One of the things I love about cities is that there are always things going on. Yesterday, aparently, was the 4th of July here. I know it was a day to celebrate San Martin (guy who liberated Argentina from Spanish) but I didn't realize it takes the place of 4th of july to commemorate their independence (which happened years after San Martin liberated them). Anyways, there was a free concert down in the city center. There were maybe 10 groups that played. The first 9 were just constantly changing in between songs. I heard some good ones that I'm going to download and it was fun to be in the middle of a huge crowd singing all the words and trying to sing along. Sometimes they put the lyrics up so we could actually sing along. I went with my friends Caroline, Leo y Ivan. Leo and Ivan (porteños) told us about the songs and why everyone knew the lyrics, or when it was a horrible cover and so and so.
This is, from left to right, Leo, Caroline y Ivan.
The last band was the best and veeery argentine. The music is called Tango-electronico. It was awesome, I can't even describe it. There was a fiddle, drums, guitar, upright base and bandoleon (which is like a squarish accordian that expands a lot more). Everyone was dancin around to the techno tango, jumping, tango steppin etc. It was a really great time. During some really dramatic parts of the song, right before the techno base beat would boom out, the bandoleon player would stand in the center of the stage with his bandoleon up in the air and let out long suspensful sound by dropping one end of his badolean the way people pour water into a glass from 2 meters about the glass. It was so intense looking, and then the booming techno underbeats would hit and everyone would start dancing even harder. It was awesome. Below is a picture of a bandoleon.
Afterwards, we went with Ivan, his friend Nico, and leo to Jose's house. I had met Jose at some party way back when and so now we got to see his apartment and meet all his friends. Turns out Jose is from San Martin de los Andes! Where I went just a couple weeks ago. about 6 of the people at this gathering of 10 or so were from there too. So I told them about my trip and I got to here the natives perspective of the town. It was about half and half in terms of liking the town and not. Its funny becuase there is one club in the whole town, and oen guy was complaining that its boring to go to the same one club all the time and that everytime he goes "shes always there" (pointing to the girl next to him. Its really like living with just the kids from your high school class.
We chatted it up late into the night with the people. They were really nice and friendly (like all the argentinians I meet). I find that language makes for great conversation in these situations. The love it when we yankees point out the frases and filler words they always say. They like ot hear us imitate them and talk about there accent. Then we talked about other accents in South America and they had a great time imitating all of those. Then they wanted us to do British accents and Irish accents and they loved that. We had a great night of speaking LOTS of spanish, learning lots of new words, practicing our filler words and colloquial phrases and just hanging out with this bunch. It was a fun night.
Hasta luego,
Kati
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