Cumbia Villera Part I

Hey Kiddies, I’m back, connecting local pizzeria el continental, which I’m told is a pizzeria buena buena buena.

I’ve ordered a pizza fugazzetta rellena con queso cremoso, two pieces of fainá and a glass of moscato, a sweet wine which usually accompanies such things.

There’ve been some major changes in my life. I cut my hair, for instance. I got a mullet. Soon this will be a dread mullet. I think that you’ve all had sufficient warning. It will be a dreadmullet, once I’ve accumulated the sufficient length.

I’m almost done with all my papers and finals and crap, meaning that here comes the part of supplying my own diversion in or out of Buenos Aires. I’m planning on mostly out. The only thing keeping me in town is my bands performances on Sundays of every week. I’ve had better luck with las chicas outside of town anyway. I guess my reputation gets around. ;-)

And finally, the achievement of the hour, my first ridiculous story accumulated in Spanish and told in Spanish. It’s a little something called Nathan goes to a cumbia villera club at 2 o’clock in a very shitty part of town.

For my anthropology class, Traditions and Cultures of Argentina, I had elected to study cumbia villera, the music of the marginalized poor of Buenos Aires. It was the weekend before the Tuesday in which I would turn in a paper and I had yet to have been to one of the notorious clubs where such music is played. I had had great difficulty in finding a place to go to.

The problem was really a function of a little systematic hiccup in being here in Buenos Aires. As an American exchange student who attends a wealthy private school in a very particular sector of Buenos Aires, I was unlikely to know, of the few Argentines of whom I had managed to make an acquaintance, somebody who listened to such music and certainly would not know someone who had the interest, (or the stones) to go.

It was Friday night and I had become desperate. In response to my suggestion that we go to a cumbia villera club together, my two porteño friends responded with “no fucking way” and outright laughter. I was sitting in the pizza joint six blocks from my house trying to wrangle the great force of the internet into solving my problem. I was coming up with nothing, less than nothing.

In desperation, I ordered another pastry.

And used this opportunity to ask my waitress where I could hear cumbia villera and cut off her next words so I could explain why I was doing this.
You see, there is a little process that I had become familiar with in my search. Namely, I ask a porteño where I should go to see cumbia villera, they take in my white foreign Americanness, calculate that we must not actually have poverty or danger in America, and patiently explain to me what poor people are like and how they will rape, rob and murder when I try to set foot inside their club.

I had heard the speech many times before. There is really no variety. It usually begins with the phrase “don’t go” and finishes with the phrase “It’s not recommendable.” In between is a vast series of generalizations made by uninformed yuppies who, though Argentine, actually know as little as or less about the music and culture than me. Having pretty quickly discarded the ideas that form the basis of this thought process (Bolivians are drug dealers, Peruvians are literally insane, etc) this speech really only reinforces the motivations that had encouraged me to select this topic anyway, makes me a little mad and wastes my time.

I hate the hypocrisy enacted by these people that dance to cumbia villera whilst deriding the music and creators. I hate the idiotic notion that there is a sector of society that lives to rob and terrorize people with more money or lighter skin.
What I told my waitress, however, was that it was assignment for class and it was due Tuesday and I couldn’t find anywhere to go. She asked me what kind of teacher would do such a thing to one of his students. I contemplated the reply of “anthropology” before explaining to here that I was the one who had elected to do this to myself.

She called over a friend that might know more, being that she herself did not dance, listen or otherwise put up with cumbia villera. Her friend, however, reportedly went to clubs that were *quite* dangerous.

Her friend came over and suggested to me a couple that were out of town and much safer than legendarily dangerous barrio of Once, where should walk no foreigner. In summary her advice was, never go to Once under any circumstances, you may go to boliche #1 with someone who knows it and you may attend sterile boliche #2 alone, probably. Barrio Once could potentially not be a lethal deathtrap if you had a friend who was a regular that could take you. Don’t even think of going alone.
The two waitresses, though ultimately useless, were the most help I’d gotten thus far. They even made some vague promise to call me should they go to one of the boliches in the boonies. I checked it out online, one of them seemed perhaps almost
as dangerous as Once.

It would have proved satisfactory had I that kind of time. I went home and contemplated my situation. Due to distance and unfamiliarity, these boliches on the outskirts of town were out of the question. I was left with finding a club in Once. Figuring that I was already breaking all the rules , I said why not call a guy named Brad Babinsky.

Brad had at one point told me he was afraid of nothing and that sure he’d go to such a club. I didn’t really want to take him before as I thought I would be able to find a Spanish speaker and make it more educational, but no. Since then, he’d been receiving some of the steam from my blunted efforts to get to this club and therefore gotten wind of the nasty reputations involved. This time, when I asked him, he was not so eager to go. Actually what he told me was “Man. Honestly. I don’t wanna go. I really don’t like the music, and honestly, I don’t wanna die, man.”

But, my home boy, for reasons not totally understood, reversed his opinion and agreed to go. We were to rendezvous at a friend’s who lived near the area.

I arm to leave and my host mother, upon hearing my plan, laughs and gives me some advice. Don’t wear anything any fancier than what you’ve got now, take little money and keep half of it in your socks. If they ask for it, just give it to them. Seemed reasonable. I grabbed a hoodie and asked her, does this make me look richer or poorer? She laughs and asks me if it’s cold out. I tell her I want to cover as much of my skin and hair as possible. She laughs and tells me its fine. Chalk one up for the host mother versus negative three million for the city of Buenos Aires.

Finally, I leave and arrive at the rendezvous, late. Brad and friend Kevin are chilling outside taking pictures of Brad failing to get a taxi for his anthropology project. Ya’see, I forgot to mention that Brad is half-Asian. Sort of. He’s fourth generation Japanese-Californian and his dad’s Polish white guy with a thing for Japanese women. In any case, here in Latin America where race sensitivity is a term more likely used to describe nascar, he’s as Chinese as bok choy. So, ultimately, one o’clock in the morning, headed to reputedly narsty sector of Buenos Aires is a six foot three white guy as accompanied by an apparent member of an immigrant community known more for its highly-competitive supermarkets than its badassedness.

Still can’t get a cab at night, though.

We begin our walk down ominous Avenida Rivadavia, artery of barrio Once. At first, the district appears to be no worse than any other. It’s no more poorly lit or unkempt as any other road in the city. There are some people finishing dinner and leaving restaurants, couples walking hand-in-hand looking for diversion or a cheap motel, what have you, groups of whorishly-dressed girls chatting on the street corner no doubt deciding what club to go…

Oh wait.

In total defiance of the Bonaerense norm of avoiding male female eye-contact, these chicas were giving me a persistent stare. Initially confounded by the total discard of this irritating detail of porteño conduct, I confoundedly returned it. Then, realizing my error, I lowered my head and continued intensely my conversation with Brad. Those weren’t just whorish club go-ers, they were straight-up whores.

My earlier description of them as whorishly-dressed girls was doubly inaccurate as only a certain percentage of them were , in fact, female. The one giving me the look most vigorously was at least as tall as I was and had a brow ridge like the continental divide.

We hurried past, having had our first interaction with the Once of legend and arrived at the Plaza Once. If you’ve ever seen the fantastic Eddie Murphy film Meteorman or another movie from the early 90s about reclaiming the streets of New York City, you may be able to imagine the crumbling scene of the plaza.
I make it out much worse than it was, but it was pretty bad non-withstanding. Little traffic, construction on a monument in the center of the plaza littered the sidewalk with detritus. But, in direct objection to the reputation of the neighborhood, the plaza was also littered with open stands that sold food, presumably to departing clubbers. If the Peruvians were really raging on drug-frenzies, then these guys wouldn’t be out here hawking sandwiches, right?

And so , generally it wasn’t that bad. There was one guy passed out on the sidewalk. Like, literally stretched-out between two food-stands with a liter bottle of… something next to him. We left him alone.

We made a circuit of the plaza and headed back down Rivadavia. Fortuitously, we’d spotted a club that had a crowd outside and near as we could tell it seemed that the Damas Gratis were to play that night. In a city with a schedule like Buenos Aires, it’s a little hard to tell if “Saturday at four” means during the night of Saturday past midnight at four or actually at four in the morning on Sunday. In any case, the Damas Gratis were alleged to be playing “11-6.”

Don’t be fooled, all propositions of time in Buenos Aires are super tentative. It is entirely possible that within the suggested “11-6” framework, that the Damas Gratis would actually play at seven. Not that I said this to Brad. I told him that we’d be home in bed at four o’clock.

And, yes, the Damas Gratis is a band of cumbia villera. So well known, in fact, that though I can name you only three bands of cumbia villera, I had already heard of them. Their name is a pun on the term for Ladies Night, which could also mean free women. We were truly working with the finest in cumbia.

We pay a twenty peso cover and line up to enter. I was subjected to an extremely thorough frisking before being admitted to the club. I was made to remove my hat and unzip my hoodie which was then felt to see if there were something concealed in the lining. The hoodie has no lining.

With that, I replaced my hat as I stepped through the metal detector and took in the scene. The place was surprisingly well lit and not totally packed as I had expected it to be. And unsurprisingly contrary to porteño expectations, not full of raging, poor gangsters. As Brad and I ascended to the second level to survey the scene, it became clear that the place was actually populated by an enormous variety of people.
There were people ranging from late teens to early 40s, judging from a visual estimation, an equal mix of men and women from a apparently large range of economic backgrounds. Styles of clothing ranged from the more typically “villero” tracksuit to conservative short-sleeve, button-downs. It seems that a majority of the club-goers had followed the advice I had received in dressing down for the event; unlike the high standard of dress found at many Buenos Aires clubs, jeans and t-shirts predominated. The environment was calm, the music at a tolerable volume level and the sound of conversation actually competed with the music.

Dancing was decidedly less pornographic than what was to be found in your average Reggaeton-playing boliche. Most couples danced face-to-face and joined hands in a pseudo-meringue/salsa style.

Alcohol consumption was also contrary to porteño expectation. It did not appear, from cursory examination that the infamous “wine in a box” was sold at this location. And to my great joy, they didn’t even sell Quilmes, truly the worst achievement in alcohol, though it’s the beer de facto in nearly every liquering establishment.

It seemed that at this juncture, the only thing that Brad and I were going to suffer from was going to be boredom. That turned out to be incorrect, but I’ll have to leave you on a cliff-hanger cause I need to go leave to get dinner now.