Bring the noise //Trae la bulla

It's not very anthropological of me but I was really wishing that I had some serious speakers, the kind that kids in the U.S. have in their cars, that are so strong that they make the car rock, so that I could blast some music out the windows of my house to do battle with whatever event it was that was taking place across town, but that had its sound system so loud that I was having a hard time concentrating.


I am not sure whether it was a culto or a party or a combination of the two. For the first couple of hours it was straight music, which makes it seem like it would have been a party, since cultos usually involve a mixture of preaching and playing. And while I wasn't really paying attention to the lyrics, the one song of which I caught some fragments had a chorus that was about liking rumba, cumbia and other genres. However, at the end, the announcer or MC or whomever it was that had the mic, went on and on for about 30 minutes or more. While the music was mildly annoying, it was at least somewhat entertaining and slightly pleasurable. Just the rhythm and melodies, although somewhat monotonous, kept it from being completely unsupportable. But hearing someone speaking loudly (he was shouting, as well as having the volume pumped up) across the silence of the afternoon was more than mildly annoying.


So I rummaged through my Itunes collection and thanks to my friend Rip, I had a lot of old school hip hop right at hand, so I started up the Beastie Boys' Licensed to Ill and put the volume on the computer up as loud as I could.  I did fantasize about blasting this out my windows and then realized that (a) it was pretty childish, (b) not likely to facilitate my acceptance in the town, and (c) probably against some section of the AAA's code of ethics. Plus I didn't have any speakers that were appropriate -- my one little clip on laptop loudspeaker probably wouldn't be powerful enough.  


Thankfully, while I placated myself with a few tracks, the festivities stopped, and now the town is back to it usual Saturday night doldrums. Now I can get back to reading about la violencia (the violence, a euphemism for the genocide of the 1980s).