Bye bye little English fireworks, hello lovely big ones in Paraguay

PARAGUAY: 2013

Mid-evening on 5th November, TAM Airlines´ Boeing 777, lifted into the night sky over Heathrow and, very soon, down below, the fireworks were tiny twinkles, little more than spent sparklers, and as nothing compared to the ´box of jewels´ that ordinary towns, traffic, and the urban sprawl makes over southern England.

As we headed out 30,000 feet up over the Bay of Biscay, I could not open my plastic sachet of ´refreshing tissues´ and nor could the woman next to me, who, until that point had managed everything fine, including reading light, audio earphones, and mini pack of Jacob´s table crackers. We had to call the air stewardess, who solved our problem with one of her long finger nails.

When I woke up, we´d crossed the Atlantic.

In Sao Paolo, I listened to European travelers get cross with what they called ´appalling signage´ and watched others flatten themselves against sloping high-backed chairs signed ´Massages ´ and be pummeled by strong-shouldered white-coated women. 

Queuing for TAM Mercosur Flight PZ707 for Ciudad del Este and Asuncion was interesting if not alarming. People rush and crush to get on when all seats are allocated anyway.   

Touchdown in Paraguay´s capital Asuncion was as exciting as ever and being bear-hugged by taxi-driving friend Hugo a tradition to like. He had instructions to bypass the hotel and take me to a surprise location. These were instructions it proved wise to follow because this is what we found.

Below the great branches of a spreading mango tree, a feast was laid out, a treat to behold. 

Harpist of international renown, Rito Pedersen had invited a handful of musicians and fine and friendly folk to eat Surubi (river fish) make music and other good sounds in preparation for Richard Durrant´s ( see http://www.richard-durrant.com/ ) latest tour of Paraguay.   We ate, we drank, we sweated, we talked, we listened, we sweated, we laughed, we played, we sang, and sweated some more.  

Next day, I enjoyed the extremes in Paraguay´s capital Asuncion.  Street vendor lunch of guiso (meat mix) and mandioca and fresh cold pineapple juice at rickety wooden table with same fruit-patterned table cloth on it from a year ago; and in the evening, a comp seat in the magnificent Teatro Municipal, to hear Richard play his lead and solo parts, under the baton of Luis Szaran, with the Orquestra Simfonica de Asuncion. Here was a concert in a splendid theatre which had its musical moments, plus all the standard sycophantic protocol of a classical concert, while members of the dressed up audience walked about at will. A strange mix of musical European formality and Paraguayan deference and indifference to it. And, to the surprise of many, with all other musicians seated but Richard standing up to play his guitar part. - Ended the day with a good few Brahmas (local alcoholic beverage) in buckets of ice, and to eat, empanadas, seated at a crowded table on the noisy pavement at the oh-so-famous but nothing special Lido Bar. (Cities may be exciting, in terms of relentless noisy stimulation that can be both wonderful and wearying but, to me at least, are as nothing to life in the campo, the countryside, the interior, as they aptly call it here, where there is space and time to truly take things in, like the beauty of that giant jaguar-faced leaf, the splendid fruit and hardwood trees, and the frog and birdsong to write home about. Am drinking it in as I sit, in garden of little house in Belen two hundred yards from Rio Ypane (river) shirtless, feet in sand, under vine arbour loaded with grapes, writing this.)   

Next morning, new acquaintance Carlos Salcedo, a former lead violinist and expert on Barrios, took RD and me for an early-morning session of tennis in the lovely club that sits on the banks of the big lazy Rio Paraguay. Great fun. Carlos is handy and has a topspin backhand rarely seen from a middle-aged mid-ranking club player. RD´s game cannot compare to his guitar playing.  It´s that of a raw and joyful enthusiast but has real scope for improvement. We had great fun!

Then I headed north, in air-conned coach that lurched a lot, to Concepcion, for R´s next concert - but, in my case, first stop Casita en Belen, where I arrived at  midnight, and, in the pitch dark, walked down Calle 15 de Mayo, which just about runs along the Tropic of Capricorn, pulling my suitcase over the sand and cobblestones while gazing up at at the night sky, a stunning sparkling southern starscape, a multiudinous brilliance that could make you believe in almost anything. My arrival that time of night, set Belen´s village dogs a-barking but, though many ran forward, to sniff me out, not one had a bite to match their bark. In fact, I felt welcomed by them all.

Next day, Saturday 9th November, the neighbours asked me over for lunch, a plain Paraguayan stew, of meat and mandioca, of course. We sat in their grubby but homely courtyard and between mouthfuls, proceeded to fit a new main seat spring in their family motorbike, a 50cc two-seater that will carry five. In fact, at times during lunch, all five were holding, supporting, or prising apart bits of the bike, while big brother Isidrio tried to make the big new hydraulic spring fit. (It did because yesterday, the very same bike came to collect me at dusk from the ruta (main road) where the collectivo (bus) had dropped me.)

That night´s concert at the entrance of a music college (they call it an Escalatrina, when they put on a performance on the steps of a big building, with grand columns framing the ´stage ´, and the performers sort of half in, half out, and the audience sitting al fresco, which can be all quite nice, despite competing noises from street, and elsewhere). It was scheduled to start 8pm, finally got going at just after 8.30pm, and proceeded to have a tortuous extended intro with MC who did not know when to stop, talking, enthusing, and promoting, followed buy a succession of fifteen short pieces by young and overawed musicians who you felt had mostly been forced to perform publicly by pushy parents and who were not ready for that kind of exposure and therefore, wore the audience out, especially because the MC kept insisting on ´Aplausos, mas aplausos para los jovenes!´  In fact, after one hour and twenty minutes of this interminable juvenile warm up, the audience was beginning to drift away, especially the ones whose children had already performed, by the time Richard Durrant, who had faced tricky set up, to say the least, with the decidedly tricky sound system, came on to play his 50-minute solo set of guitar pieces based on compositions by Paraguayan composer Augustin Barrios (famous and dead) Juan Duarte (not yet famous, young, and alive) as well as Elgar, Bach, and Django Reinhardt.  It was amazing to witness R´s playing win over the weary audience, who listened open-mouthed, as did passers by, and people who crossed the street, drawn in by the sweet notes played by RD of AB´s Una Limosna por el Amor de Dios. 

Lovely as the concert was, and during which RD called on me to offer occasional simultaneous translations from his musically-literate English to my basic Spanish, which got a  share of laughs and appreciation, its late finish and relentless people-pressure, meant that some of us were well ready for space if not solitude, so ended up with a great tray of picados (bits of river fish, heart of palms, fried mandioca, and, of course, assorted meats) and a big iced bucket of beer in the quietest outdoor corner of the crumbling colonial Hotel Victoria. It was 1am before the food was eaten, the chilled liquids drunk, and, most important of all, the debrief completed. Don´t they say that, to move on to the next thing in life, it´s no bad thing to review the last?  In other words, know your history to better plan your future . . . . 

Next day, Sunday morning, my role in life was to act as full-on interpreter at a guitar masterclass by Richard to eighteen all-age students at a distinguished music academy in Concepcion. There they all sat, ready to take in the ´great man´s´words of musical wisdom; and there I stood struggling instantly to find the Spanish for chord, fret, and plectrum, never mind arpeggio or fortissimo, in my frazzled head. It was, of course, two hours of great musical and linguistic fun, with use of gestures, analogy, and metaphors aplenty. 

By the afternoon, we were back in Belen, with a little time to chill at Casita, before the next gig in Belen´s church. Wandering round my tree, bird, and flower-filled garden, Richard, bare-skinned but for shorts, skyped his family and said, ´Yes, I am having a great time. There´s a humming bird building a nest in my armpit!´- By late afternoon, we headed off to the village church, an outwardly attractive sandstone-yellow Jesuit structure but inwardly, a somewhat barren,, unimaginatively-decorated, and untidy place of worship, with a sound system to match.

´Let´s be acoustic here´ said Richard, so the well-meaning sound man and corpulent music prof promptly set up and tested invasive amps and mic.   -  In order to be saved form the previous night´s experience, I told the two important people who had prepared (long) speeches that this concert would be in ´estilo ingles: menos palabras, mas musica´, and that if there was anything left to say, it could be said at the end but to begin with, we should let the music speak for itself.  

And so we did, starting with not a single word but, at a given signal (me turning of the ventilator fans) the sound of 8 young musicians from Belen´s Sonidos de la Tierra group sincerely strumming (who said scraping?) their first piece, followed by a sweet soloist.  A few words of thanks and others of welcome were followed by Richard´s set, which captivated a small (barely 50) and unsophisticated audience of all ages. Apart from the music prof and a woman with non-Paraguayan origins, no one appeared to have heard of Paraguay´s greatest and internationally-known composer Augustin Barrios. They looked mystified when RD sang his praises and played his famous tunes. - But the evening had an authenticity and sincerity about it, as most of the audience were introduced to a new kind of guitar music. There was something very moving and wonderful about the whole thing. Comparing it to the previous two concerts, brother John gave this one a multi-star rating.

We celebrated by going back to ´Matt´s place´, which was not unlike heading back to Lower Shaw Farm after a Swindon Festival of Literature event: who´ll be there, can we relax, and should we speak the truth? -- Neighbours had cooked great Surubi (river fish) stew and Andressa of El Roble had brought along salads and sweets. Oh did we feast, laugh, talk, and tell stories. So lovely, to see the mixing of people, nationalities, ages, and friends, outdoors, by trees, under starlit sky in this strange little ´LSF-style home´in Paraguay.

Monday morning, and the new week began with a swimming trip on the fast-flowing Rio Ypane.  We jumped in and, buoyed by or swimming beside inflated inner tubes for more than two delightful hours, simply let the 5km per hour current carry us downstream to an agreed meeting point with Peter the German-Paraguayan. Along our water way we chatted, looked out for birds, and listened for monkeys. Lovely, tell your Mum.

By nightfall, kindly Peter was driving us some 400kms south to Itacurubi and Puerto Rosario, in preparation for two gigs on one night, one a John Holland special under a big old tree on a little old boat with a big old river rolling gently by. 

Next day was a flurry of activity in an attempt to get both outdoor sites ready and sound-checked by 6pm. For one, the sound man failed to show at the agreed time, or even an hour later, so we went looking for him, and found him in his back garden, and RD did a sound check there, just like that, and came away happy, but uncertain . .

The scene by the river was scenically stunning but sonically worrying. Delay piled upon delay when the sound man did not show and the first old boat on which RD was to perform, though beautiful was, erm . . unstable, so another was found, by solution-finding John, that looked safer . .

Amazingly, by 6.30pm, we were almost ready to rock. Just the revamp lead needed to be moved along the boat a bit, which I volunteered to do and, while clambering along the boat´s side, my forearm caught the jagged metal paltform edge, and got sliced open, one of those one and a half inch nicely open flesh wounds. - Ah, three minutes to go and the MC is bleeding. The beer bar woman had some sellotape and taped it over, and offered another bottle of Brahma beer as painkiller, and the show was ready to go on, in an absolutely stunning, people-crowding, river-flowing, sun-setting setting. If ever there was an occasion in which, rather than a writer recording things, a painter, photographer, or film-maker was needed, this was it. Truly, a visual feast: the big tree (newly shored up, by John´s engineering initiative, hence the celebration) surrounded by happy Paraguayans of all ages and backgrounds. Before them, their great River Paraguay, and at the river´s edge, standing on the flat roof of a small green boat moored to the bank,  a bold English concert guitarist, guitar in hand, silhouetted against the darkening sky, and behind him, a great orange orb going down towards the river´s far horizon. And the Englishman played his plucky heart out, against all concert-giving odds, and the people chatted and laughed and drank beer and terere and a vocally-mad self-selected local enthusiast would occasionally rush to the mic, mid guitar piece, and shout above the sound of music, mayhem, and general merriment, in an attempt to whip the crowd into some mental or spiritual state they were not already in. Meanwhile RD, the one-man band, played on, through Barrios, Elgar, and Bach, and the people played their part by mostly not listening to him but preferring to tell one another what a marvelous occasion this was and how much we were all enjoying it and also how much we all loved one another. Most everyone was certainly having a good time and a Julio Iglesias style communal rendition of Recuerdos de Ypacary certainly seemed to have everyone raising their best singing voice but who knows what part the quieter notes of Barrios´ music played in the whole occasion.  What this river jamboree may have lacked in musical subtlety, it certainly made up for in visual magnificence and memorable communal collaboration.  The old tree is saved, the people are happy, and the river flows on. 

And hardly pausing for breath, a beer, or a new dressing for the forearm, we wrapped this gig and sped on, 35km to Itacurubi, where the white chairs were out, the sound men were in place (right in the middle of the stage) and the people were waiting. 

The by now, customary opening speeches were cut short by this English man coming out with the tour mantra: menos palabras, mas musica, and RD played on, despite his signals to the high-volume sound man going unheeded.

Once again, by the end of the ´concert´, the people were happy and while most drifted into the night or to the nearby bars, the passionate few huddled round performers and organisers and a certain buzz of satisfaction was felt by all.

In fact, the following day, we were hounded by local media, especially to explain why we come to Paraguay, the shared reasons being the Barbudos (bearded community Bruderhofers) past and a Barrios (musical) present.  

Next day, tour day 7, was to be markedly different. The venue was a hall in Mennonite colony of Friesland.  It was like entering a little bit of Europe placed under the Paraguayan sun. The meeting time was agreed and everyone was punctual, the sound equipment was in place and met with Richard´s approval, esp because it had something called Phantom Power, and the hosts efficiently met with all our needs; and they were splendidly-hospitable too. Terrific.

And the concert was not bad either, and nothing if not moving. Maybe it was helped by an afternoon trip that preceded it, to the Rio Tapiracuay, where we swam, with new friends in an old river, round its sweet-flowing bend, as we had as children more than half a century earlier. Some things that are good don´t change.

But before we knew it, we were back in Asuncion, back on the tennis court with Carlos and Richard; out with them for a meal that never came, a ´press´ interviewer who was two hours late and not up to scratch, a car that broke down, and wine that was undrinkable but got drunk in street doorways while the car was being fixed;  and then preparing for the last gig, more than a week and 1,500kms after the first one.  This concert, taking place on the steps of the splendid former home of playwright Julios Correa, Paraguay´s Shakespeare apparently, was entirely in the capable Paraguayan hands of tennis-playing Barrios-enthusiast Carlos A, and his trusty band of contacts and musicians in lovely Luque. Again,in true Paraguayan style, it was rather too late starting, had far too many intros from four too many ´important´ people, and three too many warm up acts, one of whom, played one of RD´s numbers on guitar! Whose idea was that!

But it was a good concert, which felt was in the right setting with the right appreciative audience, and made the more pleasurable for me by friendly German/Aussie sisters Anna and Helene sitting either side of me and loving it all. 

And to celebrate the end of this chapter, a naughty few of us went to the Bourbon hotel, a fabulously decadent piece of 21st century shiny architecture that clearly signals the end of civilisation as we have known it. It is vast, the foyer the size of a football pitch (really!) and when you go up in a see-through lift, the people down below, ambling by the flower-lined indoor lakes in the foyer, are like tiny matchstick men and women wandering through an architect´s mock up.   The roof-top bars are swish but lifeless. The seating is swank but hardly homely. All style and very little substance. The beer was the same as any beer here and waiters were far too uptight and afraid to be enjoying their jobs. The whole place is bankrolled by South American FIFA and on his last Sth Am tour, was the hotel of choice for one Sir P McCartney. He can keep it.

Sunday, my long journey back north began by going south to an impromptu Paraguayan sing-song way out in the campo in the shade of citrus trees. Then north again, with white van man, who dropped me in Santa Rosa, part crossroads part outpost, a halfway point, they tell me, between ´lugares muy importantes ´but itself, seemingly sleepy and lost, a place where lost souls and weary travelers meet, and, but for the fresh cold juices, try to sell one another things that no one really wants. Did I say desolate?  Did I say that there was a point at which I pictured fine people who know me, in England and Swindon, seeing me there, hot, tired, sandalled, shrivelled, and stranded and thinking, ´What on earth is he doing stuck out there when he could be warm and at home in lovely Lower Shaw Farm?´ Well, that certainly crossed my mind. But, as Michael Ondaatje said in his poem ´To a Sad Daughter´ - ´better find life or fail going out than be safe staying in´ or something  like that.

The penultimate leg of this journey back saw me dropped, by the bus, 3kms short of of the turning for Belen, so I had two thirds of a parkrun to walk on a sultry tropical evening with night closing in and my bags and rucksacks weighing a ton on my aching shoulders.  Actually, it was the sweat that bothered most, my shirt clinging to me and not able to take it off because of the mosquitoes.  (Are you wondering why I come here?) 

Final leg was on the back of a motorbike, that flew over ruts and through sand dunes and was handled with a combination of recklessness and skill by a naturally confident 17 year-old. Doing this sort of thing is as exciting as it is silly but is quicker than horseback and, on this occasion, got me back swiftly to where I most wanted to be, at Casita, where the oven bird builds her nest of mud, and the grapes and mangoes hang full and ripening.

And it is here that I have finally found the space to write a word or two to you. Sorry it is so late, and so long. Despite the slow pace of life in Paraguay, I have barely found time to write this, let alone shorten it.

Saludos, from where the Tropic of Capricorn runs through the middle of the house.  

Matt
litbitmatt@hotmail.com 

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