¡Una Chirigota, eso sí que es!

Keen as I am to have a taste of all things Spanish, I decided to go with a friend to the Concurso Provincial de Agrupaciones (I can't translate this.  My best effort is: Carnaval Singing-Group Competition) and check out what these chirigotas and comparsas were all about.

The ticket was about 10€, but the concert lasted about 6 hours, so I figured it was worth it.

By the time we got there, the concert had already been going for a couple of hours.  I saw that one group (all dressed in graduation robes and clown shoes) was singing, and thought that we'd better wait outside so as not to disturb their performance.

I shouldn't have worried; I should have just remembered that we were in Spain.  Every performance is interactive, be it clapping along, yelling ¡guapa!, 'campeooooones, campeooooones' or whatever else comes into your head at the time (including the chant which is the title of this post), dancing... you name it.  Someone walking in halfway through is probably the least of your worries.

Group after group appeared on the stage and, with each one, my suprise grew.  Not only do we have such a large number of talented singers and performers in the little lost province of Jaén, we also have to remember that someone in each of these groups has composed the songs, and written the lyrics.  Then there were the costumes...  The money and time which must have been spent on this is just incredible.  People told me there was a strong tradition of carnaval here, and I didn't quite understand until that moment!

Unfortunately, I couldn't understand the lyrics, as speedy, sung Spanish is a bit too much for me, especially when they're making jokes about current events and people that I don't know anything about- or double entendres that go completely over my head.  So, when the whole theatre was roaring with laughter, I just had to smile and hope I caught the next joke.

One kind of joke that I could get, however, was the musical joke.  When, for example, the last group in the competition (bakers) modified Michael Telo's Ai Si Eu Te Pego (extremely popular Portuguese song over here at the moment) and made it into instructions for making bread dough (finally, after a few hours, I start catching some lyrics), even I could giggle.

The bakers.

Before I knew it, 4 hours had gone by, and it was time to head out into the cold, cold street again.  So, if you ever get the chance to see carnaval groups performing: GO!

Villancicos... or not

After the success of the ballet, I thought that going to a Christmas carol concert could be a good idea.  Only another 3€ or so, and all going to charity.  Besides, after singing carols at school every Christmas, and being in a band that went carolling every Christmas, without carols (for me) it doesn't feel like Christmas.  And it seemed like a good chance to experience carols in a Spanish style.

Well.  It certainly was a new experience, I must say.

It was a little bit like those sets of images doing the rounds on facebook at the moment.

What we thought we were getting.

What we actually got.

I conned my flatmates into going, and one commented as we went in that she felt like we had walked into a school concert.  It was almost all family groups, so we felt a bit out of place.

And then it began.  It certainly was a mixed bag.

There were plenty of groups of little ones, who were adorable in their ruffly, spotted, mini flamenco dresses, stomping about to those aggressive flamenco-style carols that only Spain could produce!

What initally looked like a rather sheepish bunch of 8 to 10-year-old kids gave an impressive performance for their age.  A girl of about 8 years took the lead, and what a voice!  Plus, some of boys showed some real rhythm with the characteristic hand-clapping.  They must have grown up tocando palmas.

And then, the crowning glory... the compañeros de Vilches.  This was actually a nice change (at the start) as it was a group of about 15 adult males, and they had various guitar-like, strung instruments, which hadn't appeared so far in the concert.  And their first song was completely different to all of the others we had heard, with a very slow, accentuated beat, and Arabic-sounding trills between notes.
Their second song was just like the first.  And so was the third.
When they finished, everyone clapped for quite a long time.  So they came on and did a fourth.  Guess what it sounded like?  Well, it had a very slow, accentuated beat, and Arabic-sounding trills between notes.

At this stage, we decided we had had our share of villancicos for the day.
Well, at least we have now experienced a (kind of) Spanish carol service.

I just found this... Not at all funny unless you speak Spanish and know the 'Peces en el Rio' villancico.  But, if you do, it really is quite funny!

A Christmas Carol: Ballet in La Carolina

Christmas has long gone, but better late than never, right?

Before Christmas, there was one afternoon in which the kids at school were totally hyper, as there had been some kind of sports event in the morning, and they were truly incapable of working during the last hour of the day.  So, the teacher I was with decided we could at least do something useful, and got them to practise their English by asking me questions.

As soon as one girl found out that I liked dancing, she started trying to sell me tickets to her ballet recital.  However, there were two in the class dancing in the same show, and both wanted to sell me a ticket...  Luckily for me, the teacher solved my dilemma by telling me that she'd already bought about 5 tickets from one of the girls, so I let the other make the great sale of one ticket to me.

My friend, the teacher whose class I was in, told me that I wouldn't regret going to the show, and she was certainly right.  I wasn't expecting to see something of such a high level in little old La Carolina.  As it turns out, we have quite a few talented dancers here!

There were the little ones, who were extremely cute - you could see how they were watching their leader to copy the moves.  Unfortunately, I don't seem to have pictures of them.  Here are the smallest ones that I found...

Then they got a bit bigger, and more complicated...

And, finally, the big kids.  These guys knew what they were doing!

Best 3€ I've spent in a long while!

¿Qué?

I've decided to do some shorter entries with those little 'ah, Spain' moments that I have, instead of trying to do longer and more serious ones.  Because, when I try that, I never end up doing any blogging...

So, today's thing is: Spain, possibly the only country in the world where it is considered friendly to greet someone with ¿Qué? ('What?')

This turn of phrase rather amuses me.  I think it's possibly a contracted form of ¿Qué tal? or ¿Qué pasa? (What's up?/What's happening?).  Anywho, I've had it said to me a number of times, pretty much as a conversation starter.

I can just imagine if I tried this in NZ.

*friend walks up*
Me: What?
Friend: What? *looks around* What?  What do you mean, 'what'? *backs away*