On the Road to Find Out

Every Sunday La Melaza head out onto the streets near Parque Rodo in Montevideo to bang their drums. They’re not alone, there’s a number of different groups which march through their neighbourhood on a Sunday, as well as some groups which do it every night! La Melaza is a bit different though. I managed to get an okay recording of them playing on Sunday. You really should listen to it:

La Melaza

Okay, so my little camera/voice recorder couldn’t really handle the bass, but the main thing about this recording is just the different rhythms and the way they are using the drums. The Candombe dates back to when the slaves were brought over to Uruguay in the 18th century, and most of the candombe groups stick to the traditions as much as possible. There are three different rhythms they use.

La Melaza exist outside of this, despite the fact that they have an almost encyclopaedic knowledge of its traditions. I think the reason they have had to do this though is because they are all female. They started as a project borne from the idea of doing special for International Women’s Day and have grown as a force since then. Being an all-female group has meant that they have had to replace the normal thumping bass that ripples through candombe with different counter-rhythms, and I believe this has now set their style completely apart from all the other candombe groups out there.

I will be meeting some of them this week to do an interview so will probably be writing some more about them in the very near future. In the meantime, I also managed to get a short video clip, although the quickly-disappearing sun and my camera’s affliction to nighttime bashfulness, have not made it the cinematic glory it hoped to be. Despite this, it gives an idea of La Melaza, and also the chance to listen to some more of their mighty fine beats.

NB: Following this encounter I interviewed three members of La Melaza towards an article for UruguayNow. The article can be viewed here.

Unfortunately there were no bimbos at the Bimbo Cup, but it did prove to be a great evening. First off, Danubio trounced Nacional (Paraguay) 5-2 in the opening game with some nice goals too! The real reason for the evening was always going to be Peñarol v Nacional though, and this started to show about halfway through the first game when the stadium started to fill with Peñarol and Nacional fans who started to chant at each other. I felt kind of sorry for the players left playing football on the field as nobody seemed to be really interested in what they were doing. The fans were just warming themselves for what was to come, which would be El Clasico. Which, despite, this just being a friendly, would not be just a friendly, there was pride at stake after all. In the end, the game proved not to be too much of a swashbuckling affair and finished goalless. Peñarol should have won it though after a number of one-on-one’s with the goalkeeper which they conspired to miss. This meant the game went to penalties and Nacional inevitably won. I managed to actually get some video footage of the final winning penalty and the celebrations won. It’s somewhat low-key by South American standards but at least shows how many people there were in the stadium and how much both sets of fans wanted to celebrate the final whistle, Nacional for their victory and Peñarol for their team’s efforts, especially considering their team has generally been the worse of the two in the recent past.

When I first decided that I would stay in South America over Christmas I have to admit I was a little concerned that maybe I would miss it. Now that all festivities have passed and we are well into the swing of January there is no doubt that it was the right move and I would recommend everyone from England to book a flight and get the hell of that island next time Santa comes round, and not even just for the week of Christmas, the two weeks before and after too!

The lack of pressures is an absolute delight. No need to worry about co-ordinating those work-related Xmas parties, having to contend with the thousands of presents getting stuffed in your eyeholes via the tv, newspapers, Internet, shop window and whatever other surface happens to be facing in your direction between October and December, but most of all, the ability to get the hell out of the house. The ability to go to the beach, go to a poolside party, have a couple of beers in the park, these are the sort of things we should be doing when we have two weeks off work, not sat inside our houses watching 3-hour long episodes of Coronation Street and finding out the exact point when your body is ready to vomit from eating too many nut truffles. It’s such a waste of free time!

Now we’re two weeks into January and the fact that not one single person I have spoken to has mentioned a resolution of any kind, no diets, no yoga videos, no gym memberships or anything else that basically relates to the marketing of health-related products to people sitting on couches, stuffed with turkey and chocolate. Everyone actually seems pretty happy and in fact are more preoccupied with getting out to the beach while they have some free time than anything else.

God, I ended up ranting a little bit there. I do apologise! In a slightly diagonal note, I now have a camera after both my camera and mp3 player broke. I forked out for a multi-functional mp3/mp4/camera/voice-recorder thing-a-me-job. I figured it should be christened with a couple of photos. So here goes:

So this is the first one, just a quick shot of my current pad, up on there on the eighth floor. It’s the balcony just before the top.

And more importantly. This is my ticket to the Bimbo Cup, taking place tonight. I have been reliably informed there will be at least 70,000 bimbos in attendance. This seems like an adequate number. More interestingly, though, is the fact that I will get to see two football matches. The first, Danubio, featuring a ridiculously over-weight Alvaro Recoba, against Nacional, current champions of Paraguay, and the second, Nacional v Penarol, just about one of the biggest rivalries in football, or it would be if these two teams hadn’t been pretty rubbish for the last 20 years. Anyway, normally it is sold out. Stupidly, I forgot to buy a ticket before today and had to pay for the expensive seat. A whopping 5 pounds! It would have been 3 quid if I had acted faster.

My ticket to the Bimbo Cup

I really wanted to start with a picture of one of the candombe groups here but my camera is currently broke and I have just seen an amazing photo of something else, so I feel that will have to take precedence!

It’s the biggest yes yes yes

That’s one big cashew tree. It’s up in the north of Brazil somewhere. It produces 2.5 tonnes of cashew nuts every year. I feel pretty certain I must have eaten one of its little fruits at some point in my life, especially in my cashew heyday! I really feel like I should see if there are any jobs going at the Cashew Nut Marketing Board in England because I really feel like they’re missing some tricks. First, it turns out that there are cashew fruits as well, now there’s a tree that’s the size of the park. I’ve never wanted a cashew nut more!

Right, so I was actually gonna write about Uruguay but I’ve been getting a bit sidetracked! It’s all been Brazil and nuts so far, so I will get back on track.

It’s my second week in Montevideo now and the pace of life here as well as the people are absolutely perfect. At one million people it must be one of the smaller capitals in South America, plus most people have gone on holiday to the beach this month, which all means that the streets remain a notable sense of calm. That is, until the candombe starts, which seems to happen at 7pm most nights in a few of the neighbourhoods here and on Sunday happens for most of the day all over the place. Generally a bunch of 20 or so people banging three different types of drums in a sound that doubtless shares some similarities with samba. When it’s properly organised there’s also a group of dancers and performers, my favourite being the old man who normally does a great geriatric dance at the front. When carnival happens next months no doubt all these people will be out in force to parade the streets. We’ve already had one major procession, which was the parade of wise men last week, and there’s something really nice about the carnival here. It seems to lack the craziness of Brazil or even Notting Hill (I’m not even going to mention Nottingham carnival) but not the euphoria as everyone involved or watching seems to be having the times of their lives. As well as this being down to the fact that everyone is pretty laid back, and there’s not that many people to start with any, I think this is also due to the fact that it’s legal to smoke marijuana here, which means that dotted all along the route is the smell of green, emanating from all manner of different sources, old ladies sitting in deck chairs being the most surprising.

This country is fast becoming one of my favourites in South America, up there with Ecuador. There’s no hiding that the mindset in the smaller countries seems to fit my own so much better, and boy is it something of a relief to leave Argentina. I met some great people there, but I was also getting extremely tired of some of the arrogance there. Their feeling of superiority over Uruguay is shocking. I really hope I don’t act that same way about Wales! It is strange though in Argentina how they constantly talk about how beautiful Patagonia is yet hardly any people from the North travel there, and in fact more go to Uruguay, where they visit to enjoy the beaches, but yet hardly any of them speak glowingly of this place. Nationalism. Boy do I hate it!

Now they better have some cashew nuts in the supermarket…

It’s taken me a little while longer than I wanted to wake up from this haze. As stated before, Buenos Aires is dangerous over the Christmas period, especially when you’re sleeping on the floor in a mosquito breeding ground, being consistently woken up by a Brazilian ‘meditating’ in the adjoining room and a crazy Dutchman who doesn’t seem to realise that stepping on someone while he’s sleeping is not entirely necessary.

I’ve been in Montevideo now since late on Friday night and have been in my new apartment since Sunday. It’s the first time I’ve ever had a place to myself and found it very easy to slip into the regime of walking around in my pants the whole time. It does help that I’m on the eighth floor and also that the temperature is excruciating at times. I’m not sure I would get away with this behaviour in Sneinton. I have no doubt Chardonnay would have already started shouting abuse at me by now and that maybe even Terry would have begun to question my judgement.

It’s so nice to actually have a job right now that doesn’t involve solely designing a web site. Actually means that I have the impulse to get out there and do some research. I am in charge of writing about football and music for the new site, as well as writing a few hostel/bar reviews. Any reason to go out for a beer basically.

At the moment we just have a holding page, http://www.uruguaynow.com but soon it should be something quite nice indeed I hope.

Right, now I need some sun! Ciao!

I have finally been seduced by mate.

The conversion has taken a little while but I always knew it was coming. The communal drinking ritual and price a fraction of coffee or tea always made this inevitable.

(more…)

They took my scissors and cheese sandwich as I passed through customs. I’m not really sure they understand the nature of swine flu.

As with most people travelling from Buenos Aires to Uruguay, I am making a stopoff in Colonia. A beautiful World Heritage Site town; a Bob Ross interpretation of colonial Uruguay, probably not aware of it’s aesthetic kinship to Portmeirion. I could then go on to say how the place resembles ‘The Prisoner’ tv series more so than Portmeirion itself, the eerie shell of a colonial era, a town full of menacing history ala Salem, the echoes of day-to-day life ringing around the crumbling edifices. This would in fact be a load of horse shit.

(more…)