World Percussion Festival

Upon my arrival in Baires, one of the first things that Helena mentions to me is the "World Percussion Festival" to be held in Quilmes. Well, that's a no brainer for me! Let's go!

We first met up with a couple of Helena's Brazilian friends and took the bus ride out to the town of Quilmes.



Like every other festival in Baires we figured it would be held in the park so we went and grabbed a couple of bottles of beer, some snacks, and headed out. I was able to find a snack that I hadn't seen since my childhood (actually, since Amanda went to Germany a couple of years ago and sent me one back): A KinderEgg! Milk chocolate and white chocolate (very tasty!) wrapped around a plastic egg with the world's dumbest little toys inside. Ours was a little, see-through, plastic ghost with a teeny-tiny dice inside of it. No clue what the point of it is but we have determined that it must be Lacan's "Fantasma."






After sitting in the part for a while we realized that there was no festival going on. Turns out that since this was the one park in town and it was quite small that the festival was actually being held in the Library basement. Go Figure.



The first group we saw was playing Cajón, an Afro-Peruvian instrument that is basically a box which is sat upon and played with the hands.





Next was a Capoeira group. Many may be aware of his as a style of fighting (thanks to video games and Hollywood) but it is actually a mixture of martial arts, dance, and music that originated in Brasil. The instruments consist of some of the more traditional such as the pandeiro (tambourine) and atabaque (drums and congas) but also include the berimbau which looks like a bow with a gourd attached to it. The string is struck with a stick and pitch is altered using the finger (similar to a guitar or violin.) The music is then what drives the rhthym of the dance or fight...









The next group was an Argentine drum line which consisted of the traditional Bombo Leguero (similar to our bass drum), congas, and timbales.




Finally was a Murga group. These originate from the Carnival festivals of Brazil and consist of bass brums with little high-hat cymbals on top and snare drums. But they usually also include a dance group as weel. And you can tell that one of the girls in this group was really getting into the action...









By the end of this group it was almost 10pm and we had been stuck in this basement with pounding drums for about 4 hours. Supposedly there was one more group but our ears just couldn't take much more. Besides, the Subte stops running at 10:30 on the weekends so we had to make like a baby and head out.

Remember kids: Don't wear white after Labor Day.
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