Hot, Roasted Chestnuts

One of the perks of film making in Jerez de la Frontera is that in the fall, you get to buy hot roasted chestnuts from the corner stand.

I am a big believer in good food, and freshly roasted chestnuts are high on my list of good things to eat.  There are several stands near my flat, but in my usual fashion, I tend to favor one over all the others.  This is partly because it's near my bank and the ATM machine where I often find myself.  In other words, it's convenient.

Uncooked chestnuts with sea salt in a container.

Plus it's near a couple of lovely fountains, and at the beginning of one of the routes I take when I go for a walk.

The guys that run this stand get their chestnuts from Ronda, a lovely town halfway up a mountain, with a couple of ancient and wonderful bridges over a spectacular gorge.  I asked them about it and was told you can also get chestnuts in Huelva, a town on the Atlantic coast not too far from Jerez.

The chestnuts are first slit open, then roasted over a kind of oven that looks like a stove pipe.  It's filled with hot coals, and every once in a while they toss sea salt on the coals, which penetrates the chestnuts just enough to bring out their flavor.

The chestnut-roasting "oven."  Chestnuts are in the pan at the top.

A paper cone with about a dozen of them costs 1 Euro.

Putting the roasted chestnuts in a paper cone for me to eat.

You peal the chestnuts before you eat them, and there is always the question of how much of the inner skin (that comes between the hard, outer shell and the inner meat) you'll be able to get off.  Sometimes, it all comes off without any trouble.  Other times, you have to work at it and still can't get it all off.

Since the inner skin is edible, this is not a real problem.

Chestnuts roasting in the pan.

And what brought on this longing for roasted chestnuts?  Well, now is chestnut season.  Yesterday and the day before I had some, and in a couple of weeks, I'm going with a group on an all day excursion they're calling the "route of the chestnuts."  By the time I get back to California, I'll be an expert.

NOTE:  The guys with the stand didn't want me taking a photo of the entire stand.  I think they forgot to take out their peddlers' license.

OUR NEXT BLOG will be about what the world is saying about Afro-Peruvian music, dance and culture.

"Our" music--world music

We have done seven television programs about world music and dance. 

Most of what is usually considered "world music and dance" is music and dance from a specific community.  Each community considers their tradition to be "our" music and "our" dance.  Although most are happy for people outside the community to learn and perform their tradition, there is a special connection between the community and these arts.

Flamenco used to be considered a Spanish Gypsy (Gitano) art but now, almost everyone tries to learn it.

Over the years, we have acquired some great world music from our various video productions.   We're thinking about putting one selection from each country onto a CD to get this music out to the public.  We'd love to hear what you think of the idea.

And as a trial, we'll produce a CD of the musical score from A Zest for Life:   Afro-Peruvian Music & Dance.  There'll be eight tracks on the CD and for the time being, we plan to sell it ONLY with the DVD.  We'll give it a reasonable price ($5).  The total running time of the CD is about 45 minutes.

The CD will have seven tracks by the group "de Rompe y Raja," and one track in which Lalo Izquierdo gives a cajón demonstration.  If you like rhythm, you will LOVE this number.  And if you like good, lively music, this is the CD for you.

"de Rompe y Raja" with the cajita, cajon, carachacha, guitar, conga drums (photo Morty Sohl)

It will include "Ritmo Negro del Perú," an original composition sung by singer-writer Jorge Luis Jasso.  It also features the well-known guitarist Vladimir Vukanovich.  There´s even a song sung by Lalo Izquierdo, and several by Rosa Los Santos.

We´ll have the CD ready on Jan. 20, 2012 when we hold the release party for the DVD.  To keep informed, check out the web site for A Zest for Life.   Also, check out the IndieGogo campaign shown on the sidebar of this blog.

OUT NEXT BLOG will be about hot, roasted chestnuts.

Afro-Peruvians and their music and dance

And more about world music and dance, or more specifically, Afro-Peruvian music and dance:

Afro-Peruvians. THEIR music and dance are only a couple of centuries old--very young, when you compare it to the bharatanatyam of southern India.  However, the community itself is only a couple of centuries old, and their music and dance tell us a lot about their history and the horrendous conditions that the community had to endure.

Afro-Peruvians, or Peruvians of African descent, are the descendants of people kidnapped in Africa and brought cross the ocean as slaves to work the plantations of the Spaniards. Most came from West African, but others from as far away as Angola and other countries far to the east.

Photo courtesy el Comercio (Lima, Peru) from Caitro Soto:  el Duende...

Their music and dance developed in part as a way of telling of their condition, partly as a way of making fun of the whites who were dominating and mistreating them (and about whom they could not, without great risk, actually SAY anything negative), and partly because in most parts of Africa, dance was a way of speaking to the deities and spirits (especially mother Earth).

Then, let's get real, they also made music and danced just in order to have fun.

Having fun dancing!  Photo:  courtesy el Comercio (Lima, Peru)

Africans were forbidden to play musical instruments by their white masters, so most Afro-Peruvian music uses percussion instruments that were developed from found materials, like wooden packing crates of the bones of animal. The cajón has become standardized from the crates and is now used in all kinds of music.

Yes, the Cubans also developed the cajón as a musical instrument. The two (Afro-Peruvian and Cuban) developed separately.

Lalo Izquierdo playing the cajon.

The star of our show about Afro-Peruvian music and dance, Lalo Izquierdo, is a master of the cajón...and master as well of the quijada de burro (donkey´s jawbone), the zapateado (Afro-Peruvian footwork), and is a very fine dancer as well as a folklorist.  He is accompanied by the great performance group, "de Rompe y Raja."

We will be releasing a DVD soon, A Zest for Life:  Afro-Peruvian Music & Dance, which is intended for a general public audience.  (We released an educational version last year.)  If you live in the San Francisco Bay Area, hope to see you at the release party.

Map of Peru

Five days in the life of a busy filmmaker

On Monday, I left California for Spain and arrived on Tuesday evening (exhausted).  On Wednesday, following the suggestions and feedback given to me by Emmy-award winning documentarian David Brown, we recorded a dub and some voice over sound for A Zest for Life:  Afro-Peruvian Music & Dance.  For technical reasons, it had to be recorded three times.  Then I edited it in.

On Thursday, we started planning some additional shooting for Domino:  caught in the crisis.  This includes ideas I´ve come up with on my own over the past few weeks and ideas from the private screening sessions I held in California with family and supporters.

Today, we shot a short scene for A Zest for Life--to re-create some missing material--and  I added a few photos--here are two of the many I had to choose from, courtesy Rossana Craig.  Rosana is a native Peruvian who lives in the Bay Area and makes many trips back to Peru with her family.  Thanks, Rossana!

Part of an annual celebration high up in the Andes.

From the same religious celebration;  note the masked fellow.

In addition, today we continued planning the shooting we´ll do tomorrow and Sunday for Domino, plus I created a DVD out of the just-revised A Zest for Life and we firmed up the dates for its release party (Saturday, Jan. 20, 7:30pm in la Peña Cultural Center in Berkeley, CA).

SO--my next blog article, which is ready to go except for the photos, has gotten somewhat delayed.  VERY SOON I will come up with some good photos for it and get it posted.

In the meantime, just thought you might like to know what filmmakers do with their time.

Bharatanatyam and Hinduism, old art and new art

I had never heard of bharatanatyam until we did a TV show about it, which I subsequently turned into a DVD.  Yes, I HAD heard of Indian classical dance, and learned that there was an excellent academy of Indian classical dance in Berkeley (in the San Francisco Bay Area).

When I contacted them to inquire about doing a television program with them, I learned they taught bharatanatyam.

Bharatanatyam dancers.

 SO--I learned.  I learned that bharatanatyam is southern Indian classical dance.  I also learned that it used to be the temple dancing performed in Hindu temples.  The dancers and musicians were attached to the temples, and being a dancer, or musician, was hereditary.  If your mother was a temple dancer and you were a girl, you would also be a temple dancer.  It was not a question of choice.

I could continue on with a deep discussion of the whys, the hows, and the historical aspects but will spare you.  Enough to know that as India modernized, bharatanatyam left the temples and, after nearly dying out completely, was saved by the efforts of a few key people.  It is now performed in the name of beauty and cultural heritage, although since the dances are a form of sign language and tell stories or sing the praises of the Hindu deities, it still has strong ties to Hinduism.

A Hindu temple in California.

 An artist friend once told me (actually, told me several times) that someone has figured out there's nothing new under the sun.  Well, whether or not that's true, what is wrong with seeing something that's been dealt with before?  If you are a ballet fan, do you walk out of a world-class performance of Swan Lake?  If you love Bob Dylan, do you refuse to listen to "It's a Hard Rain's Gonna Fall" just because you've heard it before?

Bharatanatyam repeats dances (and music) that have been performed for centuries.  It tells stories that most Hindus are already well acquainted with.

Being new is not the point.  The point is the skill and the sentiment.  And that's what art is all about, right?

P.S.  Our DVD on the subject features the advanced students of the academy, Kalanjali:  Dances of India, along with musicians and a soloist brought over from India.  It's called Of Beauty & Deities and here is it's web site:  LINK

Our singer and musicians were brought over from India.

And just to be sure you know where India is located...