Friday Nightmoves

TWO: THIRTY ANTE MERIDIAN and the doors are closed or closing. Iron gates like rolled-up rugs suspended over doorways clank down along the street, mechanically echoing the sound of night's end. Having walked for thirty minutes in a circle around dark and empty La Latina streets behind a rose-seller leading us to a non-existent all-night bar, we consider. Sit for a moment on the stairs of the same small plaza we started out from and drink another 1e beer bought from the Chinese foreign legion. La Solea--she whines--let's go to La Solea, ya vamos. 'Twas dead not two hours prior, but it's open and still serving. One more before giving up on a Friday night. Sure.


On the other side of the innocuous closed dark grey door the atmosphere has decidedly changed.
The air is hotter. People are moving; the barmaid loads a tray with copas and cervezas. Light has adopted a glow, is less indifferent. And there is sound. Slightly muffled bouncing around the corner to meet us, but unmistakable. It comes as a din but like pupils adjusting to light, ears discern agitated wooden harmonies and miserable, hoarse wailings. They are carry along on relentless rhythm and I follow the sound around the bar to the back room.

Most Flamenco in Madrid is a performance. It occurs, often on a raised wooden platform constituting a sound stage, in front of a separate audience. Designated players dress and take positions and put on a show lasting anywhere from 1 to 4 hours or more. At this little Cava Baja bar that I walked by for nearly nine months before noticing it, there is no stage. The lights are on and the floor is the same one that people ate dinner or tapas at a few hours before. The tables and chairs are still there, but now they are all taken up. The bench lining the room is full too. Everyone is moving. Many are clapping, some are stomping, and all eyes are following the music. One man wearing a grey cotton long sleeve shirt and a baseball hat sits against the far wall hunched over the only guitar in the room, strumming while he lets out woeful cries in sporadic surges. I and mine sit at various open spots throughout the room and watch the routine that began long before we arrived unfold. Before long a waiter asks for an order but I've lost my thirst in the affair. He makes no attempt to apologize for telling me I'll have to hit the road, so a beer it is. He returns more swiftly than I'm used to and now my spot is validated. I settle in to try and lose myself.

In the first hour the music hardly ever pauses, but the singing is passed among those in the room. In front of me a man with shiny dark curly hair that just brushes the shoulders of his linen shirt takes over for a minute and all eyes fall on him. After a short volley an older, bearded and more corpulent man to the left side of the guitarist seasons the room with a harsh rasp. It jumps across the corner to a dark young skinny clean shaven man only a few people from the last whose voice is lighter than those who sang before but no less convincing in the agony of the style. Suddenly a man sitting along the wall to my rear begins and all heads turn to our direction. The vocals rotate thus for a great deal of time as songs flow seamlessly from one to another with only subtle differences. Behind me to my right the voice of a large long haired bearded man calls olé nearly every seven seconds.

I sit there watching this and the crowd as the two men on either side give me clapping lessons while they smile to each other. They have dark faces drawn with lines, and dark mouths. Learning how to clap Flamenco from these guys is not easy and distracts me from the moment, for the moment. But it gets easier and I lose the time again watching the fascinated stares of young women and the careless ease with which the men along the walls blend into the music. The crowd is mixed but one man stands out - a big guy in a blue sport coat with a fedora who overhwelms his chair but sits there in the middle of the floor nonetheless. There is no open space in the room besides the air over our heads. A small crowd stands at the entrance of the room, but everyone else is seated and occupies a comfortable space of their own. I never figure out why that blue jacket holds sway. Maybe he's a veteran performer. Maybe some kind of business man. He uses the handle of his cane to shuffle an empty chair over to a better position. This gesture seems to make impressions.

Eventually the guitar starts changing hands. Some groups take their leave, the young singer and his friends, and others immediately fill their place. The night shows no sign of slowing but I feel myself and the movement of time. The music is continuing and improvising like a life. Everyone seems to know the words at points, and the clapping and stomping rises and falls like waves. That guy is still saying olé, I don't think he can even help it. At the next pause I rise and gesture to my friends. A young woman offers her hand and I kiss it, and I leave her behind smiling as I walk out into the street and turn toward the palace just after Four: Thirty Ante Meridian.