"450 years of tradition" says the local government billboard, in an attempt to promote what to the indigenous and those who know their history as 450 years of genocide, poverty and colonialism. In Merida it is these holes in the collective conciousness that make revolutions necesary and for this same reason promted the Momoy collective to organize a day of music and poetry in a public park. An attempt at recuperatating the lost roots, at educating and fostering communal spirit, a deconolization. The location for the event, parque la isla (Island park), the program; various open music jams and performances as well as poetry readings, puppetry, art and artesania.
Hitching a ride into town
It couldn't have been a more beautiful day of sunshine to start off the morning, I didnt bother to wait at the stop for the bus and went walking on towards the next where I was called over by a father and son in a small truck. They kindly offered me a lift though they were going in the opposite direction to Tabay, I rode with them until we got to the highway at the top of the valley and got out to cross to the side that heads towards Merida. I was on a good hitchhiking streak today; straight after getting out of the truck a small white car stopped and offered me a ride into town. The driver was a young male university student called Javier. He stopped the car for a minute to frantically look for his cigaretes searching under all the seats not remembering where he'd placed them, all the usual signs of a pothead. As we got moving along the snaking mountain highway a friendly conversation started up. Javier seemed like a nice guy, telling me about how he knew a lot of travelling musicians and artesanos and had a personal interest in theatre, something of a novelty in this barrio where the youth here are fairly unengaged in all things creative or artistic. The conversation moved on to the topic of his brother which he spoke of as having been a musician before casually adding that he was desceased, that "they'd" killed him. He pulled out a small photo from inside the glove compartment and showed it to me, without wanting to be too nosy I asked him when this had taken place thinking that he'd meant a long time ago due to his frankness on the matter
“Didnt you hear the news about the student who was killed? That was my brother!” I was a bit shocked to be in the car with the brother of that particular student who had been killed during the protests a few weeks ago. Of course I'd heard the news but I never expected to meet a face behind the headlines. The police had done it according to Javier, he tried to explain to me how but I didnt completely understand (perhaps a rubber bullet to the head or at the very least some kind of hit to the head?). He was incredibly cool about it openly talking about the tragedy and of his brother as a role model. We continued conversing changing the topic to less sensitive matters such as my travels through South America playing music and experiencing different culture. Once we arrived in Merida he dropped me off a little bit out of the centro giving me instructions on how to get to the park as well his number to perhaps catch up for a few beers sometime in the centro.
In the park
To get to the park, one has to walk across a narrow bridge over a small valley that seperates ‘the island’ from the main avenue that leads to the centro. Parque la Isla is a large park with a water park in the middle where people can take a ride in pedal boats, as you'd imagine this is a place designed for families. I walked through to the other side of the waterpark to an ampitheatre where the stage was located. The scene looked kind of funny, the Momoy collective was still setting up the sound, Abram was in typical stressed out gig mode frantically running to and fro plugging and unplugging cables and looking like the whole world was about to fall apart. It wasn't even midday and barely anyone had arrived. The stage itself was quite unique, its sides were suspended over the water of the theme park and positioned directly in front of the large but empty theatre. After about an hour it was decided that the PA didnt work and so it was necesary to improvise using one of the amps as a PA system, never a great option but the best under difficult circumstances. Since it was still early I sat down to relax and wrote down stuff in my diary on the grass nearby. I didnt end up working with the guitar instead spending my whole day in the park but was lucky enough to run into Bruno, an Argentinian musician, who paid me another 20 Bolivares for a sleeping bag that I had sold to him (dont know for the life of me why I am selling my only sleeping bag).
The day was billed as a day of desconolization and healing on the flyer. Of poetry and music and artesanias en el parque with the obvious intention of historically educating the community, but as with many of the events concerning the Momoy collective, the ideas were somehow lost in the process. The whole day was practically just a bunch of hippies playing/jamming for the point of it in front of the public for hours and hours, totally boring. I opted out of it instead sitting on the grass with Alex and Daniela, a travelling venezuelan couple, The most involved I got for the first part of the afternoon was to occasionally sit on the floor up on stage next to the drumkit playing percussion in tandem with my friend Andres, a really talented but inexperienced drummer.
More photos can be found here at the blog of the Momoy collective - http://cooperativamomoy.blogspot.com/2008/07/advertencia.html
It was great to spend the afternoon surrounded by lots of friends, in the sun. I didnt feel inspired to play a song because the musicians on stage were the same old people and friends of MoMoy, effectively playing the same horrible plodding reggae rythym regardless of song. Just play for the sake of playing without trying to communicate anything or do anything interesting between them. It all sounds great to decolonize ourseles with a day in the park but it seems to me like Momoy lose the message in the process just like what happened at the poetry festival I went to in the university. The focus should have been poetry but once they showed up it degenerated into another godawful hippy jam that detracted from what we were all there to see which was the damn poetry!
I did eventually put my money where my mouth is and conspire to try a Hip Hop/De La soul influenced improv with a few specific musicians waiting till the time was right i.e. the same musicians/hippys got bored. Alex y Daniela were convinced to do some of their own original songs afterwhich I got up to play electric guitar with Alex on bass and Andres freestyling. That I think worked well as we’d sing a chorus then the others would imrpovise a rap or sing accordingly. I spose I felt a bit like a dick motioning people to enter and exit since they looked at me like a band leader, but it was better than some of the music before hand where everybody would just sing and dominate each other without listening and feeding off of each other. It would be the only song I played the whole day.
After my one song the rest of the day picked up. Bruno and his girlfriend played a really interesting mix of Balkan and cuban inpsired music (a very typically Argentino mix) that along with Alex and Daniela’s music and the theatrical circus set of porteño (porteño being people who come from the port city Buenas Aires) Danny, were the highlights for me. Not to mention the fact that alot of the kids from the Momoy music class participated in the jam, I cant forget the little 7 year old keyboard player who was holding it down for most of the afternoon, he was like a natural rockstar, totally modest of his abilities, hiding behind his sunglasses, the play it cool type.
One of the last performers late in the afternoon was a hippy Rasta guy who arrived and proceeded to shout at everyone in ragga about how personally bankrupt we all are, but in a really negative fundamentalist houlier than thou way. There’s something I really hate about this guy, if I were to rate him under my 3 types of annoying rastas I would file him under - fundamentalist moralistic hippy type. The other two being the pot smoking Bob Marley fanatic hippy who found rasta, and the white man that desperately wants to be black.
The concert jam finished with a bit of harmless subversion when the security guy turned off electricty trying to shut down the show and close the park despite there being a heap of people in the ampitheatre and on the hills enjoying themselves, the musicians continued an acoustic precussion jam defiantly for a while before finally halting up proceedings
Hanging out with Jana, getting home
Afterwards I left the concert with a real nice girl called Jana, a friend of Adriana (Adriana being the girls on the left in the photo above), originally from Caracas, I must admit that I quite liked her even though I found her to be a touch strange. We headed for the park Las Heroinas, in the centro and while there we saw a colombian painter I knew and it turned that they were ex's, as she told me afterwards. Suprising given the age diference, she must be about 18 and him, well into his 30s, they had met over the internet and she had even visited him in Bogota before he relocated here to be with her, it apparently ended badly. I was having a nice time hanging out with Jana, she even shouted me a pizza at the local bakery (something quite unheard of in Merida, a girl shouting a guy a pizza).
Once she left I stayed in the park hanging out with the numerous Argentinean artesano friends of La Joya. Though I enjoyed the company I eventually became impatient ultimately not liking the atmosphere in plaza heroinas. Eventually as a group we managed to get our shit together to leave the plaza for the bus stop of La Joya: When we got there we found out that the buses had already stopped running, I forgot that today was a public holiday – the celebrating of the Independence of Merida (450 years of tradition!). The only option was to catch a bus for Tabay and get off in the middle of the mountain highway at the valley entrance to La Joya. One of the stragglers in our bloated group named Jarvi (pronounced Harvey), an alcoholic poet, momentarily disappeared and then later reappeared just as the bus was leaving. Typicaly drunk we watched with amusement as he, in his own pathetically poetic romantic way, tried to chat up a sweet girl in the seat next to him who listened politely but uncomfortably to his ramblings. I got a little stressed in the journey by people not listening and trusting that I knew where we were and constantly bugging me every five seconds like children to ask if we were there yet.
When we got off the bus the Argentinians became even more annlying. We were in the entrance to the valley, the barrio of the El Arenal at the bottom and ascending the mountain on the other side La Joya. Everyone at once started bitching and arguing acting as if we were miles from anywhere when in reality we only needed to walk a small distance to get home. But with my luck today we managed to get an ultimate hitch part of the way in a big truck and then finally finishing with the best part of the whole day, the polar ice beers. The most beautiful of all, an Argentinian girl Maya, shouted me one, it had been so long since I'd drank a beer, I dont think I have hardly even dranken a beer since I got to Venezuela, just got accustomed to drinking the cheap crap that Jarvei and the other alcoholic artesanos of La Joya always seemt to buy.
