Very Live Music

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Andean music is just what you think it is: pan-pipes, guitars, simple drumming, bad singing and the odd wooden flute type thing. In the streets during the build up to the festival this is added to sometimes with a pair of trumpets and euphoniums and maybe a cymballist. The music is very simple, highly repetitive, full of the more than odd wrong notes but enjoyably intoxicating.

In the restaraunts however are all the good musicians. They get tipped by playing well, so they have to. One night we were going round all the restaraunts just asking if they could do us a jug of warm wine at a good price, eventually we found one after naming our own price. We were pleased to find a few minutes later that they had live music scheduled too. This group was a quartet of guitarist, pan-pipist, drummer/other piper/shaker shakerer and the 'front-man' who played a tiny guitar like thing with 12 strings or a banjo derivative and sang a little. They were more than competent with some nimble strumming, flashy piping (!) and of course the multitalented drummer, who played at least two of his instruments all the time! We loved them and tipped well. Well we'd have to wouldn't we.

The next night in another restaraunt we were less surprised to find another band. But then they started playing. Wow what energy. Most thrash metal groups have worse ñlive acts than these guys. They were all over the restaraunt. Again a quartet two guitars (very punk!) the singer/piper who was rejoiced in showing off and a crazy very hairy drummer (straight out of guns n roses) who came as close to headbanging as you can with a bass drum attached to your belly. Also to add to the normal on the beat bass bang he added rim shots and complicated rhythms. We loved their four part harmony singing and random shouts of encouragement and enjoyment. At the end of each song the drummer would throw his head back sending his hair off his face, and smiling exclaim many pop-esq, "thankyou, thankyou very much". By the end of the night he finally fulfilled his rock destiny saying "Thankyou, we love you, goodnight!". In english and spanish, note!

The third and final musical experience worth mentioning other than all the wealth of street music, dancing and parading that we have witnessed, is by far the strangest.

On a bus. An overnight bus, with a very good company that is geared up to tourists I was surprised to find that our conductor was barely 12, but actually impressively competent and throrough with his job. The bus journey started at 10pm and was to finish by about 4am, so everyone was thinking of sleep. But within 5 mins our little conductor man had whipped out his guitar and pan-pipe (attached on a harmonica style bracket) and was what he himself called "serenading us before we went to sleep". Well his guitar was horribly out of tune and seemed to play one freaky horror music-esq chord. His pan-piping bore no relation to the guitar, but then what key was the guitar in? But his voice, filled with painful conviction like that in a 60 year old blues singer, was empassioned (singing much the same lyrics each verse of each song, something about "that girl") and as random as the piping and strumming put together. He sang 4 songs in total. Each exactly the same and each apparently the last!

I didn't tip that last time, except to suggest that he didn't ever do that again.

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