La Paz, Bolivia Part III.5

Part III.5 The Tubo Plays On

When Lori was Christmas shopping for me, she met some artsy-hippies (more hippies!?!?) Luz, my Christmas present maker, has a Darbuka (the Arabic drum, what!?!?) and is one of the nicest people we´ve met on our trip for sure. She explained that she has the drum, loves the drum, but doesn´t know how to play it. No problem, Arabic Drum Teacher Lori to the rescue! :)

While Luz made my Christmas watch, they chatted about music and decided to meet up, play, jam and talk about a thing or two about Arabic music. Our last two days in La Paz, we met up with Luz, jammed, danced (rather, I danced... we have strict rules, Lori´s the hands and I´m the legs :) and played Arabic Music. We loved every minute being that it´s been a long time since we´ve jammed with other people!

The last day, we met up with Luz and continued playing, jamming, dancing for 4 more intense hours before finally deciding that the 5 of us (Luz, her 2 friends, Lori and I) should take to the street and see if we could make some moola.

We were quite a sight. With Lori amazingly leading this discombobulated bunch, another (inexperienced) drummer, Luz on the tambourine (also inexperienced), a dog pooping (experienced), a drunk man cheering us on (and stepping in the poop from the dog), 3 other dogs who were ready to attack me at any moment and the best part, Julio the tube blower. If you´ve never heard Arabic music with a continuous, monotoned tube being blown in the background... well, you missed your chance.

After about an hour, exhausted (after playing and dancing for 2 days straight), with hunger like never before and 12 bolivianos a piece ($1.50), we called it a night, thanked our spirited musical friends and were ready to leave La Paz.

A very musical finale.