6.28.06: Bariloche, Patagonia

We’re all exhausted — the band more than I, as they stayed on at the club last night to greet friends and well-wishers. Bariloche is a 2 hour flight south — it is a ski town so the shops are all filled with ski outfits, souvenirs and chocolates (German/Swiss influence up here…one of the famous Nazis was hiding out in this region…as were Butch Cassidy and the Sundance kid and their molls.)

It’s drizzling; we grab a bite to eat as the next world cup game plays on a massive TV. I get ½ hour sleep before the band begins a short one-hour set (8PM — early this time) …me joining at the end, as before. We suspect the crowd here will be less familiar with all of our stuff, both theirs and mine, which is true — they are mostly locals — but the reaction is good. A few mention that they never expected to see me live in their lifetime, so they are fairly thrilled.

I remember all the words this time.

Immediately after we finish a fireworks display commences — to celebrate the end of the snow festival. The PA pumps out music that someone has attempted to synch with the fireworks. Pink Floyd, Björk, some very grand Beethoven-type classical music. It sort of works — kind of like the dancing waters in Las Vegas but with fireworks.

We walk to a local club to get some dinner and maybe catch a BA singer who will be doing a show later (her show starts at 1 it seems, so we pass on staying for it.) 2 giant video screens play live concert videos of U.S. and UK acts over and over. The Eagles, Pink Floyd, Fleetwood Mac, Sting, Phil Collins. Not a single Spanish language act. Diego comments that this music is sort of folkloric…global folkloric? Hearing these tunes here — songs I would never listen to at home — I reluctantly realize that some of the songs are powerfully catchy — or just plain bombastic in some cases. I do feel sort of bad witnessing what I thought was a thing of the past. The steamrollering of local music by international acts. (I know, I am one.) Argentina was one of the first Latin countries to have a wave of Rock Nacional — homegrown rock acts that sometimes, O.K., imitated Northern models, but just as often they added local elements that proposed that the local audience might not merely be satisfied being consumers of Northern corporate rock. The hegemony of international corporate acts was being countered.

Another generation of bands and artists followed the originals; these new ones were often (though not always) even more independent-minded, culturally localized and original (in my opinion). La Portuaria might be considered a member of this second wave. I felt that where once I would enter a club in Rio and never hear a samba or in Bogotá and never hear cumbia or vallantao, well I thought those days were over. They’re not over up here in ski country. Maybe ski village soundtrack music is the same everywhere.

The following morning we drive to La Angostura, a small town in a huge national park — the 2nd one created in the New World after Yellowstone. Eventually the sun came out. Here is a view from our cabin where we all stayed.

Looks like a postcard. The green low area on the opposite shore is a smaller park within the park. Los Arrayanes — a peninsula that is home to a grove of peculiar trees — this is where we will go hiking tomorrow. They are a species of myrtle and this is the largest stand in the world.