This is Pavel outside his workshop in Santa Maria, a puebla just outside of Cuernavaca.  I met Pavel last Friday night at El Manojo.

Pavel is a Laudero, a person that makes instruments.  En íngles = luthier.

This is his taller.  Taller = workshop.

We played a bunch and he gave me a great lesson in the basic rhythms of jarocha.  A funny moment happened when he was talking about playing in 6/8 time.  As the beginning he used the phrase "sies octavos" which I took to mean six octaves.

I didn't understand what he was talking about, but I kept thinking, "Six octaves.  Wow.  That's a lot."

About five minutes later after much more miscommunication, "Oh.  6/8 time.  Yes, I understand that."  Very funny.

One thing that I didn't expect was for me to go through the beginning process of making a jarana.  This is going to be a mosquito - a very small jarana.

In addition, I really appreciated the patience he had with my lack of español.  It's still very frustrating that I can't say so much, and it takes so long for me to understand anything other than the simplest statements and questions.  I think we were both pretty wore out by the end, but it got done.  I was very glad to get to know him and his work and I hope we stay in touch. 

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!