by David Byrne
Musical Connections, Continued
In the early evening León Gieco and I stop by for tea at the apartment of Mercedes Sosa, a force in Argentine music for a number of decades. This reminds me of the human chain of connections that brought me here, to her apartment. Bernardo Palombo, an Argentine folksinger, was teaching me Spanish in the early ’90s in New York. He introduced me during classes to the music of Susana Baca, Silvio Rodriguez, and others, and I would practice my still rudimentary Spanish by asking about their music and lyrics. Amelia Lafferriere, a friend of Bernardo’s here in Buenos Aires, had worked with Silvio, as well as with León Gieco, a folk rock singer here. Leon is friends with Mercedes Sosa. I covered one of León’s songs, “Solo le Pido a Dios,” on my first tour here (I also covered one made famous by Mercedes too, “Todo Cambia”) and later, in New York, he invited me to join him in a concert he did with Pete Seeger. (The connections are mind-boggling, even to me. Six degrees of musical separation, indeed.)
Mercedes is an amazing singer and a larger-than-life personality. She emerged in the mid-to-late ’60s and could be considered a kind of art-folk singer, as she makes few concessions to mainstream pop tastes. In a way some of these songwriters were musically closest to the British folk models in that they looked to their own cultural and historical roots and sounds for inspiration. One might group Mercedes with the nueva trova, nueva canción, or new song, movement, which emerged in the ’60s here and throughout Latin America, and had no equivalent up north—though there was a parallel with ’60s folksing ers who also included songs about politics and human rights in their repertoire. Here, however, to sing about human rights and freedom, at least at that time, was a life-and-death matter. It took a kind of passion and bravery that we musicians up north haven’t had to deal with.
The Tropicálistas in Brazil were jailed or sent into exile. Here and in Chile it was a lot worse. Mercedes was arrested onstage and exiled. Victor Jara in Chile had his hands chopped off and was killed. León was also forced into exile. Mercedes fled first to Brazil, and then to Paris and Madrid, León to Ann Arbor, Michigan.
León looks a bit like Sting, if Sting drove a truck in Patagonia. León is more of a rocker than Mercedes, though they both often add and absorb elements of indigenous music—and I don’t mean just tango—into their songs and recordings. This musical blending, for me, says as much about what these artists are up to as their lyrics do. Their sound says they are proud of their heritage and culture, that they don’t want to simply be an imitation of the internationally popular North American models—and yet they include elements of that music in the mix as well. To me this says that they, and many others, view themselves and the present as a third stream, a hybrid that isn’t exclusively one thing or the other, but can borrow from anything out there. These musicians are defining their identity in a formal way that you can hear instantly. León has also written songs that, like some of Dylan’s, put into words what a lot of people felt at a particular time, and for this reason he’s revered, and a lot of people know some of his songs by heart.
León was, for a time, in a band with Charly García, a classic rocker here, so from Mercedes to León to Charly there is a thread that ties a number of fairly disparate musical strands together. And, at least as far as being influenced, I guess I’m part of that chain now too, as I’m thrilled to know both of them—for their music and for what they represent, culturally and politically.
Mercedes is a large woman, and she has a booming voice that in volume could be compared to that of an opera singer. Her friendly mestizo features contain some indigenous elements—or maybe I imagine this because she often wears a poncho onstage. She and León’s conversation with each other is intense and wide-ranging—from remembrances of Victor Jara to glowing admiration for David Lindley and other wacky and talented L.A. musicians with whom León has recently recorded.
It’s two in the morning now, early by Buenos Aires standards, and we’ve moved to a Japanese restaurant in a hotel. After dinner, as we leave, a group of young girls, who were sitting on the curb waiting for a local teen idol to show up, surround Mercedes with hugs and kisses. They’re more than one generation apart, but even the teen fans know who Mercedes is.
The Church of Football
The next day on TV the Mexican and Argentine players enter the field for the World Cup match that will decide which of them continues to the final rounds. The entire city has stopped for the game. Everything has come to a standstill. I’m at a sound check in a club, where I will be sitting in with La Portuaria. All the club and band technicians have stopped work and gathered around the TV. The national anthems have been sung and the players have taken the field. The streets outside are nearly deserted, the huge avenues almost clear of traffic. All shops and restaurants are closed, except a few where televisions can be seen with clumps of people huddled in front of them.
After the sound check Diego, the lead singer, and I stop at a sandwich shop for a late lunch. The café is manned entirely by women, which might explain why it remains open (the men are all glued to the TV sets). Though it isn’t the center of attention there is a token tiny TV sitting on the bar, which competes with a CD of techno music. Diego mentions that he was in high school during the dictatorship. The World Cup was held here in ’78—and he says that some claim it was used as a screen for many to go missing and become disappeared. The government supported the sport event massively and used it as a clever way to disappear people when few were paying attention. One can see today how easy that would be. This would be the time to invade.
Most people were then, and even now remain, in partial denial about what was going on, many claiming they saw or knew nothing—although many sensed what was happening. As a high school student Diego went to visit some friends one day and no one answered the door. It was soon apparent that the house was now vacant, and would remain so. Later his father said that maybe they had been taken. There was a general feeling of paranoia, and Diego says that for a high school kid this fear manifested itself in ways that any schoolkid of that time might worry about—that if your hair was too long you’d be in trouble or if you got caught with a joint you might be picked up. Those typical young hipster affectations could have been viewed by the state as outward signs that you might be a sympathizer with its enemies. So even though these might have been the same concerns of high school kids in many countries, here the repercussions for being picked up for being a long-haired hippie were much more ominous. Everyone was careful; political talk was hushed. Gunshots could be heard on the streets at night—the sound of the military or the police (often they were the same thing) going about their dirty business.
I remember having a similar feeling in elementary school in Baltimore, though it couldn’t have been anywhere near as intense as it was down here. It was during the Cuban missile crisis, and the level of fear and paranoia in the United States must have been high. Of course as a kid you assume that everything, whether it’s abnormal or not, is just the way things are. Only in retrospect do you realize how fucked up it was.
I remember walking home from school. (I would have been in fifth grade—maybe ten years old?) It was about a mile back to my home, and I would usually take a route that passed through mostly suburban neighborhoods of lawns and trees, split-level homes, and clapboard houses. I remember picturing in my mind dark-winged bombers suddenly flying overheard. (Would they be Cuban bombers? Russian?) I imagined that first their engines would be heard approaching, a low ominous hum coming from somewhere in the distance, and then they’d appear over our suburban roofs. As I walked home I would mentally plan my route to possible shelter should this happen. Block by block, I would think to myself, From this block I could make it to Dean’s house, if I run—Dean’s house was maybe a block or two away—then, a little farther on, I determined that at that point my friend Ricky’s house would be a better bet for shelter. The way home had to be calculated, planned, measured, from one potential safe house to the next. It was a frightening
passage for a kid. No wonder the movies of that time were the way they were, full of paranoia and monsters. We were all scared shitless and the monster was invisible.
Gentrification
Palermo, the district where we are now having a sandwich, used to be a quiet neighborhood with lots of pocket parks—which are still here, though it’s not so quiet anymore. It got gentrified in the last few years, and now it’s filled with clothing boutiques, chic eateries, and bars. Diego recently moved out of his apartment across the plaza from this sandwich shop. Their house is for sale. He asks what changes New York is going through—commenting that it now seems so clean. Same process—the artists and new arrivals seek apartments farther out as the rising rents drive them away from the center. I comment that the resulting lack of mixing of various kinds of people—artists, professionals, and working folk—is ultimately detrimental to creativity. Creativity of all kinds. With young creative types now spread out over New Jersey, the Bronx, Williamsburg, Red Hook, and elsewhere, it’s harder for any kind of scene or movement to gain traction. There needs to be sufficient density for it to develop. Creativity gets a boost when people rub shoulders, when they collide in bars and cafés and have a tentative sense of community. New York, or at least Manhattan, will, on its current course, end up like Hong Kong or Singapore—a vast gleaming business and shopping center. Creativity—that indefinable quality that China, for example, probably covets—will be extinguished in New York if random and frequent social contact is eliminated.
It’s often said that proximity doesn’t matter so much now—that we have virtual offices and online communities and social networks, so it doesn’t matter where we are physically. But I’m skeptical. I think online communities tend to group like with like, which is fine and perfect for some tasks, but sometimes inspiration comes from accidental meetings and encounters with people outside one’s own demographic, and that’s less likely if you only communicate with your “friends.”
I have no romantic feelings for run-down neighborhoods where crack vials litter the pavement and the plumbing barely works. Granted, those neighborhoods typically offer cheap housing and a tolerance for noise and eccentricity, but to confuse the availability of space with the unfortunate circumstances that often make those spaces cheap is, well—they don’t need to go hand in hand.
We walk to my hotel, a few blocks away. The streets are empty. (The football is still going on.) The rain has stopped. Diego asks about hip-hop. I reply that the beats and music are often incredibly innovative and sophisticated, but for the most part it’s corporate rebellion these days. Which isn’t to say there isn’t a lot I like—Trapped in the Closet is one of the wackiest, most creative video pieces I’ve seen in years. Diego brings up Baile Funk—the fairly recent Brazilian evolution of 808 drum machine beats, techno, hip-hop, and funk. (Though it’s more like being pummeled in a violently disorienting fairground ride than getting funky, in my opinion.) We agree it’s incredibly innovative and ridiculously extreme. Diego says the lyrics in the Brazilian case are violent and rough, but unlike U.S. hip-hop the words in Baile Funk are usually from a victim’s point of view.
History Told Through Nightlife
I stop by a book and record store where I select various CDs, and the clerk plays me samples from local recordings: one of solo bandoneón (the accordionlike instrument used in tango), one of candombe jazz (an unexpected hybrid to me, as candombe is Afro-Uruguayan carnival music), and one of a large orchestra playing old tangos. Over on a table there are numerous books detailing the history of the national rock scene and others describing the varieties of Porteño nightlife.
A history of nightlife!—what an interesting concept. A history of a people, told not through their daily travails and successive political upheavals, but via the changes in their nightly celebrations and unwindings. History is, in this telling, accompanied by a bottle of Malbec, some fine Argentine steak, tango music, dancing, and gossip. It unfolds through and alongside illicit activities that take place in the multitude of discos, dance parlors, and clubs. Its direction, the way people live, is determined on half-lit streets, in bars, and in smoky late-night restaurants. This history is inscribed in songs, on menus, via half-remembered conversations, love affairs, drunken fights, and years of drug abuse.
One wonders if the things that people do to relax—after work and after-hours—is a mirror of their inner state, and therefore a way to see unspoken hopes, fears, and desires. Views and expressions kept bottled up in public, in the daytime, and kept hidden in typical political discourse. Nightlife might be a truer and deeper view into specific historical and political moments than the usual maneuverings of politicians and oligarchs that make it into the record. Or at least they might be a parallel world, another side of the coin.
It’s easy to say in retrospect that the goings-on in the Weimar cabarets prefigured World War II, or that punk rock was a dark reflection of the Reagan era, but there might be some truth to looking at all nightlife that way. Was the simultaneous flowering of both Studio 54 and CBGB, when New York City was at financial rock bottom, a coincidence? Maybe not? Will this latest economic meltdown signal a creative renaissance, a rebirth of affordable and anything-is-possible nightlife? Can one read the present or the future by looking at the dance floor, into back rooms, or at who’s on the bar stools? The myriad restaurants and lounges of the past decade in New York City were often filled with hedge fund billionaires, and the rise of bottle service in discos and celebrity hangouts can now be seen as a harbinger of what was to come. But, yeah, it’s easy to say that in retrospect.
City of Vampires
After the performance I go out to a club at the invitation of Charly García, who came to the show. Charly was one of the instigators of the rock nacional movement here, which emerged in the ’60s. Charley became more well known in the early ’70s. He was contemporaneous with the folk and nueva trova artists mentioned earlier, but for people like Charly, though those others were respected, folk might also have been the style to rebel against. He, and many others, represented sex, drugs, and rock and roll—decadence as opposed to political causes.
The band at the club, Man Ray, had just gone on. It’s two thirty AM. The band is fronted by a woman who sometimes sings with Charly. Socially, this town appears to be like New York—late shows, people out till morning light—but in some ways it’s even more a late-night hang than New York is or ever was. A vast majority of restaurants are open here till at least four AM—many more than in New York. And the streets are packed at three thirty! The movie theaters have regular shows starting at one thirty AM, and these movies are not The Rocky Horror Picture Show, or some typical midnight movie—even El Rey León (The Lion King) was letting out at three AM! Then, after the movies let out the audience inevitably goes out to eat or to have a drink. Whole families are out strolling in the middle of the night! When do they sleep? As in the larger cities of Spain, people eat late—never before nine thirty—and then they might catch a show that starts in the wee hours.
A city of vampires. Do any of them have day jobs? Do they keep these hours all week? Are there two separate societies—night people and day people? Two shifts, two urban populations that never meet or cross paths? Are they using coke or massive amounts of yerba maté tea to stay up? Or, have they snuck in a little siesta after work while the rest of us were having dinner on New York time?
I fade around four AM and go back to the hotel and crash. Mauro and some of my road crew are out till seven AM—moving on from that rock club to another place that features music they describe as a mixture of zydeco and cumbia, played by DJs. They say it gets rolling around five or six AM.
Glover Gill, leader of the Austin, Texas-based Tosca Tango Orchestra, is here, as I am using his string players in my band, and they have managed to squeeze in a couple of their own dates while they are here. A group of us go to see a traditional tango group at a baroque palace, El Palacio de San Martín, as part of the World Tango Festival in progress here. The pa
lace is an incredible edifice—there is a Beaux-Arts balcony and beyond it a stained-glass panel of St. George killing the dragon. An old-fashioned tango orquestra is set up on a stage and exhibition dancers perform on the dance floor before the public takes over.
The audience, except for us, are all dressed in their slinky finery—all very elegant and sexy. There are some amazing dancers, which is a little intimidating. Later on we go to La Cumparsita, a sort of tourist tango joint in the San Telmo district. There are the ubiquitous pictures of Carlos Gardel on the walls—many, many of them. I have about had it with the Gardel myth. I feel like saying, “He’s been dead for a long, long time—get over it, move on!”
