LET THE BLOGGING RECOMMENCE

I've taken a couple seasons off of blogging. After the month I spent playing at Central American orphanages, schools, amabassador's residences and national theaters (see the blog posts below this one), I felt like I didn't have much to say. With a few exceptions, my touring had resumed the regular patterns of backstages, highways glimpsed from van windows, and microwaved egg-and-cheese-on-a-multigrain-bagels from a certain donut chain with surprisingly good coffee; not as fascinating as the adventures we in the Hoppin John String Band had in the world of Mr. Peters, King of Brukdown, staying at the same hotel as Los Tigres del Norte during the early days of H1N1, and mentoring a teenage-all-girl marimba orchestra in rural Guatemala.

But Taylor Bergren-Chrisman, fantastic bass player from HJSB/Golem/other bands, is heading back out to parts unknown on a similar musical ambassadorship, and it's making me miss certain things about those days: among them, by-the-hour itineraries, and blogging. Plus, I just returned from a brief but amazing European tour with Golem, and I felt like I should really be writing about playing Usti Baba with Serbian musicians in Strasbourg, or playing klezmer music to a packed house of young Germans on a Monday night, or an impromptu late night performance in a cavern-bar in Paris our first night there (where we were actually recognized by the bartender!)




Final inspiration for blogging again: it's release week for my new project, Girls in Trouble, a song cycle/band about Old Testament women. A lot of my friends and fellow-artists seem to have books, gallery shows, albums, all kinds of new things coming out right now. So between Girls in Trouble, and the amazing art my friends are making, and the conversations we're having about how to make a living as an artist, and wanting to open that conversation to anyone who's interested in joining, here I am.

For good luck, I started this post with a Frankenstein image drawn by my grandfather, the comic artist Dick Briefer. He died when I was a little girl, but he was a true artist who somehow managed to make it work, whether that meant drawing famous comic books, or caricatures at the mall. This one goes out to him.

last day of the tour!!!!

Dear readers! 

I am going to post an outtakes-and-credits blog, including some post-tour highlights from the 3 days Sean and I spent in Antigua, and some of the crazy political turmoil going on during the week we were there -- a murdered lawyer, an accusatory video, thousands of demonstrators, maybe you heard about it.  It was a really big deal.

BUT first:  this is the last song of our last concert, at Universidad del Valle.  We had sang it at the afternoon workshop, and the teacher had asked us to perform it again at night, saying the country needed prayers for peace right now:

Our sound man, Rolando, had specially requested "Jumbalaya," which he heard growing up in Mexico.  So for the encore, we invited a bunch of students, teachers, and even an embassy intern up on stage to help us out!!!

Thus ended the last concert of our tour.  Sarah and Taylor left in the morning;  Sean and I continued on to Antigua.  More about that soon............

making history in Coban

Coban is a small city in Alta Verapaz, in northeastern Guatemala.   It's an unpretentious working-class town, and we all loved it, especially after being stuck in fancy hotels and malls.  That world always felt to me like the sheen of an oil spill:  a thin layer of North American wealth projected just above the surface of a very different city.  

Here's the view from my hotel room:

We went for dinner at a really lovely restaurant called Xcape Coban, "The coffee from Coban" in Kek'chi Mayan.  Lots of traditional Mayan food and an amazing gift shop with scarves and candles made by local women who actually get to sell on consignment.  

In the middle of the night, all the electricity in Coban went out.  It was still out in the morning, when we drove to Universidad Rafael Landivar to perform a workshop for students.  Good thing we're a string band and can perform without a sound system!  

The teacher who had invited us, Juan Jose Guerrero Perez, was incredible.  I think he was the director of the school;  he was also a surgeon, and a writer.  He had published a book on protest songs and liberation theology, and also one about the history of the region, a kind of People's History of Alta Verapaz.  We each received a signed copy of the second book;  he wanted to invite us to lunch at the school cafe but they couldn't cook because there was no electricity.  So we ate tostadas with chicken salad on them (tomato salad for me) and talked to Dr. Guerrero about politics, history, and especially the dark legacy of U.S. intervention in Central America.  

We didn't know until he told us that the Universidad Rafael Landivar was a) trilingual (classes taught in Spanish and three different Mayan languages) and b) had had no formal contact with the US embassy since the civil war.  So, Dr. Guerrero explained, the fact that we were there at all was historic, signifying the first steps of reconciliation.  It was pretty powerful to sit there talking politics, eating cold tostadas and drinking warm Gatorade, and feeling the subtle thrill of diplomacy.  

I had never thought about international diplomacy before this tour.  Government and the arts have been pretty much anathema to each other throughout my years as an artist in the States.   I don't think I've ever received any government support, financial or otherwise, until this tour, with the exception of being a Presidential Scholar in the Arts, and even that was basically administered by an independent, nonprofit arts organization.  (Actually, I was 17 and got to shake President Clinton's hand and said "keep funding the arts," and I guess maybe this tour I got my wish.)

You can tell from the tone of this blog that the trip is coming to the looking-back-on-itself point.  I love the idea that instead of just wishing for peace between the US and the rest of the world - hoping for communication, for self-examination and mutual growth on each side - we got to DO something, and (even better) to do it through our art.  Who knows what will come out of these meetings and performances, but they feel REAL in a way that is new and exciting for me.

Dr. Guerrero must have liked hanging out with us too, because he offered to take us on a tour of the local cathedral before heading to his surgery practice.  We walked up the 136 steps to the Calvario church, just around the corner from our hotel.  This had been a Mayan worship site before the Catholics built a small but stunning cathedral over it - Dr. Guerrero, though Catholic, believes Mayans shouldn't have to give up their traditions and said he was ashamed to admit that his grandparents had been part of the building, however lovely it was.  (This, of course, impressed me as well.)

But the most fascinating part of the church is that it's one of four cathedrals where Mayan worship still happens INSIDE the temple.  Dr. Guerrero took us into a small, black-walled room off the side of the main space.  There were names scratched into the wall, including the name Alicia:  I thought they were graffiti, but he said they were the names of local priests.  Yes, priests can be women.  Yes, there is one named Alicia there.

The lights still hadn't come back on, and after a long nap, the sun was setting.  Our concert had been cancelled due to swine flu hysteria, which in the end was good because there wouldn't have been electricity anyway!   I walked back to the restaurant, Xcape Coban, through the darkening streets of  Coban in the gentle rain.  When I arrived (slightly freaked out by the dark, and wondering how I'd get back to the hotel safely), there was Taylor.  Soon after, Sean and Sarah wandered in.  We drank coffee by candlelight on the next-to-last-evening of the tour.

the elusive quetzal

THE QUETZAL is the national bird of Guatemala – sacred to the Mayans and part of their origin-myth.  Quetzales live in the cloud forest; they're brilliant green with a blood-red spot on their chest, and incredibly long tail-feathers.  The national currency of Guatemala is named after them, and I am obsessed with quetzal earrings (if you know me, you’ve probably seen me wearing them, though you might not have known what they were.)

By the 1980’s, the quetzal was highly endangered.  To make matters worse, its native region in the northeastern cloud forests of Guatemala were also a location of major bloodshed during the thirty-year civil war, because it’s a heavily Mayan area and much of the murder took place in Mayan villages.  Sean and I had read a book about two Americans who come south in search of the quetzal, Bird of Life, Bird of Death: a political ornithology of Guatemala.   So we knew about the Biotopo, the national forest which a couple local ornithologists had dedicated their lives to, creating a bird sanctuary in the midst of war. 

So, on our day off, that’s where we went.   Not much chance of seeing a quetzal at mid-day when we were hiking, but…..Cloud Forest!  Ferns!  Mist!  Here, come look:

Marimba Girls

Next stop:  Salama, Guatemala, in the department of Baja Verapaz, a very rural and perhaps 70% Mayan area.

We drove four hours to get there, checked in to the hotel (a bunch of US army people were there, as usual - I imagine the US government selects certain hotels that meet security clearance, i.e. the guy standing outside with the huge gun, and put all their people, from soldiers to musicians, there).

Last year, my friend Jascha gave me a book called Bird of Life, Bird of Death by Jonathan Evan Maslow.  It's an eco-political travel book by a couple Americans who came down to Guatemala in the 1980's, during the bloody civil war.  They came in search of the quetzal, a majestic green-and-red bird held sacred by the Mayans, which was already severly endangered by the time the authors arrived.   I learned a lot about the war (most of the fighting happened in the pueblos of the rural departments) and, of course, about the quetzal.   Much of the book takes place around the Biotopo, the Quetzal Reserve about 45 minutes from Salama.

Sean read the book as well, so it was fascinating for us to be up in Baja Verapaz.   We even met a man named Dr. Guzman, a quetzal expert who co-founded the Biotopo.   Not only does he know a lot about the holy bird, he also happens to lead a marimba orchestra made up of the young ladies of Salama.  

Though we've seen marimbas in Nicaragua, Honduras and El Salvador, I have yet to see a single girl or woman playing it.  So when Dr. Guzman and his all-girl marimba ensemble performed before our workshop in the Lions Club in Salama, we were blown away.  The Lions Club insignia painted on the wall, the matching outfits of the girls, the jaunty rhythms of the marimba....I felt like I was watching a David Lynch movie.  

I am so glad I had the camera for that one, because I never would have been able to explain it.

At night, we returned for a concert, and things just got weirder.  During sound check, the room was especially surreal under bright flourescent lights.  Gargantuan, quarter-sized insects flew in the open door, bumped against the lights, and then headed for us, their wings whirring.  I hid behind Taylor;  the marimba girls, who had arrived early for the concert, were unfazed in their plastic chairs.  

Fortunately the bugs (called ron-rons) are both good natured and stupid, and do not bite, which explains the girls' preternatural calmness.  You can pretty much just swat a ron-ron to the floor and it will lie there for a while and then buzz slowly out the door.  

The marimba girls opened the concert again, but this time it was being filmed and broadcast on local television.   As well as in front of the audience of the concert.  The layers of performance are worthy of a college paper, I think:

why I've been silent, and where we played in Antigua Guatemala

Dear, dear readers:

 Thanks to those of you who expressed concern for my lack of blogging the last five days.   I love that you are actually reading about my trip.  Somehow your presence here makes everything make more sense!  Two reasons for my silence:

1) the physical:  we were travelling every day in Guatemala and often didn’t have access to reliable internet. 

2) the emotional:  we were dealing with some exhausting issues which I won’t go into except to say that it’s very strange and depressing when someone invites you to perform in the country where they’re stationed, and then not only doesn’t take care of you, but treats you as a burden.  For those of you who have been reading about my adventures for a few years, it was a very similar vibe to Golem’s Poland trip, minus the whole Jewish thing.  

But I kept filming, and blogging in my mind.  And now the time has come to actually write down the last four days’ adventures in Antigua, Salama, Coban, and Guatemala City.

Our first hint that #2 above might be a serious problem:  through no fault of our own, we arrived at our first Antigua workshop an hour and a half late.  Frustrating for everyone, including us, but the kids waited, and they were great:  young violinists, guitarists, mandolinists and bass players.  When we separated into individual workshops, I got the mandolin students, which meant I got to teach about 12 adorable girls how to play Angelina Baker, holding my violin on my lap and plucking it with my thumb as if it were a mandolin.  Gave me a huge blister but was totally worth it. 

One of the teachers explained afterward that the music school was free or very affordable for local kids in need.  The teachers had limited resources and one had actually taught himself basic violin in order to be able to teach the kids! That wins my admiration.

(all photos by Sarah Alden)

Some of you know that I already have a deep relationship with Guatemala and especially Antigua, the five-hundred-year-old town which was once the Spanish colonial capital of Central America.   Yes, its full of tourists and expats and it’s relatively expensive, but it’s still one of the loveliest places I’ve ever seen in my life.  Spanish colonial architecture, cobblestone streets, low buildings painted yellow and pink and blue, volcanoes in the distance, Mayan women in traditional woven skirts, cream-and-white cathedrals, fresh fruit, and good coffee.

 

I’ve been here five times, and performed countless times during those visits—so it was pretty surreal to play here as just another stop on a monthlong tour, after three weeks of playing for complete strangers in countries I had never visited before.  Especially sweet in our afternoon concert, for about 400 local kids, to have among them my dear friend JP and the kids from his incredible school, Los Patojos, where I’ve played and taught.

 

We had two hours off in the afternoon, and of course I should have taken a nap, but I was way too excited to be back in Antigua.  So instead I went to the artisan’s market with Sarah and Taylor;  ate fresh baked cookies and the most exquisite meringues I’ve ever had at a local bakery;  and met JP for coffee at a café that used to be a bank. Then we headed over to the Café No Se.  

 

The Café No Se is my home away from home in Guatemala.  It’s one of a handful of places in the world where I can walk in after a year and someone will say “Alicia! Where’s your fiddle!”

 

Given this information, you might think that I set up the Café No Se gig on my own, but no -- when we got our schedule from Jazz at Lincoln Center, I was shocked to see Café No Se on our our official itinerary.  Seriously: how did this happen?!?!  First of all, we could have been sent anywhere in the world.   And even if the fact that Sean and I speak Spanish made it more likely we’d be sent to Latin America, still, WHAT ARE THE CHANCES THAT WE WOULD ACTUALLY END UP BEING SCHEDULED TO PLAY AT THIS TINY BAR IN ANTIGUA, GUATEMALA?

 

So even though I was beyond tired, I was also beyond excited to be back with my Café No Se friends:  John, Mike, Javier, Micky, JP, David…..  No one in Guatemala has ever met any of my Brooklyn friends, so it was a treat to sit at a table drinking Illegal Mezcal (John's house import, recently featured in the New York Times!) together. 

 

Hoppin’ John played a little half an hour acoustic set – Taylor used the house bass – then we all sampled some more reposado – and finally headed back to our hotel. 

 

Fortunately Sean and I knew we’d be coming back in five days to hang out after tour was over, or it would have been way too sad to leave after only one day in Antigua.  The next morning we continued on to Salama, four hours away.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

behind the music in guatemala city

Dear Reader:

On the first night of our last leg of the trip, in Guatemala, I thought I'd give you a little behind-the-scenes glimpse of what happens after the planes and embassy vans and school performances and TV interviews and autograph signings and contra dance lessons in Central American malls.





Love,
Alicia