Blues in Burlada

On Friday night Inaki and I wanted to get out and stretch our legs a bit. We wanted something new, but nothing crazy and settled on hitting up a bar called "The Black Rose" in Burlada, a village about 2 miles away from where we live. They had live blues music for the evening and we thought that sounded pretty interesting. The Spanish language is too sing-songy, in my opinion, to make a tune sound low down, pitiful, "my woman runned off an lef me, but befo she gone she done kilt me dog", sad. So, I wanted to see this Spanish blues concert of course! What would it be like!?

Well, it was in English. I almost wished I'd made up a business card before arriving because I really could have helped with pronunciation. However, the music was so good! This video isn't very good, but you can hear my fave Susan Tedeschi beat as he's getting into the lyrics:

We just leaned up against the cinder block wall, watched and had the best time. Early on in the concert, one of the first songs, the singer and band stopped after repeating the same line over and over again, and looked around at the crowd. If I were in the states, I would have taken this pause as a sign that I was supposed to repeat the line, but seeing as how there were crickets, I stood quiet. The singer looked at the owner of the bar and said into the mic, "Mikel, we're going home" but then laughed and finished the song.

In the next song, one of the lines was "oh, oh, oooooooooh."After saying it about 3 times, the singer and the band paused again, looking out at the crowd and again, silence. That is, until I got fed up and couldn't hold it in any longer. As the singers eyes passed over me, I cupped my hands around my mouth and yelled "oh, oh, oooooooh!" It came out a lot louder than I'd anticipated and my "oh"s were obviously long and very American. As soon as the words came out of my mouth I wanted to suck them back in again. The singer smiled and continued the song, but then I thought, "crap, maybe I'm not supposed to do that here!?" I mean it was sooooo silent and then here comes the big obnoxious American with her loud ways! Picture my mother, at a basketball game, doing her signature "wait til everything's quiet and then yell at the ref in a deep baritone". That's what it sounded like.

But, after the song, Inaki leaned over to me and said, "good job with the 'oh's" He said Esteban, a friend we were with, whispered to Inaki after I yelled, "oh, that's what we were supposed to do!" So, I think I was actually helpful, yay! And, during the rest of the concert, other people started participating. Yessssssss, trend setter!

Anyhow it was a great time and if any of you readers come visit, we'll take you there so you can see the first place Spanish citizens repeated after a blues singer during a concert!