adventures of a wandering fiddler

A SEVEN-MONTHS-PREGNANT TOUR IN EUROPE

2012-01-28T16:11:00.000-08:00

A two week tour of Europe at seven months pregnant? Sure, why not...?!

hey--it's me! on the Tube!

We began our tour in England, where as you can see they have very cute pregnant logos. I had been invited to teach and perform with Girls in Trouble (in trio incarnation, with with the remarkable David Freeman on drums) at the Limmud Conference, an unparalleled, all-volunteer festival of Torah study, late night discos and political debate.

Needless to say, over two thousand British Jews studying, dancing, and drinking Guinness for a week--at this case, at the University of Warwick in Coventry--deserves its own blog post. For now, I will just say that it was an incredible experience for all of us in GIT; the love flowed along with the Guinness, and I am profoundly grateful for the help, support, loaned body pillow, borrowed guitars and drums, and the amazing energy of the Conference, which Aaron and I carried with us for the rest of tour.

After a couple nights staying with our dear friend Nina in London, we flew to Turin to start tour with a night off on New Year’s Eve, during which we wandered downtown from our hotel, noticed a stream of people flowing towards a central square, and ended up celebrating with what seemed to be everyone in Torino. I must say, they know how to decorate a town center in Torino--

nice hat, Hartman.

and New Years in the streets is pretty awesome without open container laws. Each group of friends had their own champagne bottle and plastic cups, and toasted 2012 as a massive Italian big-band played on the square.

Torino just after midnight, 1/1/12. A little hard to see how many thousands of people are celebrating.

The next day we were picked up by Roberto, who (not to be too melodramatic) I will forever think of as our angel. Roberto is a fantastic musician, a classics grad student, and a friend of Monique, our Italian booking agent. When he heard we were planning to travel by train, he offered to drive us for the first week of our tour – AND to host us on a day off at his parents’ house in a small town – AND to set up an intimate house concert, which turned out to be magical and one of our favorite nights of the tour. Roberto ended up also translating, sourcing an emergency electronic converter for us, doing sound, and becoming a close friend. I only hope we get a chance to repay some of his extreme hospitality one day.

There is a really awesome community of artists and friends in Roberto's small town. A musician-designer friend cooked dinner for all of the performers in the kitchen and we all ate together, family style,

delicious risotto and vegetables for all the musicians in Roberto's family's kitchen before the show...

before we all headed up stairs for one of the best nights of tour - the other groups performing included a harp duo (during which the baby was kicking delightedly), and a theater artist-songwriter who lent me his loop pedal because I didn't yet have a converter, and whose lyrics made everyone laugh hysterically and made me kick myself (in time with the baby's kicks) for not speaking Itallian.

Duo of beautiful harpists, apparently the baby's favorite music yet, based on kick counts.

After the house concert, we slowly worked our way from Torino to Florence, with Roberto our angel at the wheel of his Fiat, and Zorba (which somehow became the baby’s in-utero name) dancing away inside me. Awesome things: the food of course, and the sometimes shocking roadside restaurant decor;

Aaron and Roberto at a random restaurant by the side of the road in Central Italy

the wine and coffee (which in Italy even pregnant women are encouraged to enjoy, in moderation of course, don't send me angry emails); the afternoons walking around old cities, even the ones we weren’t playing in – Bologna, Ferrara; and meeting up with friends (Henry and Francesca!) for an afternoon of coffee and castle-ogling.

the moat in Ferrara

Not-awesome: coming down with a serious cold and not being able to take real medicine for fear of hurting wee Zorba.

This cold actually began on our last stop in London, but by the third day of Italy tour it had fully taken effect, and taken most of my voice with it. Being sick on tour is never fun, but it was especially depressing not to be able to sing except for a few notes in my lower range. Despite lots of homeopathic Italian-pharmacy treatment, I struggled with this the whole time. But, while I was frustrated that most of my voice was not really working and I had to rewrite all the melodies within a five-note very low range, at least we never had to miss a show.

We continued traveling south, played close to the Leaning Tower of Pisa

I may be about to sneeze on you, but I am still really psyched to see this leaning tower I've always heard about.

and, a few nights later, a couple blocks away from the Duomo in Florence (so we got to do a lap around it after the show, all lit up at midnight!)

We also played at a bar called Die Hard; we noticed on the way there that whereas most of the venues wrote "2 drinks per person" on our drink allowance, the owner of that one had written "Drink until the alcohol is gone." We discussed what that might mean.

It all made sense once we arrived. Throughout the evening Aaron and Roberto were strongly encouraged to try a variety of increasingly performative shots, culminating in the grand finale, in which they had to take a mouthful of one liquor, to dip a finger in a shot of something else, light that finger on fire, and put the flaming finger in their (own) mouth to extinguish the fire. I was very glad to use Zorba as an excuse to avoid that particular cultural experience.

pyrotechnic mixologist. great cook.

We bid a sad farewell to Roberto in Florence and continued on to Rome, where we played at a lovely club called Le Mura and got to have dinner with our friend Rachel.

By the end of that night I really wasn’t feeling great. We had a day off the next day, and were desperately trying to find a place where I could sleep late. The excellent sound engineer, Paolo, turned out also to be something of an angel and took us to his family’s house north of Rome, where he lives, at 2:30 am.
We ended up staying for two nights so I could rest and recuperate, and meeting his parents, who took great care of us. Paolo’s mother actually turned out to be a professor of American literature who loves twentieth century poetry, so we had some great conversations. I tried to repay at least part of their generosity with a fireside fiddle concert the second night, and the gift of our albums.

The next morning, Paolo took us to the train station and we did the seven-hour ride (comfortable compartment! Mediterranean out the window almost the whole way!) down to Sicily. The train itself actually rolled onto a large ferry and crossed the Strait of Messina, and then dropped us off in Messina, where we were met by a lovely group of people who took us out to traditional Sicilian food.

I thought of my Grandpa Al, who had taken a semester off of college to work on a Merchant Marine ship. They were docked in Italy, and on off-hours, he would walk with his fellow sailors through the streets of a town draped in swastika banners. Still, it came as a surprise when World War II was suddenly declared, placing the American ship in enemy waters. They had to turn off all their running lights and motor as quietly as possible out of the notoriously dangerous Strait of Messina, escaping both notice from the Italians, and shipwreck on the rocks below and to either side.

We, however, were quite comfortable taking the (fully lit, very safe) ferry back and forth between Messina and Reggio Calabria, where we played at an incredible restaurant and performance space called Locanda I Tre Farfalli. We joked with them about starting a branch in Brooklyn; I would happily eat their fried eggplant every night.

Zorba looking out at the strait of Messina, where my grandfather sailed maybe 70 years ago.

After two weeks of coughing, we figured it might be prudent to go to the doctor, so we stopped by a hospital near where we were staying in Messina. How did we spend an hour there and then sneak out rather than looking for a doctor with a stethoscope? Well…

The ER people sent us to Building F, where the elevator doors opened and the first thing we saw was a man lighting a cigarette in the hallway.
Even the doctors we found in the smoky hallway couldn’t figure out what the paper from the ER meant. They banged on a couple doors and finally produced a nurse who seemed equally confused.
This somehow ended with me and Aaron sitting in a small room and a doctor looking in my ears (fine) and then taking a long black plastic tube, rinsing it in cold water, and coming at my nose. No, per favore, dottore! They seemed amused that I wouldn’t let him stick this unsanitary tube in my nose.
Finally they shrugged and moved on to the throat exam. A nurse brought a small silver dish with a cottonball, squirted something on it, and set it on fire with a lighter. The doctor held a dentist’s-mirror-looking-implement in the flame for a while, wiped it off, and stuck it in my mouth. Throat fine.
But he couldn’t listen to my lungs because he was an ear, nose and throat doctor. Only pulmonologists had stethoscopes. I would have had to go back to the ER, explain again that I had a cough and wanted someone to listen to my lungs, and get another reference, to who knows where.

GET ME OUT OF HERE!

It seemed more dangerous to hang around that place than to just continue on (and I really was doing fine, just wanted to be safe) so rather than return to the ER, we headed down to the bus station, glad to have a clean bill of health for my throat and ears at least. We boarded a bus, passed Mount Etna--which had recently erupted although I could see no trace of it--and finally reached our furthest south stop, Catania. Aaron had been excited for Catania since we first learned we were going there, and I think it was my favorite stop of the tour. We played at a space which had been an opulent theater but was destroyed by bombing during WWII, and had been largely empty ever since except for intermittent use as rehearsal space. A group of artists recently took it over, basically squatting in it (as an art-space rather than a living-space), and, entirely unpaid, have poured energy into creating this incredible theater.

Teatro Coppola=awesome.

When we played there, they had had a full month of performances, with all donated labor (performers, sound crew, the women sewing stage curtains when we arrived) and all proceeds going to the theater renovations. It felt like a sacred space, with a lovely audience who felt like friends somehow.

The next day we walked around beautiful Catania a bit, admired the famous elephant-obelisk statue, and then went to a local studio so I could record some violin on a song in Sicilian dialect written by Cesare Basile, who took care of us in Catania and is a legendary local (and touring) musician as well. I’ll let you know when it’s released this spring, I am very excited to hear the rest of the songs.

the engineer setting up mic's. really cool hand built drumset in the background.

So. Adventure complete (and the cold was, happily, proclaimed harmless by my Brooklyn midwife who had no problems locating a stethoscope despite not being a pulmonologist). Grazie mille to Monique, Roberto, Paolo, Cesare, and everyone who took care of us on the road. I wonder if the baby will come out with some sort of affinity for Italian food and culture – I wouldn’t be surprised. I guess we’ll just have to return with him/her and see.

Dear blog, are you there? It's me, Alicia.

2011-10-12T09:07:00.000-07:00

I'm sure I'm not the first person to make that pun.

I have my hands in three projects right now, which is exhilarating and challenging. I'm preparing for a monthlong Girls in Trouble duo tour, as well as some European shows in winter including our return to Limmud. I'm deep in the creative process (with requisite hair-pulling, 4 am bolting-awake, and moments of glee) for my performative song cycle about Bernie Madoff, currently working hard on the libretto thanks to a fantastic playwriting workshop with my sister-in-law Karen Hartman. (Playwriting! Who would have thought!) And I am still in the revision process for my first book of poems.

And working on other, supreme creative projects a little more out of my hands, which will be revealed soon.

Good thing it's fall, probably my favorite season for working. An overcast, drizzly day in Little Skip's, my neighborhood cafe, where the M train rattles by overhead like a reminder of technology and history all at once: the perfect place to write another page of libretto, confirm another show for tour, try another order for the book. Wish me luck.

CIRCLING THE MIAMI BOOK FAIR

2009-11-18T11:49:00.000-08:00

Last weekend I travelled with my friend Gabrielle Calvocoressi to the Miami Book Fair.

Many adventures were had, but among the most amazing was a magical night on one of the little islands off Miami Beach. Our host, the poet Tom Healy, knew our album had come out, and asked me which song I'd dedicated to Gaby's birthday (which coincided with our record release show last week). I told him about Marble Floor and the story of Chana. (I also happened to be sitting next to a famous poet dude at the moment, who turned to me and asked, "Do you have a song about Tamar?" "Yes, Desert, the first one on the album!" The table was curious about Tamar's story and he told it perfectly. I was impressed. I wanted to talk to him about Torah, but I was too shy, so I just kind of followed him around.)

I didn't even tell our host that Chana was my Hebrew name, but he almost seems to intuit it in this beautiful blog posting he wrote on the Best American Poetry blog, and sent me a link to the next day. The dessert to the dessert.

The next night Gaby and I met a circle of Miami poets who were, across the board, sweet, thoughtful and smart. Their community seems incredible and made me a little jealous. They took us to the Cuban restaurant on No Name Harbor, in a state park in Key Biscayne; the families of one of the poets, David, runs the restaurant and has for years. We had a ceviche the likes of which I have not tasted since Honduras; heard tales of catching 80 mahi mahi in a single fishing trip; and then went to the family's home to watch the Pacquiao-Cotto fight.

My first boxing match. In the middle of a state park. I had to try hard not to cry (those last few rounds seemed unnecessarily violent) but I also kind of loved it, to my own surprise. Training. Discipline. Perserverance. Presence. It made me want to go write.

LET THE BLOGGING RECOMMENCE

2009-11-04T15:32:00.000-08:00

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!!!!

2009-05-19T15:05:00.001-07:00

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

2009-05-19T14:30:00.000-07:00

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

2009-05-19T09:27:00.002-07:00

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

2009-05-18T08:47:00.000-07:00

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

2009-05-17T11:24:00.001-07:00

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

2009-05-10T22:31:00.000-07:00

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

Au revoir El Salvador, thanks for the pupusas

2009-05-09T23:59:00.000-07:00

Our last day in El Salvador!

Two shows: the first at the Tin Marin Children's museum. This museum is incredible! There's a butterfly reserve, a giant walk-in mouth to teach about dental health, and "gravity house" -- a two-room house built on a 23 degree slant which is truly mind-altering. If I could spend ten minutes a day in the gravity house, I'd probably never need yoga, therapy, or alcohol again.

We had no idea why the museum was called Tin Marin until last night, when our musician friend Guillermo told us that it's the Salvadorean equivalent of "Eenie meenie miney mo." I can't stop watching this clip of Guillermo reciting the rhyme:

Our final concert was in La Gran Via, the jarringly fancy mall right next to our hotel. There is a Ferrari dealership; a Macy's-style cosmetics floor complete with Clinique, Lancome and all those other brands; a Chili's; a Benningan's (apparently it closed in the States but is still open here); a Radio Shack; and an Ann Taylor. It's all pretty expensive, too. As Paulino told us the other night, "It's an El Salvador that doesn't exist." This is a tiny country, and they don't have highways here; where is anyone going to drive that Ferrari?

Still, despite our anti-consumerist post-suburban grumbling and the obvious incongruity of the whole thing, people really do come out to this mall on weekend nights, so playing a free 7 pm show there was actually surprisingly nice.

The show was on the first floor, but we decided to start by playing on the second floor, continuing to play inside the glass elevator as the audience watched, and walking up onto stage without stopping. Unfortunately I don't have video of that, but I did shamelessly pick up my camera during our first song, as Sean was teaching the audience to sing Sail Away Ladies. The view from stage:

Sean and Sarah taught a basic contra dance to thirty brave audience volunteers, while Taylor and I played; yet another surreal experience, playing for the Virginia Reel in an upscale mall in El Salvador.

We ended the concert with Paulino and Guillermo, playing two famous Salvadorean songs: El Carbonero (a song about a boy selling carbon made out of burnt trees - basically the equivalent of the Yiddish song Papirosn, for those of you who know that one) and Canasunganana.

"Canasunganana" is apparently a very old Salvadorean lullaby, but of indigenenous or possibly African origin, since the word is not Spanish.

All but the chorus is new, though. As Paulino told us: when a certain Salvadorean musician's grandmother died, he remembered "Canasunganana," the chorus of a song she used to sing him. He wrote the rest to fill out the song, and now it's surpassing Carbonero as the most popular children's song.

The audience really loved seeing us play with two of their own, and we were thrilled as well. I think El Salvador is my favorite country so far. Four down, one to go; tomorrow, Guatemala.

mayan music, a leftist university, and the best pupusas ever

2009-05-09T22:42:00.000-07:00

Yesterday we had the morning off, which means I got to use the fancy skiing machine in the hotel gym, and then listen to the Girls in Trouble masters (so very close to being finished!!!)

Then we played at a music school here in San Salvador. A couple Salvadorean groups presented their traditional music as well, including a group that recreates ceremonial Mayan music; the leader, in the center, is a music professor at the University of El Salvador. I was particularly impressed by his conch-playing:

In the evening, we played at the University of El Salvador where the conch-ist teaches. It was a real honor to play there because it's the leftist university, and though they do have American Fulbright students, this is the first time in at least a decade that they've actually held an Embassy event. It really felt like cultural diplomacy. We were proud to perform there.

Before the show, talking to some Salvadoreans, we learned a little more about the bloody history here. We had asked some of our new friends about the civil war in the 80's and they were talking about an infamous turning point, about 30 years ago, when a priest was killed by the government in the middle of mass.

They were all trying to remember the exact year when one of them said, very casually, "It was 1980. I'm sure. I remember, because they killed my father two weeks before the priest." He was twelve years old at the time. His father wasn't even a guerilla, he was actually a mediator. Of course, it was a long time ago, but there was something very revealing about this tragic information given in this matter-of-fact tone. I think I'm beginning to understand why, as we've repeatedly been told, music here cannot really be separated from politics.

After the concert, the president of the university invited us upstairs for a wine and cheese reception (no pupusas this time!) We all sat in his meeting room, lined with portraits of all the past presidents of the college, and exchanged gifts: pins and pens for the band and Embassy representatives, books for the president and his staff. It was another "how on earth did I get here?" moment.

The highlight of the night, though, was going to Paulino's house for dinner (pupusas!) Paulino's wife and kids were all wonderful, and his his bandmate, Guillermo, was there with his wife too. We sat around talking like old friends, as musicians often do, and hearing about their lives as politically active Salvadorean musicians - they were exiled for years, living in Mexico and Nicaragua, but also had plenty of regular old funny road stories.

Laughter, pupusas, and camaraderie:

Paulino's precocious and adorable son, Diego, told us that we are now in his top ten list of bands, that his favorite song of ours is Blackest Crow (my favorite too!) and shared his very important revelation about sushi:

Then Paulino and his wife and kids all piled into two cars and drove us back to the hotel. His wife, Lupita, who is a human rights lawyer, said on the way home: "You know, I saw you on the press conference on TV, and I got this feeling like 'Maybe we should call them.' I don't know why, but I did. And then the next day Paulino came home and said 'They called me!'"

It seems it was meant to be. Lucky, lucky us.

a beach, two volcanoes, and a history lesson

2009-05-07T22:13:00.000-07:00

Today was our day off, and the Binational Center kindly took us around this tiny, beautiful country. In just five hours we ate lunch and drank coconut juice at the Pacific coast:

visited a volcanic beach ten minutes down the road:

and then drove back past San Salvador to a double volcano.

Then we had a date with Paulino, though we had no idea who he was.

On a radio show the other night, we'd asked the host, Aida, about Salvadorean musical traditions. To our surprise, she wasn't really able to tell us what Salvadorean music was. But she suggested we talk to her friend Paulino. The embassy got in touch with Paulino and arranged that he would meet us at the hotel at 6:30.

We'd never actually talked to Paulino, but we bought some beer and wine, some cheese, avocados, rolls, and fruit, and set up a little dinner in Sarah's room. When Paulino got there he was as confused as we were. Apparently he was in the process of reapplying for a visa (he's been in a touring band for 30 years and has been to the States many times, but his visa expired) so he had called the embassy yesterday. About five minutes later, the embassy called him and said "We want you to go to the Marriott and meet some American musicians." He had no idea who we were or why he was meeting with us.

Even funnier was the fact that he apparently always listens to Aida's radio show, and would have heard the very conversation that ended in our meeting, but for some reason he didn't listen this week.

Once we all figured out why we were there, the evening got really interesting. We asked him about the traditional music of El Salvador and he explained that there really isn't any; that's why Aida couldn't answer the question. Apparently, until the 1880's, El Salvador's indigenous community centered around the production of anil, a natural dye. They supported themselves by selling the dye, and their society was structured around families farming tiny plots of land.

When the Industrial Revolution occurred, and synthetic dyes were discovered, anil was no longer in demand. The Spanish-descended rulers of El Salvador decided to transfer the farming system from anil to coffee plantations. But there was one catch: coffee takes four years to grow to maturity in its first harvest. So only the rich families, who could afford to wait four years without income, could start coffee farms.

This divested the indigenous people of their land, and turned them into poor, landless workers. For about fifty years they labored under these conditions, and in 1932 they revolved, on the 22nd of January at midnight.

At this very moment, a volcano also erupted.

The uprising was crushed and the indigenous community decimated. And that's why there are really no long-standing musical traditions here, save for some marimba.

We talked for hours - Paulino basically teaching us Salvadorean history, and me translating as he talked. Along the way he brought up Pete Seeger; I mentioned that I'd played in a band with Pete's grandson, Tao. "Tao who grew up in Nicaragua?" asked Paulino. It turned out that as a little boy, Tao's mother had come to share a house where Paulino was living in Nicaragua. So Tao and Paulino had lived together for a while. Um. WEIRD!!!

Despite our mutually confused beginning of the night, we ended up as great friends, played some music together, and got a dinner invitation for tomorrow night. Really exciting because we've hardly been inside anyone's home in the last three weeks -- it's all been hotels, restaurants, schools, concert halls, airports and vans.

Paulino also runs a major music festival here in El Salvador, so who knows, maybe with some luck we'll return. Hope so. I love this country.

Morning TV; wine, cheese and pupsas

2009-05-07T21:22:00.000-07:00

This tour is so fast that it's only as I'm writing the blog that I realize how odd it is that we played on the Salvadorean equivalent of Good Morning America yesterday.

It was a much fancier production than the Nicaraguan morning show, although the ladies of Love FM Television, Belize City, are still definitely my favorites.

Our first public concert in El Salvador was last night, at the Binational Center (these countries seem to have centers built by America to host English classes and cultural events). The crowd was friendly and loving; we got a standing ovation, a bouquet of roses each, and a beach towel printed with art in the style of the artist mentioned at the end of the video above. Then there was a wine and cheese reception (not as fancy as it sounds) complete with pupusas, the national food of El Salvador. I'm glad there is a pupuseria on my block in Brooklyn, so I don't have to stop eating them every day when I'm back home.

Au revoir, Honduras

2009-05-05T16:06:00.000-07:00

Our last day in Honduras was a three-performance day in San Pedro Sula: two at schools, and then a farewell concert in the evening. And then our farewell dinner, so delicious that I'm going to start with it:

It's hard to really know from a few days, but the constant sense of violence and danger in Honduras (for Hondurans as much as for us!) continued through our last day. San Pedro Sula is apparently even more dangerous than Tegucigalpa. Once again we were cautioned by the embassy not to walk anywhere. And when we spoke to teachers at the schools, to see what locals would do, they confirmed that they only walk when they have to.

Apparently it wasn't that bad until about five years ago. The strangest thing is that people don't seem to think it's as terrible as we do. "Well, it's a shame, but really it's like any big city - if your really must walk, you just take off all your jewelry, plan your route carefully, and walk fast," one woman told us. The same woman reminisced about walking ten blocks to school as a child, a bit wistfully.

I was pretty horrified. It's pretty dystopic, I think, when you can't walk around in a major city. Not a dangerous neighborhood here or there - but literally the entire city. People generally hang out in chain restaurants (Honduras is full of them - Pizza Hut, Applebee's, Dunkin Donuts - and they're extremely popular). Partially they just like them (and they are in fact nicer than their counterparts in the States), and partially because there's always security out front. Apparently at regular bars, there is often a bouncer at the front who collects each person's gun as he walks in, and returns it when they leave.

We asked another Honduran friend why people weren't more upset about the violence. She told us that Hondurans are famous for being complacent, which--as she said--has its good sides (no civil wars) and also its bad (accepting daily violence as a normal fact of life).

So, again, the strange juxtaposition: new news every day of an embassy employee whose car had been stolen from in front of his house, or a Fulbright fellow whose violin was taken from him on the street--with the students we met, who were cheerful, open, and happy.

We played at a wonderful bilingual high school where many of the students continue on to colleges in the States. They are generally from poor or middle-class families. The school holds classes six days a week and is one of those incredible places where all students are clearly nurtured and challenged simultaneously.

During the question and answer session of our concert, a kid came up to the front of the stage and asked me... for a kiss! I think that's a first for me. I considered it for a second, then said that it was probably part of my duties as a cultural ambassador. He offered me his cheek, and I obliged, to the delight of the other students. They gave us a standing ovation and we walked back out onto the unwalkable streets of San Pedro Sula and in the van, feeling pretty wonderful.

A masterclass with violin students later (apparently it's a magnet school, the best string program in the country, and supposed to be supported by the city, but they haven't given the school its funds for three years, so teachers have to hold concerts to meet paycheck - more dire stories!), and then a goodbye concert at the Central Cultural Sampedrano, where we played "Pitero," a traditional Honduran nonsense song about hunting an armadillo.

Here's the Blackest Crow:

We got back from dinner at 11 pm, and left the hotel at 4:30 am to fly to San Salvador, where we have two press events tonight. Pretty exhausting, but it's beautiful here. Honduras was pretty intense. The people we met were wonderful, the food was incredible, and I think we all left hoping that someone will take charge there and make the cities a place where teachers will be able to walk to work again.

honduras: mayday. a marimba orchestra. a pizza hut.

2009-05-03T22:08:00.000-07:00

My friend G. says this blog is like a TV show.

So, I'm going to start with an ad. If you or someone you like could use some fiddle music in your life, you can buy my album of fiddle tunes online. It's also on itunes if you are travelling light.

This episode begins with our day off in Honduras, May 1. It's International Worker's Day, which we rather incongruously spent in a fancy hotel (not selected by us, by the way!) in the capital city of Tegucigalpa:

The other big news was that Los Tigres del Norte, an enormously successful Mexican-American band that plays narcocorridos (ranchero ballads about drug running in Mexico, a hugely popular genre) was playing in town that night, and staying at our hotel.

Taylor is our resident Latin music expert, and when we met one of the band's managers, Olugario, in the lobby, he was so excited that he could barely speak. Apparently Los Tigres are based in California; they tour Thursday-Monday, ten months a year, and are home the other four days of the week. They've been together for FORTY YEARS.

We kept running into Olugario, and the night of the show he said that he could get us a couple tickets if we wanted. I would have loved to but had to save up energy (boring, but I need a lot of rest on the road). So Sean and Taylor hired a taxi and went to the show!!!!! They were the only gringos there.

Apparently it was fairly sparsely attended - some people say that's because it was put on by the President as an ad for his unpopular referendum to extend term limits - others say it was because of the swine flu scare. But it sounds like it was an incredible experience, a real spectacle of lights and costumes (and fake machine-gun sounds).

The next day we drove up to Comayagua, the old Spanish colonial capital of Honduras. All these Central American countries have an old capital, always far lovelier than the new capital. In Nicaragua, it was Grenada; in Guatemala, it's Antigua.

They're always laid out around a central square, with a cathedral - this one hosts the oldest clock in Central America, which was built in Spain in the 1500s and shipped over. We got a little tour; here's the view from the clock tower:

When we went back to pick our instruments up from the Casa de la Cultura, where we'd stashed them backstage, we found a marimba orchestra rehearsing!!! I've heard a lot of marimba from my time in Guatemala.

In fact, my first time in Guatemala, I stayed with a family whose patriarch, Chepe Lepe, was a marimba maker. He took me into his workshop and showed me some instruments he'd made. He played one that sounded exquisite: a pure, sweet tone. "It's almost done," he said, "just one more step." He knelt down and stuck little pieces of what looked like post-it notes on the resonating wood; when he stood up and struck the keys, now the sound was distorted and buzzing. "Done!" he pronounced, smiling.

I was pretty shocked by this--a completely different way of hearing beauty. I told my musician friend Arrington this story a while ago and he pointed out that in some African music and dance, distortion is the divine element. Pure sound is considered to be just human, but when sound is distorted, the spirits can speak through it - the sonic equivalent of a mask. The marimba supposedly has African roots as well, and you can hear the distortion here. Oh, and see some spontaneous dancing!!!

We were supposed to play our show in the beautiful Parque Central, but it began to rain. A little early for the start of the rainy season, but everyone moved good-naturedly into the covered courtyard of the Casa de la Cultura. Our sound man tossed a couple mics up, people packed in with their plastic chairs, and it created a nice sense of intimacy. The audience was correcting my Spanish (which I took as a sign of affection), and the Cajun yells, which I delight in teaching audiences, continued long after Fort Washington Two-Step had come and gone.

What a lovely audience. They gave us a standing ovation and the mayor presented us with some traditional Diablito statues. By the time we packed up, all the restaurants in Comayagua were closed, so we ended up eating in one of the myriad chain restaurants in Honduras, which turned out to be a little different from its American equivalent:

adorable kids in belize, airport masks, contra dancing in honduras

2009-05-01T00:09:00.000-07:00

I'm combining two days in one post, which is a problem, because we are actually living two days in one, so this is really four blog posts in one. I'm going to keep it brief and let the movies speak for themselves, except for #2 which was in an airport so no movies.

1. Our Last Day in Belize City

Though we didnt have a scheduled performance, Sean and Sarah had come upon a Methodist school on a walk through Belize City and talked to some teachers who said they'd love to have us. So we finished our Belize time with a concert in a church for hundreds of extremely adorable little kids. They seemed so happy, engaged and loved--there's nothing like a well-run school! Here is them singing their school anthem:

And here is their message to the children of Brooklyn!!!!

We bade a sad farewell to our Belizean embassy friends - Breanne, Denise, Zoe, James, Ralph, James and Victor. (It turned out Victor, one of our drivers, was actually an alum of the school where we played!) - and flew to Tegucigalpa, Honduras, via San Salvador.

2: Airports in a Time of Swine Flu; Harsh Reality in Tegucicalpa.

As we got off the plane in San Salvador, we saw to our horror that maybe one in every ten travellers, and all of the airport workers, were wearing face masks. It was one of those "am I living in a science fiction novel?" moments. To add to the surreality of the layover, there was a bird flying around at our gate, or so we thought. But then it landed - on the ceiling - upside down. It was a bat. There is something disturbing about sitting in the airport surrounded by people in blue face masks while a very scared bat flies very close to your face and then perches upside down, trembling, above your head.

But not as disturbing as when we landed in Tegucigalpa. It was late, and the airport was pretty much closed. We had a little drama on the tarmac when the baggage unloaders insisted that our gate-checked instruments had to go through the baggage carousel. Some quick batting of the eyes and sweetly intoned Spanish averted the crisis. But when got into the airport things got worse. There was a medical team - about five nurses in scrubs and face masks, and a doctor in a white coat - who handed us each an affidavit to sign ("Have you had the following in the past ten days: A cough? Sneezing? A fever? Sore throat?" Please disregard previous blog posts about health issues). Then each of us had to walk past a heat scanner to see if we had a fever. Fortunately, no one did.

The embassy staff, Carmen and Natasha, met us at the airport. They're friends with Michelle and JL from the Nicaraguan embassy, so we already felt like we knew them, and they took great care of us from the first minute. They brought us to the five-star Hilton; I'm not accustomed to such luxury and being waited on actually freaks me out, especially in the second poorest country in Central America. Not that I'm above appreciating the pool and sauna and cafe and gym. We actually asked if we could share rooms and save money, but since the embassy is paying, we'd have to give them back whatever we saved. So, single rooms it will be.

After our security briefing the fancy hotel made more sense. Apparently Tegucigalpa is significantly more dangerous than other capital cities - Guatemala City, say, or Managua, where we began our tour. Honduras never disarmed after the conflicts in the 1980s, so there are guns everywhere, frequent violence, and hardly any law enforcement. We are strongly advised not to walk around outside at all; in fact the hotel has a shuttle to take guests to the mall, which is a mere TWO BLOCKS away (and in a relatively safe area, though apparently there are no reliably safe areas here.)

I'm sure the embassy has to scare us as much as possible, and my guidebook doesn't make Tegucigalpa sound any worse than Managua, but it certainly is intense. I think about the wonderful kids we taught today, and wonder how safe they feel in their city. Oh, would you like to meet some of them?

3. Outside the Gates

We woke up early and went to the Escuela Nacional de Musica, a kind of public magnet school for music students. Most kids are there on scholarship and seem REALLY into their studies. We saw bassoons, violins, violas, and even a mandolin. When we arrived, a kid with was dumping large quantities of saliva out of his tuba into a storm drain.

They participated enthusiastically in our concert, and afterwards the chamber ensemble performed an arrangement some traditional Honduran songs for us:

This positive, energetic room of young musicians was quite a contrast from the sense of Tegucigalpa I had from reading the embassy's security advice late last night inside our decadent fortress.

Then we broke into groups for workshops. I took the intermediate violin students, and taught them some basic fiddling technique ("Please don't go to your lessons holding your violin like this! It's only for folk music!"), made them try to stomp while playing, and taught them the first half of "Angelina Baker," an old time tune. Thanks to the student who filmed this for me!

There was so much love of music in that room - the students wanted to stay a long time after, talking about violin, asking questions, and listening to more songs. I wished we had more time to hang out, but we had to go eat some lunch and then on to our final concert of the day.
4. Contra Dancing in Tegucigalpa

We played a 90 minute concert for a couple hundred teachers-to-be at the National Pedagogical University. (Some hambone, lots of twin fiddling, and more rudimentary clogging by yours truly). At the end, after a beautiful speech by the director of the school about how folk traditions preserve the history that does not get taught in schools nor written in history books, a student asked "How do you dance to this music?"

Finally the moment had arrived to teach the Virginia Reel. We'd been waiting for this. Taylor and I picked up our instruments, and Sean and Sarah taught the steps to a brave group of volunteers. By the end, they really had it:

And now, it's time to REST. Labor Day indeed.

Meet a Master Garifuna Musician/thoughts about knitting

2009-04-29T09:29:00.001-07:00

On our last day in Punta Gorda, Belize, we were lucky to be invited to the home of Master Garifuna musician, Mr. Paul Nabor. Mr. Nabor is about 80 years old is a national Belizean treasure.

It all happened in a very Belizean way: Zoe, one of our wonderful Belizean embassy liasons, remembered Mr. Nabor playing at her graduation, and knew we'd love to meet him if possible. She called a friend from school who had set up the graduation performance to ask if there was a way to track down Mr. Nabor; it turns out that the friend's brother was actually helping take care of him.

Here's Mr. Nabor fixing his capo, which was a rusty nail tied on with twine:

He invited us into a large shed behind his house, extremely clean with a dirt floor. This space serves as a a music studio (drums on the walls, a couple small amps, a CD player, and his beat-up guitar) and a place of worship (he's also a healer). It felt indeed like a holy place. We played him a couple songs and he listened intently. In one song he turned his face to me and stared into my eyes for a long time, listening. I actually got chills.

Then he played for us. It was incredible.

We thanked Mr. Nabor and bade him farewell as his chickens wandered around our feet.

Our next performance was a huge school in rural Punta Gorda. The show was outside (in considerable heat) and halfway through, a dazed and somewhat menacing guy dressed all in red wandered onto stage and commandeered Sarah's mic. We couldn't tell if he was crazy, on drugs, or both. We had no idea what was happening, and the principal didn't really tell him to leave.

Finally Sean said "We're performing for the kids, man" and the guy said "I want to perform too," and then just stood there. Taylor said "security?" into the mic and the guy said "security?" into Sarah's mic. Somehow the sound guy got him offstage and called the police. Later we were told that direct confrontation is more considered more dangerous than just going with the flow, which explained the principal's actions. It was pretty bizarre.

Then to our final lunch with the embassy people. I usually knit during meals and I guess Taylor got inspired to interview me about it. So here's some thoughts about knitting and blogging. My own little Behind the Music.

Now we play at one last school, and then fly to Honduras (via San Salvador)! Two countries down, three to go...........

Southern Belize: the Garifuna!

2009-04-27T22:20:00.002-07:00

Dangriga, Belize is a center of Garifuna culture, and home to the small but information-packed Gulisi Garifuna Museum. I knew a bit about the Garifuna from my time in Guatemala; they are a distinct people with Arawak, Carib, and African roots, who originated in St. Vincent and now live along the Caribbean coast of Nicaragua, Honduras, Guatemala and Belize.

The director of the museum, Mr. Peter Ciego, who is Garifuna himself, gave us an in-depth history lesson:

Arawaks from the Orinoco sailed to St. Vincent and lived there peacefully until attacked by Carib men from the mainland; the Carib men killed the Arawak men, and married their wives. (Apparently, this is why men and women use different vocabularies in Garifuna language!)

Some time later, a slave ship lost its way and asked for directions in St. Vincent. The Arawak/Caribs gave them directions to one of their own harbors, ambushed the boats, killed the captain and crew, and freed the slaves. These Africans mixed with the Arawak/Caribs and thus were the Garifuna people born.

About 5,000 Garifuna were forced to St. Vincent in the 1796s by British colonization; only about 2,500 survived the long, circuitous trip to Central America. They arrived as free black people at a time when such a thing was unheard of in the Central American colonies; and in their resistance to European colonization of St. Vincent, they had developed a reputation as fierce guerilla warriors. So they found themselves doubly unwelcome everywhere they landed, and wandered around the Caribbean coast until they finally were allowed to settle in what was then the no-man's-land between Belize and Guatemala.

And that's where we played today: Dangriga. Miraculously, the Garifuna community has managed to hold on to their language, music, and dance traditions in exile, although now many are migrating to the United States (Brooklyn, actually, our own home) and the traditions are in danger.

The mission of the Gulisi Garifuna Museum is to preserve and pass on that culture. edicated to preserving the Garifuna culture. Here is what's written over the portal to the museum:

The Museum has a school attached to it, where Garifuna children study the language and customs. Most concerts in Belize begin with a prayer and the national anthem, and here are the (impossibly cute) children singing the Lord's Prayer in the Garifuna language, with other Garifuna kids from local schools watching them:

After our performance, some local Garifuna musicians performed. One gentleman played quadrilles on the harmonica (rather surreal in this context as they sounded like the English country dances they no doubt originally were). Then a man named "Brother David" played some original songs on guitar. At first we thought this song was about "Belizean buttocks," but then we figured out he was saying "Belizean Products." Also a pretty great hook.

I loved Brother David's songs, and afterward we had a great conversation. It was one of those "guild of musicians" moments; we come from different parts of the world and play different music, but we completely understood each other from the first moment. I can't really describe how that happens, but it's magical.

Earth Day in Belize, and a mindblowing evening with the Mennonites!

2009-04-26T10:10:00.000-07:00

First of all, thanks for reading this blog. I love hearing back from you guys. A lot of people have been writing to me with suggestions for further reading or stories of your own experiences; I changed the settings so now you can post comments here if you want, so other people can see them! You don't need to log in or anything.

Yesterday was Belizean Earth Day; the Audobon Society sponsored a cleanup of the Western Highway that runs east-west across the country, ending with a concert and party at Guanacaste National Park. As we drove in the van from Belize City to the park, we saw neatly tied trash bags every twenty feet or so, and eventually passed the volunteers themselves, working hard in the sun: many Belizeans, and a crew from the U.S. Embassy, including Charge D'affaires (that means acting ambassador) Jack Diffily, who is extremely cool. More about him in a second.

We were told there would be snacks at Guanacaste; in the States that would probably mean pretzels and orange juice, but here it meant meat patties and overflowing bins of luscious, fresh papaya, watermelon, and bananas that looked much realer than the ones in the supermarket back home. We played our set (the old ladies seemed to like the religious stuff, and the mock-dirty stuff!)

After we were finished, the crowd sang the Belizean national anthem (the most peaceful, beautiful anthem I've ever heard). Then the MC welcomed the Queen of Brukdown, Ms. Laila Vernon, to the stage. She was fully dressed in resplendent green, with pearls cascading down the front of her dress, and dreads down to her thighs.

Ms. Vernon offered a blessing/toast to Mother Earth over a glass of water, ritually poured the water on the grass, and then performed a set. Here's her finale; you'll notice that she introduces her drummer as Wilfred Peters, nephew of Sir Mr. Peters (from our first night in Belize.)

After checking into our luxurious hotel in San Ignacio, we rode down to Spanish Lookout, a Mennonite community near here. Apparently the Mennonites are pacifists and kept having to move to find a country that wouldn't require them to serve in the army or pay taxes that would support the military. Belize allowed them to buy a large amount of land and live there undisturbed, and they've been here 50 years. They have been quite successful here and actually produce all the chicken and eggs for the entire country of Belize now.

We are the first artists from the outside world to perform at Spanish Lookout in those fifty years.

There is a split between the older, stricter Mennonites (who don't believe in technology, musical instruments or much contact with the outside world) and the younger generation. That's who came to our concert, a few of them with digital cameras, though they still don't dance. A lot of them have been to the States for business or to visit family. They speak "Low German," and speak perfect English with kind of German/Canadian accents.

Here is our host, Alan Reimer, and his family.

On a personal level, this show was especially moving for me because of my own religious experiences. I've spent time in the ultra-orthodox Jewish community in Israel and in the States, and for years I lived pretty strictly within the ancient laws of Judaism while still managing to travel and play music.

Though now I'm much more flexible in my observance now, ancient traditions are still a huge part of my life, and I felt a surprising kinship to these young families - who are trying to balance the beauty of structure and community, with openness to the outside world.

From stage I could feel the whole band taking on a gentle, respectful tone as we looked out at our audience. It was like no audience I've ever experienced. They were silent, and wouldn't sit in the front five rows, but we could see and feel them listening intently. We chose our material carefully and kept encouraging them to clap along, which they did. Surprisingly, it was teaching them the Cajun yell that really got them to participate!!! Our new secret weapon.

Here's a video of us playing "Keep on the Sunny Side," by the Carter Family. Maybe you can see some of that intense listening.

After the concert, Norman came up on stage and thanked us for coming. He gave us a DVD of the history of the Mennonites in Belize - "It's in Low German, so you won't understand, but there are English words on the bottom of the screen." Dozens of people stayed after to thank us for coming and to shyly, quietly say they enjoyed the concert.

Truly mindblowing. And to top it all off, the Charge D'affaires was there, after his long day of picking up trash by the side of the highway and watching the performances at Guanacaste. (I don't know how to make a french accent on this, but Charge is french and rhymes with sautee). Jack, as he asked to be called, is not only the acting ambassador to Belize but is an incredibly cool gentleman who had a whole career in the shipyards before moving on to the foreign service. We've all been enjoying hanging out with him, and it was especially fun to experience Spanish Lookout with him. It was a whole new level of diplomacy.

He told us he felt this was a really historic concert, and worth our whole trip. Oh, and did I mention he arrived by motorcycle?

Thanks for everything, Jack!

Belize, day 2: Love FM morning TV and Pallotti Girls School

2009-04-24T21:36:00.000-07:00

We started off with an early morning TV/radio show on LOVE FM, Belize's biggest station. I say TV/radio show because apparently, though it's a television show, the majority of people in Belize are radio listeners, and the show is mostly listened to that way. Television on the radio, literally.

I loved being in a TV station with so little pretention or anxiety. Belize has been described as a bridge between Central America and the Caribbean (it's a member of both the association of Central American States, and of Caricom, the Caribbean association). The rhythm of life here in Belize City feels more Caribbean than Central American - whereas our TV appearance in Managua was hosted by a heavily made up former Miss Nicaragua in a shiny tank top, this one was hosted by two lovely ladies in braids, talking about community issues.

We liked them instantly: they were positive, funny, and utterly laid-back. We played and talked for an hour; while we played, they danced in their seats, but the second the camera turned to them they would freeze and look dignified in a relaxed way. There were technical difficulties galore, but not a single person at the station seemed to mind. Everything was just.....chill.

Next, we played a "didactic concert" (a teaching performance about American traditional music) at a Catholic girls' school in Belize City, the Palotti School.

We wanted to get the girls involved, so Sean and Sarah taught them some hambone (body percussion) moves. That room was so full of energy and life. As I told them from stage, they were beautiful, and when I looked at them, I felt GIRL POWER.

The school has a good music program; some of the girls play violin, and two of them, Valerie and Carlie, came shyly up to me afterward saying they were really serious about playing and asking for advice about life as a musician. I could tell from the way they talked that they truly loved music, and I saw my high school artist self in them. As we talked, I had the powerful feeling that I was passing on to them the same encouragement and love that's given me strength along the way. We traded emails, and I hope we keep in touch.

Nicaragua Nicaraguita live (two nights ago)

2009-04-24T08:28:00.000-07:00

I just found this video of us playing Mejia's famous song "Nicaragua, Nicaraguita" with Ernesto and Raul. This was the finale of our last concert in Nicaragua, at the Teatro Ruben Dario:

The ambassador was sitting in front of us, and over 200 Nicaraguans and a few other Americans were in the audience, singing along. We all miss you, Nicaraguita! Thanks again to Ernesto and Raul for teaching us this song, and performing it with us - we are counting on playing with you guys again!

Oh and here's my doctor who also came to the show with some doctor friends (she's the one in turquoise):

I'm sure she would agree it's time for some rest now.

Belize City and the King of Brukdown!

2009-04-23T22:32:00.000-07:00

We left the hotel at 4:15 am, feeling a bit sick to our stomachs, and shortly before our flight departed, Sarah and I simultaneously arrived at, shall we say, a resolution of the problem. (Please no jokes about twin fiddling.)

But we made it through the flight to San Salvador and by the time we arrived in Belize city we both felt better. This tour is a fascinating combination of the harsh and the luxurious. Luxurious: five embassy people met us at the airport and whisked us through the passport lines, and carried all our bags out the the van. Harsh: our early check-in rooms had somehow been given away and wouldn't be ready for a while. Luxurious: fancy hotel rooms with balconies. Harsh: $11 for internet access for one night.

Before we left, I wikipedia'd "music in belize" and ended up reading about Wilfred Peters, the King of Brukdown. To quote Wikipedia, "Brukdown is a Kriol mixture of European harmonies, African syncopated rhythms and call-and-response format and lyrical elements from the native peoples of the area." (Not too different from old-time music, I might add.) Mr. Peters had a well known group called "Boom and Chime," and I looked for music online, but couldn't find it.

Today, when Denise from the embassy mentioned that some local artists would be coming to see us and play for us, Sean (who's been to Belize before and knows a fair amount about the music) lit up and said "Mr. Peters?" "Oh, I don't think so....He's in his late 70's now, and doesn't get out much anymore. But I can try." Denise said.

When we arrived at the show, Denise told us that she had tracked Mr. Peters down, and he would be coming with his son! They came in while we were sound checking "Will the Circle Be Unbroken," and when we sat down to eat dinner with them before the show, he told us that he also loves to sing that song....so of course we invited him to join us in the concert.

We said we'd also love to play a song of his. So we had a little impromptu rehearsal right there, just before the performance. The washboard player is Wilfred; he didn't bring his boom drum, so Sean lent him a washboard, which he was playing for the first time. Our Belizean sound man, James, joined in on (Sean's) bones as well.

When it was time for the show, we began with a few of our own songs, then invited Mr. Peters and Wilfred up to join us. Taylor beautifully introduced Will the Circle Be Unbroken, and Mr. Peters immediately dove into an original song. We joined him, smiling. As soon as the applause ended, Mr. Peters started a second song. We played along with that one as well. I leaned over to him when it ended: "Will the Circle be Unbroken now, yes?"

We played it, but something had gone wrong with his accordion pickup; strange and terrible sounds were coming out of the speakers. Meanwhile, our sound man had gotten so committed to his bones-playing that he didn't seem to notice the accordion problem. Still, we were having fun. We asked for a round of applause for Mr. Peters and told him we were going to play some of our songs now. "Let's sing Amazing Grace together!" he said. This segment of the concert was getting long, and the accordion was making painful electronic noises, but how could I say no to Mr. Peters? "Amazing Grace," I called to Sean and Sarah.

The words were hardly out of my mouth when Mr. Peters began playing - not Amazing Grace, in fact, but another original song. We all started laughing. He got us. And who can complain? It truly was a privilege to play with Wilfred Peters and Wilfred Peters Jr. After the show, we bought them each a drink.

Luxurious: warm ocean winds from my balcony and the rustling palm trees outside. Harsh: waking up at 5:30 am tomorrow for a TV performance.

Day 5: Goodbye Nicaragua Nicaraguita!!!

2009-04-22T21:29:00.000-07:00

How can it be that we're already leaving Nicaragua??? And that we've seen and done so much in five days?!!

I won't write much because we have to leave the hotel at 4:15 a.m. for a flight to Belize (via San Salvador). Harsh!

This morning we went to the Orphanage Zacarias Guerra to play and teach. Some of the kids live there, and some live nearby and go to school there. It seems like an amazing place - the kids seemed truly happy, and if I hadn't known it was an orphanage, I never would have guessed. Besides the school, they have a program of useful chores (washing clothes, planting gardens) and many of their graduates go on to university and technical schools, which is rare enough in this country in general. They actually have a cool website where you can read about their programs and donate, too.

We've been working on our hambone presentation, and I think we finally got it right. You can judge for yourself below. Hambone is body percussion, which originated from when African-American slaves were forbidden to play drums because their masters thought the drums communicated secret codes. So they used what they had - their bodies. We threw in a tiny bit of amateur clogging, mime, and some kitchen percussion in our silent interactive hambone demonstration at the orphanage:

Afterwards we played some songs, talked about the rhythms and the instruments, and got the kids clapping along. I actually got them to do an approximation of the Cajun yell during Fort Washington Two Step, which kind of sounded like a room of kittens mewing.

Then we took some questions, which turned out to be a series of adorable little kids saying "How do you play the banjo/violin/guitar/bass?" and coming up on stage to try the instrument. The cutest was Taylor teaching bass:

In the beginning you can see our dear translator, JL, who took me to the hospital last night at 10 pm.

Our final concert tonight was at the Ruben Dario National Theater (Nicaraguans famously love poetry - and indeed they named their main theater after a poet!) We played upstairs, in the Salon de los Cristales, a large stone room with two giant chandeliers hanging from the ceiling. The ambassador and his wife came, which was pretty special for us, since they just saw us play at their house two nights ago! My doctor/English student from last night came as well, and many of the other people we've met on our travels. It's a small country and in a strange way we've actually become a part of it for the past five days. It doesn't feel like a normal tour at all.

The highlight of the show for me was playing "Nicaragua, Nicaraguita," by Carlos Mejia Godoy, with two of our new musician-friends. Mejia and his brother are national musical treasures of the kind that happen here in Latin America. They write beautiful songs that everyone knows by heart; if I get to come back to Managua, I'll do my best to see them perform at the club they own here, where they often play.

When we played at the Domingo Sabio school the other day, we met a great guitarist and singer named Eduardo, who teaches music at the school. He got onstage after the concert and played some Nicaraguan songs for us and the kids--cultural exchange indeed. We instantly became friends, and when he said he was coming to our last concert, we invited him to play a song with us. He suggested "Nicaragua, Nicaraguita," which seems to be a second national anthem, like "This Land is Your Land."

We rehearsed backstage with Eduardo and his bandmate Raul, and that's how we finished the concert - all six of us onstage together, and the entire Nicaraguan audience singing along with every word. I'll try to post some pictures from other people's cameras soon.

But now I've got to sleep for a few hours, because tomorrow night we're performing in Belize!!!

Day 4: adventures in trees and hospitals

2009-04-22T00:01:00.000-07:00

I was nervous but excited about our day-off-in-Nicaragua plan: ziplining through trees on the Mombacha volcano.

But I woke up feeling like the cold I've been fighting since a week before we left finally had gotten worse. So, it was a day of listening to All Things Considered on wnyc.org and reading The Brief and Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, punctuated only by a trip to the rather depressing, incongruous yuppie coffee shop up the street (Nicaraguans with laptops, prices in dollars on the fake-Starbucks chalkboard).

However, the rest of the group did go flying through trees, and you can see a video of that on Sarah's blog, (which is much more interesting than mine today) or read Taylor's take on our trip. As for me, I got to see the inside of a Nicaraguan hospital.

That's not a hospital, it's Shana, our beloved Jazz at Lincoln center tour manager (for the first two countries, after which point we'll have to stage a kidnapping and teach her to play spoons so she can finish the tour with us.) Shana suggested I might want to see an embassy doctor this morning, but I thought a day in bed would cure me. Tonight, though, when neither NPR nor chicken soup restored me, we called our embassy liason and translator, JL, who went above and beyond, and brought us to the ER at 10 pm.

We went to the fancy hospital - it's owned by the richest family in Nicaragua, who make the famous Flor de Cana rum I was enjoying just last night at the ambassador's house. (I could get used to this.) I wish I had a picture but my cheap digital camera doesn't seem to be working.

The fancy hospital is too expensive for most Nicaraguans, so at 10 pm the ER was completely empty. Sean, Sarah and JL watched Million Dollar Baby on TV while I went in to meet with the doctor. She only spoke a few words of English but was very eager to learn more, so we spent half the time figuring out what was wrong with me, and half the time working on when to say "say" and when to say "tell." I also clarified that "Does your earring hurt?" is probably not what she means to ask patients like me who complain of sore throats.

It turned out she had heard about our concert on the news. An hour later, I had a prescription for antibiotics, and she had a free ticket. The appointment cost $40.85: $40 for the doctor, plus $.03 for the tongue depressor and $.82 for the "protecto del termometro."

A few highlights from past days (photo of Shana and photo below by Sarah, movies by me)

A cementario on one of the 300+ islands in Lake Nicaragua (from the monkey trip)

Varieties of Political Experience: backstage at Casa de los Tres Mundos in Grenada, Nicaragua:

And Alfredo Woo and other guitarists play the famous Nicaraguan song, La Mora Limpia at UPOLI music school in Managua, Nicaragua, at our very first stop on the tour.

This post has been brought to you by Azithromycin, and the kindness of Shana and JL.

Day 3: Miss Nicaragua, an amazing school, and the ambassador's house party.

2009-04-20T23:09:00.000-07:00

Three performances today, in such a range of environments!

First, the morning show on Nicaraguan TV. It's a very popular show apparently, kind of a variety show. The act before us was a very nervous-looking chef with a big white chef's hat who cooked a crepe on-camera. He looked so scared, I wanted to give him a hug. Then the cameras turned to us and the show's we were interviewed by a former Miss Nicaragua, who spoke VERY fast Spanish in the interview! I did my best to keep up.

I'm sure she's been photographed many times, but how many times has she appeared with a banjo?

Sarah took that picture, and showed it to us in the van. We laughed all the way to our next show about how Sean had moved on from Lola the monkey to a Nicaraguan beauty queen!

From morning TV, to a school in a rural section of Managua. At first I was confused about how a city can have a rural section, but Managua doesn't seem to have suburbs to cushion the city -- it just kind of dissolves into farms, dirt roads, and wilderness. These rural areas are extremely poor. The school where we played was created to serve these kids, and it's very special--part of a series of schools across Nicaragua who use a progressive educational program developed in Columbia, it felt almost like a Latin American version of a Montessori school. We performed for about 200 kids, and then the music teacher (a young, energetic Nicaraguan guitarist and singer) performed some Nicaraguan songs for us and the kids; then we got a little tour of the school. It was so inspiring that I started to wonder if I shouldn't just convince Aaron to leave New York and meet me down here.

Thankfully, we had time for some rest - and then to the ambassador's house, where he hosted a party for embassy folks and young Nicaraguan alumni of exchange programs. The house is lovely but as a Baltimore native, I was particularly impressed by the guest room because Cal Ripken, Jr. stayed there recently while doing some sports diplomacy!!!

About 200 people milled around outside, eating appetizers and drinking Flor de Cana (I've never been a rum drinker, until tonight!) Then a couple young people described their time abroad in the US - the highlight being one of them thinking that his host father, Doug, was named Dog for the first few days!

Finally, we played our set. Given my past history I'm not shocked to be playing fiddle music in Nicaragua, but I did get a kick out of playing it at the ambassador's house. You can see Peter, our fearless sound person (who has done sound for every single gig we've played in Nicaragua), and the exchange alumni clapping along sweetly, and if you look hard...

you can see the cream-colored bowtie of Sean, who once again wins the best-dressed award.

Day two: ambassadors of interspecies peace

2009-04-19T22:49:00.001-07:00

Today we ate rice and beans for breakfast, and then headed to Grenada, an old Spanish colonial city from the 1500's. Having spent a fair amount of time in Antigua Guatemala, I was struck by the similarites. Cities in the US are all different from one another - there's really no organizing principle, except perhaps the (recent but ubiquitous) dying downtown. Antigua Guatemala, Grenada Nicaragua, and even Oaxaca are laid out quite similarly: a Parque Central with a big cathedral, and narrow streets with some lovely hidden courtyards inside, brightly draped in bougainvilleas, and with red-and-yellow tile floors.

It's only the second day, but so far, we are all astounded at how well we're being treated. Even though we have multiple performances most days, Michelle and Jose from the embassy make sure we have a couple hours to sightsee, and they even come with us. There's an embassy van and with a driver, and we leave our instruments and bags in the car with him while we do things like take a boat tour of the tiny islands off the coast of Grenada, in the giant Lake of Nicaragua.

Lago de Nicaragua is the largest freshwater sea in North America after the Great Lakes. It also contains over 300 tiny islands, "isletas," which were created from a volcanic eruption. We motored past one island with a crumbling Spanish fort which was built to protect Grenada from pirates (Sean told us that Captain Morgan, of the rum fame, actually plundered Grenada once). Some islands have people living on them, who get around by rowboat; others are owned by rich Nicaraguan families, and have a single modern vacation homes on them. The kid driving our boat, Larry, pointed them out as we drove by: "That family owns a coffee plantation. That family owns breweries."

Our goal, though, was an island of monkeys. Apparently a veterinarian set a few monkeys free on a small island, and now they live there happily. Lola, the female monkey, sometimes will visit the passing boats. We were really hoping she'd hop on board, but we couldn't find her. We idled there, waiting, for about 15 minutes while the male monkey glared at us with his arms crossed. We motored slowly around the island. We waited some more. Finally Lola appeared, and it's clear who her favorite member of the band is:

We gently explained to Lola that Sean was a rambling man and had to keep on moving. Lola seemed sad, but she understood. She swung back into the trees, and we went back to Grenada and performed at Casa Los Tres Mundos - a spacious, tiled series of rooms and lush courtyards that must have been an old colonial mansion, and is now an arts school and performance space. About 200 Nicaraguans and maybe 25 extranjeros sat in folding wood chairs and clapped along. I think we're getting better at explaining the songs in Spanish; though my favorite moment was when Sean took the microphone and thanked the sound guys: "Quiero decir gracias a Peter .... por el sueno." "I'd like to thank Peter .... for the dream."

Sueno, sonido, los dos!

Nicaragua, Day 1: adorable kids, interesting mayor

2009-04-18T21:57:00.000-07:00

Nicaragua day 1: morning at a music school in Managua; evening outside performance at market/town square in Masaya!

In the morning we loaded into the 15 passenger embassy van, and headed to a music school. There are no conservatories here in Nicaragua; the highest music education is a polytechnic school, UPOLI, which gives a vocational degree in music. I thought of Oaxaca where I hung out with a bunch of musicians who considered busking on the streets a great job, since it actually made them some money, as opposed to their friends who had graduated from law school but could not find a job at all!

Various music schools around Managua had sent their students to UPOLI for our performance/master class. It was nice and informal (by the way it's in the 90's here, and humid!)--just us and a bunch of students and teachers in a classroom. We played a few songs, the first of which Sean bravely introduced in Spanish, inspiring me to do the same, and our embassy liason Jose translated when we needed it. (The phrase "Blackberry Blossom" had us all stymied, Jose included.)

Then we broke into groups - Sean and Taylor with the guitarists, Sarah teaching the words and a little hambone (body percussion) to those without instruments, and me in a third room teaching the violin students, who consisted of two very good teenaged boys and three seven year old girls who had just started playing a year ago. We each taught our groups the same simple old-time song about fishing, "You Get a Line," and then we all came together to try it out. I kept apologizing to the violin teacher for instructing his students to slouch and stomp and hold their bows funny, but he didn't seem to mind.

I probably should have edited this video but the kids are so damn cute I could not bring myself to cut either the slow or the fast versions of the song, so here you have it: Hoppin' John and the children of Managua singing and playing You Get a Line!

We ate lunch at a traditional Nicaraguan restaurant - the "cornmeal" soup i ordered turned out to be like matza ball soup except the matza balls were made with cornmeal. Yum. Then a quick nap at the hotel, and then to Masaya, the artesania (crafts) center of Nicaragua.

The market has a central square with a large stage, and they often have music there. We wandered around the market (very similar to the artesania market in Antigua Guatemala, for those of you who have been there), and then set up onstage adn began the concert as night fell.

The audience -- a couple hundred locals and a few tourists, all seated outside on plastic chairs brought out for the occasion--were sweet and attentive enough in the beginning, but as the concert went on a kind of special atmosphere began to build, our stumbling Spanish introductions notwithstanding. People started to clap along and I could feel the attention growing. The air was warm, dark and silky. When we had a few songs left, Jose told us that the mayor was there and wanted to speak before our last song. We welcomed him onstage after "Bright Morning Stars."

What happened next was bizarre and amazing. The Mayor began speaking to us, and the audience, in Spanish. "I had a long day," he said, "and I was very tired. Then I came here. As I arrived, someone said 'You missed half the concert.' But when I heard the music I felt like I had missed half my life. And this music was here to give me life. It will make me live longer." He went on in a kind of lyrical fever as we listened onstage beside him: "Your music is love. Your music is peace. Your music builds the peace that is the peace of this country and the peace of the world. Your music is a flower beginning to bloom." It was at once very touching, and very theatrical and a bit odd. Then he began to talk about God: "It is impossible not to love God. It is impossible to go against God." At this point I became somewhat uncomfortable. Still - what a speech! It was the equivalent of getting a hundred red roses handed to you onstage!

Now, a bit of context: 1. Nicaragua loves poetry and recently had a huge poetry festival which drew not only international visitors but many regular Nicaraguans. 2. There is apparently considerable doubt as to whether the elections were free and fair - the US position is that they were not and the US has revoked a portion of aid to Nicaragua as a result. So it was a fascinating constellation of events: the mayor onstage with us waxing extremely poetic about how our music is peace; the complex political strands of that moment, between each of us, our countries, the histories of our countries and our own personal politics.

We got a standing ovation in Masaya; it was lovely. We took our bows and came back to Managua. It's very hot in my hotel room and I am pretty damn excited to go to sleep.

Delayed: Houston!

2009-04-17T15:54:00.000-07:00

Taylor, Sean and Alicia say "oh @#@#$)(*&" as a 2 1/2 hour delay is announced on our flight to Managua.

in other news, Girls in Trouble are mentioned in Billboard this week in a feature on our label, Jdub!

From La Guardia!

2009-04-17T08:18:00.001-07:00

Last night I dreamt I was in an airport with Garotas Suecas (this great brazilian rock band.) But in real life, I'm in an airport with the Hoppin John String Band. Sarah is eating a salad, Taylor is eating an apple, Sean is eating a currant scone, and Shana (our wonderful Jazz at Lincoln Center guide who is accompanying us for the first two countries) is typing on her blackberry.

I left my iphone at home, which already makes me feel kind of strange- I'm in an airport without a cell phone!?!

We fly through George Bush International Airport in Houston, and then to Managua Nicaragua. I find this an amusing sequence of names. As Aaron said over breakfast, thank goodness we are representing the Obama administration. I've said this before and I'll probably say it again.

Harsh reality: I am no longer a Continental Elite member. Found that out the hard way when I tried to check an oversize bag. Oh well. Guess I didn't fly enough last year. OK, I obviously have no news to report here. More from Managua.

Hoppin' John at Home

2009-04-06T13:47:00.000-07:00

Well, we are all vaccinated, have begun taking anti-malarial pills and reviewing Spanish grammar, are reading up on rainforest medicine in belize and political history in Guatemala, and played two shows in our two native environments (a neighborhood dive bar, and Sarah's kitchen) to say farewell to friends and family.

Genevieve, who illustrated the beautiful coloring book about Appalachian music which we'll be taking to distribute at school shows, also took this video of us playing Fort Washington Two-Step in Sarah's kitchen:

This week we'll be playing at the National Geographic in Washington, DC (Thursday April 9), and at Dizzy's Club Coca-Cola at Jazz at Lincoln Center, NYC (Saturday April 11). I'm particularly looking forward to the State Department briefing. I find the government aspect of this program oddly thrilling. Growing up in 1980's America, I'm not used to arts mixing with the government - I think of them as totally separate, even oppositional - and it's fascinating to see how they intersect, when they do.

STATESIDE PREPARATIONS

2009-03-26T22:29:00.000-07:00

Dear reader!

Strings are being strung, songs rehearsed, vaccinations gotten, and all kinds of other preparations taking place for the big tour.

A brief introduction: I'm Alicia Jo Rabins. I play fiddle and sing in a few different bands: Girls in Trouble, Golem, and the Hoppin' John String Band, which will henceforth be known as HJSB. HJSB is an old-time band from Brooklyn NY and we are soon to embark on a monthlong tour to Central America as musical ambassadors of the US. It's a program of the State Department, administered by Jazz at Lincoln Center. THANK GOODNESS we get to represent the Obama administration!

I'll be posting my observations, musings, meanderings, photographs and maybe even some sound recordings on this blog. So if any of you are as curious as I am to know what will happen as we fiddle through Nicaragua, Belize, El Salvador, Honduras and Guatemala, follow me!