WHAM, BANG, WHIRL and skirl. Hypnotic, orgiastic drum. Crescendo and release of brass. A man’s voice raised, melodious but hypnotic – specially because the song and the whirls and skirls and the whams and bangs are repeated over and over again. Over and over.
First light is coming, dawn advancing. That accounts for it.
There’s been grotesquely amplified pop music from the square all night, as for the last three nights, one more to come, from ten o’clock till now. Just as feared, just as foretold. To conclude the all-night-long proceedings every morning. this wild music I hear now, totally different: the charanga.
Oddly, up on the hill, just in the right spot to catch the racket, we’ve sort of slept through it all each night, right up to the charanga – and with the windows open too. Wax earplugs for Gaby, in my case shifting about in bed and a bit of groaning – the kind of sleep that doesn’t entirely knit up the ravelled sleeve. Today I’m up and about in the last hour of dance and darkness. Now that the charanga has struck up I’m straight down to the village. This is the best bit, the only good bit.
I meet the players half way down, at a steeply angled crossroads, cross-lanes really. Not just orgiastic and hypnotic, but tremendously cheering, too. The charanga is a procession, really, the band strolling along from one ‘stand’ to another, a kind of beating of the bounds, but all inside the village. Quite a big crowd of the younger revellers are following this musical march from one spot to another. Arms raised and waving to the beat, a plastic mug of beer or who knows what in the extended hand. They sing along a bit, they wave and wave their bare and slender young persons’ arms in the delightful morning cool. Another hot is on the way.
One group of followers, all lads, have their names neatly printed on the back of their tee-shirts, Pablo, Javier, Jesus, Santiago. This last is the very saint, and patron of the village, whose feast day, July 25, sits at the heart of the four-day village fiesta. What hijinks will be going on in Santiago de Compostela just now, I think. Continuing to compare great things with small, I’m reminded also of our stay in Pamplona a few years back right through the festival of San Fermín. Those about to run before the bulls, dressed all in white except for bright red cummerbunds, hold their arms aloft, just like the young folk in Fuente Fría. But in Pamplona, it’s a rolled-up newspaper, not a plastic beer mug, in the extended hands. The bull-runners wave and wave, just like he young folk here, as they sing the rousing hymn of San Fermín, terrified no doubt, just before the rocket goes off at 8 a.m. to start the run.
Our own charanga band bears a lofty title, printed on the back of bright green tee shirts – Asociación Musico-Cultural de San Miguel. Their music comes without amplification, naturally, but the singer has a hand-held megaphone. As at Pamplona, despite the all-night drinking and dancing, the whole occasion is totally without malice. An extraordinary, general cordiality of a kind you would be pushed to find in northern Europe. But I do spot three young men, weaving about, the worse for wear.
One of them, not from our village, I’m glad to say, is rebuked, but very mildly, by his girl-friend as they break away from the charanga down an empty street. ‘Eso es lo que se hace aqui’, he replies, ‘this is what you do here’. What an extraordinary view of Fuente Fría, the whole village a saloon bar. I find myself almost shocked.
Further down, in front of the church, the chocolate and churros stall is still going strong – churros as many, maybe all, will know are pipes of batter, deep-fried in intestine-like rings, which are hauled out dripping oil, then snipped into convenient length with scissors. You dip the churros in the chocolate and try not to count the calories. Here the older folk are gathered, looking worn out. No charanga procession for them.
I make my way home, up the hill, listening to the drum and brass and the hypnotic singing. now at a distance.