Devil Went Down to Bucaramanga

26 de agosto 2016
Bucaramanga, Santander, Colombia

Two posts today!  It's been a busy week of adventuring for me.

The other day we all received an invitation to an event in the arts festival.  One of the board members had brought a bunch of these flyers to distribute to the teachers.

Blues musicians from the USA?  Here?

Sounded like a fun and interesting evening, not to mention out of place here in Colombia, land of salsa, bachata, and rumba.  We had to go.

Colleen and I decided to take the Metrolinea (the public bus system here in Bucaramanga).  This turned out to be a bigger adventure than we had planned for.  First off, the maps aren't the clearest.  They don't show every stop; only the major ones.  There isn't a map posted with the lines compared to the streets.  Despite Bucaramanga's streets being numbered rather than named, the stops are named rather than numbered.  We asked a Metrolinea worker, but she was not entirely sure which route we should take (she said P1 or P2 probably).  Then, a man saw us looking at the map and came up to us and (in English!) whipped out his Waze app to try to help us figure out which line to take (he said T1 or T3).  Armed with his knowledge, we walked onto the bus platform and found where the T1 picks up.  We waited for a while, looking at the maps on the wall some more, until a bus came.  This bus was PACKED.  There was no way we were getting on.  

We decided to stake out a better spot in line for the next bus.  As we stood at our improved vantage point, a small woman decided to take us under her wing.  She looked at our invitación, and we told her that the Centro Cultural del Oriente was near the Parque Centenario (people tend to know where the big parks are, if nothing else).  She confirmed that we would get on the T1, then get off at San Mateo.  This would get us close, but it would still be a walk or a taxi ride from there.  We thanked her for her help, and squeezed onto the bus as it finally arrived.  I'm sure most of you have seen those crazy videos of subways in Tokyo where people are packed so tightly the workers need to shove people in so they can shut the doors.  This was very near to that in terms of packing density.  Luckily, by the time our mama-duck friend reminded us that our stop was next, many of the people had gotten off, so we could disembark with relative ease.  

Mama-duck came off the bus with us, and told us that we were at the corner of 15th and 30, and we wanted to get to 19th and 31.  It would not be a long walk, but at that time of evening it would not be safe.  She flagged down a cab for us and told him where to take us.  We confirmed the address and gave the taxi driver the address on the invitación.  

The taxi driver had the Union Jack pinned to his ceiling.

At long last we arrived at the cultural center!  The place was beautiful, but we didn't look around much as we hurried over to the chapel (it was 6:45 already, and our invitación had said the concert began at 6:30).  Luckily, they did not look to be in any danger of starting soon.  Colleen and I had not eaten dinner, so we decided to spend our newfound time eating snacks from the cultural center's cafe.  

As we sat and ate our snacks, Kate, Ryan, Dan, and Rosa all trickled in and joined us.  Around 7:00pm, we heard the Colombian anthem start playing from the Capilla, so we found our seats (and stood).  Once the Colombian anthem was over, we remained standing for the Santander anthem.  (They really like their anthems here.  At assemblies at school, we get a THIRD anthem after these - the school hymn.)  After the anthems, someone spoke about the Cali Blues & Folk Festival, then a representative of the mayor discussed a bunch of political things that were not relevant to the concert, and then FINALLY, at 7:15pm, they welcomed Sherman Lee Dillon on stage.

He started off with some folk music on his banjo, including "Oh Susanna," which he invited everyone to sing along to.

Sherman Lee Dillon tried really hard to get some audience participation through the language barrier (he did not speak Spanish) - he spoke very slowly and with lots of gestures.  It's gotta be tough performing in a different country like this, but he was great and really wanted everyone to enjoy themselves as much as he was enjoying himself.

After a few songs on his banjo and his cool metal guitar (apparently it's called a slide resonator guitar!), he called up his son, Andrew Dillon, to join him.  Andrew Dillon had a hell of a voice and played a mean fiddle.

An amazing father-son duo

They were fantastic performers, and they ROCKED "Devil Went Down to Georgia."  They are 100% from Mississippi (which in Spanish is Misisipi...I feel so lost looking at that word now) as they kept mentioning several times throughout the concert.  Almost every song they played was written and first performed in Mississippi, and most in their hometown of Jackson.

For the last few songs, they brought up two more people to complete their band, Carlos on the bass guitar and Sebastian on the drums.

We're gettin' the band back together!

With the full blues band, they were able to get into some of the deep, soul-wrenching blues that makes you want a beer or makes you want to dance your troubles away (or both!).  When they were done with their last song, a lady behind us started shouting OTRA OTRA OTRA (ANOTHER ANOTHER ANOTHER) and everyone else started chanting with her, so we got an encore!

After the encore, we were all invited to the courtyard for a fiesta con vino, which was pretty amazing.  How many free concerts have you been to where you got free wine and got to hang out with the artists afterwards?  We talked to Sherman Lee and Andrew and found out that Andrew is actually an elementary school music teacher, he's just joining his dad for a few concerts on the tour route before he goes back to school.  It was a great event, thanks mystery board member for the invitación!

After the concert, we went to go find a beer and chat a bit.  The tienda on the corner was already closed, so we went to the Hotel Floridablanca (interestingly not in Floridablanca, but in Bucaramanga) and bought a round.  The weirdest part of this place was that they did not have bachata music blasting so loud you can't hear yourself think - a staple in any place you can grab a beer around here.  Dan asked about it, and the hotel man said they didn't have speakers.  This place was pretty rough around the edges; it looked like the kind of place you buy prostitutes or drugs.  Luckily, we were in a huge group of 9 of us, so strength in numbers.  We didn't want to walk any farther away in that neighborhood.  After our beers, we all grabbed taxis and made it home safe and sound.

Colleen and I stopped to grab a slice a pizza at the place on the corner by our house, and when we walked upstairs, our neighbor's cat was waiting for us to open the door, scratching at the door as we put our keys in.  As soon as we opened the door a crack, she ran in.  She begged, so we gave her little pieces of meat from our pizzas, and we decided to name her (if she's going to keep coming over, she's got to have a name).  We debated on a few names, but decided it had to be something Colombian, so we settled on Pía. Pía hung out for a while, but we wanted to go to bed (it was late and we still had work in the morning!) so we had to put her outside.  It was POURING rain, so she was not pleased.  We left her with a little bit of meat and quickly shut the door so she couldn't come back in.  I felt so bad.  She was waiting for us when we woke up this morning and tried to come in as we were leaving for work.  She's adopted us.