Courtyard Music
Saturday, October 20th, 2007My friend Max waxed recently about living in Oaxaca City.
“For the life of me, I can’t figure out why most Oaxacans aren’t deaf. I mean, take Charlie the drummer over there:
Charlie got deaf playing rock and roll, in band after band, for decades. After all those years of having huge pounding speakers near his ears, he ended up with speakers in his ears: he has to wear a hearing aid when he wants to listen; a lot of the time, he’d just as soon tune out.
Us old folk, who have been hangin’ in Oaxaca for a while, but are still sensitive to loud noise, have for the most part figured out how to avoid much of it (if you think you’ll be able to dodge all of it, you just don’t know Mexico). Some of us own a bit of acreage out in the Etlas, with a good-size house on it. Others opt for separate bungalows in compounds – with or without gate – in residential suburbs. Still others are in townhouses, apartments or bungalows in the center of one of the downtown blocks, far back from the traffic.
The less fortunate among us, either because we made bad choices or just can’t afford the Gringo luxury of peace and quiet, have to live with the noise. There are only two advantages to this: after a while, you stop noticing it so much; and you can still grumble about it to anyone who hasn’t heard your story before (or the forgetful folk who have). Usually they lodge with families, or in a family compound, or small apartments in working class neighborhoods. These are the ones most likely to hear the ‘Courtyard Music.’
Courtyard Music is a blend of two or more loud radios tuned to different stations, shrieking kids, barking roof dogs, and people yelling back and forth at each other. This is a more or less constant accompaniment. The bass line; the left hand on the piano.
The melody constantly changes. Motorcycles are revved up. People wander in from the street and stand in the courtyard hawking 5 gallon bottles of water, tortillas by the handful, tanks of propane gas, and other more exotic items. There may be a carpenter’s shop in the courtyard: sawing and nailing provide the percussion. One poor unfortunate lives next door to a recycling center where they do cans and bottles.
From time to time there will be a wedding or a birthday party, accompanied by a three piece, amplified electric band adept at the three traditional Oaxacan party music modes: Marriachi, Tex-Mex and Oompah.
A musically inclined friend who lives in a noisy, two or three hundred year old courtyard with a big extended family, a dozen kids and four neurotically barking poodles, has become resigned to this aural environment after two years there. He has this to say:
“Sometimes the courtyard music is just annoying – if you’re trying to sleep or think deep thoughts. Sometimes, it all comes together, the children’s singing and laughing blends with the vendors cries and all the rest into a kind of counterpoint that is as complex and beautiful as anything Bach or Villa Lobos could do. Sometimes…”
Of course, this is someone who is clearly a little crazy. Not that he wasn’t a little weird when he got here. Probably, it was the courtyard music that drove him around the bend.”
by Diana
June 16, 2007
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