BUENOS-AIRES - RIO - BRASILIA - BOGOTA

Dire forebodings, dire reality

National Theatre of Brasilia

Sitting in an outdoor cafe on Florida Street in Buenos Aires, an elderly and obsequious gypsy woman offers to use her psychic powers to tell me my fortune. I try to get rid of her. The past shaped my present, which in turn reveals what my future holds.

I’m not really goal-oriented, I tend to move gradually toward the things I want. I’m persistent rather than determined. Moreover, even if she were to reveal something about my future for which I would today willingly sacrifice my parents, there's no telling whether or not I'd still want it when it came to pass. In other words, I prefer freedom to an oracular fate. I need some excuse to get rid of her.

- Am I rich?

If she says "yes," that proves she's not competent. If she says "no," that means I can't pay her. This is what the seasoned professional responds:

- But it’s free, señor, because I like you!

- No me importa nada.

- Trust me, I have things to tell you! There’s no charge.

- Free?

- ¡Si señor!
I give her my hand. BIG mistake.

- Riqueza... Gran amor... Éxito...¡Que suerte, Señor! Now, put a coin over here, next to the hair I've just plucked from your head!
Suspicious, I put a coin down anyway.

- ¡Pero no, Señor¡ It's not ME you're paying, the money is just symbolic. The more you put down, the better your luck will be, but the money isn’t for me.

Sounds phony to me, but you only live once... I fumble in my pockets, can’t find anything but my last twenty dollar bill, and put it on the table, reluctantly. In a flash she picks up the bill and runs as fast as she can. Little does she know that I'm a bit of a runner myself! I soon catch up with her and grab hold of her. Cursing, she gives me the bill back while offering a few choice words of affection. "I hope your bank goes out of business! May women destroy your life! May the critics destroy your career!" It's a good thing I didn't pay her, since I obviously had no use for past prophecies. And yet, once again, my financial situation was about to take another turn for the worse.

*******

Music helps me to forget my troubles. The sun and the vine are the source of the diabolical rhythms one hears in northern Argentina. The dark pampas and howling winds explain the sinister ritornelles from the south. Here, everyone loves the guitar.

*******

Brazilians also love the guitar. "Guitar fever" is probably the only thing the South American people share. Whether it’s an official dinner in São-Paolo, one of the world's largest cities, or a gargote in Bélem, in the northern Amazon, people never say goodnight without a musical farewell, with everyone joining in. Here the latest hit on the radio generates as much excitement and talk as the Botafogo soccer team.

Villa-Lobos, following his expeditions in the Amazon, continued his education in France. His guitar compositions were his real claim to fame, however, even if he only wrote no more than 20 of the 1500 works attributed to him.

Young Egberto Gismonti is currently creating an interesting musical stew, with elements from inside and outside Brazil, much like the gypsies who, from Kashmir to Europe, have absorbed every musical genre they've encountered. Gismonti is a musical sorcerer. He makes use of any instrument at hand, whether African drums or crystal glasses, even ordinary bottles. From all of this paraphernalia he is able to distill a sense of incredible cosmopolitan ferment. Gismonti also studied in France, under the tutelage of Jean Barraqué. His improvisations blend African, Asian, and European traditions—verbal superlatives are powerless to describe what he does with them.

 Strangely enough, Brazilian "classical" guitarists, in an effort to set themselves apart, tend to be rhythmically conservative. And yet everyone dances—the candombes in Bahia, the samba carioca everywhere. Percussion bands incite the people to dance the way the bikini incites men to crime on the beach.

Although Brazil is a musician's paradise, it can sometimes be hell for the people who live there. The newspaper ads provide a lesson in contemporary sociology. Under the "For Sale" heading appears an ad: "I'm selling my eyes for $700 each." This sense of desperation was an eye-opener for me. Although I haven't reached that level of need, as my girlfriend sweetly predicted, I’m running out of money.

*******

The state employees at the Ministry of Culture are eager to have me perform a recital at the National Theater of Brasilia. Unfortunately, there are no openings this year, much to my dismay. "My good man, if only you'd been here last year, or if only you could wait until next year...".

What am I going to do?

- Simple. You pay the advertising and organizing fees. I guarantee you the audience will be so big that you'll make your investment a hundred times over.

Making a private vow not to go water-skiing, I invest my last three coins in this astonishing enterprise. As luck would have it, in spite of some mildly-turbulent protests at the university, the concert draws a large and enthusiastic crowd. As agreed, I head for the Director's office as soon as the applause dies down in order to get paid.

- Bravo! Señor, the audience loved you.

- And it was such a large audience!

- Yes, not bad at all.

This beating around the bush strikes me as rather strange and makes me nervous. Given my fatigue at the moment, I just want him to get it over with and pay me for the evening.

Silence. Finally, I speak up:

- Um... Any idea how much I made tonight?

- What are you talking about? A representative of the Ministry came to collect the proceeds during the intermission!

- That can't be. We agreed that everything would be paid in your office. I have a plane to catch at seven tomorrow morning!

- Sorry, but there's nothing I can do for you.

- Can I at least get in touch with a representative from the Ministry?

- At this hour? Impossible. Besides, I've got to close up the theatre now. Good night and congratulations once again!

I don't have a single cruzeiro to my name. I have a plane ticket from Rio to Lima but I have no way to get to Rio. Needless to say, I don't have money to pay for my room at the hotel, where the man who printed the posters is waiting for me, expecting me to pay him tonight. Putting on as stern a face as possible, I go back and explain what happened to the hotel manager, in an appeal to his sense of morality and compassion. Interested in more ways than one by my predicament, he hands me a Ministry phonebook, which includes the officials' home numbers. There is no reply at the Ministry of Culture. Rage starts to work its way through my exhaustion. I proceed to call each minister at home. Riveting conversations, in a mix of Portuguese, Italian, Spanish, and French, ensue. At two in the morning, I'm told by the Minister of Defense that his colleague can generally be found at the Amazonas bar right about now.

I rush to the bar and find him in good company and good spirits. He appears to find my story quite heartbreaking. He agrees to stop by the hotel at 4 in the morning to straighten out this unfortunate misunderstanding. True to his word, he shows up.

- Maestro, I'm at a loss for words. I don’t see how this could have happened. Of course I'll pay you right away. Let's see, there were 78 people in attendance...

- Seventy eight! There must have been at least 1000!

- Looks can be deceiving. People from our office were there and checked the numbers themselves. Of course, there may have been some guests in attendance as well...

- Nine hundred guests? I ask, crushed.

- We Brazilians are a generous lot, you know.

Not with me, unfortunately. My experience has been somewhat disappointing.

- Here’s a check.

A check? But I'm leaving in two hours. How am I supposed to cash it?

Lacking the energy for a final outburst, I take it from him and scrutinize the figure. Even a naive musician like myself has to face the fact of the matter: I won't be able to pay for my hotel room or my plane ticket or the man who printed the posters. I'm going to have to bluff my way out of this one. I look at the hotel manager.

- Let's make a deal, I say, trying to sound sure of myself. You see this gorgeous Rolex? I'll give it to you in exchange for my room. This is a great opportunity for your hotel!

In fact the watch had been sold to me a few days earlier by a very persistent mulatto, who followed me into the street and gradually lowered the price from $200 to $7. Unfortunately, it stopped working within an hour. When I opened the case I was horrified to read, in tiny, barely visible letters: RODEX Made in Hong Kong.

The hotel manager picked up the watch and studied it carefully.

- Before working in the hotel industry, I was a jeweler, señor.

*******

In eastern Venezuela, I encounter a group of musicians. They’re playing the local dance music in front of an audience. They are as captivated as I am. "Seis por derecho". It's a bizarre name. "Seis por derecho" roughly translates as "Six by Right," a reference to the 6/8 tempo. The name refers to the fact that the listener rejects the music’s apparent 3/4 tempo, layering it instead with an ambiguous and harder-to-define beat. The result is disturbing, hypnotic, irresistible. After a while, disoriented by the overlapping tones and rhythms (the contrabass and the cuatro, a small guitar, support the harp), the mind experiences something resembling a natural high. The polyphonic rhythms create a trance-like state in the listener, a kind of "auditory astigmatism." It’s as if a fakir were to use more than one flute to hypnotize a cobra.

Jam session with Antonio Lauro

 When the notes come to an end at last, a dizzying sensation grabs hold of me. I went "too high" and am scared to come back down again. The absence of music creates a terrifying void. And yet, what I've just experienced transcends music. It was a sound without melody or counterpoint. Just a musical "fabric" that continued to enclose me, captivate me. The giddy sensation that followed was neither pleasant nor unpleasant. Just a change in perspective...a journey through sound.

A Venezuelan musicologist, Antonio Lauro, taught me how to play such music, which I quickly added to my repertoire. .

*******

The mayor is providing the accommodations for a concert I’m scheduled to play in Popayan, a charming Spanish colonial city located in the heart of Colombia. He lives in a large house located in the town's main plaza, which is also home to his six daughters and their families. At the dinner table there is nothing unusual about the conversation. However, I’m soon told that four of the six girls are completely deaf. I’m told that deafness runs in the family. They read lips so well, however, in both Spanish and French, that it's difficult to tell them apart from their more fortunate sisters. The entire family comes to see me perform. Four of the young women carry a piece of wood between their fingers, which they use to feel the vibrations of the guitar.

*******

Bogota is the capital of Colombia. It’s also the capital of crime in the country.

- Make sure to hold on tight to your guitar, the concert organizer tells me. Kids are liable to steal it. Homeless kids will try anything. They’ll steal your blood and sell it to a clinic.

*******

My next concert is held in the patio of a Moorish palace in Cartagena, a port that bears a striking resemblance to its ancient Spanish counterpart. The children here are not as violent, the coast being inhabited chiefly by African descendants. There are no abandoned children on the streets.

- Bravo! The guitar is an orchestra unto itself, Berlioz used to say. One of my friends has even turned his band into a giant guitar. Gianluigi Gelmetti was a guitarist before he was an orchestra conductor in Rome, where he now teaches. You should meet him.

Indeed. I've got a lot to learn from orchestra conductors.