Being festive

   In Costa Rica, we flee the neighborhood festival that is days and nights of over-amplified recorded music simultaneously booming over incredibly loud commentary on the bull riding. One memorable year it lasted 10 days, usually to midnight. Most of my tico neighbors join me in disliking the torture by sound that the festival brings us. Why don't they unite to do something about it? When I understand that, I will really understand Costa Rican culture.
   Contrast that to the Marquette Waterfront Festival that is very close to our Madison home. It's two days and it has amplified music too, but you can't actually feel the bass beat from inside our house. Music ends at the civilized hour of 8:30 and it's all live. True, there's lots of beer but there are lots of activities for kids too. Many of our neighbors have porch parties to share the music with friends. One of the coolest things about the festival is that most people walk or bike to get there. (Maybe that's because parking in our neighborhood is very challenging.) Here's just a portion of the bike parking.

   This year the highlight for me was the Portland-based  Marchfourth Marching Band. It's like no marching band I've ever seen before. It plays much more danceable music and the performers wear much more interesting costumes.

The stilt dancers were really tall. The crowd gets moving—and amazingly for Madison, many of the upraised arms are free of tattoos. Our beautiful lake and giant cottonwood trees make a wonderful setting for this joyful celebration.

 

My music adventure from Java

We've been playing with the University of Wisconsin Javanese Gamelan for quite some time. Gamelan is the name of the entire orchestra of instruments, in this case for the court tradition of central Java.

This summer we played with a group of students attending intensive language classes at the SEASSI program. We had a mixed group: complete beginners and very experienced musicians—and just 7 weeks to put together a concert. I think our leader this summer, Steve Laronga, did an amazing job getting us ready. The concert was outside and featured 3 dance pieces. Since two of the pieces were danced to recorded music, it gave me a rare chance to really watch the dance, albeit from the back.

Gamelan has added so much to our lives: we've become friends with many Indonesians and benefited from having a circle of very musical friends, including many ethnomusicologists. Playing with the UW gamelan has been a great way to have young friends; recently we've been playing with students who weren't even born when we first started playing. A trip to Indonesia was made more interesting because we were able to visit many former teachers and attend lots of performances. And last but not least, Indonesian food is really delicious. Before every concert we have a special meal, called a selamatan, to insure that the concert goes well. It usually seems to help; it certainly did this weekend.
   Here's a one minute YouTube video of one of our pieces.