Thursday, October 18, 2007

Open Mic


Last month John and I went to "Open Mic" in our city, where singers and musicians from everywhere gather together and sing and play for the audience.

John has been learning, teaching, and playing the classical/flamenco guitar for years and he wanted to share his passion with the people who appreciate music. So he picked up his pretty guitar with maroon flamenco strings (he has three guitars... one of them he bought in Granada, when he had travelled there couple of years ago), and finally we went to "Open Mic".

People were friendly there, and of course, very encouraging. Some talented lady performed pieces on harp and fervidly sang, then there were couple of guys playing the guitar, singing nice old American songs to it, and finally, there was John, who played pure music, focusing on the classical and flamenco pieces. He played the famous "Spanish Romance" composed by an ananymous composer, "La Grima" by Francisco Tarrega, a piece by Weiss, an improvisation on Arabic/Persian/Indian themes, and of course, some hot flamenco pieces which set the souls on fire.

At one point, when this guy was playing the guitar and singing to it, John went on the stage to accompany it with drums, then another guy went to the piano to accompany them, another guy picked a Turkish doumbek and started to play along with them too, then in the middle of all this one of the guys there gave me a tambourine and smiled, meaning "go ahead, you can play too!" So I played along with everybody else there, and it was just us playing for the sake of our own pleasure. John looked at me from the stage and smiled in a very cute way, as if saying, "Wow Tina! You're playing with us!" It was a lot of fun... we went there 8 pm, and finally we left at half past 12. The guys there were still playing and singing, and I thought to myself: "Wow... I had real fun after a while!"

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