Fandango

As you can probably tell from previous blogs, we became great fans of Son Jarocho music. It’s traditional music from Oaxaca’s neighboring state, Veracruz. A band is composed of jaranas, a requinto, a marimbo, a jaw bone, and a whole lot of percussive tap/clog dancing on a small wooden box. Santiago Tuxtla was celebrating its patron saint day in late July (along with every other community that begins with the name Santiago – almost every Mexican town has a patron saint and annual celebrations even draw migrants back home from as far away as the U.S.), which included a nightly “fandango”, a gathering of jaraneros – a kind of rhythm mandolin – and dancers. We thought it would be fun to make Santiago our first stop, a 7 hour drive from Oaxaca.
Santiago was rockin’. Hundreds of food stands and salespeople with microphones hawking bundles of blankets at deafening prices. After the kids did the bumper cars, we gathered around the jaraneros. Tyler was tempted to get up onto the low wooden stage to dance. The shoes she bought don’t exactly have taps, but they do have nails driven into their heels. Old fellas played fiddle and jarana with 10 year olds in a half circle around the dancers, singing traditional songs in call and response style. We were in heaven.

From Santiago, we travelled to Sontecamapan, an estuary of the gulf of Mexico that twists into mangrove swamp. We touched the waters of the Atlantic, readying ourselves from our journey north and east.