La Música

March 5th 2012

by Jim Wheatley

     It’s a long story, but last night I found myself sitting on the patio at Domingo’s house, playing bachata.

     How did I get there? I had followed the music the day before. He saw me listening from the street and invited me in. People here are like that.

     Domingo is one of those guys you read about in National Geographic or see when someone posts an ultra cool video on youtube. He is the genuine article. He plays an old guitar that is always a little out of tune. Actually it is a piece of crap and can’t actually be tuned. He uses a pencil and string for a capo. But, he has these monster 3 fingered picking chops like nothing I’ve ever heard before. Also, he sings. He sings high, thin and full at the same time, fragile and strong (think Ibrahim Ferrer).  And I’m playing all these bachata licks and we are rocking out and I’m thinking this is incredible, how did I get so freaking lucky, and where in hell did I learn to play bachata? Maybe it is because I’ve heard it nonstop, day and night for 6 weeks.

     The scene is important, too. The house is made of rusty tin and unfinished block. The patio is just a small broken slab of concrete with a partially fallen down roof above. This would constitute a pretty rough barn in Kentucky. Here there are five kids, 4 with clothes on, playing under one dim bulb hanging from a rafter. There is a small TV.

     In the night sky Venus and Mars seem so close the sky looks three dimensional; like you could reach past one and touch the other; like you could almost triangulate yourself and for once understand your position in the universe. But of course you can’t and I digress.

So there we sit, two guys that have absolutely no common experiences. He’s never heard of Kentucky and thinks New York is a country. He has a strong dialect and it is difficult to communicate. But, we really don’t need any of that. We just play the old style bachata, one song after another in the star light, occasionally congratulating ourselves when we know it was a really good one. And, both of us thinking the exact same thing – This is too much fun!