index

	A.M. Costa Rica Your daily English-language news source Monday through Friday

A.M. Costa Rica third newspage
Home	Tourism	Calendar	Classifieds	Entertainment	Real estate	Rentals	Sports	About us
San José, Costa Rica, Monday, Jan. 29, 2007, Vol. 7, No. 20

He's sharing love of calypso in movement's home province

By Annette Carter
Special to A.M. Costa Rica

He has a love of African rhythms as his motivation, an elderly calypso legend as his inspiration and a carload of musical instruments as his tools. So internationally recognized guitarist, composer and singer Manuel Monestel has set out to teach the young people of Cahuita on Costa Rica’s Caribbean coast about their musical roots.

Monestel was in Cahuita from San José for the fourth in a series of six workshops designed to teach kids the history and techniques of calypso. A concert will be held in Cahuita’s Centro Comunal the first or second Saturday in March to showcase the young musicians, as well as local Calypso bands and, if funding is found, Monestel’s internationally recognized group Cantoamerica. Proceeds from the concert will benefit the construction of a senior center in Cahuita.

With its sassy rhythms and lyrics, calypso originated in Trinidad and Tobago but made its way to Costa Rica’s Caribbean coast with the early Jamaicans who first settled the area more than 100 years ago.

The most notable Costa Rican calypsonian, Walter “Mr. Gavitt” Ferguson, still makes his home in Cahuita and, although now elderly and almost blind, he can been seen many days sitting outside his family’s Sol y Mar Restaurant and Cabins in front of Cahuita National Park. It was Feruguson who inspired Monestel to study and perform calypso.

“I’ve been coming here to Cahuita for 30 years and I got interested in the town and the culture,” Monstel said. “Then about 20 years ago I met Walter Ferguson and learned about calypso music and realized that he is one of the greatest songwriters I’d ever met.”

At the time, Monstel was writing his own songs and experimenting with Caribbean rhythms. "I was trying to figure out musical expressions more connected to Costa Rican identities and began to realize calypso is a voice of expression for the Caribbean Limónese people," he said.

“Coming from San José and the Central Valley, you never hear real Costa Rican music,” he said. “I always wondered why.” Monestel says one day he came to the conclusion that the most popular music in the world comes from African diasporas and that there must be something in Limón, Costa Rica’s Afro-Caribbean province.

So he made a trip to Limón to see how people were expressing their music and he read “What Happen: A Folk History of Costa Rica’s Talamanca Coast” by Paula Palmer. It was Palmer, who introduced him to the retired Ferguson who gave Monestel permission to record some of his songs, two of which are featured on his CD “One Pant Man.”

A.M. Costa Rica/Annette Carter

Manuel Monestel demonstrates to a student

Another town elder, Alpheus Buchanan, encouraged Monestel to consider coming to Cahuita to teach calypso to the kids and share his experiences. But his work in San Jose did not allow him the time or money to travel regularly to Cahuita to teach. Now, many years later, it is a grant from the Centro Cultural de España that has finally allowed him to establish the school workshops both in Cahuita and in the Central Valley communities of Alajuela and Heredia.

Although a bit timid and with the furrowed brows of concentration, the Cahuita kids seem to move naturally as they beat the tumba and shake the maracas.

“The kids have the natural attitude towards calypso, but (the workshops) are more to motivate them to go back to their cultural roots,” Monestel said. “There are a few kids here who are really interested and have the feeling for it. I know the ones who feel the music will keep going.”

Monestel said possible next steps, with the proper funding, would be to create a more permanent place to teach the kids, getting local calypso musicians involved in the process and creating an entertainment venue which would allow local musicians to earn a living, provide family entertainment for the local community and create more of a cultural tourism industry for Cahuita.

Tickets for the benefit concert are 1,000 colons each. For information on the specific date send an e-mail to info@travelcaribbeancostarica.com. Information on the only two CDs released by Walter Ferguson can be found at http://walterferguson.calabashmusic.com and further information on Manuel Monestel and song samples are at http://manuelmonestel.calabashmusic.com.

Another saying related to the universal love of good gossip

Cuando el río suena — piedras trae

“When the river babbles, it carries stones.” This dicho has to do with gossip, suspicion and stealth.

My grandmother often used this expression to buttress some piece of gossip she was promulgating. She would say that of course you can’t believe everything you hear, but when the water gurgles it means there is something beneath the surface. In other words, at the bottom of many a rumor there is often a kernel of truth.

When I was in high school I had a very good friend who was always pining away because she didn’t have a boyfriend. She was very fair complexioned and came from an extremely white family background. Her problem stemmed from the fact that she was attracted to young men of color.

My best high school chum, as it turned out, happened to be black, and she was totally smitten with his older brother. Of course, in no time at all the gossip mill was churning out rumors about the young lady and my friend’s brother. But knowing them both as I did, I simply ignored all the tattle that swirled around them.

Then one day my grandmother called me into the kitchen and asked me if it was true that my friend was pregnant.

I answered that I did not know, but I didn’t think so because I was very close with this girl and believed she would have told me if such were the case. But my grandmother just wagged her finger at me and said Cuando el río suena — piedras trae.

My grandmother’s insistence that there must be some truth to the fairly seamy gossip that was circulating about my friend infuriated me. So, the next day I asked her, as delicately as I could, if she were pregnant.

She replied in the negative but wanted to know why I would think this. I answered that all the gossip that had been circulating about her had finally made its way to my grandmother, and this had caused me some concern.

My friend’s explanation was that she had recently been to the gynecologist for a check up and had asked him for a prescription for birth control pills. So someone must have seen her at the doctor’s office and automatically assumed the worst, or perhaps the girl at the pharmacy who’d filled the prescription had started some sort of tattle that had ballooned out of all proportion to reality.

The
way we say it

By Daniel Soto

In any case, I was satisfied with my friend’s interpretation of events, and when I got home I confronted my grandmother with it. No matter, she replied, because the source of her information in this case was absolutely impeccable and would not have told her a lie. I was getting angrier by the second and demanded that she reveal this source, but she flatly refused.

When my mother got home that evening I told her the whole story and asked her to prevail upon my grandmother to either divulge the name of her source or to stop spreading malicious gossip about my dear friend.

My mother went to talk to my grandmother in her room, and presently I was summoned. Grandmother disclosed that the person who had told her of my friend’s pregnancy was the girl’s own mother!

I was shocked and hurt, not because the truth of the rumor now appeared undeniable, but because my friend had obviously not seen fit to confide in me. The next day I challenged her with what my grandmother had told me. But she only gave me a little sardonic smile and said: Cuando el rio suena — piedras trae.

We have not spoken since that day, though I heard as was the custom in those days that she had gone off to the United States to “study,” and when she returned she was married to the brother of my high school pal and they brought with them a delightful, honey-skinned baby girl.

This child has grown into a charming young woman of quite stunning beauty, as I discovered when I was introduced to her recently at a cocktail party. I did not ask after her mother.

Real Cuban cigars for sale.

Churchill Cohibas and Churchill
Romeo & Julietas.
Bought last month. Still fresh,
authentication stickers in place.
Limited quantities.
In San José. Best offer.

cigarsincostarica@hotmail.com

You need to see Costa Rican tourism information HERE!

A.M. Costa Rica Second newspage
Home	Tourism	Calendar	Classifieds	Entertainment	Real estate	Rentals	Sports	About us
San José, Costa Rica, Monday, Jan. 29, 2007, Vol. 7, No. 20

A.M. Costa Rica fourth news page
Home	Tourism	Calendar	Classifieds	Entertainment	Real estate	Rentals	Sports	About us
San José, Costa Rica, Monday, Jan. 29, 2007, Vol. 7, No. 20


News from the BBC up to the minute	BBC sports news up to the minute
BBC news and sports feeds are disabled on archived pages.

Home	Calendar	Place a classified ad	Classifieds	Real estate	Food	About us
San José, Costa Rica, Monday, Jan. 29, 2007, Vol. 7, No. 20

The latest top sports news	Sports news from VOA
Sports feeds are disabled on archived pages.