Free live music in Las Palmas, March... to June 2020

This is how my never-published March post was about to start:

• 7 March: Patricia Muñoz «Con M de mujer» @ Auditorio José Antonio Ramos, Parque Doramas
  In this fabulous pre-8-M concert, the Gran Canarian singer Patricia Muñoz performed such hits as Soy una mujer que canta by Albita, Derroche by Ana Belén, Mis recuerdos by Luz Casal, Tu fotografía by Gloria Estefan, La Puerta Violeta by Rozalén and Desilusióname by Olga Tañón.

And then... Well, I think everybody knows what happened then. We had a long, long break from any live music. I don’t count initiatives like “Musicando en casa” — OK, it’s all great, the live stream from someone’s bedroom, it’s just not what I call live music.

Three months later, Musicando re-started, together with other concerts under the «Cultura en acción» umbrella, by inscription only and with now-customary safety and social distancing measures.

• 6 June: Germán López @ Pueblo Canario
  What a fantastic opening of a “new” Musicando season: the Canarian timplist Germán López accompanied by Jaime del Pino (bass), Yuniel Rascón (guitar), Totó Noriega (percussion) and Carla Vega (vocal). And for those who couldn’t get there, LPA Cultura made available all the «Cultura en acción» concerts on the web.

• 24 June: Happy Piano Day 176 in Las Palmas de Gran Canaria, various locations (12:00—22:00)
  Why 176? Because the Piano Day takes place on the 88^th day of the year, and this year that day was in the middle of the COVID-19 crisis. Since the state of alarm finished on 21 June, the organisers decided to double the number of days (or the keys on piano) and celebrate it on the 176^th day, which coincided with San Juan. The eight pianos (or shall I say, four double pianos?) were installed in four locations: Plaza Hurtado de Mendoza (aka “Las Ranas”), Jardines del Atlántico, Plaza de Saulo Torón and Parque San Telmo. Se we went to this latter to see what’s going on and caught the end of Irga González Falero and Ana Marrero’s performance (two Astor Piazzolla pieces, to be precise). I returned in the afternoon to hear Satomi Morimoto of ST Fusion playing a 45-minute-long non-stop recital — from Chopin, Debussy and Puccini to Gershwin, Chick Corea and, well, Morimoto — and then we came back at 21:00 to watch Buster Keaton films accompanied by Federico Lechner.

• 27 June: Natalia Machín «Las simples cosas, recordando a Chavela» @ Auditorio José Antonio Ramos, Parque Doramas
  Now, as we live in la nueva normalidad, it was possible to move Musicando from Pueblo Canario back to Auditorio José Antonio Ramos. Natalia Machín sang the classics by Chavela Vargas including Luz de Luna, Macorina, Paloma Negra and, of course, La Llorona.

Now, I’m really looking forward to more live music in July. Please, please, people, don’t screw it.

Хунну

by Lev Gumilyov

Хунну (The Xiongnu), published 60 years ago, was not the first book by Gumilyov that I read. However it was thanks to it that I got interested in Chinese history. Why Chinese? Well, the Xiongnu had long and complex relationships with China, and practically everything that was known about them came from Chinese sources. Now Gumilyov himself did not read or speak Chinese, so he’s got the material for his book second- (or third-, or higher order) hand, with 19^th-century works by Nikita Bichurin, aka Hyacinth (Иакинф), being his main references. So what? That does not make Хунну any less readable. No matter matter what you think of his theories, Gumilyov is a brilliant storyteller. At times, he is even convincing.

Хунну is blissfully free of moralising (something that Gumilyov could not quite avoid in his later works) as well as of Marxist-Leninist ideas which permeated practically all history books published in Soviet times. That could explain why Gumilyov’s own books were not published until perestroika.

Curiously, throughout the book Gumilyov mentions his ethnogenesis theory (to be developed in his 1979 monograph Ethnogenesis and the Biosphere of Earth) as if it were something widely known and accepted. Which, obviously, was not the case in 1960.

The Playhouse and The Boat

two films by Buster Keaton

As a grand finale of Happy Piano Day 176, we were treated to one hour of classic silent comedy: The Playhouse and The Boat, accompanied by the piano of maestro Federico Lechner, in the San Telmo park.

Both shorts were released in 1921. Watching them almost a century later, one can’t but marvel at Keaton’s ahead-of-his-time genius. According to Wikipedia,

Keaton’s portrayal of nine members of a minstrel show required the use of a special matte box in front of the camera lens. It had nine exactingly-machined strips of metal which could be moved up and down independently of each other. Elgin Lessley, Keaton’s cameraman, shot the far-left Keaton with the first shutter up, and the others down. He then rewound the film, opened the second segment, and re-filmed the next Keaton in sequence. This procedure was repeated seven more times. The camera was hand-wound, so Lessley’s hand had to be absolutely steady to avoid any variation in speed. Keaton synchronized his movements to the music of a banjo player who was playing along with a metronome — not a problem in a silent film. It was decades before Keaton, who masterminded this, revealed his technique to other filmmakers.

Plus, his films are still side-splittingly funny.

Women Make Film: A New Road Movie Through Cinema

a film by Mark Cousins

I learned about this epic documentary, once again, thanks to Filmoteca Canaria. Yesterday, they screened Introductions and the first two chapters, Openings and Tone. The film has 40 chapters altogether, and it is unclear if they will ever show the rest.

But I liked what I saw. Yes I watched Brief Encounters and Innocence and I knew of the work of Jane Campion, Larisa Shepitko and Agnès Varda, but the rest is totally new territory for me. Je Tu Il Elle by Chantal Akerman, Tank Girl by Rachel Talalay and animations by Alison de Vere are now on my to-watch list.

On the downside, I find most of the narration not only superfluous but annoying. Do we really need to hear the words “crane shot” or “close-up” every time we see a crane shot or close-up? I was often unable to follow the dialogue because the narrator just wouldn’t shut up. I hope the DVD comes with the option to switch the commentary off.

The film is subtitled A New Road Movie Through Cinema; the movie clips under discussion are interspersed by the gratuitous footage of the narrator driving somewhere — sorry I can’t see the point of this road-moving. It’s better to be explained at some point in the film.

The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance

a film by John Ford

Hooray, Filmoteca Canaria is back, and so I was able to see the last feature from John Ford retrospective, rescheduled from 17 March — now with safety/social distancing measures in a friendly, Big-Brotherly way. Such as: when you buy a ticket, they take your name and telephone; the usher takes you to the seat (between the seats available for, er, sitting, there are at least three empty ones) and notes down the QR code of your ticket; you can visit the bathroom (thank goodness!) but you must return back to your seat; once you are seated, you can remove your face mask. With all that, I think there were no more and no fewer people than usual, that is, less than a half of 52 seats (that is the current “limited capacity” of Teatro Guiniguada) were occupied.

Once again, the “main” characters, portrayed by that James Stewart, as the man who shot Liberty Valance, John Wayne, as the man who actually shot Liberty Valance, and even Lee Marvin, as Liberty Valance himself, left me largely indifferent. Once again, the real stars are the Ford’s recurring supporting actors: that Vera Miles (The Searchers), Andy Devine (Stagecoach), and John Carradine (Stagecoach, The Grapes of Wrath). Plus hitherto unknown to me and absolutely brilliant Edmond O’Brien as an alcoholic newspaper editor, Mr. Peabody, and Ken Murray as his fellow drunkard doctor; this latter demonstrates his diagnostics genius in what I think is the best scene of the film.