Bullfighting and La Virgen de la Macarena.

Posted by Ahmed Anzaldúa on May 3, 2010. one comment

My house is right beside the city’s bullfighting ring. Today was the first corrida of the year, which meant an extremely noisy day at my home, there was a huge crowd cheering and Olé!-ing and a band playing La Virgen de la Macarena every few minutes for six straight hours.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sr53o-wbaAw]

La Virgen de la Macarena is a very traditional pasodoble (a march-like dance in 2/4, usually in Phrygian mode –think of the theme from the second movement of the Concierto de Aranjuez if you’re having trouble picturing it.) La Virgen de la Macarena is the most popular pasodoble in Mexican bullfights, in many cases it’s the only one the band can play –which I think is the case with my local bullfighting ring because it’s all they played over and over. There are popular versions of this piece that heavily feature the trumpet, usually in some sort of virtuoso setting.

I grew up in this same house, and the bullfighting arena has been there since before the house was built. When I was a kid, I played trumpet; La Virgen de la Macarena holds a special spot in the repertoire for me because, along with an LP of Alicia de Larrocha playing Mozart’s 21st piano concerto and a few Scarlatti sonatas my dad used to play, it is one of my earliest musical memories. When I started playing the trumpet (I was about seven years old) instead of practicing what I was supposed to practice, much to the irritation of my teachers I’d spend hours learning by ear all the solos from the bullfighting band, and I’d go out into our backyard and play La Virgen de la Macarena along with them. When I was growing up I heard this recording of Rafael Mendez playing La Virgen de la Macarena:

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=595Dx74KNoY]

Along with his famous double-tonguing and the circular breathing extravaganza in his version of Paganini’s Perpetuo Mobile, that recording, and the fact that he was Mexican, turned him into my favorite trumpeter –a funny thing about Mendez, he had the worst luck with his embouchure; his mouth was struck with a rifle butt when he was kidnapped by Pancho Villa, crushed when someone slammed a door into his trumpet and smashed with a baseball bat when he was in the stands watching a game! He was my idol throughout my childhood (until I turned teenager and discovered Maynard Ferguson’s ridiculously high notes and, later on, Wynton Marsalis.)

I’ve only been to a couple of bullfights in my life and I’m pretty ambiguous about the whole thing. I expected something barbarous and cruel but instead I was fascinated with the complexity of the bullfighting ritual. There is art and passion in the dance of bullfighting, there is much of flamenco dancing in the elegance of the poses of the torero (the correct term is torero, the word toreador has no place anywhere except in Bizet’s opera.) The observer’s point of view is what defines a bullfight. While one person sees a metaphor for the triumph of life over death, another sees a mob cheering while an animal is tortured and then slaughtered. Personally, the cruelty with which the bull was taunted and killed was pretty sickening. Even so, I can understand why people are passionate about bullfighting and, being an enthusiastic carnivore, I have no illusions about my place in the food chain. I don’t mind them killing bulls all day long, but I’d rather not watch. I’ll just listen.