My time with the Hat is almost over. Soon, it will be sent off to Washington, D.C., where Megan will have the power, the pleasure, and the responsibility of ownership. Until then, the Hat is still mine, and I am wearing it as I type about this particular adventure.
How do you imagine South American music? Peruvian flute bands?* Well, I don't think you imagined Tengwar**, who describe their sound as EPIC FOLK METAL. (Tengwar, for all our more 'mainstream' readers is the name of the elvish script based on Indian brahmic scripts and created by J.R.R. Tolkein for his Lord of the Rings trilogy). As a card-carrying member of the Mythopoeic Society, stumbling upon this hobbit-loving crowd seemed like fate rather than dumb luck.
It was a Friday night, I had been planning on staying in, but my host-brother was having some old grade-school friends over. I knew if I didn't leave soon one of two terribly socially awkward things would happen: 1) I would stay in my room, typing on my computer all night, while I heard the laughter and conversation outside, only emerging from my room to use bathroom, like some Gollum-like creature. 2) Be introduced to everyone, and then becoming the awkward extranjera who doesn't really understand what's going on in a get-together that was supposed to be only old friends.
Luckily, I have made friends in the program here who took pity on me, and we hastily made plans to meet at a restaurant relatively near all of our residences. It was a German/Irish place (the two are nearly synonmous on this side of the world) and the bottom floor was crowded with porteños so we decided to go upstairs. Where, lo and behold, we came upon a scene that could have at the Renaissance Faire; it was the band setting up for an acoustic show, and they were all dressed like barbarians, furs and boots, the whole shebang. Surprise and more awkwardness ensued as we went back downstairs, unsure of what it was we had just witnessed. Retreat is more or less a safe initial response, although in retrospect, we shouldn't have left.
A half hour later we began to hear the celtic melodies and rhythms coming from upstairs. People were stomping, clapping, and singing and a variety of metalheads were walking up and down the stairs. What was this music? It sounded awesome! We went back upstairs only to be turned away at the top by a waitress who said there was no more room.
What happened next? Torture. To be so close and yet so far from the fantasy geeks of Argentina was almost too much to bear. After the show, I went and talked to one of the roadies who told me that the band sang in English because it was more "celtic" and that they often had performances at this establishment. I could see them again.
I never thought to find celtic/metal/punk in ARGENTINA, a country that has not had as much
British immigration as, say, Canada and the U.S. There is a bagpipe and celtic music tradition in Northern Spain, but the band here had a distinct fantasy flare, namely Tolkienian. I'm surprised to find a Tolkien fan base of non-English speakers here, even an Argentine Tolkien Association (ATA), mostly because Tolkien's medium and expertise was in the English language. He wrote the epic and his stories with the intent of using as many Anglo-Saxon derived words as he could. I am extremely curious about how well that attention to detail was translated into Spanish, and if the fan base grew up from around the LOTR films, the ex-pat community, fantasy fans, or the metalheads.The existence of Tengwar reassures me. I have been having difficulty finding sci-fi and fantasy books here, in Spanish or English, and the stuff that is here, like Asimov collections and Dragonlance, is not exactly representative of the state of the art. I will definitely be exploring this subject more and at least buying their new album as soon as it comes out, if only because I missed out on the Ren Faire this year!
--Nicole
*Click here for South Park clip about Peruvian flute bands.
**Tengwar's Myspace site
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