Worth it

So on Thursday I woke up with horrible food poisoning. I even threw up, which was actually quite exciting - because I haven't done so since I was 12, even when I was really ill - and practically the highlight of my day. It wasn't a great day. Honestly I think I've been nearly as ill in the past month as I have in the whole of the previous year in Mexico and I'm getting fed up with it.

I considered to myself that karma might be taking its revenge on me for being mean about my friends on the internet, which I did feel a bit guilty about, even if I had been feeling miserable and abandoned. But then I found out that one of my colleagues, with a hard-as-nails, been-in-Mexico-for-decades stomach had got sick with very similar symptoms and could definitely blame it on his cafeteria sandwich. I had also had a sandwich, so I felt rather relieved, perversely, since it is not a good thing that the cafeteria, where I eat every day, is poisoning us; it was nice to know that I didn't have myself to blame for recklessly eating 'dodgy' festival food. (I also found out that what I had taken to be particularly nasty ham - there is only one kind of sandwich every day so you can't choose - was in fact head cheese, i.e. brawn. Look it up on wikipedia if you have a strong stomach. If I hadn't already thrown up that would've tipped the balance. Urgh.)

But even when I was feeling at my worst, I did, defiantly, think to myself that I would still rather have gone to the festival. The short story is that it was completely awesome, and a million times better than the cinema any day!

When I arrived at the sports ground, the main venue for the festival, a rather unearthly kind of music was floating through the stalls and the crowds. I toddled along to find an Indonesian gamelan playing in front of the little church inexplicably located within the sports ground. I enjoyed listening to and watching it for a while very much. As well as the music itself, I liked the kinesis of it, the hypnotic way the players moved together and the music flowed from it. I liked the seriousness of the young Mexicans who were playing. I liked the visual beauty of the instruments, and the sheer strangeness of finding them here under a darkening Mexican sky, listening with my strange British ears.

My poisonous sandwich having been a small and very long-ago lunch, I was very hungry, and so I went to explore the many and varied delights of the food stalls. I bought delicious esquites (hot herby corn off the cob served up from a huge pot, with mayonnaise, cheese and lime, and chilli powder if you're not me), hot fries with weird yellow salt (no idea why it was weird and yellow), ponche (hot sugary fruity cinnamony yummy punch) and a gordita (sweet flat bready goodness). I just noticed how many times I wrote 'hot' in that sentence, but it was a freezing cold night (literally), and heat was very much to be desired.

Retiring with some of my booty, I went to sit up on the giant concrete steps of the stands in front of the main stage, and although I would rather not have been there alone I was quite happy sipping ponche and watching some excellent flamenco.

However, I was even happier to get a text message from a Mexican friend asking where I was, and managed to find him down below in the standing area. It was great to see him and great to have someone to chat and crack jokes and enjoy things with. (I was massively proud of myself when I understood a joke someone next to us in the crowd made and we looked at each other and laughed.) The stagehands did their stuff, and then the next act came on, complete with the weirdest musical instrument I have ever seen. A giant frame, the size of a garden shed, like a cube with octagons for sides, and a kind of set of ribs in the middle which the musician seemed to bash like a xylophone. With that, a cello, an actual xylophone, and a guest appearance from a didgeridoo, they played some of the hippiest music I have ever heard in my life. You'd file it under "world", but more classically-trained musicians discovering weird instruments than any kind of traditional music, and you wouldn't be surprised to hear it in an aromatherapist's waiting room. Being one of those dirty hippy types I was kind of enjoying it, but the crowd were cold and restless and wanted Willie Colon - unlike on previous days the acts were running significantly behind schedule due to technical problems. Mexican crowds don't tend to be shy in showing their disapproval, so I was feeling pretty uncomfortable with all the angry shouting and whistling - and sorry for the poor floppy-haired cellist who was trying to chat to the crowd in between pieces! And yet at least some people seemed to be enjoying the weird hippy music, because there was also cheering and clapping, and at the end they shouted for more - unless that was sarcasm?!

The tension built as instruments were moved on and off stage, and the sound was checked and rechecked. Finally, more than an hour and a half late, Willie Colon and his band began to play. And from that first moment I couldn't stop grinning - they were absolutely amazing! For a start, the music itself is just excellent - very, very good salsa tunes, the irresistable kind that you just have to move to, with the gorgeously jazzy flavour of New York salsa - and I actually knew most of them. And the band and the sound system were both superb, so you could really enjoy them. And then hearing them live was a whole extra experience. Unlike in the recorded versions, there were a lot of solos - trombone (Willie is a trombonist as well as a singer), trumpet, keyboard, and drums - and they played around with the songs a lot more. You could hear the melodies and the rhythms changing and evolving through the song, and as they segued seamlessly into the next one. And I really liked being able to see the instruments being played and what was making the music. They played my favourite songs - Talento de Televisión and Gitana - and we even danced a bit (difficult, other than on the spot, in the crowd!).

I loved every song and I am so happy I went. It reminded me just how much I love salsa (I have been leaning rather towards cumbia recently) and showed me just how amazing it can be live. It may not have been my once in a lifetime chance to see Willie Colon, if I wanted it enough, but I'm pretty sure it was my once in a lifetime chance to see Willie Colon for free a couple of miles from my house, standing in the cold amongst a hyped-up crowd of locals in my home town.

[I was trying to add a video here too, but blogger doesn't like that idea.]