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| Time for some Christmas spirit and Christmas cards! |
December ushers in the Christmas season,
although Spain, like the U.S., has also started its holiday advertising
sometime right after Halloween. And to
my delight, a thousand zambombas erupt throughout Puerto, Jerez, and probably
in the rest of Andalucía. (But not in
Madrid! The streets were quiet the first
weekend of December when we visited our friends Carlos and Annette, who are now
stationed there with the Air Force.)
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| Carlos and Annette were fabulous hosts, zambomba or no zambomba! |
But December’s weekends here are all about
zambombas. A zambomba is both a musical
instrument (see below) as well as a flamenco Christmas party, often outdoors,
and traditionally around a fire. The streets overflow with song and dance, providing
me with multiple forums to dance a pataita
de bulerias. Although I’m still not very good (and I’m
realizing, the better I get, that I will NEVER be very good, having started
much too late), I seek out every opportunity to dance, unlike many of my Spanish
friends, the vast majority of whom are much better dancers, but they just don’t
like to show off like I do.
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| The Christmas lights are always gorgeous |
Click here to see me dance in my teacher Lola's zambomba!
This year I was part of my dance teacher
Jaime’s singing class that worked up a bunch of villancicos. Thus far, I’d learned only popular ones: Peces en el Rio, La Marimorena, Campana Sobre
Campana. But this group taught me the
more ancient and traditional flamenco villancicos: Carita Divina, Azucar y
Canela, Los Caminos Se Hicieron. We
learned about 10 new ones in a very short time, and again I fell head over
heels in love with the rhythmic harmonies of Andalucía.
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| The tubs of water are for wetting down your hands! |
Click here to hear La Carita Divina
Click here to hear Azucar y Canela
Click here to hear Los Caminos Se Hicieron
Once we had some of these songs down, one
Saturday we took to the streets of Jerez after an excellent lunch in Plaza
Platera. Jerez was an explosion of
singing, dancing, and the zumming, thrumming sound of the zambomba, that funny
percussive instrument made from a clay jar with a stretched covering with a
reed poked through it. You moisten your hands and glide up and down the reed;
the resulting zzzuuubbb-zzzzuuuubbb matches well with the most traditional
villancicos.
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| Singing around the fire |
Click here to see me playing the zambomba in Jerez
Every plaza seemed to be throwing its own
zambomba, and as we were a group of some 20 strong, we were our own moving
zambomba. Every time we stopped and
sang, passersby would stop and join us, until we had a impressive-sized group,
all singing, with the occasional dancer entering the center of our circle to
whirl and twirl before gracefully exiting.
And so Jaime guided us through the streets of Jerez until we wimped out
to go home at 11 pm, leaving the rest of the group to continue until who knows
when!
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| Singing and dancing until the wee hours |
And of course I organized my own palatial
zambomba. With my favorite
bring-a-plate-of-tapas-and-a-bottle-of-whatever, these parties are easy, and
all I had to do was arrange the music and find plenty of chairs. My friend Jesule and his group led us through
villancicos, sevillanas, and of course the bulerias. (These musicians have stamina during this
season, sometimes playing 3-4 parties per day on the weekends!)
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| Rumba with Paqui |
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| Time for the bulerias |
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| Jaime bailando: This is what I aspire to...and it will take me another 20 years to get there. |
After they left (for their next event!), we
began singing and dancing with no need for music other than the accompaniment
of our palmas (clapping). In my premiere, I sang bulerias for the
first time in public with the gorgeous copla
Mal Alma, much to the amusement of everyone.
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| Todd gets roped into dancing--what a good sport! |
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| Begoña and Juan Pablo sing around the fire |
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| Fiesta fun |
To my delight, my friend and former student
Timothy Hurst came to visit just in time for the zambomba. I learned to teach at Our Lady of Perpetual
Help (OLPH) in Anacostia, Washington, DC, also known to the kids as “Our Little
Prison Home.” Timothy, a young
11-year-old in 7th grade, was in my class my very first year of
teaching. He’d found me through
Facebook, as have many former students, and as he was stationed in Crete,
Greece, I’d invited him and his family to come stay with us. It was strange and familiar at the same time
to get to know him and his wife Natalia, a strikingly beautiful Puerto Rican,
and to play with their two small boys Gabriel and Massimo.
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| Teacher and student |
We took Timothy, Natalia, and the boys to
Todd’s former patient Mr. Suitt’s farm in Chipiona. Not a zambomba exactly, but we made off with
freshly harvested potatoes, carrots, and oranges. Perfect loot, just in time for the arrival of
Suzi, Ethan, Griffin and Ado for the holidays!
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| Bugs Bunny's dream: Nascent carrot farmers |
