Salsa de la calle

The decadence of the Catholic Church (read: financially) has the interesting effect of old ecclesiastical edifices being put to (sometimes strange) new uses. In Michoacán I went to two different state-subsidized artisan's workshops in a former convent and former church, respectively, and last night we also hit a few altered sites. I didn't know I could find so much fun on a Monday night, but here's (more or less) how it went down.

La Argentina is leaving on Thursday, and we've decided this calls for going out every night between now and then to allow her to give a proper despedida to Mexico. Yesterday we were struggling to find something to do on a Monday night, when El Portero mentioned that a girl he's interested in had mentioned to him that on Monday nights one of the cafés in the Plaza of the Ex-Convento del Carmen puts on a little salsa gig, weather permitting (it's okay, it took me a moment to sort it out, too). We were up for that, so we settled on a time to meet and figured it couldn't be too complicated.

It rained yesterday afternoon, and hard. It was still sprinkling a little when La Argentina set out walking for the Ex-Convento. The chispa wasn't the problem-- it was the cars splashing us everytime they drove through the deep charcos on the edges of the streets. We were both more than a little damp around the ankles by the time by got to the plaza. The Ex-Convento, which has been converted into an art gallery that was closed at that hour, is actually across from the plaza, and once we figured out that part we found only one café open, and didn't get a clear answer on whether or not it was the salsa joint. El Portero was running half an hour late, but we couldn't get a table in the café to wait for him. We decided to find another café, but being unfamiliar with the neighborhood we just wandered past a few gay clubs. Finally El Portero and his crush found us and we tried to get into a Cuban restaurant with pictures of Che on the walls (every socialist Cuban's favorite Argentine), but the neanderthal at the door wouldn't accept La Argentina's foreign ID (we didn't even get around to my Colorado driver's license). We wandered a little more and ended up in what, by appearances, was the former rectory of the Ex-Convento converted into a goth joint. Not so. It may have looked goth, what with the low lighting and the weird paintings of monks and religious symbols on the walls, but I don't know any goth clubs where they play banda over the sound system (that's the Mexican equivalent of really bad country, for those of you lucky enough never to have been subjected to hearing it). Anyway, they had open tables, nice salads and a good view of the plaza, so we spent a while hanging out there, chatting. After a while El Portero's ears perked up and he asked if we heard the salsa, too. We looked out on the plaza and saw that the party had started across the street. We paid the tab and went to join them.



What we saw last night in the plaza was the kind of thing you dream of experiencing while travelling through Latin America. The plaza had mostly dried out after the rain, but the air was still clean and cool. The party was very simple, and nobody was dressed up. The entire band consisted of a guitarist, a trombonist, and two very busy percussionists, with all four of them alternating vocals. The music was simple but extremely lively and raw, with incredible rhythms. They were really tight. Reva, you would have loved it. The dancing was unpretentious and fun-- just average people out on a Monday night, enjoying the perfect temperature and lack of rain. We recognized a group of a about half a dozen dancers who had been in the floor show at a trandy Cuban club we'd been to a couple of weeks ago, but they were in jeans and tees instead of flashy costumes and there was no show, just the group of them playing around with different moves. They were incredible, don't get me wrong, and in that respect it was wonderful to watch, but it was unchoreographed, natural, and they were laughing and smiling with each other. The scene was wonderfully simple, improvised, plebian-- it was real life, and I think La Argentina and I were the only tourists there. I wish I could find something like that here every night. Tonight we're headed to the Feria de Tlaquepaque, something I gather to be the rough equivalent of a county fair, but a la mexicana. I'm bracing myself for the banda, but other than that I'm looking forward to it. More to follow.