It is Sunday night. The churches are full, the colmados are full, and the streets are full. Tonight I've chosen the streets of the oldest city in the Americas. Every Sunday evening a couple thousand people gather in the colonial zone amid crumbling masonry to take in music as if it were sacrament. They drink, and most importantly, they dance. With a clear view from atop a wall I see the crowd, the band and the colmados, restaurants and street venders conducting their business at the peripheries.
The Crowd
We gather while the sun is still up. Burning off one final stubborn hour of daylight. Many have brought chairs or rent them from the neighbouring establishments. We clump together in groups around the designated keepers of the liquor. Each group has one, a benevolent fatherly figure who has brought a bottle of whisky to lace the drinks, or a young man casually dangling a half-gallon of rum from his right hand as he strolls through the square to meet with his friends. There are plastic cups filled with ice waiting to be filled. There is the constant fetching of “jumbos” from the colmados near by. The icy bottles of beer are fetched by delivery boys and arrive in paper bags with small plastic cups turned upside down over the mouths of the bottles. As the sun's energy wains the crowd's energy mounts. Some get up and dance to recorded Meringue that is played to warm up the sound system. There are three or four couples churning their legs around the small dance floor, testing for the soft spots. Inevitably the power goes out, just as the sun goes down and the tension of waiting is wound into the crowd. Generators fire up and colmados light candles and make space in the ice-cream freezers to keep the beer cold. We are not angry or anxious. We know the power will come back on; we know the music will start. This is only an intermission. We drink beer and wait as the street stones give back the sun's heat they have absorbed throughout the day. The stone's actions are involuntary, just as the cheer that we give with the return of the street lights is involuntary.
The Band
Although they seem redundant the five front men are all you really notice. Most of the time they are not even singing, one has a set of maracas and the one in the white hat is constantly bouncing around the stage. He waves his arms around making gestures that fall somewhere between conducting and dancing. When the chorus finally rolls around the five front men step up to their microphones and sing the one line chorus over and over again. They are window dressing to distract the eye from the motionless rhythm section that is really making the music. So too are the brass players, interjecting every so often with trumpet screams and saxophone noodling. They are athletes, pushing themselves higher, louder, faster. But they give nothing you can dance to. Their riffs are gimmicky and banal however impressive their athletic performances may be. They must spend hours a day blowing as hard as they can just to maintain their chops. The heart of the band beats although you cannot see them. The percussionists are hidden behind the man in the white hat, but you can just make out their faces. They are focused and stoic. The guitar player is seated with his back to me and the piano player wears a look of disdain for the theatrics of the front men. Every note of the bass player ripples through the dancers' bodies. The notes are simultaneously anticipated and unexpected.
The Dancers
I have never seen an old, portly, bearded man in jeans and suspenders look so sexy as this one does on the dance floor. His partner is oblivious to the substantial gut between them as they sway their hips in and out of my range of vision. If you focus on the shoulders and heads of the dancers it would appear that they are skating or at least sliding around the dance floor. They are ducks on a pond: legs churning furiously, heads completely still. An aisle has formed amid the white plastic chairs to accommodate the dancers as they exit after each song and then return with a different partner. An old lady with silken white hair dances where she stands, reverent. A white haired man with a pony tale dances where he stands and leans up against the wall between songs. Everyone stops to sing happy birthday at least two times each set. I can never discern whose birthday we are honouring because there are so many cheesy affects on the microphones.
The Peripheries
I've read that a Spanish colonial city is always oriented by a plaza central. We have formed a sort of city within a city. The band and dancers at the centre of the square where the music takes place. The dance floor is at the very centre. The crowd spreads out from there, until we reach the venders. There is a large charcoal barbeque across the square from me and I can see the smoke, smell the meat cooking on it. Just below me is a man with a propane burner deep-fryer, serving up empanadas. The dough is made from processed yuca (the staple food of the long eliminated Taino people) they are filled with cheese and served with ketchup. There is a man in a bright orange linen jacket offering tables to paying customers of his restaurant that have an excellent view of the stage. The most prominent colmado in the square is dispensing bottles at an alarming rate. There are blue portable toilets too. Perhaps the only public washroom in this city. Yes, we have all we need. For these few hours each week it is as if nothing else could possibly be happening, but just a half a block away I can here the familiar slap and shuffle of dominoes.
We turns into they as I quit my perch atop the wall. I can never make it to the end because tomorrow is Monday and the public cars stop running late at night. I have no proof that the music stops. Like a root fire, dancing in the streets may flare up at any time. If you listen you will probably here this same pulsing music crackling out of a cheap clock radio next door or hammering at the windows of a passing car. On Sunday nights they let the fire blaze for a while.