Just got back from performing at the Festival Internacional de Musica y Nuevas Tecnologias: Visiones Sonoras in Mexico City. Jeremy Bleich (oud) and I were there as part of the NWEAMO festival, which will also take place this week in Portland, Oregon and next week in San Diego. From the start, things were very organized, with someone at the airport to meet us and drive us to our hotel. Mexico City is a gigantic labrynth of densely packed streets, so driving on our own would have been down right foolish. My wife Laura came along for the fun of it as well as taking pictures and generally helping us out.
Tuesday 9/20/05
Once we got settled into our room, Jeremy and I took a short walk around the general vicinity of the hotel. The air in Mexico City is bad at best....and you could feel it. As the 6th most populated city in the world (with everybody driving cars it seems), it's no wonder the air quality is poor. And with the exception of a few streets here and there, the city is engineered to accomodate the car, not pedestrians. That being said, the city is very exciting. Like any large city, it has its good and bad; squalor and filth, rich and beautiful, old and new. Most of the taxi were, oddly enough, green and white vintage Volkswagen Beetles...kind of surreal. I suppose if you want to own a vintage Beetle...that would be the place to get one. We went out to dinner that night in the San Angel area. A nice little cobblestone neighborhood with restaurants and shops. Unfortunately, we got there sort of late (especially for a weekday) and so many of them were closed. But we found a cool little place where the food was really good and affordable and the service was some of the best I've ever had...despite our one-year-old level Spanish.
Speaking of bad Spanish, I am determined to learn another language(Spanish probably makes the most sense). There's nothing worse than not being able to order food properly, express youself, be courteous, read signs etc...Most of the people we hung out with spoke decent English (many of them learn it in school when they are children), so except for the times we were out on our own, we had translators(special thanks to the sound guys Emiliano,Marten and Andres for driving us around and for taking us out for some delicious tacos)...
Wednesday 9/21/05
The day of the concert was long. We got there at 9am and didn't get back until about 10:30. Everything was really organized however, with all of us setting up and sound checking several hours before the performance. Jeremy got to give a little demonstration on the oud to some students. Although he resisted my suggestion, I got him to remove his thug-looking hoody sweatjacket before hand...The performance went very well. The room sounded so good that I didn't even use headphones. This is usually necessary for electro-acoustic performances(to separate the noise in the room from the noise in the music...)but the sound was mixed well, it wasn't too loud and the audience was quietly listening...amazing! What a difference performing in a recital hall as opposed to a rock club. All of the performances were different and interesting. Here's a pic:
Afterwards, a bunch of us hung out at the hotel bar drinking beer and tequila. Viva la Modela Negra!
Thursday 9/22/05
Thursday was tourist day. The three of us were feeling sluggish so we didn't get going until about noon...after we stuffed ourselves with the delicious breakfast buffet at the hotel...We wanted to ride the subway (something I always like to do in other cities)to save a little money on cab fare, but we had to get a ride to the last stop. La Metro looks like it was built in the 1970s, with lime-green seats in the cars and the proper urban patina. Subways are always filled with such an assortment of people. We saw everything from corporate types to farmers...and of course there was no shortage of people trying to sell stuff.
Our stop was Zocalo, a massive stone square with the metropolitan Cathedral at one end. The Cathedral, which replaced the Templo Mayor in 1572 " had the privilege of introducing new architectural styles that subsequently flourished throughout New Spain. Classic evolves into neoclassic and envelops the baroque play of style without detracting from it in any way." The reason it looks crooked in the photo is because it's been steadily sinking...I believe something like 12 feet in 25 yrs.
Next we went to the the Palacio de Bellas Artes (Palace of Fine Arts). The building houses performance of dance, music and theater as well as some the nation's great muralists(Diego Rivera,David Alfaro Siquieros,Jose Clemente Orozco and others. It also has some nice galleries dedicated to other Mexican artists. The opera hall was locked, which is a bummer because I heard it was spectacular. It was on this day I started to get a cold...nose running, sinus pain, sneezing...general misery, but what the hell, we were in Mexico City...onward! The reason this building looks crooked is beacause I took a bad picture of it...
We took a nice walk through a city park(Alameda Central),stopped at an amazing building with a giant inner courtyard. Whatever the place was, it is currently a cafe. We heard music from the street so we went in and behold! there was a band playing Beatles songs in Spanish...we had to stay.
After another subway ride, an interesting walk through a dense outdoor market, we caught a taxi to take us back to the hotel. Laura bailed on us and stayed back at the hotel while we went to check out the next nights performances. The group, The Electric Hammer performed several pieces by different composers. They consist of two guys on laptops and one percussionist. They were really amazing. We'll see them again in San Diego.
Friday 9/23
Homeward bound. Eventually. Our flight got delayed so we sat around the (smokey) airport sitting in front of our laptops (getting sicker),while the airline kept changing the time of our flight. We finally got out about 9pm. We arrived in Chicago about 1am. Of course our connecting flight to Cleveland was about 4hrs into history so they set us up in a nice hotel where we got about 3 hrs of sleep until we had to get up for our 6:45 flight...just lovely. Totally sick now. But thats what antibiotics are for right?
Overall, an amazing experience. Can't wait to go back. Met a lot of really nice, interesting folks. Next comes Portland, Oregon...
