Spain Chronicles 1999 – June 7 – 14

Written by Marianna Mejia

Fatima, Carlos Heredia’s daughter, dancing bulerías at Concha’s party

Luis, Concha, & Carmen at Concha’s Party

Marianna, Nacha, & Carmen at Concha’s Party

Nacha, Rafael, & Jose Luis at at Concha’s Party

Carmen dancing at Concha’s Party

Curro Fernandez, Carmen Ledesma, Carmen, & Concha Vargas at Concha’s Party

Carmen & Carlos at Concha’s Party

Carlos & Rafael singing, Curro Fernandez at Concha’s Party

Carmen Concha’s daughter at Concha’s Party

Esperanza Fermandez & Rubina at Concha’s Party

Freddie with guitar at Concha’s Party

Freddie at Concha’s Party

Marianna Sevianas silhouette at Feria de San Lucar

Baby in yellow at Feria de San Lucar

Freddie drinking Cerveza Sin at Feria de San Lucar

Luis & Freddie with hats at Feria de San Lucar

June 7, 1999

It is Monday night and the Carboneria is less crowded. Already people are leaving Sevilla for the country and the sea shore. It is unusually cold this summer, a blessing for us, because the weather is balmy and pleasant. It was starting to get too hot when this coolness came, with soft wind fanning the heat and the sweat. People say that summer has not yet hit and when it does Sevilla will be like a furnace. We are thinking again about whether we should stay here or find an air conditioned apartment. We find that we spend a lot of money eating out because we have no stove. But then again, we want to see more of Spain so we might just travel to the cooler regions right here in Spain.

Concha is back. I had my first class with her today and started to learn the escobilla for the Siguiriyas. Last Saturday she gave a party to celebrate her return from a month in Japan and her husband Rafael’s release from jail. Rafael is a quiet man, giving an air of refined sensitivity and kindness. His gray hair softens him and he looks like the last person who would spend time in jail. I heard that he had taken a drug rap for someone else but I don’t know anything else about it. He sang a beautiful Siguiriyas at the party. It was a great party with people whose names we had heard before, Curro Fernandez and the Familia Fernandez, Carmen Ledesma, Pepa Vargas. People were friendly and relaxed. Carlos and his family were there and his two year old, Fatima, danced a buleria in her diapers that blew us away. Her little foot stamped right in compas. The adults encouraged her and I saw again that Flamenco will not die if this tradition continues, if the parents continue to take such joy in the passing on of Flamenco to the next generation. Concha and Rafael’s eight year old daughter Carmen also danced and sang. The smiles on her parents’ faces again spoke of passing on the tradition. Both kids were good and had been around good Flamenco all their lives. We have videos of them dancing. I thought it would make a wonderful documentary to video artist parents passing their art on to their children like this, in an informal and relaxed setting. Rubina also sang and danced a little and everyone loved it. Luis’ face was beaming in a huge smile as he watched her. Carmen who cleans at the Carboneria was there and she too sang beautifully, with tears in her eyes, truly meaning the words she was singing. Freddie and I were tired because we had rented a car the day before and had driven with Luis and Rubina to the Feria de San Lucar. At this Feria all the Casetas are open and people are continually dancing Sevillanas. Rubina and I both danced and everyone but Freddie drank wine, beer, and manzanilla. We spent the night at Luis’ house (near Chipiona) which is near San Lucar and then drove back in the morning and arrived in time to return our car and take a quick shower before going to Concha’s. By the time we arrived at Concha’s the food was almost but not quite gone. Concha makes wonderful gazpacho and luckily there was still a little left. I found out today that their apartment is new. They must have bought it just before Concha left for Japan.

Marianna & Rubina in las borrachas at Feria de San Lucar

Marianna talking with Rubina at Feria de San Lucar

Rubina, Luis, & Marianna at Feria de San Lucar

Miguel, Juan, and Aqui Tamo Nojotro at Feria de San Lucar

Ma O Meno at Feria de San Lucar

Peñadela Amistad at Feria de San Lucar

Marianna & Rubina dancing Sevianas at Feria de San Lucar

June 8, 1999

The wind continues to fan the heat and Freddie and I continue to practice and to take classes. It doesn’t leave much time for much else. I will be doing a soul retrieval (Shamanic work) for someone who works here, on Thursday, which is Freddie’s birthday. I will have to change the hour of my dance class to do it. The other day, while eating salmorejo (like gazpacho, but thicker and with ham in it) at an outdoor table at Bar Modesto, we talked on our movil phone to Viva in Granada (a young dancer friend from Sweet’s Mill who has been studying dance for her junior year of college at the University of Granada). She too said, after immersing herself in the Spanish life all year, that if you do just one errand in the day you have accomplished something. There is little time for more, but I guess that is the price you pay for slowing down the pace and relaxing. We are still working on going to bed earlier and last night I made it by two AM! When it gets hotter it will be important to be up earlier and to take a siesta during the strongest the heat of the day. So now, all our friends and family, try not to call us after two AM Spanish time just in case we make it to bed early.

Freddie and I both notice that our Spanish is still improving. We can both understand almost everything that Nacha and Jose Luis say to us. Although I must admit that Nacha has learned how to talk more slowly and distinctly to us. When Paco forgets and speaks normally (rapidly) we still miss a lot, but not as much as before.

I have just realized how courageous Freddie is. He is working so hard to change his entire style and technique: the way he holds his hand, the placement and curve of the wrist, the amount of movement and placement of the right hand fingers, the length of his nails. There are so many things to change and during this transition he cannot play what he has learned in the last fifty years. He has played scales over and over, becoming cleaner and cleaner while yearning to play the falsetas he knows so well and to learn the new ones that Carlos can show him. But Carlos keeps pushing the technique first and Freddie now can start to play the old falsetas cleanly. And some of the exercises Carlos has given him are beautiful and haunting. Carlos is a task master with Freddie, not letting him slouch on compas, tone or cleanliness in his playing. Carlos is with Freddie the way Freddie is with me, making me do it more and more cleanly, perfectly, over and over, not letting me slide in the least. And now I see my Freddie and his wonderful determination and I try to encourage him as much as I can. On Thursday June 10 he will be sixty years old. That used to seem so old to me and now of course it doesn’t. Juan Camas, the cantaor brother-in-law of Paco’s who lives in the room with cardboard walls on Paco’s floor, told me that Freddie is young. Juan is eleven years older. He is seventy one, Paco’s age, but he looks to me like eighty. He looks like an old man, much older than Paco and much older than my father who will be eighty in September. Yet, despite his appearance of age, Juan has a girlfriend, for two years now, a young architectural student of twenty seven.

Carlos is teaching Freddie a falseta right now and they just had me listen. Freddie did it right. It is a complicated contra (counter time) tune with a jazzy upbeat sound. Carlos won’t let Freddie get away with anything and he stops him and makes him do it over, and sometimes more slowly. Don’t run. It’s the same thing that Concha tells me. Play it less “brusque” is like dancing it lighter, not pounding the floor. I am learning the escobilla as of yesterday. I learned two more steps of it today. Now remembering what I learned is the challenge, and stringing them together. I have to learn them by heart before my next class tomorrow at seven PM. The choreography Concha is teaching me is a little different from the group class, I discovered. Yesterday I took her group class because they were working on parts of the Siguiriya I had already learned. But they have more footwork because, Concha said, they are younger than we are and can do it. We are older (and I am sure I am a lot older than she is) and so we do less footwork and concentrate on our body and arms. She said this in class and later Delphine, the girl (young woman) from French Montreal, Canada who is here for two years to study Flamenco, came up to me and talked about it. She thought Concha was too blunt but I told her that I was older and didn’t mind it. That’s why I have let my hair go gray. Even so, Delphine had thought I was in my forties, not my middle fifties. I had told Rubina a few days ago that I would put a temporary dye on my hair and that Freddie would do the same, but every time I pass a beauty store I know that I don’t want to do it. I like my gray and I don’t care right now if I look “older”, if I look my age. And I don’t want to spend the time dying my hair, I want to dance. I want to write. I don’t want to take time away from these things to dye my hair. So probably I won’t touch it. It is a big job just to wash my hair here because the hot water tank is so small. I usually try for the afternoon, and then I wash my hair with cold water for both shampoos and then after the conditioner is on I get in the tub and turn on the hot water to wash myself, after soaping without the water on, and then I rinse the conditioner from my hair with the rest of the hot water. That way I have just enough. I hate to think of what I would have to do to put dye on both Freddie’s and my hair too. And then I probably wouldn’t like it. When I tried to explain that I liked my gray hair to Concha, and that Rubina and others wanted me to dye it, Concha started to tell me what color she thought it should be! A little darker than the tinted part I still have. Everyone in Spain, at least all the women, seem to dye their hair, no matter how old they are.

Surprise Freddie, on your 60th Birthday in the Patio de La Carboneria

Freddie’s birthday cake

Freddie at 60

June 9, 1999

I found out today that Concha is only forty three! I guess that people here in Spain, and I know in many other countries too, look older than we do, although Concha does not look old to me. If I dyed my hair and appeared even younger, would people expect me to dance as a younger person too? Despite my looks, my body is still fifty four, almost fifty five years old. It is in good shape but it was in better shape when I was forty three! Today I learned the rest of the escobilla. Class at seven PM is harder because I am tired and we couldn’t find time to eat first. A package arrived but we had to go to the post office to pick it up and that was our eating window. Time sure flies here. Last night we fell asleep early as we watched the video of my yesterday’s dance class. But we awoke at two PM to actually go to bed and our room was filled with smoke. We looked all over and opened the windows. The smell of something burning was definitely in our room and not outside but we couldn’t find anything burning. Finally I told Freddie I was going to the bathroom and we could look more when I got back. I was so tired I just wanted to go back to sleep. I went downstairs to the bathroom which is below our room and I discovered that someone had put a cigarette in the plastic trash bag that hangs in front of the toilet for toilet paper. (In Spain you don’t flush the toilet paper, you put it in a bag instead, because much of the plumbing is old and can’t handle much paper). Anyway, the plastic had melted and the contents of the trash bag were burning on the tile floor. I got a bucket and poured water on it and stopped the burning. Then Freddie and I got dressed and went downstairs to tell Paco. He started to follow us up and got sidetracked and we were too tired to wait. As we started to go back up the stairs Freddie told Sergio, one of Paco’s sons who works at the Carboneria. He immediately came up with us and then said it was probably his fault! I know he comes upstairs to use this bathroom. He cleaned up the mess. It still smells of fire and someone has placed a fan on top of the washing machine. We were able to get the smoke smell out of our room by turning on our two fans and opening the windows. We went back to sleep and managed to wake up at ten AM and get out of here by eleven, which is early for us. We went to a new place for breakfast that we had discovered the other night. It is in a little plaza beyond Plaza Alfalfa. We ate outside and watched the Spanish morning. There were few tourists, if any, in this part of town. Spain does start later than the US and this was still fairly early in the morning. The stores open at ten AM.

After breakfast we looked in a few jewelry shops keeping an eye out for wedding rings and then went down Calle Cuna to Menkes, a very well known maker of Flamenco shoes. I bought a practice skirt there but they had no shoes with the right heel in my size. I will order some, but I have to come back at ten AM before my feet swell so the shoes will fit right. Concha recommends buying my shoes at Menkes. She thinks they are better than the Corrales that I have but she said to keep the same heel, the Cuban heel, which is low and easy on the body.

She loved my new skirt today. I have no class tomorrow because Concha is performing in Madrid. It will give me time to cement into my brain what I have learned so far of the escobilla. After this there is one more letra and another escobilla and then an ending. Then I will be concentrating on bulerias. I had thought to also try other teachers but I think I will get more out of this experience by just concentrating on learning this Siguiriyas and gypsy, fiesta style bulerias. I like Concha’s gutsy, funky, “down home” style of bulerias.

Freddie and I are both thinking that we don’t want to leave. We love it here in Spain and will plan return trips on a regular basis. I think I want to learn it all this trip and I know I can’t. At last we are learning to navigate our way (walking) in Sevilla. This week we have taken some exploratory walks and are starting to learn the layout of this part of the city. It is fun to know where we are going and how to get there quickly and not get lost. It takes about five minutes of a fast walk to get to the Giralda, the major cathedral in Sevilla. When we were first here we went to meet Carla and Miguel there and got lost. It took us half an hour! But we had a nice walk and they were late. They arrived shortly after we did so at least the timing was perfect, it was Spanish.

June 11, 1999

Freddie turned sixty yesterday. In the morning we went to Menkes and ordered my shoes and then we ate breakfast, starved, at the little restaurant near there, Bar Europa, which we discovered the other day. While we were still in Menkes, a small shop filled with shoes, dance skirts, leotards, and other dance related items, Rubina and Luis called and said they were on their way to Sevilla and wanted the telegram which we had read to them over the telephone the day before. It was about a driving citation that Luis had to take care of. I had a soul retrieval scheduled at two and told them that I couldn’t be disturbed during that time period. They arrived earlier and decided that they too wanted soul retrievals and would take care of the citation the next day.

I set up our room for the soul retrieval, laying two blankets on the floor and covering them with a sheet. I placed a pillow at the head. I burned rosemary instead of sage, for purification. I had a piece of fresh rosemary in a plastic bottle of water and a white feather I had found the day before. I placed a new candle in a green bowl that Leslie had bought for us at the rastro (flea market). I had my medicine bag around my waist and my tape recorder with earphones so I could hear the drum. Fortunately I had brought my traveling rattle with me to Spain. The client, a gypsy employee here, had brought me some dried rosemary. Many gypsy women here, dressed in long, colorful skirts, walk around selling rosemary on a donation basis for good luck and Luis always buys it from them. I don’t even know the word for sage in Spanish, but in my journeys I have been told that I can use romera (rosemary) as I use sage, for purification. I was a little nervous about doing this work in Spanish and without my usual shamanic tools, but the soul retrieval went very well. My client’s face was totally changed by the end of it. And the next day (today) she reported that she had slept very well at night for the first time in a long time. She was still smiling too, which was good, because she has a long term depression which even medication hasn’t been helping. Who would have thought that I would be doing soul retrievals in Spain? Certainly not me. I came to study dance. I ended up doing one for Luis that day too, but postponed Rubina’s to the next day so we could continue to celebrate Freddie’s birthday. And I also wanted to practice a little to prepare for my next class. In the evening before the sunset, around eight PM, the four of us (Luis and Rubina and Freddie and I) walked to the Triana bridge to go pedal boating. On the way, just before we reached the Giralda, we ate ice cream which in Spain is much better than at home. By the time we reached the river Luis had decided that he really didn’t want to go pedal boating so he and Rubina waited on the shore and Freddie and I pedaled for almost an hour. It was fun, relaxing, and tiring. There is something about being on the river just before sunset, floating in the warm wind as the day starts to cool, that is totally enchanting. We pedaled first west into the setting sun, with Triana on our left and Sevilla on our right. Then we turned east and when we passed the dock where Rubina and Luis were sitting we called them with our mvil to see if they had changed their minds and wanted to come with us. They turned around and saw us and waved. A little later they walked along the river bank as we pedaled up the river, but we were faster than they were. Afterwards we ended up walking all the way back home again and Freddie and I discovered parts of Sevilla we hadn’t yet explored, including the arched gate in the old wall of Sevilla. There are only two left of the sixteen gates that were in Sevilla long ago. This one originally divided Sevilla from Triana. I had arranged a surprise party for Freddie’s birthday at 10:30 that evening at the Carboneria with Nacha. She was bringing the cake. It is hard to keep a secret from Freddie because I tell him everything, but I did keep this secret. We were a little early as we passed the Giralda so I suggested that we stop at a nearby bar we knew for a quick tapa. We ordered coquinas (tiny little delicious clams) and of course they took longer than I counted on. Then I had to rush to pay the bill and hustle us out of there. Only Freddie didn’t know why we were rushing but I told him we needed to change clothes to go out and eat. Then I told him I had to hurry because I had to go to the bathroom. Rushing is not very Spanish and I am even surprised that there is a word for it in the Spanish vocabulary. We were about ten or fifteen minutes late but Freddie was really surprised. Nacha had bought two candles in the shape of five and added five more small ones to make sixty. I carried the cake and Carlos lit the candles when we were almost to the patio where Freddie was sitting with Paco, Luis, Rubina, Jose Luis, Alfredo, Sergio and others. I sang happy birthday in English, with people singing the words they knew. Carlos brought Freddie a tiny guitar as a present. The cake was delicious and Freddie’s sixtieth was celebrated in style. After we ate cake we got to listen to Luis and Carlos perform. Then we ate some food at the Carboneria because I hadn’t arranged the day to get us fed before the surprise party. By the time we were done eating we got to hear Luis and Carlos perform a second before we staggered upstairs to bed. It was after two AM so we are getting tired earlier and getting up a little earlier too.

I remember years ago, for his fortieth birthday I gave Freddie a huge party at my house on Amesti Road. It was before the adjacent lot was sold and the houses built so the land stretched to the next street, filled only with plum trees and weeds. There were no neighbors to disturb in those days and the party lasted until dawn. We roasted a goat over a spit outside and Steve and Alice Peterson made paella, also outside. There was a small platform for a stage that Freddie had built next to the chicken coop (converted into a simple house) where he was living at the time with Jenny and her daughter Jesamy. The flamenco went on all night, on the stage, around the campfire, and later in our house. I have given Freddie other parties too, before we were together. Last night’s party, the first since we have become a couple, was smaller, but it was in Spain! My birthday gift to Freddie this year will be a new guitar, made in Spain, when we find the right one.

June 12, 1999

I started to learn the second letra of my Siguiriyas today. People are impressed with our dedication to practicing and learning here and are being very supportive. A lot of people see me practice because there is no privacy on the stage here and I have learned how to block everyone out and just to concentrate. Paco says I have first choice of practice times here and I can start earlier than I thought I could. I had been afraid of disturbing him if I started too early. Of course, I can’t practice in the evening because the Carboneria is open then. Concha usually starts to teach here around five o’clock so I have to get all my practicing on the stage done before then. Freddie and I are getting a reputation of being “practicers”. Yes, it is what we are here to do. Concha wants Luis to sing the Siguiriya for me and Luis wants to do it. I can’t believe all the support I am getting here. I love it and it makes me want to do even better. Rubina says she thinks I am going to get very good. I hope she is right. The other day I had only been practicing half an hour and Concha and Rubina walked in and I got distracted —I blew the new escobilla that I was practicing with Freddie and was disappointed and upset because I didn’t know that Concha was going to teach a private class. I had had to wait for space on the stage to get my time to practice and I really needed at least another half hour to prepare myself for my next class. I couldn’t help crying, I was so frustrated. But, everyone said not to worry and Rubina told me that everyone had been impressed with what I had been doing. And I could only see my mistakes. That was when Paco said that I had the priority of practice times.

I haven’t written of this yet, but it seems to be for sure. Luis has been hired to sing in the Grand Canyon while the French high-wire expert Philippe Petit crosses the canyon on his high wire. This “performance” is being aided by the Navajo Indians and will be televised world wide. Although the contract won’t be here until next week, Philippe was here last week and definitely confirmed, after he heard Luis sing, that he wanted him. Luis will fly to Arizona on August 31 and the performance will take place either September 5 or 6. Luis wants Freddie and me to go with him. Rubina, who leaves for the US on Monday morning, will fly with us from San Francisco. Afterwards Luis will be able to stay with us because he will have an open ticket for his return to Spain. He plans to do some “fragua” work for us, which means working with a forge to make wrought iron railings for us. We have been walking around Sevilla looking at railings with him, talking about what we all like and what we don’t like. He would like to stay in the US at least until after our wedding. So we are planning to leave Sevilla early, with Luis, to witness this spectacular event at the Grand Canyon although we have not yet changed our flight reservations. I think that neither Freddie nor I will be ready to leave. We have so much to learn here. And then, we want to see a few sights too! But learning is certainly taking a priority. Concha will work with me on styling once I have mastered the choreography. And then we will move on to buleras. I know that Freddie and I will just have to come back to Spain to study more. I don’t know if we will return in September or wait until next year. We will see. Will our beautiful home in California keep us from returning to Spain immediately after my father’s birthday? We can’t know that right now. But I have time off from my psychotherapy practice until January of 2000 so we could go again if we wanted. Of course Luis will be at our house in California. Will we feel done with Spain? Spain grows on us more and more, especially as it is becoming easier and easier to speak Spanish and our brains no longer feel so overloaded. We even discovered recycling bins near here the other day. It used to kill me to toss all our plastic bottles in the garbage. Now we can take them to a plastic recycling bin. I love it. Yes, Spain grows on us and we wonder how we can leave it. Of course if you live here you want to travel to other places, like Luis does.

Concha too would like to visit the US, both to teach and to attend our wedding. I am hoping that Rubina and I can get someone to arrange classes for her. I will be too busy with our wedding to even attempt it. The most I could do would be to arrange a week or two of classes in my dance studio. Concha is willing to come next June or June, whenever we want. The wedding of course is June 10, so we will be sure to arrange that she arrives in time for that. If she is here in July she may want to come to Sweet’s Mill although she won’t be able to make money there. She is a wonderful teacher and her Spanish is very easy to understand. Her style is very gypsy (which she is), from Lebrija, which I like. But she knows how to teach Madrid style dance too and this is what she gives the “young ones”. We will see what happens. She will either give Rubina promotional materials tomorrow before Rubina leaves for Madrid or she will fax them to her soon. Fax in Spanish is pronounced “Fa”.

June 14, 1999

I have finished learning the second letra of the Siguiriya and will start to learn the second escobilla. It is a beautiful choreography. Today I got two hours of practice in and it showed. We changed the time of my class to five PM which is better. Now Freddie and I have time to eat before he takes his class with Carlos at nine thirty.

Spain Chronicles 1999

Spain Chronicles
Flamenco Romántico en España
Index