Sunday was much slower than Friday and Saturday, but it wasn't without it's musical excitement. 

There was a book fair outside of ES3 today on Calle Comfort last Saturday.  This is the book fair where I first found out about the music happening last Saturday. 

This is Miguel.  He's a pretty cool guy.  He was working at one of the booths and saw my banjo and asked me to play a song.  I ended up sitting with him for a while.  I didn't realize it, but everyone in the book fair was gathering around as I was playing and after a rendition of Oh, Susanna, the crowd gave me a pretty good ovation.  That felt really good. 

Miguel remind me of the older guys that I used to meet hanging around Ann Arbor.  He's got lots of opinions, swears every other word and smokes too much.  I couldn't quite put it all together, but he's kind of a intellictual vagabond.  His advice to me, which he gave me many, many times, was to drop out of school, and stop being one of those people "who never get nowhere."  His advice - read the dictionary if I wanted to learn to speak Spanish.  He said that's how he learned how to speak English. His English is pretty good.  

Who knows?  Maybe he's right.  I must admit that I've been reading about 10 words a day since.  I don't know if I remember them, but Miguel says that's not the point.  He warns, "You may not remember them, but when you f#$%ing need them you'll remember them."

Later I went to have dinner and coffee at Cafe Gringo.  I ran into this guy, Alejandro, who I had seen walking around.  We hung out for maybe an hour, trading songs and instruments. 

After school, I went home, dropped my stuff off, and when back downtown to Cafe Gringo to meet up with Erensto.  Cafe Gringo is awesome.  It's beautiful inside.  The building that it is in is 200 years old.

Like a lot of places in el Centro, it doesn't look very big from the outside, but when you walk in you find that there's a pretty good sized garden area.  So Ernesto and I played some improvised music pieces, which was great.  And then some of his friends showed up.  I took a break from playing with Oscar (on keyboard), Richardo (on guitar) and Ernesto, played some post-bop standards.  One this I learned yesterday was that there is a lot of young people in Cuernavaca that like post-bop and fusion music.  Who knew?

After we were done at Cafe Gringo, we went over to El Manojo, one of my favorite spots in Cuernavaca, to hear some music.  The place was packed!  Turns out, there was some sort of a fusion variety concert or something.  I never quite understood.  Ernesto, Oscar and Richardo played again.  This time they were joined by Julian on drum set, Andres on congas and Agustin on bass.  Pretty cool stuff.  I joined them, as did  some other players for a big jam session at the end of their set.  Very fun, but I couldn't hear a darn thing.  I recorded it with my phone, but it's too much sound and didn't record well. 

Two interesting people that I met last night.

This is Pavel.  He plays jarocho music and makes jaranas and requintos.  He's a really interesting guy.  He's studying how to make an instrument called the banjoquinto, which is the traditional instrument of Morelos, the state where Cuernavaca is.  I hope to get to his workshop this week to see his instruments, and learn about the music of Morelos. 

Also, he knows about the Old Town School.  ¡Qué padre!

Another interesting person I met (I don't have a picture yet) is Catherine.  Catherine is from San Francisco and is now a music teacher at an elementary school.  She has an Irish music session today (Saturday) at Cafe Gringo.  Can't wait to check that out.

OK.  Onwards!

I haven't been teaching quite as much as I had in the past, so I've been trying to make as much music as I can.

Last night I went to Banjo Night at the Lincoln Restaurant.

Banjo Night really means, 4-string banjo night.  It's a group of mostly older guys that play dixieland music.  I can't keep up at all, but it's fun to be around.

These are the guys.  The gentleman closest to the camera is Jerry.  He plays the accordian.  Next to him in the red Hawaian shirt is Clyde.  Clyde plays the trombone.  It's pretty cool because they come to the Thursday Night Special Jam at the Old Town School.  I've made a ton of music with them.  But at Old Town we play much different music and they play different instruments.  It's great to walk in and be on their turf.  I love being a beginner!

Written on Sunday, August 8, 2010
Just finished attending the Improvised music jam at Cafe Metstizo in Pilsen.  This is a picture of it.  I'm not sure if the "Lavanderia" sign is there because they can't get it down, or if it's there for affect.  But there is a cafe in there.

The jam has been going for years and years, but it's only been recently that I've been brave enough to attend.

This is the content of the email that gets sent out over the chi-improv listserve on Yahoo.

Interested in working on free jazz improvising? Meeting some new musicians? Come to Cafe Mestizo's improvised music jam every Sunday from 5 to 7. We're talking about complete improvisation - no charts, no tunes, no keys... nothing! Open to all instruments, electronicists, noise people - anything that makes sound. Hosted by Henry Mayer (drums and electronics).

Today the group was Henry on the drum set, Tom on fretless electric bass and I played my long neck banjo. The highlight today was that there was a PA that I could plug into. It gave me a chance to mess around with creating some feedback. I was doing that and Henry was playing some harmonics on the snare drum. The combined sound reminded me of a dolphin conversation.

Like I said, I've been to the jam a couple of other times. This was the band the first time I went. That's Matt on bass, Nick on drums and Josh on reeds.

The second time I went Henry was there too. This is his effects board. I plugged my banjo into it. It was a weird combination of me playing the physical instrumentt and him controlling the tone and volume. I was glad to give it a shot, but it was humbling to put my voice in someone else's hands.

Ginny was also the the second time. She played flute and this interesting instrument from Thailand.  It sounded like a combination church organ, bagpipe, harmonica.  It was great!