Sunday 23th at five pm. About 90 Fahrenheit degrees in the city. This is way too hot.
Davies Symphony Hall in San Francisco. Man it was so hot! But it was so cool!
My first time at Davies! Not long ago I heard a woman during a speech, saying that the less you are willing to try new things, the older you're getting, then she asked the audience: when was the last time you did something for the first time? Well, there it goes, I'm happy to say: yesterday, less than twenty four hours ago! Yipee!
The performers? Or better said: the magicians? The Afro-Latin Jazz Orchestra, led by Arturo O'Farrill, heir to Chico O'Farrill. Like father like son. Excellent maestros! Period
The eighteen member orchestra cast a spell on us, or maybe they hypnotized us, or ... I don't know what they did to us but for about two hours we were the happiest human beings in the world! (With so much suffering going on right now, with so many inocent civilians being killed by the minute, being happy might seem shallow and selfish, but while enjoying the maestros' magical arts I was convinced that everybody should have this kind of experience, at least once, and this thought convinced me even more to fight the good fight and defend this and other equally important rights and experiences, like the right to be listened to and to be respected no matter where you come from)
Their music is strong, erotic, sensual, it caresses the body and the senses, it caresses the mind ... and it puts it to work too, at least my brain was actively working, eagerly absorbing and observing each and every one of the sounds, each and every one of the movements and the rhythms, noticing how each part of my body reacted to that avalanche of feelings.
One thing led to another, and while my multi-tasking brain was absorbing everything, I couldn't avoid thinking of the past. This music reminded me of my childhood in a northern México City barrio. We were living in a small house in a street called José María Mata. Next to our house there was a big home where a big family of musicians lived. Three generations of them: grandpa, father and son (and I just heard recently that the great-grand-son is a musician too), all of them played at different times with the famously revered Internacional Sonora Santanera, which every afternoon at about 4pm, right on time for me since I always finished my homework at that time, gathered and rehearsed their music, only few meters next to where my family and I used to live. The instruments I loved the most were the saxophones and the trumpets. They sounded beautifully! It was gorgeous.
Fast forward lots of years later and here I am, at Davies Symphony Hall in San Francisco, listening to this gorgeous music in an extra-hot Sunday at an extra-cool and fancy location. I'm very happy this kind of music has gotten the recognition it deserves so much so that it is now played at beautiful symphony halls. Remember the time when danzones were dismissed as music for prostitutes and pimps? In México, that music was played in horrible "congales de mala muerte" at worst, though some other times it was played at decent and honorable working class parties. I think that's what made that music ours, it was our music then, it is our music now. I couldn't avoid thinking that Acerina or Luis Alcaraz or 'Cara e Foca' Perez Prado or Amador Pérez, Dimas or Carlos Colorado would have all the right to be here, playing, conducting this or their own orchestras.
Then again, I couldn't avoid remembering the beautiful rumberas such as Tongolele, Ninón Sevilla, Rosa de Carmina, etc. perfectly and sensually moving their erotic bodies while dancing with music just like the one the Afro-Latin Jazz Orchestra was playing yesterday.
The soloists were virtuosos, powerful maestros conveying so many feelings with their instruments that sometimes we could only gasp in awe. Lots of other times we wanted to stand up and dance. Man! I wish we could've dance!
The temperature was rising by the minute with every single theme they played, mind to say the Hall is comfortably air-conditioned, but by the time el Comandante stood up and danced while playing the flute with mucho sabor a cha-cha-chá, that place was burning!
