A musical day

Today has been a day of music. I wiped the sleep from my eyes as I entered the Subte with thoughts of the Coca Cola tango-dancer billboards around the city. I shimmied in my seat to outdated American jazzy pop music as our van to La Matanza flew by sunshine and the city and horses and fields, leaving Capital behind us.

Upon arriving at my volunteer site, we were told that until the kids arrived for classes that we could help pack up the Semana Santa pan roscas (sweet breads for Easter). In the midst of sweet, sugary-smelling breads and celophane wrapping and crinkling and the snipping of pink ribbons, two Argentine brothers walked in. They smiled and said hi in a familiar way that prompted my compañera to ask if I knew them. They promptly unpacked a guitar and announced they would play for us as we worked. They opened their mouths and my heart stopped (and melted); all jokes aside, they had the most beautiful voices I have heard in years, each like a different texture of honey. In between 4 or 5 songs we chatted a bit and learned that each is in a different band. One is an Argentine rock band, the other a Mexican Mariachi and Ranchera band. The Mariachi brother plays just a few blocks from my dorm on weekends, so at least one of this weekend's nights is now booked.

(Oh, and let's talk about how last night I fell asleep with freshly beat-boxed rythms in my head. One of the friendliest boys in my dorm is a famous Hip Hop artist in Paraguay, where he's from. He wouldn't freestyle for me, but agreed to beatbox, and upon beginning was joined by an NYU kid who's also really good.)

The evening wound down with a Tango Orchestral performance and presentation on the history, methodology, and music of tango, conducted at the NYU academic center. Check the mout at www.myspace.com/orquestaimperial. My mind drifted as I soaked up the notes and smiled to myself and to the performers (which I'm sure weirded out one of the women who got caught off guard when she looked up from her accordian-like tango instrument to a cheesing Lilly), and in the moment I felt so utterly happy with Buenos Aires. I also felt so thankful that I attend NYU... I am living a charmed life in Buenos Aires, via New York City--specifically Greenwich village, Manhattan.

I love my life the most in the moments when it is filled with music. And the moments it is filled with love... but love is its own flavor of music.

Here's to a musical day and the hope and belief that this music is a foreshadowing of what is to come,

L