EVENTS UPDATE / NOTICIAS DEL ULTIMO MOMENTO

MUSIC THIS MONTH

CANADIANS comprise a good percentage of the snowbirds who flee the northern climes to enjoy the best winter climate on the planet here every year. Some of the regulars often invited blues musician friends to spend a week or two on the beaches and to play a few gigs around town. This year the Canadian Blues presence has grown into Puerto Blues, 2005, a festival featuring some of Toronto best blues and roots artists that will span two months. Blues isn't widely known in México, but songs about feeling blue, songs of sadness, are a national passion. Music is very much a living medium here, integrated into daily life. Strolling troubadours and Mariachis provide romance and nostalgia for a few dollars. And at any gathering of friends and family, someone is likely to produce a guitar to sing and play into the wee hours. So get down and groove to those funky blues, but also learn something about the music and the poetry that's part of what makes Oaxaca the special place we love, - - Warren Sharpe, editor

Georgina Meneses, delightful diva, whose interpretation of the traditional popular music of Oaxaca inspired our lead story and our appreciation of the passion and poetry of its people.

PUERTO BLUES 2005

Jack de Kezser, the King of Canadian Blues, who started this whole thing with his jams around town in 1999, has won more Juno, Maple Blues, and other prestigious awards and nominations than we can mention here. He is also an accomplished songwriter and producer.

Joining Jack de Kezser for the first series of Puerto Blues is Dave Rotundo, blues harpist and vocalist. He founded the Blue Canadians in 1997 and became a staple of the Toronto club circuit. In addition to de Kezser, he has played with Ronnie Hawkins, and with ex-Muddy Waters drummer Willie "Big Eyes" Smith.

Paul James stars in the second set of blues sessions. Described as a real musician's musician, he has shared the stage with big time players such as Bo Diddley, Bob Dylan, John Hammond, Spencer Davis, Lightnin Hopkins, Jack Scott, Mink De Ville and Sunnyland Slim, to mention a few.

Coming up next month: the animated performance of SAB, aka Peter Sabourin, Canada's original outlaw rocker, and Chris Chown, a great all-round performer who feels as comfortable playing the Montreaux Jazz Festival as the beaches of Puerto Escondido.

PROGRAM

All Shows at Villa Belmar Beach Club, Zicatela
Tickets: $50.ºº per show. Special Package: $1,000 pesos for two people for all shows (includes a commemorative t-shirt)
Available at: Hotel Flor de María, Hotel Buena Vista, Villa Belmar and at El Sol de la Costa

THE BLUES & BEYOND

The blues, which purists would tell you is a melody based an a 12-bar, bent or blue-note, was first popularized in the 1910's by the black composer W.C. Handy. By the twenties, the blues had become a national craze. It strongly influenced the emerging jazz and ragtime music and later gave birth to rock n' roll.

In the early 1960s, urban blues was discovered by young white American and English musicians and blues-based bands. such as the the Paul Butterfield Blues Band, the Stones, the Yardbirds, John Mayall's Bluesbreakers, Eric Burden and the Animals, the Cream created the rock-blues hybrid: rhythm and blues. The spirit of the blues through its evolution has remained the same: pain, suffering, misfortune and loneliness; I miss my woman, though she done me wrong. I got the blues!

In English, the use of the word in this context goes back to the Elizabethan era. But it is the American writer, Washington Irving who is credited with coining the term "the blues" in 1807.

Everyone Gets the Blues

And some of the most famous and loved of these songs have their origins in the state of Oaxaca, a land of beauty and joy and sadness, of poetry and romance. A land of music and music makers, song and singers.

Take for example La Llorona, a song which literally everybody knows. Its title translates as the Weeping Women. Some say that La Llorona is about a mother crying by the river for her lost children. Others insist it refers to a legend that dates back to the Aztecs, about a spirit, or a witch, whose lament for all the sadness and suffering in the world still can be heard echoing through the night.

Credit for the song is usually listed as traditional or anonymous, but it was actually composed by Eustaquio Jiménez Girón, a Zapotec from the Isthmus, who was known as "Taquio Nigui".

Its original Zapotec title was Nagola Riuxi and over the years countless verses have been added.

LA LLORONA
(Eustaquio Jiménez Girón)

You were leaving the church one day, Llorona,
I saw you as you passed by.
So beautiful was the huipil you were wearing, Llorona,
that I thought you were the Virgin herself.

Everyone calls me The Black One, Llorona,
Black, but loving.
I'm like a green chile, Llorona,
Spicey, but delicious

Ay, Llorona,
Llorona of yesterday and today
Yesterday it was marvelous, Llorona
Today I'm not even a shadow.

Canción Mixteca, the Mixteca Song, is another classic. It was written in the 19th Century by José López Alavés. It talks of nostalgia for a faraway homeland and is as poignant today, in indigineous communities decimated by emigrants in search of the American Dream, as the day it was written. There have been countless renditions of this song recorded over the years. (Check out the version by Ry Cooder and Harry Dean Stanton from the soundtrack of Paris, Texas.)

CANCIÓN MIXTECA
(José López Alavés)

How far I am from the land where I was born.
A vast nostalgia invades my thoughts
and seeing myself so sad and alone, like a leaf in the wind
I just want to cry,
I just want to die from my feelings

From the Zapotecs of the Oaxacan Isthmus comes another classic: Sandunga, an anthem of love and admiration for the women of Tehuantepec. It was written more than 150 years ago. This lovely song still accompanies the activities of the Tehuanos from the cradle to the grave.

It was written by Máximo Ramón Ortiz on the death of his mother. It is said that when he died (he was serving as the town's military governor and shot by firing squad in 1856), the flowers disappeared from the fields and everybody from the most humble peasant to the most exalted aristocrat wept. So profoundly did this song capture the collective emotion of this Zapotec people.

LA SANDUNGA
(Máximo Ramón Ortiz)

¡Ay! Sandunga
I want your love
If you don't give it, Sandunga
Sandunga, I will die.

¡Ay! Sandunga
Sandunga don't be so cruel
Don't refuse me, Sandunga
Your mouth which knows the sweetness of honey

I spent the night awake
Dreaming I am your lord
and then in the morning
I understood it was just a dream

Born in 1848, Jesús Chu Rasgado is to Juchitan what Máximo Ramón Ortiz represented for Tehuantepec. His best known composition, Naila is the anthem of Juchitan, whose people have always had fierce rivalry with their Tehuantepec neighbors.

He began playing in the local band and showed so much musical talent, that he was band conductor by the age of 15. Before he died in 1907, he wrote some exquisitely sad and poetic ballads and he left an indelible mark throughout the state of Oaxaca teaching, setting up and directing local bands.

NAILA
(Chu Rasgado)

On a moon-lit night
Naila was crying before me
She spoke to me with tenderness, she filled my lips with sweetness.
I asked her why she was crying,
and she replied to me:
I've fallen for another man, I'm no longer your Naila
Naila, tell me why did you abandon me?
Foolish woman, you know how much I love you.
Come back to me, don't choose another path.
I forgive you, because without your love, my heart will surely break.

The Zapotec culture of the Isthmus also gave the world El Feo, The Ugly One, a poignant song by Demetrio López about an ugly guy who says he doesn't care if he is reviled for his looks, because he has a great capacity for love and will gave his heart completely.

Another personal favorite of mine from that region is the bitter-sweet La Martiniana, a traditional melody with lyrics written by the poet Andres Henestrosa.

LA MARTINIANA
(Trad. Lyrics: Andres Henestrosa)

Little one, when I die
don't cry over my grave
sing me beautiful songs, my love
sing me the Sandunga

Don't cry for me, no, don't cry for me
Because if you cry, I'll haunt you
But if you sing for, my love
I'll always be alive, and I'll never die

Oaxaca's most illustrious musical son was Alvaro Carrillo, a man who was both the Lennon and McCartney of his country. A brilliant poet and melody writer, his 300 or so songs include some absolutely perfect compositions, ballads, which are sure to be sung for generations to come.

His best known composition was the international hit Sabor a Mi, A Taste of Me. He also wrote numerous chilenas, the upbeat music that was born in his native Costa Chica (Small Coast), such as the ubiquitous Pinotepa, But it is his romantic boleros, ballads and songs of love that capture the depth of human emotion: Each sweet encounter, every bitter farewell, the tears and sorrows of lost love and and abandonment.

SABOR A MI
(Alvaro Carrillo)

We enjoyed this love for so long
Our souls become so close
that I carry within me your essence,
but you also carry the flavor of me
If you were to exclude me from your life.
I would only need to hug you and talk
I gave you so much life
that you can t help possess a taste of me
I do not pretend to be in control
I am nothing. I have no value.
From my life, I only give the good things,
I am so poor, what else can I give?
More than a thousand years will pass by, many more
I don t know if there's love in Eternity,
but there, just like here,
in your mouth you'll have a taste of me

Alvaro Carrillo Alarcón was born in Cacahuatepec, Oaxaca, on Dec. 2, 1921 and died tragically young in 1963 in a car wreck, just as his star was on the rise.

He epitomized the Bohemian lifestyle of his time, scratching out a living in México City, seeking out other musicians, long nights spent carousing in bars, cantinas and night clubs, playing music to drown the bitter sweetness and the inevitable pain of being in love.

The so-called Bohemian Night (Noche de Bohemia) is still a favorite pastime among Méxicans. Don't miss an opportunity to sit in on a session, as a group of friends take turns playing and singing all these great classics of Méxican pop culture. It's an excursive in sweet, unadulterated, and totally satisfying, nostalgia.

Many recordings by various artists can be found at a good record store, such as Universo Musical, on Calle 4th norte (4th north street), just across the street from Ahorrará Supermarket and conveniently close to the offices of El Sol de la Costa.

You can always count on hearing the intrepid Mayka at her El Son y La Rumba club, where every night she presents her interpretation of the complete range of Latin music, including much of what was written about in these pages.

There is, of course, a pool of talented itinerant musicians who, on any night of the week, can be found roaming town ready to bring music into your life. Ask any one of them to play a song mentioned here, and I can almost guarantee they will know it. Don't be afraid to ask for a song. The going rate is 20 or 30 pesos per song. (If you would like to hire a trio for a private event, expect to pay 300 or 400 pesos per hour.)

I can personally attest to the passion for music that is so deeply rooted in our community. When El Sol de la Costa sponsored a song contest, A Song for Puerto, the response was amazing; housewives, fishermen and bricklayers, as well as professional music makers entered in droves.

So take a listen and put a little romance back into your life.