Sala de Sigsig...
Friday night Billy and I went out to canvas the town. We started out at this place called Wonder Bar. It's a really quaint little café that serves a variety of drinks, appetizers, and deserts. It has a really calm ambience -- soft lights, warm drinks, and their walls are adorned with those artsy and old-style posters that used to be French advertisements for vermouth, french cinema, and movie posters that have beautiful women like Marlene Dietrech smiling while smoking cigarettes. Billy and I met up with Ryan at the bar. Ryan is a really cool and nice guy who seems to always laugh at my jokes -- even the bad ones. Ryan is a man of few words -- I haven't heard him talk a whole lot on our trip but that doesn't mean anything bad (no value judgments here) nor does it mean anything good...it just means what it means. It was a good time to sit back and relax at the Wonder Bar after a somewhat disorienting week. It seemed like we had made it out, survived the week, and it was a nice release to sit down at a bar and sip orange juice for a couple hours (Billy and Ryan on the other hand were handily tasting some samples of Ecuador's fine breweries). Later on, some more members of our program coincidentally met up with us -- Emily, Nick, Megan and Jake -- and we sat at the Wonder Bar for some more time.
Later on we went to this liquor store called Taxi and it was all so strange. I felt like we were in the middle of a theater set. People were all gathered around the store drinking and listening to reggaeton -- it all actually reminded me a lot of when I was in Spain back in 2005. People just sitting outside in their cars, drinking, smoking,....conversing. After Taxi, we went to this dance club called Zo. That place was really surreal -- pretty dark place like a cavern with a bunch of flashing neon lights, hordes of dancers, and the heat from everyone dancing made us all sweat. This was the kind of place that, without all of the people in it, could be pretty functional for brainwashing someone. Just strap them down in a chair in the middle of the room, pump up the music, turn all the whirring lights on, and just let them go crazy. After about an hour there, I felt a little crazy myself and I wanted to go. I didn't want to leave Billy there alone though, so I made sure we left together.
The night was okay but it wasn't my thing. Some people just like to lose themselves in a dark dance club full of drunk strangers. Alcohol, lights, and music pumping through their veins, they abandon consciousness to chase a surreal fantasy. It is places and times like those that remind me how absurd existence really is -- "can't believe the things we ask for; can't believe the things we need."
Today was really fun. I got a chance to break away from my program mates and do my own thing. This week, I met a really cool and nice guy named Judd. Judd is doing a independent study in South America over Andean music. In the fall, he'll be attending the University of Illinois to get a master's degree in Ethnomusicology. When we met, we hit it off and decided to become recording partners. So Saturday, we both travelled with this band called Cañara (I think that is their name). Cañara is a seven-person group that plays Andean folk music. Today, they performed in a little town called Sigsig as a part of a local music festival. Judd, Lauren (another student at CEDEI), and I all went to hear some music, have some local food, and relax. The music was very fine and Judd and I both recorded it from the audience. The picture above is of the auditorium after the show and it shows the room in which the audience sat. The room itself was pretty problematic in terms of getting good sound. There was a echo of about 500 ms built into the room -- this caused a good bit of low-end feed back, confusion, and just a general unpleasant 'boxy' sound. When the band first started out, I felt pretty insecure setting up my sound equipment. Maybe not insecure as much as conspicuous -- the room was filled with about 200-250 people and they all glared at me as if I was some kind of alien. I suppose it was a pretty strange sight to see -- some gringo setting up a boom stand and microphone -- and I sat smack dab in the middle of the room with my boom stand raised about 15 feet in the air.
The recording turned out pretty good though and it was nice to make friends with people from Cuenca. This Thursday, I am going to go to Cañara's practice. I'll probably be able to get a better recording of them there -- they won't have an annoying echo in their practice space.
Fricatas...
