One of the things I love about Oaxaca is people's inventiveness. Listen, I know people are creative everywhere. I have hung with artists my whole life. Heck, I'm an artist if you count my music, photography and my life. No, I guess what I marvel at here is the idea of making art from what is around us. "Let's go out into the backyard and find some material to make some fabulous piece of art." like... radishes, or corn husks, or dried flowers, or clay or branches, or palm trees.... the list is infinite.
And here, it gets passed down from mother to son, from father to daughter. I have photographed this woman many times over the years. We now recognize each other and she greets me with a smile.
Her work is always wonderful.
I am sure she has won in the past, however, this year is was her son, Elpidio Adrian Gonzalez Lopez, who won one of the big prizes. He came in first with this amazing band of 261 musicians... all girls! They represent six months of work.
As a former music teacher, I just love this, not only for the fact that it's a band, but for what it says. One sees a few girls in the village bands, but not nearly enough. So let's go for it! Look at them all.
Not only are there a lot of them, but look at the detail that each has.
I always used to encourage my girl musicians to show the boys how to do it. The music world is too male dominated. Too many male lead guitarists and drummers, so I taught them to fight the status quo. And I always made friends by asking, "Name five composers." "That's easy. Bach, Beethoven, Mozart, Brahms and Carillo (one of Oaxaca's favorite)." "OK, now name five women composers." They are there, it is just that most of the music history books were written by men, so we don't learn them. So I say, "¡Viva la banda de las niñas!"
Nadia Boulanger, Amy Beach, Clara Schumann, Fanny Mendelsson, Meridith Monk,just to get started. Here's a small
list.
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