November 24, 2006

Guatemala: Marimba players (video clip)


Link to video (in Flash or Quicktime).

Marimba band playing at a popular restauraunt in Antigua called La Fonda de la Calle Real (the food there is quite tasty). Where: Antigua, Sacatepequez, Guatemala (lat: 14.567 lon: -90.733 alt: 1601 m)

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posted by Xeni at Friday, November 24, 2006  

2 Comments:

Skinflint said...

Don't they look strange in their business suits. It's as though some middle-management types had just popped out to a restaurant and then suddenly had an urge to play a little Xylophone piece they had prepared earlier, for the amusement of fellow diners. Weird!

7:11 AM  
Ric Carter said...

Some of our Special Moments in Guatemala happen when walking down an evening street, hearing babbling scales emerging from nowhere, peering in an open window and seeing a handful or a dozen guys crowded around a single or double marimba, practicing. Here's the leader; here are the novices, stumbling; here are the virtuosi, showing off; here are the stalwarts. All these hands moving in different directions, without sheet music, forging a hypnotic wholeness.

We left the Petén, crossed Belize (way too expensive) into Quintana Roo, Mexico; got medications for my pneumonia (much better now, thanks); plopped at an open-palapa comedor for Yucatecan fried fish. Two guys brought their small double marimba out front and started playing enthusiastically, old Mexican standards. Half the marimba was clear and crisp and ringing; the other half was warped, buzzing wildly, psychedelic in its skewed harmonics. Without looking, we thought we were hearing a synthesizer. How can tones like that come from pounded wood? Marimba is magic.

6:53 AM  

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