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Another day, another great sight in the Born.

I was sitting here 15 minutes ago when I became aware of lots of drumming and piping outside. I tossed up whether to go down and film some of it, given that I’ve recently been posting a few things from the Born and it might be getting repetitive. I’m glad I did though, because the giants were out.

I’ve seen these giants dozens and dozens of times over the years in Barcelona, but I’m still not sick of them at all. I find them somehow majestic and solemn, and I love watching them parade down an old street bobbing up and down to the music, doing courtship dances, and spinning around. There’s also lots of variety. Sometimes you’ll see at least a hundred of them out for a special occasion.

Have a look at the video. It’s very impressive live. I hope some of that comes across in these few short clips. You have to wait until about 2 minutes in before the giants start moving and dancing.

OK, this will be a quick one. I’m trying to post occasional videos taken in my neighborhood.

Here you have a typical Catalan scene: a band playing and people dancing Sardanas. You can see this any weekend in front of the cathedral. But this was in the Born and I happened across it on the way home. It’s 60 steps from my front door (yes, I counted).

I don’t really like this music. Like living in Santa Fe and eating Southwest cuisine, I thought it was great at first but that quickly changed. I don’t enjoy the too-reedy quality of the sound and that it’s almost always identical. It’s also really long. But you may go ahead and enjoy it. Be my guest. I really like it when the first person does the initial piping and beats the tiny drum attached to his forearm near the elbow. The dancing starts a couple of minutes into the video. It’s cute.

The church in the background is Santa Maria del Mar, whose stained glass windows and gargoyles are about 4 meters from my balcony.

I’d never even heard of a bandoneón before last Thursday.

There was a performance of the guitar class at the kids’ school and after they were done the two teachers played for us all. It was great. The woman on the right playing the bandoneón is Argentinian and has been in Barcelona for 3 months. She’s been learning the bandoneón for 5 years and playing guitar “all my life”. As for the bandoneón, it looks good, sounds good, and doesn’t sound easy to learn. Here’s an excerpt from the Wikipedia page linked above:

Unlike the piano accordion, the bandoneón does not have keyboards per se, but has buttons on both sides; and also unlike most accordions, most buttons on the bandoneón produce a different note when played closing than when played opening. This means that each keyboard has actually two layouts - one for the opening notes, and one for the closing notes. Since the right and left hand keyboards are also different, this adds up to four different keyboard layouts that must be learned in order to play the instrument.

Check it out:

I’ve not been blogging much recently, but that may change before long.

Today I was having a nap and awoke to hear music on the street downstairs. I went down to take a look, and took the camera along for your benefit. I should film more of this sort of thing, I like it so much, and there are lots of groups playing around here. But I’m often sitting around in my slippers working and I figure they may end before I get there.

Here’s Amants de Lulú playing about 50 meters from my front door. I hope they don’t mind appearing on YouTube. I bought their self-titled CD for €10 after filming them for these few minutes.

I love Barcelona. I love living in Barcelona. There are many reasons. One of them is that stuff like the following happens on a regular basis.

At 8pm tonight I could hear music outside that was louder than the music on my stereo. So I turned off my music and went out on my balcony (did I mention the wonderful Barcelona climate yet?). Down in the street an impromptu concert had struck up. I’ve seen many of them, and I love them. They’re loud and raw and energetic, and the sound and feeling in the narrow streets is just fantastic.

I went back to work, leaving the balcony door open. Neighbors were out listening and looking. After ten minutes I decided to go down and film a little for you, gentle reader (etc). So here you go, Bésame mucho, as played by a French 20-piece brass band in the street about 50 meters from my front door. I can’t understand why you wouldn’t want to live here, why you would want to live in a place where this sort of thing doesn’t happen. I’ve been here nearly 12 years, and I don’t think I take this stuff for granted at all. I love it.

Apologies for the shaking video, there were probably a couple of hundred people there and I had one arm up in the air to do the filming.