Folkmusic in a Pizzeria

Last night my friend Anna and I went to a barrio I have never seen before, on the outer edge of the city. The subway doesn't go there, so we took bus 71. The bus dropped us off on the corner of Monroe and F.D. Roosevelt and we walked a few blocks until we found the former pizzeria, across from some railroad tracks. From half a block away, it looked abandoned and dark; the sign above the building had obviously not been turned on in years. At first, I thought we must have another block to go. Then I got close enough to hear music coming out the door.

Inside the pizzeria there was already a large crowd sitting around low tables, facing a stage that was really just an open space on the floor with some microphones and chairs. The people were as varied as the rainbow of plastic stools on which they sat. There were families, groups of teens, university students, and a table of only older women who looked like old, old friends. This table was by far the loudest, standing up and crying "una mas! una mas!" when a particular folk group said that it was time for them to go. Anna and I walked into the pizzeria and made our way towards the back, looking for the friend of Anna's, Santi, who lived in the barrio. When we finally found him, he explained that the pizzeria had been closed during the 2001 economic crisis and then taken over by the community. They now used it as a center for assemblies of all kinds, political as well as artistic, and continued to sell pizza and beer to help fund work in the community. According to Santi, community centers like this were common after the crisis but now this one was one of the few that still survived.

Anna and I found seats on a long red bench next to two people our age dressed as clowns (their act came later in the night). The first act we saw was a folk duo, a man and a woman singing traditional Argentine folk songs with a guitar and an accordion. The crowd seemed to know every song and they sang along loudly. When the group played Guantanamera, I thanked Pete Seeger for allowing me to join in. After this group finished, a girl my age did an interpretive dance depicting the Argentine struggle, then a quartet of men sang a variety of folk songs and sambas. Everyone got up and danced in the space that had been cleared for the interpretive dancer. After the quartet was a group dressed in sparkling marching band uniforms. Santi explained that this group was formed by friends and relatives of people killed in the boliche fire three years ago. One female performer told the crowd that this group had allowed her to change her pain over her son's death into resistance. Then she sang a tango that made the crowd cry.

In the three hours we were there, the crowd sang, danced, drank, cried, and every once in a while someone glanced at Anna and I and probably wondered, how did you end up here?

Luck? That describes how I felt, sitting on the bench watching such a strongly connected community come together over art and music. The few young people I got a chance to talk to told me that they had spent their whole lives living in this barrio and planned to stay, working and making it better, for the rest of their lives. As someone who, at the age of 22, is living in her fifth city, it is hard to imagine what that would be like. And, even though I know their unity is born out of difficult times, it is hard to not be envious of such a closely knit, emotionally expressive community. People asked me if we had these things in the United States, and I didn't know how to respond. I replied that I hoped so.