Intermission

Last night, I arrived back from a whirlwind tour of Argentina in which my family and I ventured into the jungle, the mountains, and the pampas. Iguazu, featured in the last post, is spectacular, and yes, was the setting for the Robert DeNiro-Jeremy Irons film "The Mission". On the Bariloche area, less than two hundred kilometers north of El Bolsón, I've already gushed enough, but suffice it to say that the scenery is just as mesmerizing there even if the town is a far cry from Bolsón's behind-the-beat charm.

Rosario, Argentina's second city, marked the end of our trip. It's a tranquil and pretty town that feels both refreshingly slow paced and a little barren. I love peaceful little villages, but I like my cities with a little more propulsion.

Today, I'm off to northeastern Uruguay for what promises to be an adventure. To get to the beach where I'll be camping, I need to take a boat, two coach buses, and then walk for 5 kilometers. The journey will take about 14 hours in total, but should be rewarded by a beautiful beach and the cooking of my friend Diego, an Argentine chef whose "private" restaurant in Buenos Aires is one of the very best places I've eaten down here.

A little extra:
My friend Adam Bloch—a sportswriter, jazz aficionado, and leading expert on subjects as diverse as New England beer and Alfred Hitchcock—has just released a feverish howl into cyberspace in the form of his Knicks blog "Isiah-in-Wonderland". The blog has been up for only a week, but Adam has already authored 12 passionate and hilarious posts. He's an excellent writer, so whether or not you're interested in the unending whimper that has been the Knicks' lot since Zeke took over, IiW is definitely worth a look.

Over at Destination: OUT, they're ringing in the New Year by reposting their 10 most popular tracks of the year. Number one is an exuberant and relatively accessible tune by the very strange Japanese pianist Masabumi Kikuchi. When I heard Kikuchi play with Paul Motian and Chris Potter last December, he croaked like Golem as he played his sparse piano. Call me small minded, but I draw my limit at Keith Jarrett's whining.

The Falls

A brief update

I haven't updated the blog for close to two weeks and while I don't have a story of mountain conquests or blazing jam sessions, I think it's only fair that I give a brief update.

I'm leaving tomorrow morning for Iguazu Falls in the north with my family on a vacation that will take us through Bariloche as well. Then I'll be off to Uruguay until the 3rd of January at which point the blog should return for a more frequently updated form.

Bad Plus pianist and excellent blogger Ethan Iverson is scaling back in the new year. I'm planning to expand with the possibility of guest writers, article links (hopefully), and maybe even some fiction.

For now though, just a favorite quote from Tennessee Williams: "Make voyages, attempt them, there is nothing else."

Happy holidays, I miss the snow.

On Air

Two weeks ago, I met a young Cuban, currently residing in Brazil, named Gabriel Rio Cabo. He’s been on a six-month odyssey through Brazil, Uruguay, and now Argentina, and his stories are a tremendous whirlwind. I imagine he’s writing them down, and that they’ll be published in the near future by a small Portuguese-language press, undoubtedly under a pseudonym—such is his mischievous wit.

On Saturday night, a friend of Gabriel’s whom he had met in the street a few days earlier, invited him onto Argentine National Radio. Gabriel generously extended this invitation to me as well.

We arrived at a seemingly closed downtown office building at 11:30 p.m., but a security guard finally arrived, and we were ushered into the studio of Argentine National Radio 1050, where Gabriel’s friend Rochy has a late-night show from midnight-6 a.m. I’ve had some experience on radio as of late, appearing for an extended segment on Greg Kress’s “Neon Jazz Train,” and, more recently, on WGN Radio in Chicago on the “John Williams Show.” Yet, those appearances were in my cozy mother tongue, this was in Spanish.

Let my appearance on Argentine National Radio not fool you—I’m conversant, but hardly fluent in Spanish. Luckily, instead of waxing on about the jazz club Small’s or Oprah’s potential presidential candidacy, all I had to do was praise the porteño streets in my funny gringo accent. I was on two segments (as was my Cuban compadre Rio Cabo), and managed to get in a plug for my roommate’s restaurant, California Burrito Company, which will net me three free meals. (I’m perfectly willing to shill for products on this blog too, especially if I get free food.)

Gabriel has not only invited me onto Argentine National Radio, he’s also turned me on to the work of the great Chilean writer Roberto Bolaño. To be fair, it was my dear friend, leading football expert, and avid and incisive Type and Tonic-reader Adam Bloch who first alerted me to Bolaño. But it was Gabriel who gave me a copy of Bolaño’s “Estrella Distante” (Distant Star) a disturbing, brilliant gem of a novella, which I devoured like no Spanish-language book I’ve read before. I’d highly recommend it to anyone, and it’s readily available in English. I’m now on to “Llamadas Telefónicas,” since Adam recommend the Bolaño short stories—so far so good. I’m not quite ready to tackle Bolaño’s two big novels “The Savage Detectives” (just named a top 10 book of the year by the NY Times) or “2666,” Bolaño's 1000+ page opus, but I’m sure they’re more than worth a look.

Where I'm Calling From

Before I returned the camera that my friend Olivia had generously lent me, I decided to take a few pictures of my Buenos Aires apartment. A look at the place where I hang my hat:

The view from my living room:

The Festival

The El Bolsón Jazz Festival was a musician’s event through and through. I’ve always liked going to jazz gigs where musicians are in the audience. For a non-musician like myself, it gives the show a stamp of instant authenticity—this is what the people who really know are checking out. In El Bolsón, nearly every musician went to every show, both as an act of mutual support and as a sign of genuine interest.

There was never more than one show going on at a time in El Bolsón, and the festival's vibe was that of a migratory herd rather than a sedentary audience. At 12:30 p.m., the first gig of the day would start at the outdoor garden of a grill called Tsunami 70. Not everyone would show up right on time, but by the end, the space would be packed.

Part of this communal spirit was purely logistical. Everyone, including yours truly, was fed by the festival, and if you wanted a free lunch, you had to show up to Tsunami by about 2. Yet, there were other shows with nothing to do with free meals that drew seemingly every player that had been invited to the festival.

Not only did musicians support each other by sitting in the audience, they often played with each other too. Bands invited the members of other bands up onto the stage with them, adding funky horns to afro-peruvian rhythms, or beefing a trio up to a quartet or quintet. (The festival’s most able pianist, a really good guy named Ariel who bore a striking resemblance to Levon Helm, played in three different groups, even though he only came with, and presumably was only paid by, one.)

Both Saturday and Sunday night ended with jam sessions that stretched into the early morning. I’ve been into jazz since I heard Kind of Blue when I was 12-years-old, but I’d never been to a real jam session. It was a lot of fun. The sessions amplified the intermingling of the festival, as a musical chairs of players carved through Blue Note-era standards like “Canteloupe Island” and more standard standards like “All The Things You Are.”

Most of the jazz at the festival was innovative to the point that Eduardo, the bassist of the Ale Dimogli Trio, said to me, “this is a jazz festival sin swing.” He didn’t mean that as an insult or a compliment, just as a statement, and it was dead on. Few of the groups, and none of the best groups, were fully straight-ahead. Everyone was trying for a new sound, which surprised and excited me. I’d worried that Argentine jazz might be stuck in a bebop, or worse, high-school “jazz combo”, tradition. The best Argentine bands are doing what the best American bands are doing, pushing the music in different directions, which is what the best have always done.

The jam sessions though, were a refreshing return to jazz’s swinging roots. Guys who were trying out new things with their own bands, showed that they could still blow over changes. Hanging out with these guys until far into the madrugada was a pleasure, and I relished my totally alien, but totally comfortable, position in the festival—a newbie gringo, seven weeks off the plane, somehow hanging out in the Patagonian Andes with a bunch of musicians from Buenos Aires.

A few short videos from the festival:



Levas Cruzadas, a jazz-funk outfit who wear hazmat suits when they perform, was one of the most exhilarating bands at the festival. They're all very young—between 25 and 30—and they're full of energy and swagger. The guys in Levas caught every show and were all over the jam sessions.



My friend Ale Dimogli with his trio + the aforementioned pianist, Ariel. Ale is a virtuoso on guitar and his band was one of the most rooted in the jazz of the moment. They could easily be playing a fine gig at Small's or the Jazz Gallery. Ale and his group were also big at the jam sessions. Ale went to Berklee College of Music and lived in the States playing with people like Richard Davis and Bob Moses, and he's clearly very comfortable in a jam session setting.


If there was a star of the festival though, it was Los Negros de Miércoles. They're an Afro-Peruvian band not a jazz band, but they're energy and charisma were extraordinary. They closed out the festival with a raucous midnight show on Sunday which saw the first few rows of chairs cleared out and transformed into a make-shift dance floor. This video shows them at their outdoor show earlier in the day, and unfortunately doesn't do them justice.

Up the mountain...

I needed to climb Piltriquitron. The big mountain looming over the small town (El Bolsón) beckoned me, if for no other reason than its proximity. Its snow-capped peak offered a further remove from the world of Buenos Aires. Flee the city for the mountain valley and it’s only natural that a trek up the mountain should follow.

It was no easy shakes to get there. My romance with Huara Viajes, the touring company I mentioned in the previous post, lasted about four hours. I walked into their office on Thursday morning not knowing if I’d have to pay for any excursions and unclear as to whether they’d even know who I was. Two hours and a few of cups of mate later, I knew I wouldn’t be paying a dime and plans were made for an excursion to a small organic farm followed by whitewater rafting. The trip to the farm was fine—nothing too special but a choice spot to be sure—but it dragged on too long and I missed my rafting trip. To make up for it, Huara took me out to a lunch that proved long and boring. It started out well enough, but when the head of Huara arrived it turned into a drawn-out affair, focusing on the impact of the weakened US dollar exchange rate on the travel business. I had mistakenly thought that any Spanish was good Spanish. I know now that I was wrong.

The next day, Huara totally dropped the ball. They couldn’t reschedule my rafting trip and when I said I wanted to go up to Piltriquitron, they farmed me out to another company. When I arrived at that company’s office, they told me that the people who I’d trek with wouldn’t arrive in El Bolsón for another couple hours and I wouldn’t be able to leave on the excursion until at least 4:30 p.m. Fuck that shit. Life’s too short. It was 11 a.m., I had money in my pocket, and a burning desire to get to the summit. I decided to pony up for a taxi to the trailhead and just do the damn thing myself. Best decision I’ve made in Argentina.

I’d been told that the summit was anywhere from 2 to 3 ½ hours from the refugio and that an entire day needed to be set aside to reach it. The refugio was an hour stroll from the trailhead and the guy working there cast a skeptical eye on me when I mentioned the summit. “Do you have boots?” he asked. I clearly did not. “No.” “There’s a lot of snow,” he said. “Okay. I’ll just climb for a while and when I need to turn back, I’ll turn back.”

We both knew this was a bald-faced lie. He told me what he needed to tell me, and I proved that I’m my father’s son by giving lip-service to his advice and then doing what I knew I could. (Please take this as a compliment, Dad.)

I was very close to being wrong.

As the hike began, I felt vindicated—a stroll on a mountain, a little snow, sure, but it was hard and my shoes barely sunk in. Even as I began to make the ascent up the back of the peak, and the snow got deeper and more difficult to avoid, I kept up a chipper mood. I’ll show them, I thought.

However, there was another thought that began to creep more and more into my mind. This is how people die on mountains. The sun doesn’t set in El Bolsón until after 9 p.m. this time of the year and I knew that daylight wouldn’t be an issue. Yet, I didn’t reach the refugio until after 1 p.m., a very late start for a summit push by any measure. I also was well underdressed, had no equipment (rain coat, hiking poles, etc…) save a water bottle and a camera, and was full of hubris. My thoughts turned to cocky Americans dying on Everest in Into Thin Air. Oh, did I forget to mention that as I marched towards the icy winds and deep snows, I was completely alone.

About two-thirds of the way up the mountain, I ran into a well-equipped Argentine hiker. He couldn’t hake looked at me with any more disdain. Here I was, dressed in a green herring-bone sweater, khaki shorts, sneakers, and aviator sunglasses, close to 6,000 feet up on a windy, snowy peak. I was dressed for yachting or golf, certainly not mountain climbing.

To his eyes, I could not have been showing any less respect for the mountain. He was right—up to a point. Piltriquitron is not K2, and I like to think that what I lacked in equipment, I made up for in experience. A thin excuse, not doubt, and were I in his shoes, I would have looked with equal disdain on such a preppy chump messing around in a serious game.

I repeated the same lie to him that I had told the guy running the refugio. At this point, though, my intentions were even clearer. His disdain and his warning about snow, ice, and freezing wind pushed me decisively toward the “I’m going to die on this mountain” strain of thought.

For some reason, I carried on. Now, I started lying to myself. “I’ll just climb until it seems like a very bad idea to continue.” When I reach the ridgeline, I told myself, that’ll be it. It’ll be almost as good as the summit. I didn’t have to traverse much snow to get to the ridge, and while the wind was picking up, I felt like I could make it. Sometimes crawling on all fours to get across the scree and snow, I finally made it to my goal.

Then I saw it. Tantalizingly close, with a stack of bricks clearly marking it, and an unrivaled position that would offer a complete panorama of the area—it was the summit. A lot of snow and a short, but steep, climb lay before me.

I didn’t get up to the ridge to turn back now. The wind is gusting; it’s not very strong, but it’s cold. I can see those bricks getting closer with every step. The rocky outcropping that is the summit is going to be the steepest part of my climb. It’s also covered in snow. I slush through it, my feet are getting cold and wet, and soon I’m back on all fours, clawing my way toward those bricks. No more than forty feet away now.

I’ve never been on a summit like this before. Usually the summit of a mountain isn’t appreciably higher than it’s surroundings. The summit of Kilimanjaro, for instance, is a letdown. The view walking towards it is just as good as the one found on the summit.

The summit of Piltriquitron is a pillar of rock, hovering 300 feet above the rest of the mountain. Once I reach the summit, there’s no question that this is the highest point. Off to sides, the mountain plummets hundreds of feet. I clutch the bricks as I look over the precipice. A few false steps—fin.

I do a quick photo session at the summit before thoughts of warm pizza and homemade beer at the refugio lure my down. I want to descend by skipping or jumping, or better yet dispense with the descent altogether and just beam my way back down—maybe parachute off one of the cliffs.

Every mountaineering book I’ve ever read harps on the dangers of the descent. On a serious mountain, this often has to do with storms that tend to come later in the day, but more than anything, I imagine it’s complacency and carelessness that kills the cat. The descent is an invitation to be sloppy and let your mind drift—all the things you shouldn’t do on a mountain.

Thankfully, I was aware enough of this that I spent most of the descent thinking, “careful, don’t screw this up.”

Even with my relative care, it was a quick descent, and I arrived at the refugio, beaming. The place was full of an English-speaking crowd (Americans, Scotsmen, Swiss) who were merrily drinking, adding to my spirits. They all left shortly after I arrived, and I spent the rest of my time on the mountain eating and drinking with Nacho, the steward of the refugio.

As soon as I’d walked into the refugio, Nacho asked me if I’d reached the summit. On the way down, I’d thought about lying to him since he’d strongly advised me against it. His tone when he asked, though, said, “Did you do it? I sort of hope you did.” So I told him the truth.


A little extra:

My opinion of refugios is generally very high. I’ve never met someone who runs one that I didn’t like. Running a refugio and scouting in a fire tower (not sure that anyone does this anymore, or has for about 40 years) seem to me to be related pursuits. Yet, there’s no comparison as to who has the better gig.

Read Kerouac’s Desolation Angels about his experience on Desolation Peak, and it’s all boredom and depression, even if you get some holiness thrown in. Running a refugio you still get plenty of solitude on the mountain, but you also get a lot of visitors from around the world. It’s like operating a mom and pop restaurant in New York by day, and living in a wilderness paradise by night. No doubt, a naïve and overly romantic opinion, but suffice it to say, I know which I’d choose.

Escape from B.A.

Buenos Aires is an uncompromising city. It doesn’t offer many of the escapes from pure urbanity that other cities do. It has some parks, sure, but they’re a far cry from Central Park or anything in London or Paris. It has a big body of water right next to it, but the city is built away from it, as if the water were something to be avoided. There aren’t many trees in Buenos Aires either. In short, it’s nearly devoid of anything that might come under the broad umbrella of nature.

B.A.’s all-encompassing urbanity had me looking at my trip down to the Patagonian Andes with an extra dose of excitement. My eager anticipation proved well placed.

From the moment I arrived in Bariloche, merely a stopover between plane and bus on my way to El Bolsón, I was full of energy and delight. I’ve heard Bariloche described as crass and touristy, but the little I saw of it was a marvel. The mountains are formidable, rising to snow-capped heights, but also stretching across the horizon. It was their girth that impressed me most.

The lake near Bariloche was equally impressive, dark blue with white caps slashing through the surface.

I viewed all this from a place that in most cities is the second only to the sewer system in terms of smell, vista, and ambience—the bus terminal. In Bariloche, however, the bus terminal sits next to overgrown train tracks on which a few old cars lie forever fallow. While I sat there, a few gaucho-looking types rode by on horseback. El Sur, here I come.

After a spectacular bus ride through the Andes, I arrived in El Bolsón, which I’ve heard described as the Woodstock of Argentina. It’s not quite that hippie, but it has a stout bohemian spirit and more natural beauty than it knows what to do with.

I was in El Bolsón for the El Bolsón Jazz Festival, an event I heard about through my friend, jazz guitarist Ale Dimogli, who was scheduled to play with his trio. I’d paved the way for my arrival by getting on the press list and talking with a travel company about the prospect of doing some trekking and/or rafting. Yet, I didn’t know quite what I’d find. My agreement with the jazz festival was that I would get press credentials but nothing else—no free meals, no hotel discount, etc. The travel company sent me back a decidedly ambiguous response when I asked if I might be able to do some activities for free as a journalist working on an article.

So when, on Wednesday night, my first in El Bolsón, I was essentially adopted by the jazz festival administration, it was a surprise. Now that I’m back in Buenos Aires, I see my trip as the tale of three adoptions: first, by the jazz festival administration; then by the touring company; and last by Ale and his band, of which I became the de-facto fourth member.

The jazz festival administration adopted me because I was the first person to arrive and I was alone. Viviana, a violinist who ran the festival with her guitarist husband Alejandro, picked me up from the center of town and brought me to her house, which had been transformed into the festival’s office, brain trust, and war room. For six hours, I hung out, drinking mate, listening to a series of discussions about everything from who was picking up which musician to the possible liability implications of having a touring company as sponsor (if someone where to get hurt, could the festival be sued? In the States, I’m pretty sure the answer is no, but someone could try. In Argentina, I can’t imagine anyone ever wins a lawsuit or even that anyone ever bothers with one).

The people running the festival were musicians, artists, and teachers, and were all kind, casual, and bright. The festival didn’t have a lot of money, but thanks to them it more than made up for that in spunk.

The festival organizers had a great communal vibe. A bunch of friends dropping by, cooking homemade pizza, drinking much better beer than we have in Buenos Aires, and welcoming, with open arms, a castellano-mangling, reporter-wannabee, twenty-two year-old gringo stranger. Not only that, but as the festival progressed, my deal (remember, pre-arranged as just press credentials) improved dramatically. The festival paid for my lunch and dinner every day, and I discovered that my hotel room (in a pretty Bed & Breakfast near the center of town) had been steeply discounted by virtue of my reporter status. It was almost as if the festival organizers wanted to check me out first, make sure I was okay, and then upon discovering that I was (I think they thought that at least) they rolled out the red carpet. I owe them tremendous thanks.