Tango Festival due to declaration of the UNESCO

Two weeks ago I had a bad intestinal flu. I couldn’t eat anything at all for seven days, then had to do a diet. Now I’m slowly starting to eat normal again, finally.

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On November 30, Tango has been declared Intangible Patrimony of Humanity at the UNESCO conference. For this reason Buenos Aires and Montevideo (Uruguay) organized a huge Tango Festival. Therefore they closed for two days one block of the Boedo Avenue, corner San Juan, the most famous street corner of Tango in Buenos Aires (Boedo district). Here the Tango was born. So Tina and I went there on Oktober 2, at 7pm. They had a stage from one sidewalk to the other. We had nice weather, still around 20°C. They started with typical Tango songs played by a live orchestra. The invited five of the most famous still living Tango singers:  Rubén Cané (*1927), Alberto Podestá (*1924), Osvaldo Ribó (*1927), Julio Martel (*1923) and Juan Carlos Godoy (*1922). The atmosphere was just awesome. After that, the World Champions of Tango Salón 2009 (Hiroshi y Kyoko Yamao, Japan) gave us a little presentation. Then there was a Milonga Popular, they played Tango music and everybody could just start dancing. There were a lot of couples of all ages dancing Tango right where they were standing. It was just great to watch. I would have liked to dance right at that moment - my feet were already moving - but the skills I needed for that were still missing. Later, the orchestra Vale Tango played and Malena Muyala from Uruguay sang with her great voice. It was a great night!

For the next day they had another program. But when we arrived there the stage was gone, the cars were using the Avenue again, and only a few people were standing on the other side of the street. So we asked them and the explained us that the cancelled the second half of this festival due to the death of Argentinian’s most famous singer Mercedes La Negra Sosa. I mean, we knew about her death but we didn’t suspect that they cancelled every event immediately…

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The next twelve days there is the 15th World Guitar Festival in town. More than 250 guitar players from 13 nations are comming to play clasic, contemporary, tango, flamenco, baroque, ancient and regional folk music. Some of them are from Spain, Italy, Argentina (Juanjo Domínguez, Jorge Cardoso, Ricardo Moyano, Juan Falú and the duo Rudi & Nini Flores), Cuba (Iliana Matos and Eduardo Fernández de Cuba), France, Cananda, Uruguay and Mexico (Juan Carlos Laguna), Turkey, Finland, Germany and Syria. They are playing in Teatro Nacional Cervantes (Libertad 815), Espacio Tucumán (Suipacha 140) and Biblioteca Nacional (Auditorio Jorge Luis Borges, Agüero 2502). Free entrance. The grat final will be on October 18, at 19.30 in Teatro Argentino de la Plata (Calle 51 between 9 and 10). Of course Tina and I are planing to go to this event but still don’t know when…

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btw: there is a law to protect foreign culture that says that movies, films and series have to stay in original. Therefore in cinema the movie “The Wave” (dt. Die Welle) is presented in German with Spanish subtitles and “Inglouries Bastards” you can enjoy in German, English and French with Spanish subtitles.

Chambao concert

Last Thursday, 29.09.2009, Tina and I went to the last concert of this year’s tour of the Andalucian band Chambao in the Teatro Gran Rex. It was a very good concert. The music style is called flamenco-electronic, a mixture of Flamenco singing combined with modern elements. I especially liked the guitar sounds!

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On September 19, 2009 the two girls I met at the Frankfurt airport, Tina and I went to San Telmo to go shopping at the market. I first did some sightseeing at the Plaza de Mayo to see the Casa Rosada, officially known as the Casa de Gobierno (”Government House”) or Palacio Presidencial (”The Presidential Palace”), which is the official seat of the executive branch of the Government of Argentina. It is weird having such an important buiding painted in pink!

After that we met at a market hall in San Telmo. They have lot of very old ‘treasures’ there as well as there are some farmers selling their grocery, meat and cheese. I found some maracuyas. They usually don’t sell them in the supermarkets. I finally bought myself a mate (drinking-vessel made out of pumpkin) with a bombilla (metal straw with a strainer at the end) some homemade sweet tomato jam and a bottle of homemade coffee liqueur. Before we went finding some young-designer clothes we had a snack and a capuccino in a café and later on, after ending our shopping day we had a coffee, some medialunas and churros.

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btw:  in (almost) every café they have WiFi and you can use it for free