Story by Jane
My
song is 'Chan Chan', track one on the Buena Vista Social Club album.
I first discovered Buena Vista Social Club sometime in the late nineties
when the film featured in the line-up of our town's film festival.
My Dad took my little sister and I to see it one night and I have
lasting memories of being completely engrossed in the crumbling glamour
of Havana and the incredible music being made by a group of such
frail looking old men. At the time it represented everything exotic
and interesting and exciting about the world - things I spent a lot
of time wishing for as a girl growing up in Dubbo.
Years
later, when I took myself off to live in Damascus I discovered that
this track and this album was somewhat of an anthem for the odd assortment
of students and wanderers that had found a place for themselves
in the Middle East. When I first arrived in Damascus it was the
end of summer and the middle of Ramadan. I moved into a crumbling house
with a courtyard painted a dusty pink. The house was full of cats
and housemates from all over the world. After classes each day I would
walk home through the dusty city and spend the hot afternoons in the
courtyard in the shade of the orange tree trying to study. In the background
I would hear the news on Aljazeera, chaotic multilingual conversations
and faltering arabic conversations. Often someone would be
practicing the oud or the darbuka and periodically everything would stop
as we waited out the call to prayer blasted through our house by the
three local mosques.
In
the evenings, everyone would settle in the courtyard to drink cheap whisky
and discuss the problems of the world. We all thought we had the
answers. Before long, and often in order to halt an argument, someone
would pull out their laptop and scroll through their music. Inevitably
they would come to Buena Vista Social Club and we would yell
for them to stop skipping and let it play. I would sit there and feel
so lucky and excited to be there. In those moments it felt like I was
exactly where I was supposed to be and anything was possible.
Artwork by Karin
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