Live music in Las Palmas, June 2023

This month I was doing a course in the afternoon and so unfortunately missed all the weekday shows. This is what I’ve seen (on weekends, of course):

• 10 June: La Trova @ Auditorio José Antonio Ramos, Parque Doramas, Las Palmas de Gran Canaria
  Closing this Musicando season, La Trova — who mark their 20th anniversary this year — treated us to Latin standards including such crowd-pleasers as Corazón Espinado, Idilio, La vida es un carnaval, Volare and inevitable Guantanamera.

• 17 June: «Volver. Tango Sinfónico» @ Plaza de Santa Ana
  The show was opening this year’s Fiestas fundacionales. Featuring Orquesta Sinfónica de Las Palmas conducted by Rafael Sánchez Araña; the singers Ariel Ardit (Argentina) and Francis Andreu (Uruguay), bandoneonist Claudio Constantini (Peru), pianist Andrés Linetzky (Argentina), actors Tony Báez and Yanara Moreno, and dancers Michelle Perello and David Prieto (see the gallery). The programme included A media luz, Cambalache, El día que me quieras, Milonga sentimental, Nostalgias, Por una cabeza and, naturally, Volver.

  

• 18 June: Momi Maiga @ Teatro Guiniguada, Plaza F. Mesa de León
  A great show by Momi Maiga (kora, vocals, percussion), Marçal Ayats (cello), Carlos Montfort (violin, bass guitar, percussion) and Aleix Tobias (drums, percussion), with Alba Gil Aceytuno (sax) joining for a final jam.

• 24 June: «Música en el corazón de Vegueta» @ Vegueta, various locations
  A lot was going on in Vegueta but in the end we went to see N’Trío featuring flautists Dalila Díaz, Gladys Pérez Molina and Paulina Niemczycka (Casa de la Iglesia 1, calle Doctor Chil, 17); trio of Pino Quimont (vocals), Miqui Delgado (piano) and José Carlos Cejudo (bass) next door (Casa de la Iglesia 2); and pianist Luis Sánchez (Fundación MAPFRE, calle Castillo, 6).

  

Really looking forward to July.

Fair Play

by Tove Jansson
translated by Thomas Teal
introduction by Ali Smith

Not much is going on in this short book (subtitled “a novel” but more like a short story collection), and at the same time a lot is going on. Mari and Jonna — quite obviously based on Jansson herself and her partner, Tuulikki Pietilä — are two artists in their seventies who live on a small island. Quite apart from their creative work, they are busy letting out, after all these years together, some things about their mothers (One Time in June, Fog) and fathers (Viktoria); getting jealous (Jonna’s Pupil, Stars); and starting new friendships (In The Great City of Phoenix). Wise, touching and at times hilarious. Love isn’t mentioned often but it’s there, all over the place.

The opening and closing chapters, Changing Pictures and The Letter, nicely bookend the collection; the rest could be (re)read in any order.

He leaped up and began striding back and forth across the room with long, almost dancing steps. “No, say nothing. What is it I have found? I have found a glass shard of what I call the Finnish legend, a shard of a clumsy fairy tale, and I have made this glass shard sparkle like a diamond! Is there any more tea?”
“Not at the moment,” Mari replied rather coldly.
“You should use a samovar.”
Mari filled the saucepan and turned on the hotplate. “It will take a while,” she said.
Wladyslaw said, “I don’t like your tone.”

Wladyslaw

“But you don’t have to get meals for her, I hope.”
“No, no, I told you. Just coffee.”
Once, when Mari went over to Jonna’s on the wrong day to borrow a pair of pliers, she walked right into a coffee break. There were two kinds of salad, Camembert, and small pasties. And the beef that Mari and Jonna were supposed to have the next day had been cut into elegant strips and decorated with parsley. On top of it all, Jonna had lit a candle on the table. They all had coffee. Demonstratively, Mari ate nothing.

Jonna’s Pupil

Jonna said, “I’m not talking about your father. I’m talking about mine. He used to tell us about his trips. You never knew what he was making up and what really happened.”
“Even better,” Mari said.
“No, wait... They were awful, terrifying things, including storms, although he’d never been to sea.”
“But that can make them even better,” Mari said.
“You’re interrupting. And when he was talked out and didn’t know how to end it, he’d just say, ‘And then it started to rain and everyone went home.’”
“Excellent,” Mari said. “Wonderful. Endings can be really hard.”

Viktoria

Josephine Baker

by Catel Muller and José-Louis Bocquet
afterword by Jean-Claude Bouillon-Baker
translated by Regina López Muñoz

I am not a big fan of biographies, but I’m always prepared to make an exception for a book like this. A monumental graphic biography of Josephine Baker — or Tumpie, as they used to call her as child.

Gabriela Frost wrote in her review:

Catel and Bocquet give an often excessive blow-by-blow of Josephine’s male sexual partners, but fail to mention her relationships with women. This can only be a deliberate exclusion, given the depth of research which must have gone into the graphic novel. Only once is her bisexuality alluded to.

This “only once” refers to pp. 176—179 showing Josephine cuddling up with Ruth Landshoff on a sofa. I am not sure about “deliberate exclusion”. At the end of the book, there are eighty pages (out of 568!) dedicated to biographies of main and secondary characters of the comic^*. Reading through them, I could see that the authors were really careful not to bring the unproven relationships — either homo- or heterosexual — into the story. So no affairs with Colette (p. 515) or General de Gaulle (p. 541). Bricktop, most likely. And no Frida Kahlo in sight. Anyway, who needs unsubstantiated gossip describing a life as fantastic as Josephine’s?