go out at all, and my plans to meet with and film the group Los Reyes thus fell through. After delivering the pieces of my costume to the tailor I went over to Betanias’ to find out if the Confraternos were going out. They said they were since the “Disco Lite” (truck stacked full of enormous speakers) was already there, but were just going to wait til the rain let up a bit. Eventually, surprisingly, it actually did for a while. Instead of costumes, we wore our official group t-shirts (sponsored by Tucan paints).

This year is supposed to have a “new concept” of carnival, combining the now-vanished tradition of lechones gathering in parks with the new tradition of the parade. They have deteremined that there will be nine carnival “zones” in which lechones from different barrios will do some merry-making before joining the route, which, they say, will include Calle El Sol, the old route, with Las Carreras, the new one. It seemed an interesting idea, but this week, at least, it didn’t happen – maybe because of the rain, maybe because of habit. This week it was the usual – out from our homebase in Pueblo Nuevo, down to Las Hermanas Mirabal, under the bridge to Las Carreras, up to the monument and a U-turn to go back down the other lane (strangely, we did follow traffic directions and stay to the right). On the way, whenever we got stuck, I filmed neighboring lechones or the many groups of small, unaccompanied boys with whips who were trying out their moves along the way. They were pretty good – but where were their parents?? On the other end of the scale was an adorable little girl in a lechon outfit, gripping her cowboy-hatted father tightly by the hand at all times. Her father was happy when I wanted to take her picture, but she wasn’t. On the way back, I stopped to buy a whip and some very stinky bladders for next week’s event, forcing my entire group and our Disco Lite to stop in an underpass for 15 minutes while a kid ran to get my order for me. Then I was stuck with the stink all the way home. At least I also had the Disco Lite.

Samaná photos

2009-01-27T13:28:00.000-03:00

here is a links to my photos of musicians in Samaná.
http://picasaweb.google.com/salsasydney/SamanaJanuary2009#

Back in action: Fiesta de la Virgen de Altagracia, Samaná, 2009

2009-01-27T13:25:00.004-03:00

Hello faithful readers!
My now-annual visit to the DR is now well underway. Although I arrived safely, my luggage did not. Somewhere between JFK and Syracuse, where I stopped off for a quick interview on my way west from Berlin, the bag with all my clothes in it got lost. I suspect it is still sitting in customs gathering dust, whereas I myself have hardly had time to sit still for a minute since getting here.

I got in on the 16th and found Santiago looking pretty much the same, only I had forgotten my clever shortcuts from before so ended up taking a rather long detour between the airport and the Centro Leon. There I met with the woman who’d be renting me a room for my stay this year, since my previous apartment was already taken.

All the errands that followed hardly bear mentioning. I did take a moment to reconnect with the good people of the Centro, however. I’ll be doing a little program there on Feb. 12 and, hopefully, we’ll still be able to get the ball rolling on the ethnomusicology summer school I proposed some time back. More on that later.

That reminds me that I need to tell you the purpose of this year’s visit. Because I actually finished my dissertation and graduated in September (!!), I am NOT going to be working much on merengue típico this trip – I probably won’t even be playing accordion, since I’m going to at least make the attempt not to get distracted from my task. Instead, I’ve been awarded a grant from the Society for Ethnomusicology to do a study on dance and movement in Santiago’s carnival. I am interested in how movement defines both the characters of carnival and the sense of place, even Santiago itself. For example, people often point to the way Santiago’s lechones move and the way the diablos cojuelos of La Vega jump around as a key difference between the two carnivals, and the two neighboring towns. I will therefore be looking at how movement defines things like place, class, and gender in Santiago by examining the movements of carnival participants and comparing with those of merengue típico dancers.

But before I could get to work on that, I had one other thing to do. Perhaps you remember from earlier years how I have gone to Samaná repeatedly over the past couple of years in various futile attempts to convince local musicians to play merengue redondo, a form of folk merengue unique to the area, for me and my recorder. Although I’d met the man reputed to be one of the last people knowledgeable about this form, he kept telling me I’d just have to come back on January 21, the feast day of the Virgin of Altagracia. This year I made sure I’d be in the country on that day especially for that purpose.

And so the night after I came in, my mom flew down to meet me and accompany me on this mission. As both she and her bags were – amazingly - at the airport on time, we had a day for shopping and visiting before we had to hit the road. We thus paid our now-traditional visits to the Mercado Modelo (tourist market) and Calle del Sol, then to Rafaelito and Carmen, and Laura and the kids. At Rafaelito’s we found the front room redecorated yet again, and were invited back for dinner following our road trip; and at Laura’s, while we were sad to note Chiqui’s continued absence and rather shady behavior over in New York, we did have a rousing dominoes tournament on the balcony of their new, breezy second-floor apartment.

The next day we hit the road – only two hours later than planned, and thus in good Dominican time. The roads were good up to San Francisco de Macoris, the drug-dealing capital and usual pit stop (they have a big grocery/department store with food and decent bathrooms), and afterwards more typically potholed. It was pretty uneventful but still took more than 4 hours to go the 200 kilometers. I hadn’t known they built a new toll road that goes up to Nagua from the capital through Monte Plata, which makes the trip from Santo Domingo now much faster and more direct than the one from Santiago. Also more comfortable, as the nice buses run a direct route from the capital to Samana, whereas the only direct service from Santiago is on the world’s more uncomfortable vans, which allow about 12 inches’ knee room between seats. So while Samana is considered part of the greater Cibao, it remains more difficult to travel there from elsewhere in the Cibao. Besides the potholes, the most interesting thing we saw on the road was a procession of a group of women with colorful cut-paper flags, a few of them carrying a small figure of the virgin inn a little house.

Road trips are always pretty tiring in this country, but we didn’t have time to rest. As soon as we got checked in to our hotel – the guide book and the hotel’s name had promised a bay view from our room, but new construction meant we only had a view of the backs of some houses and a dirt lot – we had to go searching for my friend Virgilio, the former mayor and my guide for all things Samanense. I’d been trying to call him for a month with no luck: his home number apparently belonged to someone else now, and I could only ever get his voicemail on the cell number.

After stopping at his old apartment on the Malecon, it was clear why he’d been hard to locate – he’d moved! No one answered the door at any apartment there, but a visit to the store across the street produced helpful information from the proprietor and we soon found his new house. Today was inauguration day and while CNN had been full of the news we wanted to hear back in Santiago, we got no news on the radio and had no TV in our non-bay-view hotel, and were a bit starved for Obama coverage. We found Virgilio, his son, and his father all gathered round the TV watching the continuing Obama coverage, but unfortunately we had missed the speech. However, Virgilio had other important news for us. First, his cell phone had been stolen, which explained the rest of the story. Second, it was actually tonight that was the big night for the Virgin here: there would be an all-night palos party getting underway shortly.

That didn’t leave us much time to prepare. Batteries still had to be charged, equipment tested, and dinner eaten, not to mention showers taken. A bit tired, we were nonetheless ready at the appointed time. But we couldn’t find Virgilio. After a couple of calls and a drive-by, we found out he was at the basketball game that we’d been able to hear emanating from the sports stadium, and went over there to pick him up. As it turned out, our phone call had reached him just as he was singing hte national anthem over the loudspeaker. Oops.

So we headed out to Acosta, a little village about 3 km east of town. At 9:30 the street was already quite crowded and it was difficult to get through., so Virgilio took over the wheel and got us parked. It was also nice to have his and his son’s help with the equipment – I’d had to get a much bigger microphone stand since the little portable one was one of the things packed in the lost bag, and also I couldn’t keep ahold of the microphone case once everything was set up and I was working on protecting the equipment and getting the recording done. It wasn’t an easy task in the space at hand.

Outside, the street was decorated with strings of those colored, triangular flags one sees at car lots and people were either standing around or resting on motorbikes in order to watch the fireworks going off. There were no streetlights, so except when something was exploding it was pretty dark.

Inside was where the music was going on, in a small, tin-roofed house with one large and two small rooms. In the large room, the paleros were set up in one corner, facing the wall and a window through which some people were watching, their backs to the room. The rest of the room was packed full of revelers, some dancing, some singing, many drinking. I set up my microphone near a doorway next to the drummers and was then stuck there for the rest of the night, unable to move with all my equipment through the crowd. My mom took over the role of videographer, however, and roamed around the house filming. One of the small rooms held an altar to the Virgin and a few people sitting quietly or praying, my mom reported. The whole thing was brightly lit, so someone must have had a generator or an inverter.

This style of palos was a little different than what I was used to, including one person always hitting a tresillo rhythm on the side of one drum with a stick. Another person played a really big güira. The older men present improvised verses, sometimes apparently competing with one another, while the rest sung responses, usually wordless. They did not do any songs familiar to me from my time with Grupo Mello in Santiago, not so surprisingly I guess, since my friends were originally from the Southwest, near San Juan de la Maguana, not the Cibao.

I saw a few people I knew: Yoyó, the merengue redondo expert, and Mártires, the local music teacher. Virgilio also introduced me to the owner of the establishment and patron of the party, who proudly told me that his family had been responsible for this ritual for 150 years. We made plans to come back to talk to him the next day, but that never happened. I also talked briefly with one of the singers, who then improvised some verses in praise of mine and my mother’s beauty, and expressing his desire to go home with us.

Sometime around midnight, we decided it was time to go. Although the music would continue all night, changing palos groups every few hours, it was very hot, very crowded, we’d run out of battery at some point, and anyway, Virgilio informed us that fighting generally began sometime after midnight. AS the musicians drank more and more, every year they got into brawls over whose turn it was, or who was the best, or any other reason.

So we got a bit of sleep, but not too much, as Virgilio had suggested we get up early to try and meet with some musicians in the morning. There would be an 8 AM mass and then a procession around 9 AM, and apparently this would be a good time for musician finding. As usual, however, it didn’t work that way. Even though we were late getting going anyway, when we passed by Yoyó’s place, a little shack on a hill, we were told he’d only recently gone to bed. When we went through Acosta, we found most of the town in bed, except for a group of three tígueres still on a drinking spree. They stopped us and asked for money. When Virgilio asked what for, they said, “Whatever!” Because of their honesty I tried to find some change to give them, but we honestly didn’t have any, and they didn’t seem to mind too much.

Down on the Malecón, we did find a trio of musicians getting ready to play merengue típico for the cruise ship passengers just arriving. Virgilio introduced us: one was Pai, Yoyó’s partner in merengue redondo, and another was his son. They agreed to play some stuff for us later, but since they’d be there until 4, there was no hurry. We decided we might as well see some sights in the meantime, as my mom’s time in the country was short. One tour company told us a boat to Los Haitises would be leaving in just a few minutes and if we hurried we could get on it, so we really hurried and made it down to the dock in time – in time to wait around for an hour. The wait time was not a total loss, however, since we could listen to the típico. They played the usual standards, but Pai did have a unique way of playing the tambora. Meanwhile, my mom talked to some people coming of the cruise ship and found out they’d been told to “look but not buy anything.” This I found incredibly offensive. How dare they (a) make up people’s minds for them and (b) refuse to bring desperately needed resources into the communities whose ports, resources, and labor they are using! I wish I could tell you which company to boycott or send angry letters to, but unfortunately there were 2 ships in that day. This is certainly something that tourism scholars and policy-makers should be looking into, however.

In the end, guess what, we weren’t even allowed to go. Cruise ship people only. Instead, we hired a local with a boat to take us out to the beach on Cayo Levantado, where we spent a pleasant couple of hours, after which I felt recuperated and ready to deal with more musicians (unfortunately, I was also a little sunburned). We even found another musician deserving of a later visit – an old tres player from a nearby town, who was playing waltzes and corridos (not the Mexican kind) accompanied by a younger partner on guitar.

Having already arranged a time and meeting place with the musicians, all that was left was to look for a recording location, and hope they’d actually show up. Searches for a suitable indoor location were unsuccessful: city offices were closed as was the radio station, and the local music professional was sleeping after a gig (we woke him, but only briefly). Parks were too noisy, so Virgilio’s suggestion of a nearby, mostly-deserted beach was the best we could do on short notice.

Back at our meeting point, we found no musicians, so got ice cream. Then we found two musicians, followed shortly by one more. One, Yoyó, was still missing, off in search of a marimba, apparently. The sun getting lower on the horizon, we had just decided to go look for him at his house when he arrived.

Now the trick was getting everyone and their instruments to the beach, with just one tiny car with a trunk big enough for a single suitcase stood on end. We ended up doing it in two trips, so it was good that the place was only 5 minutes away. It was a beautiful spot in an enclosed little bay with cliffs on either side and white sand in the middle, the kind of thing that would have been good for a music video - at least, if someone had cleaned up the trash, and without the big new resort whose walls formed the backdrop. The dumb thing is that the hotel didn’t even use that nice beach, but by building there had effectively kicked out the locals who used to use it. The musicians told us that Samanenses had used to go down there in the evenings, make up a big pot of rice, throw rocks at the mango tree to get the fruit down, and generally make merry. Since the hotel had gone up – which Pai’s son had himself worked on plastering – things had been kept quiet and locals now went elsewhere.

Well, we livened things up again at Puerto Escondido, if only for an hour. Merengue redondo, bamboulá, even a merengue típico and a popular merengue about Samaná were played on accordion, guira, a tambora turned upright, and a marimba Yoyó made himself. It sounded so nice on the beach at night that one of the hotel security guards came down to listen in (I just had to make sure he turned off his noisy walkie talkie).

The marimba isn’t native to Samaná but Yoyó explained he heard it on a visit to the capital as a young man, liked it, and went home and made his own. So this was actually the “modern” instrumentation for merengue redondo, adapted from merengue típico and based on the higher availability of these instruments. When pressed, however, Yoyó said that when he was a child merengue redondo was accompanied by atabal and bamboo tubes as percussion. Now they only play these instruments occasionally and with enough prior notice to prepare the bamboo – a few old folks in the mountains still hire them to play this kind of music and they indicated that I could do the same, if I so desired, and I think I do.

Unfortunately, we got started so late that the sun went down about 15 minutes after starting, making further filming impossible, although we kept playing a little longer until the wind came up and made that impossible too. Oh well, it was a good start and more than I’d been able to record on three previous trips to Samaná. I hope to come back soon for the bamboo and the tres.

Our next day was set to be pure vacation. We had made a reservation for a whale-watching trip, since the season in which the humpback whales visit the bay had just begun, and while I’d been out to see them before, my mom hadn’t. Once again we patronized the tours led by Kim, a Canadian marine biologist who’s lived in the area for over twenty years and is responsible for the development of whale-oriented tourism here as well as conservation measures. (Her off-season job is breeding mules at her country home.) We were told not to have high hopes of seeing the big guys, as only 50% of trips since the season started had been successful, but our captain Pimpo would do his best. (Yes, I did ask him why he was called Pimpo, and he claimed not to know! I told him to ask his mom.)

Last time on this trip I experienced the only bout of seasickness I’d ever had in my life and it was pretty awful. Today, with no cold, I was luckier even though the seas were really rough and we were pitching all over the place and could barely even stand up for a second. We did indeed go for a long time without seeing a thing, but then we encountered a school of bottlenose dolphins, two of which leaped out of the water to greet us. Then Pimpo got a call from some other boats following a pair of humpbacks, and we hurried out to get in line. It was really spectacular: last time I’d seen mothers and babies, but they were pretty mellow and I never saw more than their back. This time, these two were actually jumping completely out of the water, turning around with noses out, flipping their tails, in short, making an amazing show for us. The hard part was getting a picture with ten people sitting between us and the whales, and the boat going up and down the big swells like a rollercoaster, but we did manage a couple of whale portraits.

On this trip, we also made a new friend: a French geographer consulting for local tourism organizations and making recommendations for sustainable development of the industry. His brother, as it turned out, is a sociologist specializing in Cuban music who will be visiting soon, so maybe they will come along to my future merengue redondo party. At any rate, I thought it would be good for this guy to meet Virgilio, since both are involved with tourism, so we brought him to the Mercado family house. However, Virgilio had left early that morning to go to the capital for some carnival organization business. Instead, we played with his adorable daughter for a little while before hitting the road once again. (She is about 4 and engaged me in conversations like the following. After asking the names of all the family members she could think of, she said, “What are your children’s names?” “I don’t have any children.” “Oh, they died?” “No, I never had any children. What about you?” “No, I don’t have any, either,” said very seriously.)

Since we were setting off so late, we decided not to go so far but instead to stay in Las Terrenas, a beach town with a big expat population – particularly French – on the northern coast. There we found that things were changing rapidly. The stretch of beach at the eastern side of town where we drove in, where we had stayed in one of many adorable and colorful little bungalows last time, was now being paved over with giant condo and resort buildings. Thus we decided to opt for the other end of town. But due to the recent heavy rains, we found the road impassable for our tiny car. Eventually we found a good candidate on a side road, where we got a bungalow decorated with a pirate theme. It was a relaxing spot to spent the next 20 hours, minus the time we spent eating tapas and crepes, sitting on the beach, and shopping for gifts. After that we had t o hit the road again for the long and uneventful if potholed drive back. At least we knew that at the end a delicious dinner was waiting for us at the Roman house. In this we were not disappointed. There we ate locrio (with jalapenos added just for my benefit), habichuelas, pastelon, spaghetti, and salad followed by pineapple upside down cake, all with little Mauricia, the new cat, looking on. (Perhaps you remember that Rafaelito’s cats are all named Mauricio because they all say “mau.” Since this one is a girl, I suggested the altered form and it appears to have stuck.)

Then it was mom’s last day already – time really flew. It was naturally spent in a flurry of shopping, though this time principally for a carnival costume for my nephew who was just turning five. He is rather theatrical and has developed a taste for costumes of all types. Because it was still early in carnival season, this was a difficult mission, and necessitated visits to four different shops, each shopkeeper giving us directions to the next, and even so, we were unsuccessful. At this point I was completely frustrated with driving around on this ridiculous scavenger hunt so we got a purple feathered boa instead, which I hope will be a fabulous addition to the costume trunk. Maybe I can get the little lechon suit later.

After all our errands were done, we celebrated by going to the cinema to see Twilight, which both of us had read and my mom had already seen twice (although never before with Spanish subtitles). And after that, we had our traditional dinner at Amici, the incredibly delicious Italian restaurant across the street from my former apartment. It did not disappoint. Even the limoncello we remembered was still there.

The plan for the next day was to get up ridiculously early, take mom to the airport, return the car, do the paperwork for my lost baggage at the Delta office while there, then go home, have a nap, write and read a little before going to Rafaelito’s gig in the evening. Alas, things did not work out as planned. After arriving at the airport we found that mom’s 9:30 flight had been rescheduled for 4:30 in the afternoon! The crew hadn’t had the required amount of sleep. Neither had we, so we went back to my place where I tried, mostly unsuccessfully, to nap. At noon we went back again, I used the meal voucher they’d given as a consolation prize, did the required tasks, and went home again for another unsuccessful nap attempt. Clearly, no reading or writing was meant to be done this day. I did nonetheless make it to the gig, hitching a ride with the Roman family to Las Vegas, a disco out on the Santiago-Navarrete highway, where I enjoyed the tail end of El Ciego’s set and two of Rafaelito’s, all while filming the dance activity as best I could. I also talked to a few of the notable dancers present in order to convince them to (a) submit to an interview, if they hadn’t already and (b) participate in my upcoming event at the Centro Leon.

Afterwards, Rafaelito took me and the kids (his youngest son and daughter, niece, and stepson) to eat a Naboa, a kind of snack they make at only one food cart in town. It was made of a ball of Mapuey, a root vegetable, with a cheese filling, dipped in some kind of crust and deep fried. Totally unhealthy but just the kind of thing you want at 2 AM.

stay tuned for carnival news!

Batey Libertad pide su ayuda (asks for your help)

2008-09-24T04:52:00.003-04:00

You may remember a previous posting about Batey Libertad. Bateyes are where agricultural workers live, and are among the poorest places in the DR. My friends on Batey Libertad have been asking me for some time for some help in getting money for fixing up their church, which is in sad need of some help. You probably know I am not a religious person, but everyone has a right to their own kind of comfort, and this church/community center certainly provides that to many batey residents. I feel bad I haven't been able to help them out so far, so please help me to remedy this situation!

I've added a "Donate" button to my page over there on the left. Please donate whatever you can to my Batey Libertad fund. This money will go into a Paypal account, and I will then send that money on to them. I'm not a non-profit so I can't offer you tax deductions or anything, but I do promise you that whatever you donate will go straight to the church at Batey Libertad (minus the approx. 6% I pay in fees for sending money to the DR). Even $5 or $10 would make a difference to them - that's already 165 or 330 pesos!

Previously, they had written to me explaining their need for a few fans and some paint, as well. You can take a look at the church in this previous post:
http://accordiongirl.blogspot.com/2007/06/batey-libertad-church.html

Here is the new letter I received from my friend Yanlico from Batey Libertad this morning. In short, the gist of it is that the church already had some problems and then was robbed several times this year. The robbers stole their speakers, microphone, chairs, robes, and decorative items. Besides needing to replace these items, they want to put bars on the windows and secure the door in order to prevent future thefts.

"Reciba un fuerte saludo y muchas bendiciones en el nombre de Dios.

"Le escribo en el nombre de la Iglesia Cristiana en Batey Libertad. Después de este cordial saludo, quiero manifestarle los siguientes.

"Desde el inicio de este año 2008, hemos sido víctimas de robos en el templo, donde han llevado algunos objetos útiles e importantes. La primera vez se robaron cosas decorativas como, manteles, sillas, micrófonos y hasta las flores y otros. Hace dos meses atrás también nos robaron dos bocinas (speaker) y un micrófono de gran valor que hasta ahora no podemos comprarlo, suerte que tuvimos guardados la otra bocina.

"Entonces, por estas razones hemos decidido y planificar la idea de que la única forma de estar seguro es ponerle más seguro a las puertas y ventanas reforzándolas con hierro y así no tendríamos que llevar y traer las cosas en cada momento de los cultos. Por eso estamos pidiendo ayuda y colaboración. Primero comenzamos con los miembros de la iglesia y luego las otras personas amigos y colaboradores de la comunidad como usted y sus amigos. Solo quiero recordarle que no es algo obligatorio.

"Pues, según una cotización que hicieron, el costo de los materiales ascendió a un monto de $10,000.00 sin la mano de obra que costaría $3,000.00. Espero que cooperen con lo que puedan y así no estarían ayudando a la iglesia sino estarían cooperando con la obra de Dios. Muchas gracias.

"Bendición,

"Yanlico"

Free! Free at last!

2008-09-24T04:43:00.003-04:00

You may wonder where I've been and why I haven't been posting. First, I was teaching at the University of Arizona, which took all my time. Then I moved to Berlin, where I am at the moment, working on improving my mediocre German. In Feburary I was indeed back in the DR for my usual carnival-season activities with Los Confraternos. And then......

I finished my dissertation.

I defended on Sept. 5 and my degree was apparently awarded last week.

Can you believe it? I can hardly believe it myself.

Anyway, it's titled Merengue típico in Dominican transnational communities: Gender, geography, migration, and memory in a traditional music. 700+ pages all about your, and my, favorite music. I need to get to work on turning it into a book, but frankly, I'm a little worn out and need a dissertation vacation. Anyway, anyone who wants to tackle it, feel free to email me and we'll discuss.

I'll next be in the DR in January-February for, you guessed it, some carnival research. In the meantime, I'll try to do a better job of keeping all you faithful readers up to date.

By the way, if you haven't taken a look at or listened to the tipico CD I co-produced for Smithsonian Folkways, what are you waiting for?? It has all my favorite stuff on it and I wrote the liner notes myself. They are highly educational and you can even download them for free. I don't earn any royalties from it, but La India Canela does, so you might as well buy the CD while you're at it.

Here's the album: http://www.folkways.si.edu/albumdetails.aspx?itemID=3206

And here you can watch a video about it: http://www.smithsonianglobalsound.org/feature_28A.aspx

Blog transfer

2007-11-13T15:25:00.001-03:00

Hi folks,

So I decided that this blog should be entirely devoted to merengue tipico and the Dominican Republic. Therefore, I'm moving all entries about my other travels and activities to another location: http://sydtravels.blogspot.com. New writing will likely appear there in December, when I'll be in Germany.

I'm sorry for the long delay in posting, but I hope to return to my old blogging ways after the semester ends, and I'm finished teaching this incredibly labor-intensive lecture course in Mexican music.

Thanks for sticking with me!
-accordiongirl

Thanks for the 404s

2007-06-18T17:54:00.001-04:00

I've fixed the links the best I could for your continued enjoyment, faithful readers. But now you may have to wait a bit for the next installment. I leave tomorrow for a month in Europe where I will be having more adventures, many of them involving various types of accordions. I'll still post pictures and stories when I have the chance, though.

In the meantime, those of you who are in New York may wish to visit this year's installment of the Main Squeeze Accordion Festival, July 7 2-9 PM Riverside Park, Pier 1 at 70th St. I'm told that our friend Ernestidio Rodriguez has been invited back to play again this year (unfortunately I won't be able to join him this time) - though I don't know if this is going forward as he doesn't appear on the current program! If any of you go, let me know.
http://www.ireallyshouldbewriting.com/accordionfestival/

Have fun and stay tuned!

Birthday links

2007-06-13T19:08:00.000-04:00

Hey guys, it’s my birthday today!
My gift to you are some links for listening to típico.

LIVE STREAMING RADIO:
La Super Regional
http://www.superregional.com/

Radio Típico
http://www.radiotipico.com/

GROUPS
Fulanito web site – first group to combine perico ripiao & hip hop
http://www.fulanito.com/

Many groups have MySpace pages where you can hear some of their music. Here are a few.
Rafaelito Roman http://profile.myspace.com/104690413
Raul Roman http://profile.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=user.viewprofile&friendid=105889957
El Ciego de Nagua http://www.myspace.com/elciegodenagua
Cristian Guira http://www.myspace.com/cristianlaguira
Geniswing http://www.myspace.com/geniswing
El Prodigio http://www.myspace.com/elprodigioylasuperbanda
Nicol Peña http://www.myspace.com/nicolpea
Geovanny Polanco http://www.myspace.com/geovannypolanco

There are many more, but it’s pretty easy to find them under the “friends” section of these guys.

MISC.
Merengue & Bachata – República Dominicana(site with sound clips of major musicians in these genres) http://home-3.tiscali.nl/~pjetax/

Batey Libertad church

2007-06-09T17:33:00.000-04:00

Hi folks-

so if you know me you know I'm not much of a churchgoer, but today I'm posting on behalf of a church. My friend Yanlico has asked for help for some badly needed repairs and upgrades to the church at Batey Libertad near Santiago. If you've been reading my blog for a while you know that the bateyes are settlements for agricultural workers in the Dominican Republic, mostly of Haitian descent, and they are the poorest parts of the country. Batey Libertad has no water supply and very few services of any kind, so the church serves to provide comfort, a community center and suchlike to many on the batey.

If any of you are involved in a church or charity group and would like to help out the Iglesia Cristiana Reformada of Batey Libertad, either through donations or a sort of adopt-a-church set up, please contact me. You would find yourselves some lifelong friends in the DR!

Their immediate needs are:
2 ceiling fans and 4 wall-mounted fans (it's realllllly hot there!)
50 plastic chairs
1 desk/table
2 microphones
contruction of a cement patio in front of church

Here are some pictures Yanlico sent of the church, churchgoers, services and classes.

fixed it!

2007-06-07T02:16:00.000-04:00

Who are you, Cerveza in Tucson? Thanks for spotting the broken link. It is now fixed and you can enjoy the genius that is El Prodigio.

Tipico Videos

2007-06-01T15:04:00.000-04:00

I realize I need to have more sound and video available to people, especially since many of you have probably not had the opportunity to hear live merengue tipico. I put some examples up last summer but it was very time consuming, so instead, I thought of posting some annotated links this time around. When I first went up with my tipico website, merengue-ripiao.com, in 2001, there was virtually nothing else available on the web about the music. Well, things have changed a lot since then. Now many tipico groups have websites, and with the advent of MySpace and YouTube the tipico world has gotten ever more wired. So here's the first part in a series of links that will help you get to know tipico virtually. I'm starting with video and then I'll move on to sound and other websites.

A great performance by Arsenio de la Rosa, circa 1980 I’d guess from the hairstyles.
It’s his own composition about Columbus coming to the Americas, complete with paseo.
http://youtube.com/watch?v=85ET7btQut8

And his brother King de la Rosa, same period, playing “La Agarradera.” He’s playing a three-row accordion just to be different. There’s Chinito on güira and Jose el Calvo on sax with a really nice solo. And boy, people were really enthused about video effects back then.
http://youtube.com/watch?v=Zv8FAw-v7mM

Here’s King today, playing sans sax so you can really hear the accordion:
http://youtube.com/watch?v=7kP936TvdK4

Another classic: El Ciego de Nagua playing “El Cuento Comparon” – a song I myself played on my TV debut – accompanied by singer Vinicio Lopez and Jose el Calvo on sax.
http://youtube.com/watch?v=KRc-H0lyPV4

Rafaelito Roman (my teacher) playing with his two sons, Raul and Nixon
http://youtube.com/watch?v=Ql_0emJ7BzQ

Raul Roman y La Nueva Selección Tipica. This is Raul’s own group. Obviously the accordion is awesome. The saxophonist, Quiquito, is also really good. (He joined us on the recording we just did for Smithsonian Folkways with La India Canela, as did the group's conguero, Veneno.)
http://youtube.com/watch?v=Kl8cKsZKDos

Maria Diaz back in the day. Watch out for those crazy video effects.
http://youtube.com/watch?v=_wJGIpUvjTY

Fefita la Grande – the Celia Cruz of the Dominican Republic! She has a very unique style to say the least.
http://youtube.com/watch?v=gTmZa-AHwMY

Too bad this clip’s so short – here you can really see why El Prodigio is one of the best and most respected accordionists today. Also he’s with his old group from a few years back, all of whom are with Kerubanda today, including Cristian güira and Tormenta Tambora.
http://youtube.com/watch?v=hgSmQ_rpFco

Here’s el Prodigio with his new group playing the Tatico classic, “Cualquiera llora” (aka Tatico llorando)
http://youtube.com/watch?v=5RxgGI00_9g

Geovanny Polanco’s “Historia de un gran amor” is a pretty song and a good example of modern style típico.
http://youtube.com/watch?v=FQw-Ne25SRc

Geniswing is a new group composed entirely of New York-born Dominican kids. The accordionist, Geno, is 21 and the oldest in the group – their tamborero is like 15?! Amazing. Just a couple of months ago they recorded and released their first single in the DR. In April it was playing a lot on the radio. Here they play Las 7 Pasadas in a party in someone’s house. This is one of the only instrumental merengues.
http://youtube.com/watch?v=hk7PkSWVjik
And here one with singing: http://youtube.com/watch?v=o0Qt6WLiQB8

And here’s merengue típico in its original form – a trio, played in the campo. The little boy dancing is the funniest.http://youtube.com/watch?v=Ahc9QBSxB08

Another one, in Cotui, this time with marimba – although you can’t really hear it. http://youtube.com/watch?v=UE2d5-Bum7Y

And now some percussion!
Ray “Chinito” Diaz was one of the early innovators on percusión in New York. He played with King de la Rosa back in the late 70s-early 80s and developed very syncopated güira rhythms based on his experience scratching records in early hip-hop. Later he played with great NY orquestas like Milly, Jocelyn, y los Vecinos and became a producer, producing Lidia de la Rosa’s records among others. Here he takes a tambora solo.
http://youtube.com/watch?v=shNlAwkCuIY

La Kerubanda is one of the hottest groups in the DR now. The accordionist isn’t anything to write home about, but the band is great, particularly the brothers on güira and tambora (Cristian and La Tormenta). Here they play “Un ser que me persigue” (aka “El hombre mas guapo), whose lyrics are in the form of a décima and were originally a son.
http://youtube.com/watch?v=bBwINKGPe8c

La Tormenta percusión solo (sound not very good, but amazing to watch)
http://youtube.com/watch?v=e-bv7FlyR10

Conga solo from Juanchu – same band.
http://youtube.com/watch?v=YRuyYuEHFeY

This is kina of nice, a conguero demonstrates basic rhythms used to play merengue tipico.
http://youtube.com/watch?v=smobACy5U_g

New to the blog?

2007-05-24T15:34:00.000-04:00

So I was thinking, some of you may be new readers, and if you are, you may have no idea about what the deal is with my blog. This should bring you up to speed.

I'm an ethnomusicologist working in Latin American music and dance. I have been researching Dominican merengue tipico for six years and am now in the midst of the horrific process of writing up that research in the form of a dissertation. That, and procrastinating a lot by taking on other projects and drinking lots of beer.

Merengue tipico is the traditional kind of merengue from the northern Cibao region of the Dominican Republic. It is very different from the kind of big band/pop merengue you may have heard on the radio in instrumentation, rhythm, and repertoire. It's based around the accordion and uses several different rhythms, some highly syncopated, unlike the monorhythmic pop merengue, and is an oral tradition that incorporates improvisation, unlike orquesta merengue, which relies on written arrangements. If you want to know more about merengue tipico, you should be able to find most of what you'd need on my web site: http://merengue-ripiao.com
If you want the quick version of tipico and orquesta history, read what I wrote for this small record label: http://www.iasorecords.com/merengue.cfm

I started the blog when I moved to the Dominican Republic in 2005 as a way to document my research and other activities and get out of writing icky field notes. If you look back over the course of the blog you will see pictures and stories about merengue tipico in different contexts: in ranchos and car washes in the city of Santiago, in parties in people's houses, etc. You'll also hear about how I learned to play it on accordion and the various places I've performed.

While in the DR I got involved in several other projects as well. Being the only person yet granted access to the complete papers of Fradique Lizardo, the late Dominican folklorist, I got interested in his research on Dominican folk dance and how he started the Ballet Folklorico Dominicano, so I observed current ballet folklorico groups in different parts of the country and talked to dancers.

I also got interested in carnival - how could you not? - and joined a carnival group called Los Confraternos in Pueblo Nuevo, a Santiago barrio. I dressed up as a lechon, Santiago's traditional carnival character, with them and went through the grueling parades every Sunday through carnival season in both 2006 and 2007. If you are interested in seeing pictures of carnival, visit my posts from February of both years, as well as late January and early March (carnival lasts a long time in the DR). This year I also tried to visit other carnivals for comparative purposes, so you can also see pictures from La Vega and Cotui in February-March 2007.

My other research site is New York City, where there is a very active tipico scene, particularly in Brooklyn. Since the bulk of my NY research was done between 2001 and 2004, you won't see much of it here, but I have paid some return visits. You'll find chunks about NY tipico from June-July and October 2007, and at other random points.

When I'm not in the DR, I'm usually in Tucson, AZ, or traveling about randomly. Since tipico doesn't make much of an appearance outside of the DR and New York, when I'm away I usually post stuff random stuff from my tipico files or other observations about Dominican culture. I try to post at least once a week. Please subscribe to the feed if you want to be sure not to miss anything!

That's the blog in a nutshell. If you have any suggestions for accordion, tipico, or Dominican-themed topics you'd like me to write about, please post them here!

I've been tagged, damn it!

2007-05-24T01:03:00.000-04:00

My sister (http://mamaoknits.blogspot.com/) tagged me, so now I gotta do this.

Mi hermana me lo pegó, así que ahora tengo que hacerlo yo.

The rules: Each person tagged gives 7 random facts about themselves. Those who are tagged need to write on their own blog those 7 facts as well as the rules of the game. You need to tag seven other people and list their names on your blog. Then you leave those you plan on tagging a note in their comments so they know that they have been tagged and to read your blog.

Las reglas: Es como un juego de pilla-pilla. Cada persona a quien tú se lo pegues (a quien tú pilles) tiene que dar 7 datos al azar sobre si mismo. Los a quienes se le pegaron tienen que poner los 7 datos en sus blogs junto con las reglas del juego. Tienes que pegárselo a 7 personas más y poner sus nombres en su blog. Después, dejarás un comentario en los blogs de ellos para que sepan que se lo han pegado y que tienen que leer el blog tuyo.

Those I'm Tagging: (Los a quienes se lo estoy pegando:)

Tes, living on the crispy edges of grad school: http://thebookimnotreading.blogspot.com/

Linda, a friend to turtles: http://truffles-turtles-tunes.blogspot.com/

Alex, the friendly Francophone: http://enkerli.blogspot.com/

Rossy aka PayolaMusic, una amiga en Santo Domingo: http://www.payolamusic.blogspot.com/

Accordion Guy, who oddly enough, I've never met and know nothing about, although we almost share a name: http://www.joeydevilla.com/

Let's Polka! Another accordion-happy blog made by strangers (but they look friendly): http://www.letspolka.com/

Dial "M" for Musicology. They are musicologists, I am ethnomusicologist, but they say they "want to be friends with everyone." Is it true??? http://musicology.typepad.com/

7 random facts:

I hate revealing all my secrets, but here they are.

1) At age 15 I was the host of a televised variety show on cable access titled "Syd's Show" because some friends of mine told me, "you should be on TV," and proceeded to create the show. It had a different band on every week, a bizarre set of guests, and a theme song whose lyrics went, "Syd's Show, Syd's Show. If it weren't for Syd, I don't know what I'd do - how about you?" I briefly had a co-host who laughed heartily at my jokes and clapped for everything else. Damn! I sure could use a co-host now.

2) I was a semi-professional bellydancer for five years. I can balance a sword on my head, or a tray with candles - take your pick.

3) I was a salsa dance performer and teacher in New York, a member of Razz M'Tazz mambo company. I performed once at the Congreso Mundial de la Salsa in Puerto Rico but soon thereafter I quit because I went back to school.

4) Two knee surgeries have effectively ended my dancing career - hence all the accordion playing, writing, and blogging.

5) I'm very competitive when it comes to Boggle or Blokus, but not much else.

6) My favorite vegetable from an aesthetic standpoint is the eggplant.

7) My first publication was a drawing of a neuron in the Journal of Comparative Neurology. I always thought I would go into science. And now look at me! Go figure!

a prophet in my own land? not quite, but...

2007-05-24T00:51:00.000-04:00

Hey blog pals,
just so's you know, yours truly appeared in the local weekly this week in Tucson, talking about merengue tipico, carnival, and other random things.
http://www.tucsonweekly.com/gbase/Currents/Content?oid=oid:96251
The reporter wanted me to have a name for my accordion, but I don't (took me a month to think of one for my CAT, for pete's sake), so I offered to buy a beer for the person with the best suggestion. Only problem is, you will have to come to Tucson to get that beer from me.
S.

Congos de Villa Mella

2007-05-16T18:49:00.000-04:00

5/16/07
Well, we’re coming right up on Pentecost. I confess that I don’t actually know what Pentecost is, not having a religious bone in my body, but in the DR it is celebrated as the Fiesta del Espíritu Santo (Feast of the Holy Spirit). That is the main time of year in which the Cofradía de los Congos del Espíritu Santo gets together to play a very unique type of music in Villa Mella, Dominican Republic, just north of the capital. So I figure this is a good time to put up some info on the Congos de Villa Mella. It is I think the only major type of Dominican traditional music that I haven’t yet been able to experience in person since I’m usually not in the country in the months of May and June, but I hope to rectify the situation before long.

The Congos are a type of drum ensemble music only played in this one part of the country. Both instruments and repertoire are different from those of the more widely-distributed palos. In fact, the congos are so unique that in 2001 UNESCO declared the Cofradía de Congos del Espíritu Santo de Villa Mella one of its 19 “master works of oral and intangible heritage of humanity” worldwide. UNESCO is currently engaged in a research and preservation project with the Congos.

In Carlos Hernández Soto’s book titled Kalungah Eh! Los Congos de Villa Mella, he tells us that cofradías are voluntary associations that arose in Spain as to provide mutual help among the poor. Because blacks were excluded from white associations, they began to form their own cofradías in Seville during the 14th century. From there, the organizations came to Latin America and in the DR they still exist in San Juan de la Maguana, Cotuí, and Villa Mella. “Congos,” he goes on to tell us, was a term applied to blacks in general in the colonial Dominican Republic, since many African slaves in the DR came from the Congo River area. Today, the word refers to the music played by people associated with the Cofradía or Hermandad (brotherhood), who are still very connected to their African roots. It seems to have similarities to ritual music associated with groups of Congo origin in Cuba and Brazil.

The music of the congos is principally played for the days of Espíritu Santo, la Virgen del Rosario, and the funerals of cofradía members, but the congos are so important that now even non-member residents ask for the music to be played upon their deaths. They also play for cultural activities and fiestas patronales, but death rites are the most important use for the music of the congos. Unlike in Cuba’s African brotherhoods and secret socities, both men and women are allowed and can hold offices in the cofradía. Women are not prohibited from playing the ritual drums. The Espíritu Santo is the patron saint of the area and Hernández Soto suggests that the saint is syncretised with Kalunga, god of the dead in the Congo-Angola region.

Congueros, members of the cofradía, say that their instruments were brought directly to Villa Mella by the Espíritu Santo in the form of a man. The ensemble consists of two double-headed drums, the congo or palo mayor of about 3 feet long and the conguito or palo menor of about 12 inches. These are combined with a couple of idiophones: maracas and the canoíta (little canoe), a hollowed-out wood block with a handle that’s beat with a stick.

Congueros say they have 21 toques (pieces), since this is a sacred number, but there are actually more than that. All are sung in call-and-response fashion. The song “Palo Mayor” refers literally to the lead drum and figuratively to the group’s principle ancestor, as ancestors are generally called “tronco mayor” (main trunk) or “cabeza mayor” (main head) and children are known as “ramazones” (branches). Trees seem to be very meaningful in general to congueros, as a recent article reported that the Hermandad and an agronomist were protesting the cutting down of five trees in the park in Villa Mella that stood over the spot in which they have always played. The agronomist argued the trees, too, were part of the “patrimony of humanity.” The “king” of the hermandad, 96-year-old Pio Brazoban, called them the “soul of the fiestas.”

Hernández Soto describes the Fiesta del Espíritu Santo as follows. During the nine days before Pentecost, each part of Villa Mella elects kings and queens who all meet at the parish church on the eve of the feast. Official greetings are exchanged, and congregants enter singing “Ya llegó, ya llegó” accompanied by percussion instruments (panderos, balsie, mongo, and guiro). To the left of the entrance, the Cofradía plays and one couple at a time dances, then people pray and sing novenas. Theater and poetry may also be enacted by the youth. During these activities, the cofradía exits to the park, where they set up opposite the house of the current king of the cofradía. They take turns singing and entering the house to eat. In another part of the park, people sing and dance pri-prí (local accordion music) until morning. On the next day, Sunday, a couple dances a solemn congo piece in front of the alter during the offertory, to the accompaniment of the church choir. After mass, a procession tours the town with the image of the dove while singing pieces like “Ya llegó” and “Quítame lo malo,” and the cofradía again plays, continuing on rotation for the rest of the day.

Different music is used during funerary rites, Hernández Soto explains. For funerals of a cofradía member, the three main Congo pieces (Palo Mayor, Camino Real, and Kalunga) are played during the wake, as the body is carried to the cemetery, and again upon arrival at the grave. Kalunga is always the last piece, as it asks Kalunga to accompany the deceased on his/her journey. Thus, in the community to say “Le cantaron Kalunga” (they sung Kalunga for him/her) means “s/he died.” The cofradía meets to play again on the ninth day in front of an altar on top of which sits a doll representing the dead person and perhaps the god Kalunga as well. No dancing takes place at these rituals until they meet again to play on the Cabo de Ano, the one-year anniversary, at which all dance except the family. At the Banko ceremony, which ideally takes place on the seven-year anniversary, everyone may finally dance because the dead person has become an ancestor and no longer inhabits the home. The dead person often “mounts” a family member and dances too. At the Banko the papers from the altar are burned and the ritual enramada shelter is swept and cleaned. After this, the cofradía enters the room next to where the mourning women are secluded and play the “toques de viuda” (widow’s pieces) to officially take the family out of mourning.

What connection there between the congos and merengue típico, my usual topic? Probably not much, except perhaps in vocabulary. For instance, there is a merengue in call-and-response form called “Cumandé.” I asked several típico musicians, including my teacher, what they thought this word means and they didn’t know. (My teacher said he thought it was a Haitian word.) But according to Hernández Soto the word “kumande” appears in the song “Ya cantan lo gallo” (the roosters are already singing) and means “there is no death” in the Fon language. Since call and response is not the usual form for merengue songs, those songs (like Cumandé) that have that feature could be borrowings from other Dominican folk traditions. I’ll be very interested to see pri-prí, the accordion music from Villa Mella, to see how it is similar or different from the music I know.

FURTHER READING:
Hernández Soto, Carlos. 2004. Kalungah Eh! Los Congos de Villa Mella. Santo Domingo: Editorial Letra Grafica.
Hernández Soto, Carlos and Edis Sanchez. 1997. “Los Congos de Villa Mella, Republica Dominicana.” Latin American Music Review / Revista de Música Latinoamericana, (18)2:297-316

LINKS:
photos: http://www.melassa.org/gallerycomunidad.htm
music download: http://www.emusic.com/album/11007/11007078.html?fref=150051
UNESCO: http://www.unesco.org/culture/intangible-heritage/masterpiece.php?id=6&lg=es
documentary for purchase: http://www.melassa.org/OrderForm.html
palos, salve, & congos tracks: http://www.dominicana.com.do/musica/musicaraiz.htm
article on Palos by Martha Ellen Davis, with comparison to congos: http://svr1.cg971.fr/lameca/dossiers/ethnomusicologie/pages/davis2_eng_2003.htm
article on the trees: http://www.arquiteca.com/modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=47&mode=&order=0&thold=0

Adventures in Ethnomusicology and Espionage

2007-05-09T14:24:00.001-04:00

Some of you readers know that by trade I’m an ethnomusicologist, some of you don’t. Well, now if you didn’t, you do, and the reason I’m bringing it up is that (a) that’s what this blog is about and (b) I just watched this old Hitchcock film in which, I was surprised to discover, the hero is an ethnomusicologist, too. The movie is The Lady Vanishes from 1938. If you’ve seen Flightplan you have the basic idea, except that here the heroine is traveling on a train, not a plane, and the person who disappears is a kindly old woman she’s just met, not her daughter. Everyone denies the old woman was ever there, causing great consternation, but all is made clear at the end, and it has to do with the fact that Europe was about to enter WWII. I highly recommend the movie, especially if you too are an ethnomusicologist.

Anyway, the ethnomusicologist comes on the scene in the beginning as the heroine is trying to get a good night’s sleep in a quaint little inn somewhere in continental Europe (probably Germany, though we’re never told for sure).

A great stomping noise echoes throughout the hotel, rattling the light fixtures in the room below. The young woman staying there calls the front desk, demanding the manager put a stop to it so that she can get some sleep. Because she is one of the wealthier guests, the manager sees to it immediately.

When he opens the door to the room of the guilty party upstairs, he finds a strange scene. A young, mustachioed Englishman lies on a couch playing a very Central European-sounding melody on his clarinet as three picturesquely clothed peasants dance about in what appears to be some poor imitation of the Hungarian csardas. When he stops, they strike a pose, he makes a few notes on a pad, and then they all start up again. The manager insists that they desist.

“Will you kindly stop? They are all complaining in the hotel, you make too much noise!” he explains.

“Too much what?” the guest demands.

“Too much noise,” the manager replies in embarrassment.

“You dare to call it a noise?! The ancient music with which your peasant ancestors celebrated every wedding for countless generations, the dance they danced when your father married your mother, always supposing you were born in wedlock, which I doubt. I take it you are the manager?”

“Sure I am the manager of this-“

“Yes, unfortunately I am accustomed to squalor. Tell me who is complaining.”

“This young English lady underneath.”

“Well, you tell the young English lady underneath that I am putting on record for the benefit of mankind one of the last folk dances of central Europe, and furthermore she does not own this hotel!” he shoos the manager from his room with a flourish of his clarinet. A short while later, however, she succeeds in getting him thrown from his room with a well-placed bribe.

She should have known that he can’t be gotten rid of that easily: this man appears to be everywhere and know everyone. Later, on the train out, the woman encounters him on the coach class car, watching different peasants dance, this time to the music of violins. He reveals that he is writing a book on European folk dances, which he expects to finish in about four years. And when together they go about enquiring about the missing woman who is the subject of the film, and are introduced to some Italians, he exclaims, “Oh yes, I met her husband. He presented prizes at the folk dance festival. Minister of Propaganda,” he explains in an aside to his companion.

Naturally enough, the ethnomusicologist ends up saving the day. You could have seen that coming, no?

Basically, I wanted to bring up this movie because it is so much like my blog. Except that instead of clarinet, it’s accordion; instead of Germany, it’s the Dominican Republic; instead of a stomping pseudo-csardas it’s merengue; instead of a quaint Alpine inn clothed in snow, it’s a Santiago apartment under the boiling sun; instead of Ministers of Propaganda, it’s politicians, secretaries of tourism, and the like (although the difference there may be more of degree); instead of four years, I have one to finish what I’m writing; and instead of a train, it’s the Millenium Falcon. And of course, there is only a heroine in this story and no hero. But otherwise, the story is virtually indistinguishable. I’m hoping I too will be able to save a trainload of innocent passengers from the evil machinations of fascist spies at the end, although I could probably do without the shootout.

Last Game

2007-04-30T16:14:00.005-04:00

Last Game
Originally uploaded by salsasydney2000.

The traditional last game of dominoes before I left the DR. Here's El Mambi, Felo, Laura, Chiqui, and Robinson. Laura and I won two out of three!

Juan

2007-04-30T16:14:00.003-04:00

Juan
Originally uploaded by salsasydney2000.

Juan Cruz lays down some vocal tracks

Alfonso

2007-04-30T16:14:00.001-04:00

Alfonso
Originally uploaded by salsasydney2000.

Fonso bajo doing his thing in the recording studio

El Americano

2007-04-30T16:13:00.003-04:00

El Americano
Originally uploaded by salsasydney2000.

the tambora player takes a rest. bet you can guess why he's called El Americano

Veneno

2007-04-30T16:13:00.001-04:00

Veneno
Originally uploaded by salsasydney2000.

Veneno, the conga player, looks happy to be in the studio - even in this sweltering isolation booth.

working it out

2007-04-30T16:12:00.005-04:00

working it out
Originally uploaded by salsasydney2000.

La India Canela and Quiquito saxophone work out a mambo.

Raul & La India

2007-04-30T16:12:00.003-04:00

Raul & La India
Originally uploaded by salsasydney2000.

A moment of levity in the midst of a very long day in the recording studio with Raul Roman and La India Canela

Bocachula

2007-04-30T16:12:00.001-04:00

Bocachula
Originally uploaded by salsasydney2000.

Boca chula tambora gives his opinion of the recording session

Guira on fire!

2007-04-30T16:11:00.001-04:00

Guira on fire!
Originally uploaded by salsasydney2000.

This photo of Ramoncito Guira in the recording studio didn't come out too well but I like how his guira looks like it's on fire.

The Last Week

2007-04-24T18:55:00.001-04:00

4/22
There was no time to recover from the road trip, though. On Monday I had to hit the ground running in order to be ready for the week’s activities, which would start that afternoon with the #$&*% press conference. Let’s not talk too much about it. At least it was over fairly quickly, and at the end there was beer. The nice part was I got to see some friends I hadn’t seen in a while: Gaspar Rodriguez, the host of TV show Arriba el Merengue, and El Papillon, a típico radio deejay. Afterwards, La India invited us all out for a typical Dominican dinner at Rancho Chito, one of the only places in town to get Dominican food for dinner (Dominicans don’t usually eat out, or really eat anything much for dinner), where owner Luis had prepared a whole buffet for us. He also shared with us his technique for finding out a woman’s true age: guess an age you’re sure is too old for her, and in indignation she will say, “What do you mean?!” and reveal the real number just to show you. He claims it works like a charm.

That was the last time I’d get to relax and enjoy food for a while, though. We hit the ground running in the studio the next morning at 10:00 and pretty much didn’t quit until 11 PM Thursday. It was a marathon recording session, since the Smithsonian folks could only stay three days and we had 13 tracks to get down. We did it, but only just. It was done by recording all the instruments live, then going back and cleaning up any problem parts instrument by instrument, and finally adding the vocal tracks. As we broke only once a day, for lunch, it was quite tiring for all involved.

Juan, the vocalist, got particularly tired of the whole business when, after recording an entire vocal track, La India came back in and told him he wasn’t supposed to be singing that one at all. He started griping loudly and long about all the “tiempo perdido,” lost time. A little later, as Juan sat with head in hands, Ramoncito, the güira player, came out of the booth and picked up an industrial-strength flashlight that was laying around the studio. He turned it on and started shining its powerful beam all around the studio, paying particular attention to all the corners and hidden nooks and crannies. “What in the world are you doing?” the other musicians asked. “Looking for all the lost time! Where is it? Where has it gone?” This got even Juan laughing. Later he was laughing still harder when Ramoncito started imitating the vocal stylings of Julian, an old-school accordionist who apparently has a particularly bad break in his vocal range. Over and over, Ramoncito tunelessly skipped from high to low, and Juan fell on the floor and was actually holding his sides from laughing so hard.

The other moments of mirth came, unfortunately, at our sound engineer’s expense. Trying to learn a new system on the fly (ProTools was not his accustomed home), he was taking longer than the musicians were used to or had hoped. Bocachula, our wacky tamborero, started calling for “Duran! Duran!” over his mic, confusing me thoroughly, as there had been an engineer called Duran there in the beginning but he had left long ago. As I insisted, “Duran isn’t HERE!!” the musicians were all collapsing in hilarity. As I soon realized, this was Bocachula’s way of saying the guy was taking too long: durando.

One completely non-funny moment was experienced on the first day, however, and one that took the wind out of all of our sails – particularly mine – for some time. After recording four tracks a cuarteto with Bocachula on the first day, we broke for lunch feeling quite satisfied. They sounded great, and the fourth had sounded particularly awesome – we needed only one take and it just clicked into place. Beautiful. Bocachula was anxious to leave so we paid him and he took off, as for the other tracks we’d be using a different tamborero, one better able to play slow and controlled (Bocachula is fantastic, probably my favorite, but is known for always pushing the limits of speed). Shortly thereafter, we discovered that the entire last track had somehow been erased from the computer, leaving no trace. Bocachula had completely disappeared, and we were unable to contact him for the rest of the day, and for the next two days (he appeared to have gone to the beach and left his phone with some unknown woman). We had no choice but to redo the track with different personnel at the last minute on the last day. Bummer.

In the end, though, we did get it done. All tracks recorded, all contracts signed (even by those who were illiterate), all people filmed (they were making a documentary at the same time), all our names included in some song or another (in accordance with típico homenaje tradition), all lost time found – but not all lost sleep. And again, there was no time for me to recover from this tiring time, as the very next day the big, three-day, biannual conference (Musica, Identidad, y Cultura en el Caribe) would begin at the Centro Leon.

It was good to see friends, many of whom I hadn’t seen since the last installment of the Congreso, but my enthusiasm was somewhat tempered by sleep deprivation. That and the embarrassment of seeing and listening myself on the big screen right at the start of the event. I’ve never particularly liked to be in front of the camera, but I’d agreed to appear as the Voice of Academia in a documentary on son in Santiago as a favor to the friends who were making it. As thanks, I had to see my giant face sans makeup plastered up there when they showed the film at the opening ceremony, and again at a huge concert a few days later which was televised all over the country. Zoiks!

More fun than that were the panels I attended. I particularly enjoyed one on changui, a music from eastern Cuba that has much in common with merengue típico, and two that dealt with Dominican son dancing complete with demonstrations. But even more fun than those was taking friends to my final dinner of 2007 at the continent’s greatest Italian restaurant. And on a similar level of fun was the second night’s concert (minus my documentary appearance there), where Chucho Valdes, one of my favorite pianists, did an amazingly salsariffic solo.

There was no time to catch up on sleep, what with all that fun, which put me in a bit of a state on the day I was to give my paper. It was scheduled for 9:30, not a good time for me, and I had to get up even earlier anyway in order to FedEx some contracts to the Smithsonian. I was standing in front of the FedEx office at the exact moment it was to open, 8:30, when I discovered that it was closed on Saturdays. Frantically, I ran down the street to the Mailboxes, Etc, which thankfully was open, sent the package off, and ran away as quick as possible – it was now almost 9 and I hadn’t eaten, had coffee, or been able to set up the technical side of my presentation.

And I wasn’t going to be able to now, either. Turned out I’d locked my keys in my car. Imagine the mirth of the FedEx guy! Imagine the consternation of Sydney! Another guy in Mailboxes offered to call a locksmith, and did so, but the locksmith said he would be there in “twenty minutes” (translate: forty-ish minutes in Dominican), not soon enough. I was so flummoxed that a third guy who was just standing around offered to break into my car using some wire, and I agreed to this plan. While he worked on that, I bought some coffee and a cheese sandwich at the sidewalk stand across the street and ran around a bit as bees chased me and my beverage. By the time that was done, so was he, and I was on my way again. Or almost on my way again – I also realized I’d left my phone at home and had to run back and get it, since I would definitely need it (both for communication and timing purposes) in the long day ahead.

It was not my best morning. My paper was OK though, and after that I was able to relax a bit more. Well, after that and after my tenure as panel moderator afterwards.

The highlight of Sunday was definitely the performers’ panel, where Chucho Valdes, tres player Pancho Amat, and salsero Johnny Pacheco were able to tell their own stories and answer questions. Pacheco was the star of the conference, since he was given some long-deserved recognition by the Centro Leon and the Dominican government for his instrumental role in the creation of salsa music in the 1960s. Though nearing the status of ancient, he was still both hilarious and insightful in his comments. For me, the best part was when he said that he was originally an accordionist, playing merengue típico here in Santiago – a revelation I don’t think he’d ever made before –and that perhaps some of his salsa ideas came from there. The lowlight of Sunday was the announcement of the next conference’s theme – bolero. Blah. Having little to no interest in slow, romantic music, I’m unlikely to give a paper at that event.

The conference finished with a patio performance by Son Santiaguero, and after that, I had a quick errand to do. It was my last opportunity to say goodbye to Tonito of my carnival group, and when I went by I discovered it was his son’s birthday, and they were in the middle of a party. That was cute, but I couldn’t stay as I was booked to take some friends for a less official but more típico conference closing event, by going to see Raul Roman at Andy Ranch and then Francisco Ulloa at Rancho Merengue. In between, we also had a típico style dinner from the cafeteria at Parada La Tinaja. And John Taveras, the owner and originator of RM, told me he is putting the business up for sale so he can go back to Pennsylvania. He asked me to put it on the web, so I’m telling you, loyal blog readers, first. If you have any money you’d like to invest, consider investing it in Santiago’s oldest and most prestigious rancho típico, thereby helping to keep the music alive! Write for further details.

So the recording was over at last, and the conference as well. After that I had only two days left, and my last days in the DR were, as usual, a whirl of activity as I tried to tie up loose ends and get everything arranged for my time away. As usual, whenever someone asks how long it will be until my next trip and I tell them eight months, they exclaim, “Why so long?!” They can’t believe I actually have a life, family, and friends somewhere else, and sometimes it’s hard even for me to believe, so involved am I in life here. In fact, I will be happy to get home to Arizona and see everyone there, but the transitions are always hard.

At any rate, there is little worth writing about in this section - who really wants to hear about picking up things, dropping off things, packing things, and paying for things? One noteworthy occurrence was a major ant invasion discovered when cleaning things out. I waged my usual war on them but victory was incomplete. I found out later they had invaded my purse as well – after they’d bit me about ten times on the arms, causing incredibly itchy, swollen lumps all over that made it hard to sleep. After a sleepless week, it was the last thing I needed, but perhaps all the deprivation would help me be able to sleep on the plane, I reasoned. I also received going-away gifts from three friends: earrings from Claudia, a scarf from Zoraya, and a bottle of Brugal from Tonito.

On Monday, I paid my last visit to Rancho Merengue, going to see Rafaelito play for one last time. My last evening was spent in the best way possible, in what is now becoming the traditional final farewell game of dominoes. As we’d done last year, the Taveras-Peralta clan came over with their dominoes, this time accompanied by saxophonist El Mambi, and we played three rounds over beer. Laura and I won two out of three. Mujeres al poder! Mujeres al poder!

Coming back is always bittersweet. I was looking forward to seeing my family, eating Mexican food, and just generally being at home. I was also ready to be done with running around for a while and get back into the mode of sitting around and writing. But I’ll also miss my friends, as well as the music, in Santiago. Actually, it looks like the missing people is going to be a constant theme – when I’m there I miss the people here, when here, I miss those over there – but hey, having people (and music) worth missing makes life worth living, doesn’t it?

FYI: My book is out!

2007-04-24T00:21:00.000-04:00

OK, it's not about tipico (that one is still in progress), but still, I wrote it, it's out, and maybe you should buy it! The official release date is May 17 but it's in the warehouse already. Here is its page. Of course, you can also buy it on Amazon, etc...

http://www.uapress.arizona.edu/BOOKS/bid1801.htm

Judas

2007-04-24T00:13:00.001-04:00

Judas
Originally uploaded by salsasydney2000.

This giant Judas figure gets paraded through the town of Navarrete on Easter Sunday, then burned.

gagá

2007-04-24T00:12:00.003-04:00

gagá
Originally uploaded by salsasydney2000.

I caught this small gagá group and dancer on the highway as they went from Batey Libertad to Maizal.

Hotel Haiti

2007-04-24T00:12:00.001-04:00

Hotel Haiti
Originally uploaded by salsasydney2000.

Too spooky to stay here!

Haitian house

2007-04-24T00:11:00.005-04:00

Haitian house
Originally uploaded by salsasydney2000.

I like the cactus fence.

Baron's house?

2007-04-24T00:11:00.003-04:00

Baron's house?
Originally uploaded by salsasydney2000.

This interesting construction was in the middle of the Ouanaminthe cemetery. One of my friends said it must be where the Baron del Cementerio dwells.

Ste Philomise

2007-04-24T00:11:00.001-04:00

Ste Philomise
Originally uploaded by salsasydney2000.

This bus was probbly the most beautiful sight we saw in Ouanaminthe, Haiti.

Customs office

2007-04-24T00:10:00.003-04:00

Customs office
Originally uploaded by salsasydney2000.

on the Haitian side.

No Man's Land

2007-04-24T00:10:00.001-04:00

No Man's Land
Originally uploaded by salsasydney2000.

Three Haitians walk in the empty border zone between Ouanaminthe and Dajabon.

Travels with beans, part 2

2007-04-22T21:04:00.001-04:00

4-21

My first task of this Easter Sunday was to head over to the Centro de la Cultura, an unmarked yellow house, for a demonstration of the newly formed children’s típico class. Laura came with me, and we found the children anxiously awaiting our arrival in the backyard. It was a complete group of accordion, tambora, güira, and marimba, all played by children under 12 (the marimbero appeared to be more in the neighborhood of 7). They did quite a respectable job on three merengues, considering the accordionist had been playing for all of four months. This was one of the results of Dajabon’s win in the city pavilion competition at last year’s Feria Regional del Libro, which I had attended on my last trip. With the prize money Chio purchased instruments and got this new program going – the first such class I’ve ever seen or heard of.

Chio also showed us quickly around the other new developments, which included a large room used for sleepovers and movie showings, the recently purchased other side of this duplex house. We couldn’t stay much longer, though, if we wanted to carry out our plan to get to Haiti. Laura’s brother, a military man, thought he could get us across with no problems, but the border crossing would close for lunch at 12:00 sharp and then there’d be no crossing back. When we met him at Laura’s mom’s house it was already nearing 10:00 so we had to get a move on.

Approaching the border by Falcon, we parked it at the customs house and passed through its arched gateway, pausing to greet several soldiers on the way, all of whom assured us we could go on through the big metal gate in the center of the bridge over the Rio Masacre that here marked the border. Well sure, the Dominicans let us through, along with all the Haitian vendors carrying heaps of clothing and carts full of other mysteries to sell. But the Haitian border officer wasn’t such a pushover. He didn’t mind the Dominican members of our party going through, namely Felo, Yary, Robinson, and our military escort, but I was another matter. First our guide tried evasionary tactics: he insisted that I was, in fact, Dominican. The guy didn’t buy it and wanted to see ID. Unable to produce this, he then said that I could go through if I showed a passport and paid 600 pesos. Luckily, I did (unusually) happen to have my passport with me, but the price seemed a little steep. Arguing that we would only be there for a short time anyway, the price was negotiated down to 200 upon our return, and we set off.

It was a weird no-man’s land we had entered. After the customs house, it was a rather muddy dirt road lined with masses of trash, first passing by a line of men selling things like phone cards from TV-tray-sized tables, then a larger table with food and drink, then a tiny city of booths selling lottery tickets. All this was in the middle of a sizable empty space sparsely populated by trees and one lonely white truck marked “UN.” In the heat it was like entering a weird purgatory where no one spoke our language and could only stare quietly at us as we passed by. It was a relief to finally cross a small bridge and enter the town of Ouanaminthe, known to Dominicans as Juana Mendez.

The road conditions did not improve. In fact, I saw not a single paved road in the whole town. I did see a surprising number of fancy mansions in various stages of being built. Then there were the places that held only a nice-looking wall surrounding a plot of land filled with nothing but weeds. I was told the method here was to build the wall first, then the house as money becomes available. Where does the money come from? Probably best not to ask. Borders are borders anywhere.

We walked on through the hot and dusty streets, passing little girls dressed in Sunday best on the way to church and small businesses painted with slogans in Kreyol. A brand new white SUV passed and Laura’s brother hailed the driver. Apparently this guy was a friend of his, with two others in the car, all Dominicans claiming they were there to visit friends. They invited us to pile in alongside and they would take us as far as we wished. We didn’t go far but it was still a relief to have those few minutes of air conditioning.

After dropping us off at the town’s main square, our ride took off. We were left to stroll through the park, such as it was: a ramshackle building in the middle in the middle of a somewhat depressing slice of patchy grass with few other plants to speak of, all surrounded by a low stone wall. A few sheep relaxed in the shade on the side nearest the church from which a crowd of people were emerging. Next door to the church, a few men watched soccer on some benches under a roof, a place where you could pay to enter and watch TV. A poster advertised some upcoming games and movies that would be shown.

There wasn’t much to do here unless we wanted to sit and watch the game, so we continued down a side street toward the fortress. This too was a bit depressing – a large cinder block structure that was only partially standing, as apparently some kids had blown it up or set it on fire about ten years back for no very good reason. A mule tied up under a tree swatted at flies in front of the place, and that was pretty much the only activity on the street until a street vendor came by with her wares in a wheelbarrow. Among the various bottles and cans were several pints of clerén, a bootleg Haitian rum. I’d had it before in its clear form, but this one was flavored with something that made it an almost fluorescent orange color. My companions bought a couple and we pushed on.

Coming to a graveyard surrounded by a high wall, I insisted we go in if at all possible, and finding the gate open, we did so. It was not very different from Dominican cemeteries I’d visited, with its large above-ground tombs plastered in various pastel colors. An unusual structure, like a mini castle complete with turret, stood in the center. It didn’t appear to hold any bodies, at least it wasn’t marked with a name, but it was hard to be sure. One of the group suggested it belonged to “El Baron del Cementario.” This vodou spirit in charge of the dead still survives in Dominican folklore, although in a somewhat different form. My friend told me the Baron del Cementerio was a sort of honorary position occupied by the first person to be buried in the cemetery, and I couldn’t tell if he was joking or not.

Emerging from the graveyard we checked our watches and saw it was getting perilously close to 12:00. We had better make for the border tout de suite to avoid being turned into pumpkins or something. Indeed, when we crossed the no-man’s land and walked up to the customs house they were nearly ready to close the doors, and Laura’s brother’s cell phone was ringing with a soldier friend calling to notify us. They were all worried we’d get stuck in Haiti and never make it back, I guess, but we paid our fee and passed through to the other side safely.

Our little international sojourn over, it was time to pack up the car and hit the road. It would be a heavy load coming back: not only would we total five people in the car, each with a bag, but Laura wanted to bring back a giant sack of rice and another of dried beans. The Falcon would be riding low, which made me a little more nervous than usual about the potholes. I’d have to go slow, but I was in a bit of a hurry to get back, as my friends from the batey had called to inform me that a gagá group would indeed be going out that day and I should stop by to see it.

As we got on the road, Laura informed me that rice and beans were considered contraband in these parts and that if we were stopped by the military, they would confiscate it. What was that about? Haitian rice smugglers? I thought it was more likely the guards wanted to eat the stuff themselves. Our illicit agricultural products were well hidden under clothes and bags, but Laura was still nervous. Not I. I cackled maniacally every time we passed a checkpoint. They waved us through every time. “Ha! I’d be the last person they’d suspect of rice smuggling!” I bragged. “I could smuggle a ton through and they’d never notice!” Laura wished she’d brought more.

We actually made pretty good time on the way back, even considering our heavy load. As we approached the batey, we encountered the gaga on the highway – they had already set out for Maizal, hoping to collect some tips. I pulled over and jumped out with my recording equipment, as well as an umbrella for the blazing sun, and paid them to play a couple of tunes for me before moving on to Santiago. This accomplished, I finally felt that my Easter was complete.
We weren’t home yet though: just as we were about to come into Navarrete, we hit a major traffic jam. Turned out that in Navarrete this is the last day of carnival, and perhaps the most important one. From a distance, we could see a giant doll of some sort propped in a pickup truck somewhere in the mass of cars ahead of us. Then I remembered how I’d heard that the Navarreteneses make a big Judas doll, kind of like in Cabral, parade it through the town on Easter Sunday, and then burn it in a kind of cleansing ceremony. Following the Judas were more pickups, these filled with various carnival groups in their matching t-shirts, carrying their masks more for show than anything else (they weren’t going to actually dress up today, it appeared) and blasting music. I would have liked to get a picture of Judas and maybe see the burning, but I couldn’t deal with getting through all the traffic again in order to follow it.

Outisde of Navarrete, things didn’t get any better. We wondered if there had been an accident, since traffic was backed up on that side too and we could see a couple of police cars a ways down the line. As it turned out, though, this was simply a part of the plan to reduce traffic fatalities this year, since these are always high during Holy Week here. The police cars were there to escort us at a safe speed down to Santiago. It was a fine idea, but too slow for my tastes. And it got even slower a minute later, as it started pouring rain. Luckily, the cloudburst ended before Santiago and I was able to drop everyone off and get home with no further incident – other than for complete and total exhaustion.

Kendall oil goat

2007-04-13T13:54:00.001-04:00

Kendall oil goat
Originally uploaded by salsasydney2000.

colmado

2007-04-13T13:53:00.007-04:00

colmado
Originally uploaded by salsasydney2000.

Yahaira and Laura sample the wares at their cousin's roadside colmado

Everyone

2007-04-13T13:53:00.005-04:00

Everyone
Originally uploaded by salsasydney2000.

The family and the cherries they just picked: Yary, Felo, Laura, Robinson, Yahaira, her grandma, and Laura's mom

The magic mango tree

2007-04-13T13:53:00.003-04:00

The magic mango tree
Originally uploaded by salsasydney2000.

two varieties of mangoes growing on the same branch of the same tree. weird.

The Baker

2007-04-13T13:53:00.001-04:00

The Baker
Originally uploaded by salsasydney2000.

Chiqui's father gets chicken out of what usually serves as the bread oven in his bakery.

The Model

2007-04-13T13:52:00.005-04:00

The Model
Originally uploaded by salsasydney2000.

I was amazed he had U of A shorts and had to take this picture

Dajabon Dominoes

2007-04-13T13:52:00.003-04:00

Dajabon Dominoes
Originally uploaded by salsasydney2000.

playing by candlelight with Kenia, Laura, and Robinson.

Monte Cristi

2007-04-13T13:52:00.001-04:00

Monte Cristi
Originally uploaded by salsasydney2000.

"El Morro," the famous mountain at Montecristi

Travels with beans, part 1

2007-04-13T13:48:00.001-04:00

4/7/07
After Mom left, it was back to work for me, making the final arrangements for the Folkways recording and press conference. I also had to finish my conference paper and a couple of applications. Nothing too exciting for the blog, expect perhaps for a rehearsal in preparation for the recording. Since one of La India’s tunes combines palos rhythms with merengue, we figured this should be worked out beforehand in order not to waste a lot of studio time. We considered it successful, although we never did manage to coordinate the palos drummers into the percussion breaks, instead opting to let them keep doing their thing. Also, I convinced them to try my favorite arrangement technique- dropping out all the melody instruments for one chorus, letting just the drums accompany the voices. Cubans do this a lot in timba, and it always gets the dancers (i.e. me) all pumped up. Strangely, Dominicans don’t ever use this technique, but I’m advocating for that to change.

Then it was holy week already, and so it seemed like I should leave town once again. Everyone else does, and if I stayed behind, I’d probably just feel lonely. I accepted a long-standing invitation from friend Laura (accordionist Chiqui’s wife) to accompany her and her kids to the family home in Dajabon. Unfortunately, Chiqui couldn’t join us: all their neighbors would be out of town, and someone had to stick around to keep their eye on things in the neighborhood. Also, I couldn’t get away until Thursday, when everyone else had already left, but Chiqui’s sister Yahaira waited around in order to accompany me on the drive. This turned out to be long but uneventful.

The main sights to see along the way were the numerous paradores that start soon after Esperanza selling spicy goat, also known as chivo liniero (goat from the northwest border region), as well as herds of the living versions that every so often attempted to cut off our progress. In the same area, the landscape became more arid and eerily Arizona-like: full of cactus and trees with tiny leaves that looked much like mesquite. The soil too was different. Instead of the bright red-orange of the fertile lands around Cotui or the slightly mellower red-brown near Santiago, it was now the burnt-looking light tan of my Arizona childhood.

The land continued thusly all the way until we hit the coast at Montecristi. This city was a bustling port town at the turn of the last century, but since being abandoned as a commercial port has fallen into disrepair. Numerous old and stately homes dot its streets, and one can see they must have been grand when freshly painted, but most of them are nearing the point of uninhabitability. One rotten-looking two-story wooden mansion bore a sign stating that it was being restored by a local historical society, but the rest are likely to be gone before long. So it seemed a little incongruous when, next to the park with the famous clock (just a big timepiece on a tall scaffolding), we passed a nice, new museum building of bright white marine limestone. I would have loved to see what was inside, but it was of course closed.

I’d never seen anything of Montecristi, so we decided it was worth a quick stop to take a look at the coastline and El Morro, the big sugarloaf mountain next to the city. It was indeed scenic: the dry-looking mountain towered over the sea, wide and very blue under the intense sun, and so shallow that we saw two men walking in it while presumably fishing a hundred yards out. Lining the road were numerous saleras, the square ponds used for extracting salt from ocean water. A dozen small wooden boats were tied up where the road met the sea, and a few men had cold Presidentes at a tiny cafeteria nearby. We bought juice instead in order to refresh ourselves for the road ahead.

Good thing, too. It wasn’t far in distance, but the road was absolutely abominable for much of the way. Great big potholes, long stretches of missing pavement, bumpiness and rockiness: it really had it all. A little over halfway to Dajabon, however, we suddenly and unexpectedly hit fresh pavement, still black with newness. This was a happy surprise. Later I was told that a local guy had gone all the way to the capital on foot with a cross on his back in order to protest the condition of the roads in these parts, and the new pavement was the result. He was also given a motorbike and some other stuff in recognition of his efforts. I suggested that he needed to take his cross out for another run at it so we could get the damn thing finished. He and the cross could both get to the capital much more comfortably on the new bike, though perhaps it wouldn’t have the same symbolic weight.

We arrived in Dajabon around 3:00, all hot and sweaty, and went straight to the Taveras family home, which was also hot and sweaty. There was no power or gas at the moment, so we found Laura working on the habichuelas con dulce, the sweet beans that are the traditional Dominican fare for Holy Week, over a coal stove on the porch. Or rather, she was going back and forth between stirring these and giving her mom’s hair a new dye job in the outdoor shower. Various and sundry other family members were milling about, the menfolk all engrossed in different fix-it jobs in the space between this house and the next, either cars or CD players or other electronics. Broken-down microwaves and speakers took up much of the space, a new chest of drawers had apparently just been built and sanded nearby, and chickens, roosters, and stray dogs wandered in and out of the whole mess. Chiqui’s blind mother was seated inside, and she seemed to be making a lot of progress in recovery from her recent stroke. The last time I saw her she had been prostrate in a hospital room, unable to care for herself or speak intelligibly, but now she responded to our greetings in a slurred but intelligent fashion.

My friend Chio, the director of the local culture house, had made me a reservation at a hotel, but it seemed that Laura had been expecting me to stay there. I have a hard time sleeping under the best of conditions, though, and these were definitely not the best of conditions. I didn’t want to become a raving b****, but I would do just that if things were half this active here in the morning. I talked this over with Laura, and she suggested maybe I would do better at her mom’s house, which was quieter and in a sort of cul-de-sac at the edge of town with no traffic noise. After a lunch of rice and veggies and an enormous glassful of blessedly iced, freshly made guava juice, we went to the other house to check it out.

The other house was indeed more quiet. Actually, it was two houses at the end of a road on the edge of a field. One of Laura’s sisters, brother-in-law, and several nieces and nephews lived in one; her mother and another sister with family lived in the other. They were made of a few rows of cinder blocks topped with roughly-hewn wooden boards through which light easily shone, as it did through numerous little holes in the tin roofs. It was obvious that electricity was an infrequent visitor here from the kerosene lamps sitting on high shelves in both homes. There was also no plumbing, but I was getting desperate for a shower. I did the best I could with a bucket of water in an outdoor shower stall bricked up to about chin height. Luckily, I didn’t need a toilet at the moment.

I was feeling exhausted, so Laura showed me to a bed in her mother’s house to lay down for a while. Two double beds took up all available space in the room, which offered little privacy, what with the four-inch gaps above and underneath the door, and the window whose screenless shutter stood open. This wasn’t the kind of house that had closets; instead, someone’s (perhaps several someones’) entire wardrobe was hanging from nails on the walls in here. There were a lot of flies and gnats milling about, and, I suspected, mosquitoes as well, so I lathered up with my trusty bug spray before lying down. Naturally there was no power at the moment, which meant there was no relief from the heavy, hot air, but I found it tolerable once I’d been lying there a while.

I very nearly slept, or perhaps I did for a few minutes, but before long the rooster had figured out what was going on and couldn’t let such a thing happen. “Hey!! Hey, YOU!!” he seemed to be shouting right underneath the open window. I could only imagine six AM at this house. Sleep would probably not be happening here, either. Instead, I invited Laura to come stay at the hotel with me, making more space for everyone involved. After I got up, we went to check in, and luckily the place was both much nicer than the ramshackle spot I’d stayed last time I was in town and much cheaper! It was such a good deal that Robinson, Yary’s boyfriend who’d come along for the weekend, decided to stay too. It was also managed by an Argentine, something I’d quickly figured out from the guy’s accent even though he’d already replaced his “vos” with “tu.” I wondered aloud at this, since last time I was in Dajabon I’d met another resident Argentine. Turns out both had ended up here through their stints with the UN Peacekeeping Force on the border.

The night was still comparatively young, so we didn’t stay to chat with my new friend Ruben any further. Instead, we returned to the Taveras house to eat the famous habichuelas con dulce. That served as dinner, since after the heavy sweet soup I couldn’t stomach anything else. So while Yary was anxious to go off and eat homemade pizza prepared by the husband of Chiqui’s sister Rossy, a strange and rather crude French Canadian character, Laura and I instead begged off and returned to the hotel for hot showers and early sleep. There we encountered Chio driving by in an official Centro de la Cultura van. He invited me to join a group he was taking across the border to Haiti in the morning for a two-hour excursion and I happily accepted, being that I had been anxious to try crossing the border anyway.

It was not to be. We waited and waited, but Chio was a no-show. I called him about a thousand times, but half the time the calls wouldn’t go through – all the circuits appeared to be blocked by all the Dominicans calling each other on Good Friday – or it rang and rang with no answer. Exhausted from the day before and being awaked at some ungodly hour by a screaming child, I went back to bed. Of course, shortly after I’d done so the screaming child returned. Oh well. I rested and read my book for a while, fumed about being excluded from the Haiti trip, and then went back to Laura’s mom’s. There, I found Felo, Robinson, and a cousin, Kendry, playing cards. I joined the circle and they tried to teach me their game, but I found it completely unintelligible and gave up. Then I taught them blackjack, five-card stud, and hearts. Then I suggested dominoes, and some other cousins ran to a neighbors, returning a bit later with the necessary equipment.

We appeared to go a bit dominoes-crazy after this, and ended up playing for four hours straight. Players came and went, but Felo, Robinson, and I were constant in our devotion to the game. I started off playing well but grew increasingly tired and inattentive and then started making stupid mistakes. Still I couldn’t tear myself away from the game, even when Robinson started trying to fool us all with his inaccurate point tallying and throwing of “chivos,” the misplaced dominoes for which Chiqui is famous. It started raining, so we moved inside. The power went out, so we lit a candle. The candle burnt down, so we bought another. We consumed more habichuelas. The game went on. And on. It was almost impossible to quit, but eventually my sagging eyelids forced me to do so.

Back at the hotel, we encountered a small child that sounded suspiciously like the one who had awakened us so mercilessly. He was yelling and running around the parking lot as his mother stood around talking on her cell phone. Since he was staring at me anyway, I decided to have a little talk with him. “Hey buddy,” I said, all friendly-like. “You know, you can yell all you like out here in the parking lot. Just not inside, OK? Have fun now!” At which he promptly took off screaming into the hotel and down the hall where my room was located.

His mother told us, “No, that kid making all the noise in the night wasn’t mine. It was a nephew of mine.” Fat chance. We could hear him going on for another half an hour as we showered and got into bed.

In the morning, I stopped by Laura’s family’s house again. I was surprised to find her brother-in-law, Sandy, sporting a pair of University of Arizona shorts. That would be probably one of the last items of attire I would expect here on the Haitian-Dominican border, so I asked him how he’d gotten them. He gave some roundabout explanation about people sending clothes from the US, and Haitians getting ahold of them and then selling them in the market here, etc. In other words, who knows? Let’s just enjoy the bizarre coincidence. I took a picture to remember it by.

The next stop was of course to see how the other side of the family was getting along, and we found Chiqui’s father, brother, and assorted neighborhood children busy in the bakery. The giant brick oven was fired up, but at the moment they were baking chicken rather than bread. Outside, a couple of goats had been brought in to the patio, presumably to escape the on again-off again drizzle that was occurring, and were dozing amidst oil barrels and assorted machinery. We decided the time had come to get out of town and see some different scenery, so Yary, Felo, Laura, Yahaira, and Robinson all piled in and we headed south on the lovely paved highway.

It turned out to be less of a driving trip and more of a stopping trip. My passengers had relatives and friends all along this road all the way to Loma de Cabrera. First stop was at an Isla gas station where a sister ran a small bar/cafeteria/pool hall. The pool table wasn’t in that great shape, but we all shared a beer before moving on. Next stop was a roadside colmado run by a cousin, just next door to Chiqui’s grandmother’s house. This was our main sightseeing stop of the day, since I had been hearing for years about a bizarre mango tree at this location that produces two different varieties of the fruit on the same branch. The stories were true: the tree was huge, and on one of its long limbs you could clearly see a clump of the usual kind of elongated mangos hanging next to another of tiny round ones. But this wasn’t all grandma had to offer: there was also a pig sty, a big bush full of ripe Dominican cherries, a fuzzy little puppy, and a house built entirely of yagua (a kind of palm frond) – even its walls. My companions busied themselves with a bucket and the cherry bush while I photographed and looked for the puppy.

The colmado also had a domino table parked in front, so you know what that means.

The first domino game of the afternoon out of the way (but far from the last), we stopped at a little round sort of enramada/roadside hangout spot in front of an uncle’s house. The main thing to see here were two adorable fluffy gray and white bunnies in a cage in back. We fed them bits of grasses to amuse ourselves until the drizzle began to get harder and we weree forced to take cover and admire the planters full of bromeliads for a bit, as well as the herd of cows being driven into an enclosure just up the street, before moving on.

Further still, and in heavier rain, we came to a roughly built roadside shelter, inconveniently located in front of a large pothole now filled with muddy water, where a stout, dark woman was selling sweets. Across the street, a narrow dirt road led down a hill back into the campo. I was informed that this is where Yary and Felo’s birth father lives with his Haitian wife, and I might as well accompany the kids down there with my umbrella and get a look at him. I did. Clearly, we prefer Chiqui.

From here, it was only about 10 kilometers to Loma de Cabrera and the swimming holes near that town – we saw many pickups full of bathers coming back to Dajabon from that direction – but the road looked like it got worse, and also it was still raining and dusk was approaching. I voted to save that tour for a later date and get back to town while I could still see the potholes. That made us just in time to catch the end of the bakery’s working day. All the trays of sugar cookies were out of the oven. Soon they were being stacked by the dozen into Styrofoam trays by Yahaira and wrapped in plastic by three boys of about 9 or 10 years old. I decided to join in on Yahaira’s side, which meant things quickly got silly, and two trays knocked over, but all was right in the end.

After a couple of those cookies and some habichuelas con dulce, I found I didn’t really need much dinner. Instead, back at Laura’s family home, I sat around in rocking chairs with her, her sister, and their mom, looking at family pictures in the dim light of one energy-saving bulb and discussing them with the sister’s two little girls, age 4 and 18 months. Those two girls had more energy than I could even imagine having, and they kept jumping up and down nonstop on the cement floor, getting right back up again each time they fell. The older girl was counting, “Uno, dos, tres, cuatro, cinco, seis” as she jumped, but the little one couldn’t get beyond “Dos! Dos! Dos! Dos!”

That’s when I heard the story of the Third House. While now only the two wooden structures (and one half shower stall) stood on this property, Laura and her sister told me that there had been another one up until a few months ago. It belonged to their brother and his wife. She had been a problem all the way along and couldn’t get along with anyone in the family. Eternally jealous, she was always accusing her husband of various things with no basis in reality. Then one night, she burned the house down. Torched it and everything in it: television, refrigerator, everything one has to work so hard to have now. She then went back to the capital, and he has to start over from scratch.

By now I was yawning a bit, but I was told that we had been invited over to the Canadian’s house to eat his famous pizza, so I could hardly turn that down. While waiting for everyone to get ready, I sat around talking to the teenagers. We were talking about different hand signals and what they mean (this was sparked by usage of the middle finger). They showed me how an “L” made with thumb and forefinger of the right hand here stands for the political party PLD, the current president’s party. I remarked that that was funny since in the US it means “Loser,” especially when held up to the forehead. Felo and Robinson found this both hilarious and useful, especially during dominoes games. When we did eventually get to the Canadian’s and get out the dominoes (as well as the beer and pizza), “Loser” became the evening’s theme, along with the “W” Robinson started flashing, gang-style, in order to represent his supposed “Winner” status. “Whatever!”

It was hard to stop playing but at 11 we really had to call it a night. I had a 9 AM appointment with Chio, who had reappeared as mysteriously as he had disappeared the other day, and then we were planning to attempt a border crossing. In Haiti, we probably wouldn’t have to eat any more beans, at least.

Cabarete

2007-04-13T13:46:00.003-04:00

Cabarete
Originally uploaded by salsasydney2000.

the beach is famous for kite surfing, and with good reason.

Se me fue la lisa

2007-04-13T13:46:00.001-04:00

Se me fue la lisa
Originally uploaded by salsasydney2000.

Eel fishermen in the mangrove swamp at Rio San Juan reminded me of a merengue, "La Lisa"

Manglares

2007-04-13T13:45:00.001-04:00

Manglares
Originally uploaded by salsasydney2000.

mangrove swamp at Rio San Juan

Development!!

2007-04-13T13:40:00.009-04:00

Development!!
Originally uploaded by salsasydney2000.

this is the kind of overwhelming development Playa Grande currently faces.

Playa Grande

2007-04-13T13:40:00.007-04:00

Playa Grande
Originally uploaded by salsasydney2000.

on the north coast of the DR

The Jump

2007-04-13T13:40:00.005-04:00

The Jump
Originally uploaded by salsasydney2000.

a crazy man jumping from the Salto El Limon, Samana.

Waterfall dog

2007-04-13T13:40:00.003-04:00

Waterfall dog
Originally uploaded by salsasydney2000.

our little companion at the Salto El Limon, Samana

El Cibao

2007-04-13T13:40:00.001-04:00

El Cibao
Originally uploaded by salsasydney2000.

a view of the valley from above

Laguna Gri-Gri

2007-04-13T13:39:00.001-04:00

Laguna Gri-Gri
Originally uploaded by salsasydney2000.

me and our guide on a boat in the mangrove swamp in Rio San Juan

Travels with Mom, part 2

2007-04-07T11:46:00.001-04:00

4/4/07
The path was very steep and muddy, making me glad we were on horseback. A short ways into our trip we came across another group of tourists, Europeans, waiting for the rest of their party next to a little pond. We passed by as many of them as we could – they were too slow for us with two small, saddle-scared children – and made our way slowly and carefully up through grassy slopes and palm trees. Tiny pineapples grew by the side of the path.

At the top of the ridge was the most perfect little house, painted green with white shutters, surrounded by a vast expanse of naturally occurring lawn, reachable only by horse or by foot, its ramshackle outhouse across the path in a field. The guides told me an old man lived there, farming his plantains and other crops with the best view in town from his rocking chair.

About fifteen minutes later we had made our way down the other side and past a crashing cascade they told me was “the small one,” getting out of the saddle next to a kind backwoods colmado looking a bit like an old west trading post. Behind it, one could look very carefully over a precipice at the top of the waterfall, but it was hard to judge distance from that angle and gauge how tall it really was. So we went down the now even steeper, no-horse footpath to get to the pool at the bottom, accompanied by someone’s little black and white dog. At the bottom we found two swimming holes filled with cold water of a glacial green, the waterfall crashing down from above and covering everything and everyone in a cool mist. According to my guide book, the thing is 53 meters high.

A few daring Dominican teenagers managed to climb their way up the rock face under the pounding water, one of them reaching perhaps twenty feet before cannonballing into the pool below. I wasn’t feeling quite that brave, but since we were there, we had to get in, at least enough to take a picture for the old scrapbook. I managed to get thigh-deep – for about four seconds. I have never made any secret of the fact that I am a cold water wimp, and that water was not only cold, but it was not a warm day, either, with the sun coming and going from behind the clouds. A quick dip was enough for me. Mom, on the other hand, long notorious for being even more of a wimp than me, actually swam around the whole thing, something which no one in the family will ever believe but which I swear is true.

Once reclothed, we and our temporary dog tripped our way back up the path, passing a Domninican tour group of perhaps a dozen people, one of them carrying an enormous piece of hand luggage. “Moving in?” we asked. “For a couple of hours,” was his reply. Must have been some party. When we reached the semi-colmado where our horses and second guide awaited, we mounted our trusty steeds, sure-footed Carmelo and stubborn Ceniza, and packed out what we’d packed in. Passing a few other groups hiking in, tiredly enquiring how far they had to go, the guide and I had a bit of fun at their expense by telling each that it was “only another hour or two now.”

If anything, the landscape seemed even more spectacular on the way back. But we’d forgotten entirely about the scenery along the path in our excitement over the falls and so had left our cameras in the backpack, inaccessible, and thus that perfect house and the impossibly steep, impossibly green ridges dropping down on either side of us are only in our memories.

Caked with mud, we took advantage of the little bathroom and sink in the parada’s parking lot to change clothes and wash ourselves and our shoes. We decided to save road time by eating the apples and nuts we had in the car for lunch, but we’d only gone a few yards before we had to stop again. One of our guides, apparently with a sister and small daughter, was madly hailing us from the side of the road, so we cleared out the back seat as best we could to give them a lift. (Gave them an apple, too).

We deposited them at their mother’s house, halfway to Samana, and continued on our way. This time we were hoping to take a bit more time and get some nice pictures of houses and interesting businesses along the way, so we divided our roles into (a) driver and (b) scenery-watcher. (B) was supposed to shout out “Stop!” whenever something impossibly cute or scenic was spotted, but the plan turned out to be completely unworkable because of (A)’s difficulties in making time, avoiding potholes, and keeping the drivers behind from getting overly horn-happy. It became kind of comical to listen to (b): “Oh, look at that! That’s a good one!” and then, “Oooooooh… never mind, too late. Next time, maybe.” This occurred approximately every 90 seconds until we hit Nagua, where we stopped for a bathroom and batida break before pushing on through, this time onto a highway I’d never traveled before, up the northeastern coast.

Now it really felt like a road trip. We were in unknown territory, speeding along a surprisingly well-paved road. The towns we passed through were so tiny they were not marked on either of my two road maps, nor were they mentioned in the guide book. In between them were vast stretches of fields, hills, marshes, and often, the sea visible off to our right – anything and everything except for civilization. The Falcon seemed to be feeling just as fine as we were as it ate up the kilometers. Perhaps the mechanic was right and we could make it to Puerto Rico. Imagine our surprise when we found out we, in fact, had done just that, as one of the ubiquitous blue Brugal-sponsored signs that mark roadside settlements told us we had arrived in a place called “Puerto Rico A Pie” – Puerto Rico By Foot. This definitely wasn’t on our map.

It was tempting to stop and see what exactly this hamlet might have to offer in terms of diversion, or even simply in terms of explanations for itself, but we had a lot of ground to cover before we got to anyplace likely to hold a hotel. We took a quick turn through Cabrera, the small coastal town from which El Prodigio hails, and then pushed on to Cabo Frances. This northeastern tip of the island was marked as a national park on one of our maps and we were curious as to what it might hold.

Eventually we found a friendly Brugal sign marking the turnoff, but the lip of the road was too high and the road too rough-looking for the Falcon to take on without further information. A few yards further, we came across a man walking alongside the road and stopped to ask about the place. He was Haitian and his Spanish wasn’t so hot, though, so we moved on to a clump of teenage boys. One of them filled us in on Cabo Frances. “It’s a lighthouse.” “Oh! Is it nice? Is it pretty there?” “No! It’s falling down,” he answered honestly, and I laughed. We probably would have found it interesting nonetheless, but it wasn’t worth losing an axle over, so we went on. A bit farther we passed some more mysterious ruins, stone walls weathered down to only a few feet tall, under a palm-topped cliff.

According to our guide book, there were some lovely beaches along this coast, but the writer warned us that they had all been bought up by large hotel chains and would be full of tourists and touristic developments in no time. We pulled off the main road to take a look, stopping first at Punta Preciosa. This was not a swimming beach by any means, but a wild rocky point above a short stretch of sand that ended in another cliff, that one with a small islet off its tip. It was exceedingly scenic as well as windy and choppy. Later we learned that there is an old sunken ship under its waters, a bit of which can be seen sticking up above the waves at low tide.

Just about a half-kilometer further was Playa Grande, the one our book had assured us would quickly become over-developed and practically uninhabitable by the more discerning traveler. We turned off where Brugal directed us to, parked on the dirt amidst palm trees, and strolled down to the glorious, long, sandy beach where about four other foreigners were scattered to watch the four Dominicans working at surfing in the choppy waters. “Development!” Mom exclaimed in worried tones, pointing at a half-dozen shacks selling fish and beer back among the palms. It would have been a lovely place to spend the day sunning and consuming Presidente if it hadn’t been so late already. It reminded me of Oahu’s north coast, where I had been similarly watching surfers only a few months earlier.

Pushing ever onward, we came to Rio San Juan, one of our possibilities for lodging that night, but which had few hotels listed in our guide book. Rio San Juan used to have a dive shop offering scuba excursions, but it’s now closed; the town is mostly known for its unusual lagoon. We took a quick turn around the place, noting two hotel possibilities, one on the rocky coast, looking breezy and cool in its white lobby if a bit run down, the other a couple of blocks from the lagoon, and looking somewhat uninhabited. The town had a couple of beaches but just small ones, on either side of the breezy option. We decided to decide after looking at the Laguna Gri-Gri.

It was right there, seemingly in the middle of town: quiet waters with a dozen small boats afloat on it, shaded everywhere by towering trees sprouting right out of the water. Cement steps led from a little plaza down into the lagoon, and next to them an information booth – closed. There was only one person there to talk to, an old man sitting on a step next to the two-spot car park, so we talked to him. He quickly scared up a couple of guys with a boat, who started to make it ready before we’d even agreed to a tour. This turned out to be over-priced, even after a negotiated deduction, but we decided to do it anyway since we were there and all.

Our guide explained that the waters came from a subterranean river that emerged at that very spot, and that the lagoon’s name came from the trees surrounding it, also called gri-gri. They drove us slowly through a stand of mangroves, very slowly because of the illegal fishing nets strung across our path in spots. There was a swamp house on stilts, just like in Louisiana, and then more illegal fisherman – these ones teenage boys in a wooden boat known as a cayuco, pushing themselves along by pole and looking for eels. Egrets flew above us and some kind of vulture strutted along the interwoven tree roots below.

Emerging from the eerie mangrove swamp, we came out into the choppy waters of the ocean, passing by a minuscule island with a bit of ruined wall on the ocean side. The guide told us it used to be a restaurant, but was destroyed by Hurricane David back in the 1970s. It was hard to imagine a restaurant could fit on such a tiny slice of land, but he explained that it used to be larger, with a dock even, until it started getting washed away due to lack of care. We continued all the way down past the Bahia Blanca hotel and the so-called “Playa de la Guardia,” a beach known for the shacks at its back, occupied by military men. Then we returned the way we came, making sure to note another important local site – “Playa del Amor,” so named because “two go in and three come out.” Didn’t look like it could fit more than two anyway, buried in a sort of thicket as it was, but we were assured 8 could fit if a party were required.

The guide also informed me that land was for sale right on the coast for $65 a square meter. “I can’t do much with a meter,” I complained. When they suggested I buy more than one, I pointed out that things would then become expensive very quickly and they nodded sagely. “Well, buy a meter then. You can grow some flowers,” was the guide’s solution.

Manatees were supposed to live in mangroves like this, I remembered, and asked about them. These locals had seen many of them, both here and up the river from which the town takes its name, but they explained that the manatees don’t like to come out in high, rough seas like this. (The maritime conditions also eliminated the possibility for us to visit the Cave of the Swallows, usually the last stop on this trip, two kilometers the other way up the coast.) At any rate, when the manatees appear they are happy to see them and so are the tourists. The guide said they are so calm, quiet, and slow that they stay right by the boat without moving, allowing everyone to photograph them to their hearts’ content. I hope to return in calm seas next year and see them then.

We’d seen all we could. In fact, we’d seen so much it was hard to believe we’d only left Las Terrenas that morning. The sun was still up, though not for much longer. The guide thought we could make it to Cabarete in an hour so we decided to go for it, opting for the tourist mecca over the sleepy seaside town. This way, we’d have plenty of sleeping and dining options, and we’d have a shorter drive back to Santiago the next day.

Unfortunately, we didn’t make it far before the sun went down, and then Mom had to experience the dubious joys of nighttime driving in the DR – the hidden potholes lurking in the darkness, the blinding lights of other drivers, the inadequacy of our own lights in the unlit streets. Still, we made it, and found a lovely hotel right on the beach with breakfast included – always our favorite part. We particularly enjoyed the European-style bathroom, since we hadn’t showered all day, and the restaurant on the sand with its beer (though that, too, was served European style, which is to say, at a temperature Dominicans would term “hot”). We didn’t so much enjoy the overpowering air-conditioning, but our porter had showed us that it could be deactivated by opening the sliding glass door to the porch, so we did that, and slept the sleep of those who have sat all day in a bucket seat, enduring numerous potholes in a car with questionable shocks.

We arose the next morning fully ready for a final morning at the beach. We hadn’t even gotten much of a look at it the night before, since it was already dark when we arrived, but were pleasantly surprised both by the plentiful breakfast and the beach full of dozens of colorful kites. For us, Cabarete did live up to its reputation as kite-surfing capital of the world, and though we’d never seen this sport before, we were impressed and entertained by the many surfers who went flying past at high speed. I wondered what would happen if two kites got tangled, but we never saw this happen. We did see plenty of hot shots doing spins and flips as their kites pulled them through the air, even jumping far into the air as if they might fly away altogether. This free entertainment, coupled with a paperback murder mystery and sunshine, made for a perfect morning. We felt rested and relaxed as we got back on the road, making for Santiago, if a bit sad that it was mom’s last day in the country!

Instead of the usual highway through Puerto Plata, this time we decided to try the so-called “touristic highway” that splits off near Sosua and gets to Santiago via Gurabo. It appeared to be a short cut, eliminating many kilometers and the trafficky way around Puerto Plata city, and the hotel receptionist assured us the road was fine: even though it “had a lot of curves,” it would be faster than the other way.

The touristic road was certainly scenic, more so than the Puerto Plata route, but we appeared to be the only tourists on it. Also, maybe the road was usually good, but our informant clearly had not taken into account the recent rains. At several points, we were held up at construction sites guarded by military personnel. One was an apparent mudslide, and the road was still covered with the gooey stuff. The sedan in front of us got stuck, but the Falcon valiantly held out in second gear. At another, a piece of the road had simply dropped down the cliff, not an encouraging site, but on the bright side, half of the curve had recently been reinforced with rocks in chicken wire cages.

Because of the lack of tourists, there was also a lack of services on this road. In one little section, there were a ton of tiny businesses advertising amber for sale, and there was a roadhouse there too, but we didn’t pass anything else similar until we were already down in Santiago. The only thing to do was enjoy the views of the Cibao valley stretching out below us, the flamboyán trees just starting to put out their flame-colored flowers, and the roadside stands selling fruit. One had a variety I’d never seen before: a bright, pinkish-red thing, small and elongated, the shape of a half-size avocado. (Later I described it to Rafaelito, who told me it was the fruit of the cashew tree.)

Thus concluded our road trip, DR style, as well as Mom’s vacation. Well, almost – we had a couple more gifts still to buy at the Mercado Modelo, and I still had to pay my totally stupid and unjust parking ticket.

Playa Rincon panorama

2007-04-04T15:34:00.005-04:00

Playa Rincon panorama
Originally uploaded by salsasydney2000.

Samanese house

2007-04-04T15:34:00.003-04:00

Samanese house
Originally uploaded by salsasydney2000.

Samanese musicians

2007-04-04T15:34:00.001-04:00

Samanese musicians
Originally uploaded by salsasydney2000.