Chilean Street Concert

On Saturday afternoon after an excellent turkey dinner, a few of us decided to go shopping. Need I mention that I have not seen a real store in months? We headed out in a group to the mall. It was a great idea. Ross and I found some excellent pictures and so straggled from the group. We dawdled through Unirii Piata checking out the Christmas decorations and lights. The buildings here are so huge. It is not that they are skyscrapers like in New York City. There are fifteen or twenty stories high so it is not the height so mush as the length of them that is surprising. Atop every inch of these behemoths is neon advertising. It is quite a sight to behold.

An immense Christmas tree is going up in the park in the center of the Piata. The top is missing, but otherwise, it is nearly complete. I can only imagine what it will look like when it is lit up. Across the Piata is one of the malls. I am almost there. We are supposed to cross over and catch bus number 123 or 124 to the big mall.

Twilight is waning and it is becoming dark. The lights twinkle above. It is a wonderful place tonight. We are mesmerized by the lights. We continue across the piata through the park. Music filters through the sounds of the cars and buses in the round-about. It is a street band or a concert in the Piata and it sounds interesting. IT is not rock music or classical music, but something more haunting. Finally, across the very busy round-about are lights and a large crowd. That must be the band. We head that way to take a look ourselves. We are just in time for them to take a break. We hear the last strands of their music die away as we get there. There are three band members with enough musical instruments to outfit a high school band.
There are dressed in buckskin from head to foot. They have buckskin shoes with crepe soles to keep their feet warm. I have no doubt that in the summer they wear moccasins, but in the freezing temperatures, it is impossible. They have buckskin pants, buckskin shirts, and buckskin over-tunics. Their faces are a ruddy brown with three parallel black stripes running diagonally from the center of their foreheads to their right ears, as if they have been swiped by a bear and lived to tell the story. Their hair is thick and black, held back with a wide red headband. One of them is wearing a war bonnet. I am not sure what the significance for that is here, and maybe there is none.

We stop to talk to one of them while they are taking a break. It turns out that they are Chilean and the costumes are authentic. I did not know that any South Americans had war bonnets. Close up, it is easy to see that he probably is from Chile from his bone structure. It is a bit different than our own Native Americans. He tells us that the music is traditional Chilean. We walk over to look at the array of instruments. I do not recognize all of them. Many of them are percussion and wind instruments. Flutes and pipes of all different sorts and sizes. It seems that the break is taking an awfully long time. I really want to hear them again as they sounded rather good from across the Piata.

Finally, they begin to plug in the portable generators, two of them. The lights illuminate their corner of the square. Soon the haunting melody of a single flute begins to drift through the crowd. The fog machine starts to bellow out smoke and the concert begins. Now it is apparent now that the music is essentially a recorded synthesizer that they use to accent with their various instruments. I have waited forty-five minutes to hear an enhanced recording. They have three cds that the Indian with the war bonnet is hawking to the crowd that has gathered. One is called Mohawk, one The Great One, and the last one Apache. They are Chilean, remember. The cds were published in Poland – interesting. There is an admonition on the back cautioning against copying, sending the files over the internet, unlawful sharing, unlawful hearing of the music. Apparently, I can buy the cd, but I cannot let you listen to it at my house unless you pay for your own copy.

Each one of them has a talent. The one in the war bonnet is a gifted salesman. One of them plays a mean flute. The last one has been watching the Discovery channel as he has the dancing down to a T.

They are obviously making money as they have two generators, a fog machine, lights and amplifiers, and a whole host of instruments. Their costumes cost them a pretty penny. Apparently, everyone is paying attention to the warning about unlawful hearing.