Springtime Musings.....

April 21, 2009
Hi all, Spring has arrived and is gorgeous. We went on a mini-pilgrimage last weekend with Miguel and Pilar. Unlike the pilgrimage to Rocio which lasts 3 days on the road with camping out, this one went about a kilometer from the church to the pine grove on the beach. There the priest said a few appropriate words for San Isadoro Labrador, the saint for whom the pilgrimage was made. Then, it was party time, full speed ahead. We were invited for good food and many drinks. Andi ended up demonstrating who was the best dancer of Sevillanas and I ended up playing and singing in the center of a big circle until a TV camera showed up and someone shoved a microphone in my face. Really fun!

Here are some of the carretas parted in front of the fiesta.

Here is a handsome horse with a funny look in his eye.

The cutest thing all day was Negro's brother Manuel, who had gotten babysitting duty, with a matched team of little kids all roped together so they couldn't get separated. They were all so well behaved.

Other than that, the flamenco has been pretty intense. I am rehearsing regularly with Miguel for our show in Zamora and last weekend at the Peña, I played for many hours. In the afternoon, there was a really good session with some visiting singers from Sevilla including Isabel, the presidenta of the Peña la Fragua. I played about 4 hours. Then the same evening, there was a dinner for people from a Peña in Malaga who had invited the Roteños to a dinner in Malaga earlier in the year. They showed up with several good singers. The Malaga people had their own guitarist, but the Peña asked me to accompany the Sevilla people and the Rota people - so I spent a long time on stage. Andi and I finished off the show with some bulerias.

It is quite a change from when we first arrived and all the men in the peña were very wary about who is this American who keeps wanting to play the guitar. Now they scream encouragement and treat us like dignitaries. This is beyond a dream come true because in my wildest dreams I couldn't imagine this. Maybe I imagined being able to play and sing a little without people being rude, but I never imagined having a place of honor at the table.

Misc. thoughts - Olives: do you like Olives? Well we LIKE olives! Here, there is an olive lady at the market who has different kinds of olives in a variety of marinades. Olives are never refrigerated, but kept in flavored brines sort of like pickles in the days before refrigeration. We really like the "gordales", which are really big, meaty olives. We spend about $40/month on olives and I can't imagine being without them. In the US, we had to make our own. The olives that go in martinis are so-o-o-o-oooo boring. But the upscale markets are starting to have Sicilian varieties that may help us get along.

Speaking of foods you don't get in the USA, how about octopus?

Our US visit - we will be in the USA all summer (We need to rent a car from somebody - borrow is even better, but we would pay for the insurance to cover us. We let our insurance lapse when we sailed away, so need to piggyback on someone else's). Anyway, we are looking forward to reconnecting with old friends....

Here is a photo from Semana Santa here in Rota. This is one of the pasos from the church here, carried by about 20 young men (hidden under the skirts of the paso).

BTW, in the sidebar at the right is a new entry "All Our Videos" that takes you to a list of all our videos including new ones with Miguel and Negro.

Here is a video of Semana Santa....

Semana Santa (Holy Week) in Sevilla - and Rota

Friday, April 10, 2009
After getting back from Zamora, we rested for a day and then went to Sevilla for Holy Week. Steve and Robin Kahn joined us for the first few days and it was a delight to show Robin (new in Spain) all the fleshpots of Sevilla and then the first Holy Week activities on Palm Sunday.

Here are Steve and Robin in front of El Toboso, a good place to be found.

Here is Columbus' tomb in the cathedral of Sevilla.

Here is the cathedral itself - it is much too big to fit into a picture. All the processions of Semana Santa come through this cathedral.

For those of you who don't know about this, Semana Santa is a huge event in Spain, but especially Sevilla. Many families are on vacation all week and some bury themselves in religious activities and others go to the beach. For the former group, there is plenty to do. There are 72 cofradias in Sevilla - that would be a group from a specific parish that will actively work in the church activities. There are 3 cofradias in Rota, so you can see the difference in scale. The main activity, besides masses, is a procession in which they carry these huge floats (pasos) weighing sometimes more than a ton around the city. The wealthy churches may have a variety of pasos, some for Palm Sunday, some for Good Friday, etc. The poor churches usually just have two, one of Christ carrying his cross and another of the Virgin Mother. These pasos are usually hundreds of years old and are covered in silver or gold, carved from dark hardwoods, and covered with candles and flowers.

Here is one with lots of carved hardwoods.

They slowly wind their way through the streets to the big cathedral in Sevilla and then back to the church. They are accompanied by many (often more than a 1000 per church) Nazarenos (those guys with the Ku-klux-klan outfits - the idea stolen from them by some bigot). The Nazarenos carry huge candles through the streets and each church has their own color scheme for the outfits.

Here is my cosuegro, Enrique looking down on the littlest Nazareno, who retired to her stroller and took off her capilote (pointy hat).

Here is a proud dad helping junior with some detail of his outfit.

And here one of the Nazarenos is giving candy to kids (which they do during informal moments when the pasos are stopped)

And there is a band with every group too, that plays special holy week music and plays drums in between. The pasos are carried by 40-60 men who shuffle through the streets with a synchronized step that they practice the week before carrying loads of bricks or metal. Since they need to rest from time to time (their route may be several miles through streets so narrow that the pasos can barely fit through), they lower the paso for a break. At that time, singers on balconies will sing Saetas to the Christ or Virgin on the pasos. Ah, Saeta - that's the name of our boat! Saetas are impassioned moorish sounding songs done without accompaniment that are only done during Semana Santa. They are chilling.

Here is the church next to the house with the paso of Christ coming out of the door.

After the Cristo comes out, then the Virgin comes out with 400 Nazarenos and a band of musicians between them.

Here is the paso of Jesus coming back by the house at 2AM with the streets much more empty than when they left at 6PM.

You can see all this much better on TV, but TV can never capture the emotion that you feel when a paso comes by you in the middle of the night with the smell of incense, the thousands of candles, the hushed crowd, the beat of the drums that you feel in your stomach, and the awesome spectacle of the pasos and Nazarenos. One group had a choir of tiny children - really young - who sang so sweetly it made me cry. You have to be in this to really get it, but I try to give you a hint. There are so many cofradias in Sevilla that they all have defined arrival and departure times and colored routes on a map so that you know where to meet them. The problem is trying to get around on foot during this time. It is very difficult because somewhere between here and there you will probably have to cross 3 processions, 1/4 mile long, which takes lots of time. Yesterday there were a million people on the streets!!!! Luckily everything is made of stone because the fire trucks could never get through.

Here is the Virgin coming back to the church at 2:30AM.

We spent 5 days in the house of our wonderful Spanish relatives and then retreated to the relative calm of Rota to see Semana Santa in a small town. It's nice to be surrounded by people we know.

Zamora and back again.....

Wednesday, April 1, 2009

As mentioned in the last entry, I was contracted to perform at the Peña Amigos del Cante in Zamora. So at 4 AM last Saturday, we started off to drive almost the entire length of Spain. Zamora is way north - the farthest we've ever been.

We arrived at midday and checked into our hotel. Soon Eduardo Abríl, the president of the peña came to join us and escorted us to lunch with his family and Alberto, another officer of the peña. Then, after the traditional nap (of which I am uncommonly fond), we went to a bullfight. We had seen lots of bullfights on TV, but never in person. The 5 toreros (of which there are usually 3) had donated their performances to a benefit for AA. It started to rain and then hail during the first bull, but cleared up in 10 minutes. There were some great performances from most of the toreros and bulls. One torero got tossed (which is unusual), but continued with his bull even though in considerable pain. He had a very difficult time of it. But several of the other toreros were awarded ears for good work. Bulls relatively small, but appropriately fierce.

This guy did a very nice job.

Later, we did the show. I was the whole thing, so I had to fill the entire evening... and did so. Andi danced the buleria on the stone floor. Nice review for both of us in the local paper and on the blog on the peña website - http://www.amigosdelcante.es/ - same text for both. Click on "Blog" at the top of page and then scroll down the blog for the article.

Here I am again. I can't believe this!

The next day, we started off to spend our earnings on tourism in a quest to see the best castles in Castilla. It turns out that most of the Spanish castles were just intended to be forts and watchtowers. Very few people lived in them, unlike the castles in Germany and England. As a result, they were mostly fortified walls around a central plaza in which the army and local civilians camped during a battle or siege. The castles were modified every time the region changed hands in the long struggle between Christians and Islam (700 years long!).

Here is the castle at Peñafiel, one of the biggest, built on a ridgetop. It is long and narrow like a boat. You can see Richard Parker's little blue car.
Here is the "pointy end" of the castle. You can see that the walls are made for fighting and the rest of the space is for camping out by soldiers and civilians.
Here is the town of Peñafiel as seen from the castle.

Yet another view from below.

We visited the castles at Peñafiel, Istar, Cuellar, Coca, Medina del Campo, and Barca del Ávila and then polished off the tour by seeing the Roman aqueduct, temple, forum, theater, and coliseum at Mérida. That last was truly amazing - some of the best preserved Roman ruins in existence. One of the things we found was that Castilla-Leon is spectacular in the Spring. We took mostly back roads and came down a mountain pass near the Sierra de Gredos, driving through little villages with tile roofs and rock walls, cherry trees in bloom, and a river in the bottom of the canyons. 20 spectacular miles that might just be the prettiest place I've ever been.

Travel expenses - we found very nice hotels for 45 Euros per night, ate well, and figure we spent 100 E or less per day for everything including gas for the car. That's about $133... just in case you were wondering if you wanted to visit Spain. Another thought - there are a lot of villages in Spain with declining populations. The young folks go to the cities and the old folks die off. That leaves quite a few abandoned houses. Groups of foreigners could go and find a village with abandoned housing in decent condition and buy houses for very little $. Sure it means living in a village, but what a beautiful life style once you learn to slow down. The people are wonderful. Now we're back in Rota to rest for a few days and then it's off to Holy Week (Semana Santa) in Sevilla. More castle pictures follow this post.

Castles in Spain....

April 1, 2009
In Cuellar, in fact all over in this region, they like to train the trees to make arches of shade.

Hre is the castle at Cuellar. It has been refurbished and is now used as a school. We spent the night in this town.

Here is the moat and drawbridge of the castle at Coca, one of the best restored castles.

Here is the Coca castle frow afar.

Here is the castle as Iscar, really just an elaborate watchtower. They had towers placed on high places so that they could see any troop movements and signal the other castles.

Then we went to the castle at Medina del Campo.


This castle has also been used as a school.

Castles and a Roman City.....

April 1, 2009
Welcome to Merida in Extremadura, formerly an important Roman city.

Here is the Forum..
This is the aqueduct.
This is called the Gate of Trajan, but it was probably built earlier, during the time of Seneca.
Here is the temple of Diana, right down the street from the Forum.
Here is the Anpitheatre, where the gladiators came to play.
And finally, the Theater for plays and music.
This was a very large city in the time of the Romans, a trading crossroad. These pictures show only the smallest part of the actual remaining structures. Very impressive to sit in the theater and think of what might have been happening more than 2000 years ago in that same spot.


Wednesday, April 1, 2009