Wednesday 31 January 2024

Free stuff in Las Palmas, January 2024

There was not much in terms of free live music in Las Palmas this month. So I didn’t see any.

Some arty stuff:

  • 8 November 2023 — January 2024: «Mis Vientos» @ Airport César Manrique, T2, Lanzarote
      This exhibition of sculptures by César Corujo Saavedra was supposed to last till 10th December but evidently stayed on longer as we saw it in the airport of Lanzarote in January. In the catalogue that I took with me, a photo of each sculpture is accompanied by a poem and a title of a hard rock song (inspiration? suggested listening?), with a heavy emphasis on Led Zeppelin.

  • 15—31 January: «Mi Primera Exposición» @ Biblioteca Pública del Estado en Las Palmas, Avda. Muelle de Las Palmas
      An exhibition of paintings by Antonio Santana Trujillo.
  • 19 January — 23 February: «Otros mundos» @ Parque de San Telmo
      Forty photographs of the planets of the Solar system captured by the space probes of NASA and ESA, selected by Michael Benson.

And an excursion:

  • 27 January: Visita guiada por el Risco de San Juan

Looking forward to live music in February.

Friday 26 January 2024

Fifteen short films

I missed them last January, but this Wednesday, just like year before, and all these years before that, I went to Teatro Guiniguada to see the 15 winning shorts of San Rafael en Corto. I have to say that the quality of the films went up — I liked all of them. My favourites were Araceli by Andrea Gutiérrez, El Alquimista by Oscar Santamaría, Patata by Emilio González and SAI* by Aldo and Celia González.

Proyección del palmarés de la XIX edición de SREC

Teatro Guiniguada, Las Palmas de Gran Canaria
Tuesday, 24 January 2024, 19:30
  1. La Espera by Manel Salgueiro
  2. Araceli by Andrea Gutiérrez García
  3. Allegro (ma non troppo) by Zhana Yordanova
  4. Heroínas by Iris Carballo Déniz
  5. Desmadres by María Sanz Esteve
  6. El Alquimista by Oscar Santamaría
  7. El mejor fruto del huerto by CEIP La Zafra
  8. Volver contigo by Iván Umpiérrez Cañada
  9. Mar & Flor Amazonas by Elena Gracia, Marta Fuenar & Natalia Martínez
  10. La era de Verdugo by Daniel Santana Sosa
  11. Patata by Emilio González
  12. VIh-VIR by Estella Lola Cedrún Lastra & Ana Rosa González
  13. Eco Papa Whisky by Himar Soto Martín
  14. SAI by Aldo González & Celia González
  15. Fría by David Sanz

* SAI stands for Sistema de Alimentación Ininterrumpida (uninterruptible power supply).

Thursday 25 January 2024

Холода

a song by Vladimir Vysotsky
English lyrics by Mika Tubinshlak

It’s been cold outside, innit? Even here in Canarias it’s pretty chilly by night. So this song came up in my memory.

В холода, в холода...

Of course Vysotsky would normally accompany himself on the guitar, but this jazz-waltz version recorded with Georgy Garanian’s big band Melodia (Мелодия) is exquisite. As I just have learned from Russian Wikipedia, in 2009 Garanian founded the jazz festival «Играем джаз с Гараняном» (“Playing jazz with Garanian”) which has been taking place annually on 25 January!

I’ve found a number of English translations which render the words «в холода» as “to the cold”, “into cold”, or “into the cold”. Oh dear. «В холода» really means “when it’s cold” (outside), “in cold weather”. This is a completely different meaning of the preposition «в»! And even if we wanted to go to a colder place, neither Minsk nor Brest would do: they are normally warmer in winter than, say, Moscow. I like the re-interpretation of this song by Mika Tubinshlak: not literal (for example, he swaps the cold for the mist and rain) but quite poetic and true to the spirit.

Владимир Высоцкий
Холода
Vladimir Vysotsky, Mika Tubinshlak (translation)
Through the mist
В холода, в холода,
От насиженных мест
Нас другие зовут города,
Будь то Минск, будь то Брест,
В холода, в холода.

Неспроста, неспроста,
От родных тополей
Нас суровые манят места,
Будто там веселей.
Неспроста, неспроста...

Как нас дома ни грей,
Не хватает всегда
Новых встреч нам и новых друзей,
Будто с нами беда,
Будто с ними теплей.

Как бы не было нам
Хорошо иногда,
Возвращаемся мы по домам.
Где же наша звезда?
Может — здесь, может — там...
Through the mist, through the rain
From our sheltering nest
Other places are calling our names
To the east, to the west,
Through the mist, through the rain.

Home is where we belong
But we hear them again
Distant voices we’ve known all along
Like the missing refrain
From an old favourite song.

And it seems, yes it seems
Live can be so much more
New adventures and friendships and dreams
Once we walk through the door
So it seems, so it seems.

But no matter how clear,
How light-hearted we are
Home is waiting, and we reappear.
Where is our lucky star?
Maybe there, maybe here...

Monday 15 January 2024

Guerra de almohadas

by Soledad Salim
Послушай, дедушка, мне каждый раз,
Когда взгляну на этот замок Рётлер,
Приходит в мысль: что, если это проза,
Да и дурная?.....
Now listen, granpa, to me, every time
I take a glance upon this Röttler Schloss,
A thought occurs: what if this is just prose,
and, moreover, bad one?..

In his famous epigram, Pushkin parodied the blank verse of «Тленность» by Vasily Zhukovsky. Which, in turn, is a translation of the Alemannic poem Die Vergänglichkeit, also written in blank verse, by Johann Peter Hebel. (Pushkin actually copied the first two lines verbatim from Zhukovsky’s poem.) Yet Alexander Sergeyevich himself was not exactly a stranger to blank verse: Boris Godunov and The Little Tragedies show his mastery of the form. I don’t know what was Pushkin’s opinion on either vers libre or prose poetry but suspect he shoudn’t have cared of them at all.

Now why do I even bring in Pushkin, when he’s got nothing to do with free verse? Forget about him. The point is that, now and then, I come across some free-form poetry that I happen to like.

¿Y si la felicidad siempre ha estado
a la vuelta de la esquina?

Guerra de almohadas is a debut collection by Sole Salim, a social worker by day and an amateur poet, it looks like, always. Sole says in an interview that she writes prose poetry or, rather, short stories which are almost 100% autobiographical. My favourites are several of her “micropoems” (the erotic ones), and others such as Rara, Momentos, La mujer que habla y sonríe con los ojos, ¿Seguimos sumando? and, of course, Me gusta — basically, the lists of things Sole loves. Poems to share with friends and ask them how many items they identify with.

Read some of Sole’s works here.

Monday 8 January 2024

Трудно быть богом / Hard to be a God

by Arkady and Boris Strugatsky
translated by Olena Bormashenko
foreword by Hari Kunzru
afterword by Boris Strugatsky

I first read «Трудно быть богом» in the mid-Seventies, by way of my brother who borrowed it from a classmate. He kept doing it every year till he finished the school. Later, the pattern repeated with his university mate, a lucky owner of a different edition. Naturally, I carried on re-reading the novel.

Even though literary-wise it’s not at the level of its predecessor, Escape Attempt, I loved it. Not as much  sci-fi as a swashbuckler, set in some mediaeval quasi-Hispanophone kingdom, both revolting and fascinating — light-years away from a desolate world of Saula. For me, Anton aka Don Rumata, “our man in Arkanar”, was an almost perfect hero: part Aramis, part Stierlitz. His best friend Baron Pampa was, of course, 100% Porthos. The immortal formula «не вижу, почему бы благородному дону не...», “I see no reason why a noble don shouldn’t...” (© Don Sera), became an integral part of our discourse, as it surely did for a major part of our generation. And the previous generation. And the following one.

I said “almost perfect” because with each reading the naïveté of the protagonist and his (incidentally, Russian-speaking) colleagues irritated me more and more. It’s as if they never read Escape Attempt.

Хорошо бы всё-таки ввести в моду нижнее бельё, подумал Румата. Однако естественным образом это можно было сделать только через женщин, а Румата и в этом отличался непозволительной для разведчика разборчивостью.
Насколько было проще с носовыми платками! На первом же балу Румата извлёк из-за обшлага изящный кружевной платочек и промакнул им губы. На следующем балу бравые гвардейцы уже вытирали потные лица большими и малыми кусками материи разных цветов, с вышивками и монограммами. А через месяц появились франты, носившие на согнутой руке целые простыни, концы которых элегантно волочились по полу.
It really would be good to bring underwear into style, thought Rumata. However, the only natural way to do so would involve the ladies, and in this respect Rumata happened to be unforgivably picky for an operative.
It had been so much simpler with the handkerchiefs! At his very first ball, Rumata extracted an elegant lace handkerchief from his sleeve and dabbed his lips with it. At the next ball, dashing guardsmen were already wiping their sweaty faces with pieces of embroidered and monogrammed cloth of various sizes and colors. And in a month, there was a spate of dandies sporting entire bedsheets draped over an arm, the tails of which dragged elegantly across the floor.

The story of the book didn’t end with its publication, or with lives of its authors. For instance, the novel quotes just the first line of the farewell sonnet of Zuren the Truthful: «Как лист увядший падает на душу» (“As a wilted leaf falls on my soul”). It was my late friend Sergey Valkov who told me about myriads of fan-versions of this poem*. Sergey himself wrote a song to the version of Kir Abramovich (Кир Абрамович).

Hard to Be a God was published in 1964. Is it still relevant? Why, very much so. If we ignore for a moment the world of triumphant communism, that is. I said, for a moment. Cutting to the chase: do I concur with Don Condor that our eagle Don Reba should have been — has to be — “removed”? Totally. Would it help? Rumata was not sure, neither am I. That would be a good start though. In any case, it’s not up to Rumatas but to the good citizens of Arkanar. I don’t hold my breath.

According to Wikipedia, the first English translation of Hard to be a God, by Wendayne Ackerman (1973), was made from a German one. Thanks to the Internet Archive, I was able to read the excellent 2014 translation by Olena Bormashenko. The afterword by Boris Strugatsky sheds some light on the history of the writing. How come that I didn’t know until now that Don Reba originally was to be named Don Rebia, a too transparent anagram of Beria?


* See, for example, here, here and here.

Monday 1 January 2024

Free live music and stuff in Santander and Las Palmas, December 2023

This is what I’ve seen in December:

  • 2 December: Carmen Lang @ Discos Cucos, Calle Santa Lucía, 41, Santander
      Carmen Lang (vocals, acoustic guitar), accompanied by Paco Gómez (electric guitar), was presenting her new EP Dandelion in the Wind.

  • 2 December: Noche de rumba @ Bar Bolero, Calle San Celedonio, 35
      Later the same day, with Esencia Trío featuring Jose Hernández (vocals, bass guitar), Tony León (flamenco guitar, bass guitar) and Dani Peña (cajón), with a guest Dani Simons (bass guitar).

Back to Las Palmas:

  • 9 December: «Música en el corazón de Vegueta» @ various locations, Vegueta, Las Palmas de Gran Canaria
      Fewer venues than this June but still, a nice and quite full programme for a Saturday evening.
      • 20:00: Augusto Báez @ Patio de la Fundación MAPFRE Canarias, calle Castillo, 6
      • 20:30: Trío Gabriel Rodó featuring Pilar Bolaños (cello), Ana Marrero (piano) and Liliana Mesa Montané (violin) @ Patio de Los Naranjos, calle Espíritu Santo
      • 21:00: Chromatic Dúo feat. Derque Martín (timple) and Nicolás Mendoza (guitar) @ Patio del Colegio de Abogados, calle Agustín Millares, 25
      • 21:30: Iván Quintana Trío @ Plaza de San Agustín
      • 22:00: Midnight Soul @ Plaza del Pilar Nuevo

The fifth edition of the author song cycle «9 cañones sin banda» — and the first time that I went to see it. The titular 9 cañones refer to the nine cannons of the venue, Museo Castillo de Mata (Calle Domingo Guerra del Río, 147), as well as to the nine cantautores (I presume every year they have nine artists).

  • 14 December: Jesús Garriga / Sandra Bautista / Guiu Cortés

  • 15 December: Juan Gallardo / Luis Quintana / Fede Comín

  • 16 December: Isa Izquierdo / Alicia Ramos / La Otra & Jhana Beat

  • 19 December: Quinteto Resonancia @ Palacete Rodríguez Quegles, Calle Benito Pérez Galdós, 4
      Featuring Gabriel Simón (first violin), Nebojsa Milanovic (second violin), Francisco Quintana (viola), Jozef Racz (cello) and Voicu Burca (double bass), plus Margot García (vocals).

  • 19 December: «La inmortalidad» @ Teatro Guiniguada, Plaza F. Mesa de León
      Later the same evening: a tragicomedy by Antonio Tabares tells the stories of five young students in La Laguna during the years of the Transition. Staged by Delirium Teatro (Tenerife). Actors: Silvia Criado, Delia Hernández, Abel Moral, Daniel Sanjinés and Javier Socorro; directed by Severiano García.

And three double councerts from the cycle «Jazz entre muros», again in Museo Castillo de Mata:

  • 20 December: Esther Ovejero Trío / Esther Alfonso Da Costa
      Esther Ovejero Trio with Esther Ovejero (vocals), David Quevedo (piano) and Tana Santana (double bass); Esther Alfonso Da Costa (vocals) accompanied by Rayko León (piano), Fofi Lusson (electric bass) and Javi Montero (drums). Unfortunately the rain cut short the second set.

  • 21 December: Yul Ballesteros / Pino Quimont
      The trio of Yul Ballesteros (guitar), Akior García (drums) and Tana Santana (double bass); Pino Quimont (vocals), Miqui Delgado (piano) and José Carlos Cejudo (electric bass).

  • 28 December: Jonay Mesa & Luis Sánchez / La Local Jazz Band
      Jonay Mesa (electric guitar) and Luis Sánchez (piano), plus a guest vocalist Carla Vega; La Local Jazz Band featuring Miqui Delgado (piano), Miriam Fleitas (vocals), Abraham Ramos (double bass), Ernesto Montenegro (trumpet), Miguel Ramírez (tenor sax) and Suso Vega (drums).

And a bit of art:

And that was it for 2023. Happy New Year!