Week 25: Julieta Venegas

Also included: Part 9 of The Book of Fables.

To the NAP writers – 25 weeks, a quarter of a century if centuries were counted in weeks, and no one has quit.

The right vocal delivery can be sweet nectar for the soul. Add an accordion and you really have something special. Remember when you fell in love? The first time you felt that innocent tug? Like the first time I listened to Astrud Gilberto. The first time I heard Diana Ross. One soft tender voice, one sweet melody. And I think of my daughter and the music that awaits her. And I smile.

[Ms. Venegas has been performing and writing since the early 90s when she lived in Tijuana. Besides the accordion, Ms. Venegas sometimes plays the piano or the guitar. Here she is doing a rare solo performance on the piano of her song ‘Me Voy’ - "I’m going, too bad, but goodbye.” - my translation]

And here’s part 9 of The Book of Fables:
THE MOUNTAIN MARCHING BAND

Many years ago, in my younger days, I was on a 24-hour train ride through the Largest Canyon, not as deep as the Deepest Canyon, but much much larger. It was not a comfortable train ride; we were pressed so close together that I could practically feel the pulse of those standing halfway across the cabin. But after a few hours of pain and suffering, the body and mind adjust and one forgets about the back pain, the numb legs, the smelly sweat, the thick air, and the very long train ride ahead. One forgets about the discomfort of it all, and friendly conversations suddenly spring up all around, card games break out, and one starts to hear music. I started to hear music. Clear as day I could hear a song. And suddenly that is all I could hear. The lull of a hundred conversations, the excited yells of card players, the playful screams of children using the luggage racks as monkey bars, the squeals of the train wheels against the tracks, all disappeared and I could hear the song as if it was the only sound in the cabin. And then I saw her. In the midst of all that crowded chaos, The Teenager was sitting comfortably at the other end of the cabin playing her guitar as if she was on the dunes of a wide open desert. And through some trick of the acoustics I could hear her song as if she was whispering it right in my ear, almost like it was playing right inside my head. At that point we made eye contact and before I could smile, we were standing alone, leaning against the back rail of the caboose looking up at the stars while the earth sped away a few feet below us, and her song reverberated through the walls of the canyon.

We did not speak the same language, but when the train stopped at the very center of the Largest Canyon, we both got off the train together and holding hands we walked past the little station (the only building for miles around) and headed right into the woods. Like long time friends we set up camp, started a fire, and played songs for each other on the guitar until we fell asleep. When we woke up I realized that there wouldn’t be another train for a week and we were in the middle of the Largest Canyon, and our canteens were empty. So we walked to the nearby station to fill them up, but the attendant said that since it was the draught season, there was only water every third day for two hours and we had just missed it. If we wanted water we would have to walk to the well in the woods and fill up our canteens there.

He gave us directions and we headed into the woods to find the well, and as we walked The Teenager told me her story, but I didn’t’ speak her language, so I didn’t understand the story until years later, until now that I am an old man. And her story is this that I have been telling you. She knew the beginning of it and she knew the end of it, even though the end hadn’t happened when we met. And so it is that it is only now that I’m telling her story, many years after she told it to me, and as my memory slowly fails me. But back then as I was happily listening to a story I didn’t understand, we lost the trail and were lost and without water in the woods of the Largest Canyon.

We had lost the trail and were wandering thirsty and aimlessly among the yellow, sun-dried vegetation, starting to feel the heat of the late-morning sun. We were surrounded by dry trees, the occasional chirping of a lonely bird, and the blazing sun hanging in the sky like a wrecking ball waiting to knock down our hopes. A feeling unlike any other suddenly came over me. Like the calm before a storm, I had a prelude to panic. I felt that the world had come to a halt; time stood still and the magnificence of nature towered around us like a Van Gogh painting; the sun, the sky, the trees, The Teenager, all became a series of brushstrokes on a giant canvas. And sweet life rushed through me, a refreshing iced tea of colors and sounds, and I felt the majestic canyon cradle me in its hills, and the wind whispered in my ear the answer to the riddle of life. And in the distance a dog was barking.

A dog was barking and suddenly time was rushing forward again and the panic set in. Without water we would die; if we died here no one would find us; my mom would never stop worrying. Then the dog barked again. The Teenager said grabed my hand and led me towards the barking dog and we found a man cutting wood in a clearing while his three dogs kept guard around the periphery. All three dogs barked at us as we approached and the man called them back. Hello, I said hoping he could understand. Hello, he said back and we sighed with relief.

Soon we were following him and his dogs in a straight line towards the well, over several wooded hills. And just when I was starting to feel my throat choking around the dryness, we heard the music of a thousand instruments playing all at once. We had reached the top of the last hill and were overlooking a dry riverbed filled with thousands of musicians in the process of tuning up. We had run into the Mountain Marching Band.

The Mountain Marching Band appeared like a giant rectangular mandala stretched over the riverbed. At the front end was the Field Commander, his baton towering high above everyone else, while lieutenants could be seen scattered through the mass of musicians, batons also held high. At the center of the formation the drumline glittered under the afternoon sun as additional snares and bass drum sections radiated like sunbeams out towards the edges of the formation. Meanwhile, the brass and woodwinds were divided into many small sections creating a type of checkered pattern in juxtaposition to the sun-like shape of the drumline. This basic formation was peppered throughout with sections of less traditional instruments such as glockenspiels, flugelhorns, and other instruments that I had never seen before. The imposing sight was further enhanced by the many colors of the many different marching band uniforms worn by the musicians. But the view was nothing compared to the sound made by the Mountain Marching Band as it finished tuning up and began to play.

Like a giant slowly rising, the Field Commander began to mark a very slow tempo with his baton. The Lieutenants immediately picked it up, then the hundreds of drums began to play a slow and steady marching rhythm. Then the rest of the band started to play a repetitive dirge that echoed throughout the hills of the canyon. After several minutes of this, the whole band began to slowly move down the riverbed, and the Field Commander began to carefully increase the tempo. Sections of brass then began to introduce melodies which were then echoed by other sections elsewhere in the band. The Field Commander continued to increase the tempo until it reached a parade marching speed. By this time, the various sections of instruments were engaged in a call and response type of arrangement that steadily built upon the harmonics of the various melodies being played by the individual sections. The power of the slightly out of phase harmonics, compounded with those created by their echoes as they bounced throughout the canyon walls, built a sound that was almost unbearable in its magnitude and depth. And just when I thought it would burst my eardrums, the music reached a peak and the now thousands of melodies being played at once exploded into a plateau of sound that seemed to be coming from everywhere at once. At this point I looked next to me at The Teenager and the man with the dogs and passed out.

When I woke up the moon was high up in the sky and I was down on the dry riverbed next to a well. There were fires lit all around as far as I could see, and members of the Mountain Marching Band were joyfully eating, drinking and singing all over the place. The Teenager was sitting near me avidly talking with a man that seemed to be older than time itself. The man with the dogs had just pulled out a fresh bucket of water from the well and handed me a cup. It was the sweetest water I’ve ever tasted, and I fell back asleep.

The next day I woke up to various sections of the Mountain Marching Band standing around the riverbed practicing different tunes. The Teenager saw me and came over to say goodbye; she was heading out. She had spent the night talking to The Critic and she had played him her song. He had not liked it, but he had helped her understand it. She realized now that not only had she written the song, but that the song was about the death of her father, The Folk Singer, who had been murdered by a couple of record label executioners. That was the moment when The Teenager landed from her eternal jump out of childhood, and became a grown-up, and whether she wanted it or not, took her father’s place in the world as The Folk Singer. And she set out to find the two men who had murdered her father.

Moral: All teenagers, even eternal ones, eventually grow up.

For other parts of the Book of Fables click on the label link below.