There are a million reasons to love
Malaga. Even on my journey to work each day - grumpy, eyes half-mast,
wishing that coffee could be administered by IV drip – even then,
as I race across Plaza de la Merced past its squawking rabble of
green parakeets, as my taxi (I always miss the bus. I have time
management problems) whizzes by the sunlight climbing white-footed
over the sea, I’m struck by how lucky I am to live in such an
effortlessly, generously beautiful place.
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| Photo taken from an early morning taxi. |
But Malaga has one flaw. A fatal flaw,
because Malaga lacks music.
At times this has almost killed me. At
times, spending whole evenings listening to nothing but people
babbling relentlessly at full volume about the price of onions has
made me want to stick my head in an oven. I’ve brought visitors
here and after a few listless nights they’ve suggested that we just
sit and drink cava on my balcony instead, because at least then we
could listen to some tunes. And how exactly is that contributing to
the ailing Andalusian economy, eh?
Yes, there are bars with music ( for
example, the marvellous Modernicolas – although last time I was
there the music was inaudible and the manager was looking harassed,
saying that he’d been leant on by the council to keep the sound
turned down) – but these are usually late-night bars, often only
open on weekends. What to do when you fancy a drink and some tunes
during the week but don’t want to down vodkas till 4am? What to do
if sitting on an endless interchangeable terrace eating tapas makes
your joie de vivre trickle away and makes you feel like a member of a
stone-faced middle-aged couple on holiday in Torremolinos circa 1984?
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| Nocturnos on the Fnac Malaga stage |
Enter stage left the saviours of music
in Malaga... the buskers! Gracias a Dios for the buskers! Not the old
black geezer by the Alcazaba who plays the same few notes of the Pink
Panther over and over on his sax, not the handclapper and
accordionist who whizz off into the sunset after playing one flamenco
tune (although I’m very fond of those too) but excellent bands
playing whole sets on Plaza de la Merced. Drinks AND music! Oh happy
life! A week or so ago my friend Essex Girl and I, after arriving on
the dot every evening at 6.45pm to find a sunny spot outside a bar to
watch the live bands on the Fnac Malaga stage as part of the Malaga
Film Festival, full of the unbridled joy of SOMETHING finally
happening in this city, found ourselves lured into staying many, many
glasses of wine after the council-sanctioned bands had finished by a
rotation of fantastic street musicians .
The band who play rousing renditions of cheesy 80s and 90s songs with plastic tubs as drums
(this sounds bad, but it’s good). A melancholy, long-faced Oriental
guy who played heartbreaking acoustic guitar that sent Essex Girl and
I into a tearful conversation about childhood reminiscences until he
announced his name (“Hang on, he just said he’s called Seta de
Jabon. That means Mushroom of Soap. Am I losing the plot?” *). But
best of all, some jazz musicians, one of whom looks like a young
Johnny Depp, playing buzzing, Django Reinhardt- esque jazz guitar –
the perfect music to kick back to with a glass of verdejo and a sense
of happy wellbeing while the sun sets. It was marvellous. I had to
run especially fast to the taxi rank each morning that week,
clutching my clanging head. The Andalusian economy flourished. All
was well.
But today, waking late on the May Day
holiday and wandering down to the square with a book for a pitufo
with serrano ham and tomato and coffee at Cafe con Libros, I found
Django/Johnny holding this sign:
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| "We are sorry. City Hall has taken our instruments. We cannot play!" |
and so it seems that the draconian
anti-music laws have kicked in once more and the grasping hand of the
Ayuntamiento de Malaga (the local council) has whizzed in and grabbed
all their instruments, waiting for a nice pay-off in return. The band
were passing round a petition, which I signed, and they seemed to
have a lot of support amongst locals. It does make you wonder about
the council’s reasoning – in a city that benefits from a benign
kind of tourism (this isn’t Magalluf), isn’t it
counter-productive to stamp down on something that makes Malaga so
much more enjoyable, and that harms no-one, just to make a shitty
little profit? And more than that - in a city that has so little to
offer young people in terms of employment, that is losing its youth
and vitality to bigger cities and to emigration, surely some guys
making some coin by playing decent music isn´t such a terrible
thing?
That’s not why I’m worried though,
really. I’m sad for the musicians, and I’m sad that once again
there is no music, and that once again I’m stranded on that joyless
terrace full of people noise. Today I wasn’t tempted to linger. I
finished my pitufo and coffee, paid the bill, and wandered morosely
out into the City Without Songs. The Andalusian economy foundered.
* Later I saw his sign. He was called
Sayto de Japon.
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