Murga

Murga is a kind of music and dance. I could try to impress with my extensive knowledge of its roots (a combination of Spanish and West African styles) and its meaning (originally a form of artistic protest used by slaves to mock and/or escape from their miserable reality). But the fact is that I don’t know very much about Murga. All that I know comes from one less-than-professional-looking website I found and hurriedly skimmed. I could also take the lack of Murga information on the internet as a mark of its authenticity. “After all, a true folk tradition is not even written down, much less broadcast across the globe,” I might say, congratulating myself for penetrating an insular, pure world protected from the corruptions of information culture and its ravenous consumers of exoticism. But that would be B.S. The fact is, I didn’t search very hard. Besides, this is a blog about soccer hooligans. So instead of starting a very Macalester-esque debate about authenticity and cultural consumption and imperialism, I think I will just right about the Murga that Bruno and Adrian brought me to in La Boca. There is the talented band leader and the boys with huge drumsticks and the tattooed, fat, drumming men and the effeminate, thin, dancing men. There are plenty of characters. I am not sure whether or not they are aware of the historical and political meaning of Murga but they dance and play it every Wednesday and Friday outside the Bombonera.

On Friday, November 28th Adrian, an ex barrabrava and long-time Boca resident, invited me to an “ensayo de Murga.” I had no idea what “Murga” meant and was only almost sure that “ensayo” meant “rehearsal,” but Adrian assured me that current members of the barra would be there. Actually, it was in response to an offer of volunteer labor that Adrian suggested I come see the Murgueros. He told me that one of the reasons he left the barra was to spend more time on his and Club Atletico Boca Juniors’ social work. Looking for a way to intertwine volunteer work with my research, I told him I would be happy to help out with any of the club’s programs. Instead, I got invited to the Murga. Murga is certainly un-paid, but it would be a stretch to call it work and, in any case, my contribution to it cannot be in anyway construed as a “service.” If it escapes the realm of a “disservice” it is only because I provide comic relief. In any case, there were, supposedly, barras there.

So I met Adrian, his friend Bruno, and their families at another friend’s mechanic shop in the Boca. We then drove the four blocks to the other sides of the stadium to a long park that parallels a nearby avenue. The distance was short, but my companions were not big walkers and, besides, “why have a car if you’re going to walk.” We parked next to a van being emptied of enormous drums and we escorted laden percussionists to a concrete patio in the middle of the park.

Then we waited. It seems like the ensayo is destined to start later every week. Everyone greets and catches up while they wait for the key characters to arrive. The first week, we started about 10 minutes after the official 8 pm rehearsal time. Each subsequent week, the band leader, or half the drummers, or the head dancer came about 5 minutes later than the week before. Matias, the head male dancer now usually arrived last. The band has drawn the line and generally starts playing, dancer-less, at 8:45 pm. Before this, however, while their parents catch up with each other and the week’s neighborhood gossip, the little kids warm up the instruments. Small boys try to strap on enormous drums and ultimately resign themselves to beating them as they sit on the ground, using both hands to swing drum mallets as big as their arms. The young girls divide into tom-boy types, who join in abusing the drums, and girlier girls, who hang on to their mothers’ legs while they gossip. Eventually, the band leader blows his whistle, the drummers congregate, and the music starts with another sharp tweet. The band consists of the same basic drums played in U.S. marching bands. The majority of the 10-12 drummers plays bombos, large drums beaten on both sides while hung vertically in front of the chest. These also carry a symbol, attached to the top, that is played on the off-beats. There is also usually one tall drum that stands on the ground, its horizontal surface beaten with two large mallets. Finally, there are one or two small drums, hung with their playing surface horizontal at waste level and rapped with normal-sized drum sticks. The band leader plays one of these, while also keeping a separate rhythm and giving directions with his whistle.

The band leader always wears a baseball cap and bright yellow Boca Juniors shorts. He is able to stomp one rhythm, drum another, and whistle a third. He is an impressive musician and he leads his drummers with the same firmness with which I have seen him direct fellow barras in pre-game preparations at the Bombonera. His band, however, sticks out for less-flattering qualities.

All of the men who play drums in the Murga are large, wear Boca Juniors shorts, have (many) Boca Juniors tattoos, and talk a lot about Boca Juniors, pausing only occasionally to mention beer and asses; women’s asses. The men who dance, on the other hand, are effeminate and thin (I am not sure whether their fitness qualifies them to dance or disqualifies them from drumming due to their lack of a beer belly on which to rest the instrument). My first ensayo, I stayed on the sidelines and observed. I talked to the wives whose turn was up to watch everyone’s kids while the others danced. I talked to the men who were too cool (or too fat, or both) to dance. They asked about the U.S: “do they like dark-haired women there?” “what kind of work is there for Argentines?” “Do you have anything like Murga?” “How do you say ‘hijo de puta’ in English?” I did my best to satisfy their curiosity, though the sheer volume of crude expressions they wanted translated into English was a bit daunting. They were forgiving, however, and generally very welcoming. They hoped the Yanki would dance. Eventually, I promised I would the next week.

Now dancing is never easy for me. I am bad at it and bad for it, in almost every sense. I am not flexible, I don’t have rhythm, I am aware of these faults, and I am too proud and self-conscious to often do things that I will never be good at. So it took a little self-encouragement to get me out the door for my second ensayo. On the bus on the way, I started to feel nervous. For all that they seemed nice and welcoming, my new friends Adrian, Bruno, and other guys from the neighborhood, all had terrible reputations, if not as individuals then as members of a not-so-well-regarded social movement from a rough neighborhood. I couldn’t quite bring myself to trust them, at least not yet. So here I was, arriving at night in a neighborhood I didn’t really know, to do something I didn’t really want to do, with people I didn’t really trust. I wanted to get off, cross the street, and take the bus back in the other direction. But I didn’t. I stayed on the bus, I got off at Aristóbulo del Valle street, and I walked to the park.

Once there, I began to do what I always do when I am expected to dance: convince myself that I have something more important to do. Absent any actually obligations and lacking even a large number of friends to catch up with, I pretended that I had important thinking to do. I pretended that I, alone, was charged with worrying about something crucial, something that dancing people wouldn’t understand and couldn’t do as long as they were busy dancing and making merry. “One day, when I’m important and successful,” I imagined, “they will look back and understand why I didn’t dance. In fact, they will be very glad that I stood at the sidelines thinking important thoughts and preparing myself for the important work I would be doing in a few years.” But, of course, I wasn’t actually thinking important thoughts. I was thinking about the important thoughts they might think that I would be thinking. And about how, no matter how silly I felt at the side of the patio, alone, I really was doing the only right thing to do, given the gravity of the circumstances.

Of course, I wasn’t alone. I was with the wives watching children (an actual, important responsibility) and the men who couldn’t or wouldn’t dance but, rather than pretending to have compelling reasons, stood in small groups and talked about Boca Juniors and women’s asses. As always happens, I gradually began to feel bored and very stupid, and it became easier to convince me to dance. Eventually two of the unrelentingly welcoming women of the Murga pushed me out to the middle of the patio and introduced me to Matias, the leader of the male dancers.

Effeminate as they may be, the bailadores still separate themselves from the bailadoras. The women dance in lines and circles, with coordinated steps. The men, at least so far, dance individually and much less-formally. One of the non-dancers told me that the secret is to “move your arms and legs as much as you possibly can, but to the rhythm.” Matias informed me that there were, in-fact, steps to follow but that the most important thing to do was to keep my arms as high as possible in the air, and shake them continuously. “You see, when you do this for Carnaval, we give you a suit with lots of ribbons on the sleeves and it looks good if you shake them.” He kept using the word “you.” I assumed (and prayed) that the “you” he was using was the impersonal “you” and that he did not expect me to dance in carnaval. I am still not sure, and am a bit afraid to ask.

I did my best to imitate Matias’ steps. They didn’t go very well. Thankfully, though, there was enough truth to the non-dancer’s words that I could get away with just walking in place and shaking my shoulders (usually) to the beat. No one laughed (much) and I almost enjoyed myself.

I came back a week later, a bit less apprehensive. I was now relatively certain that the women and the effeminate men didn’t mind having me there. The fat men, both drummers and non-drummers, were harder to read and at least a few seemed annoyed that another foreign “journalist” had arrived to write about their soccer-watching habits. No matter what I do, I am always a “journalist.” The closest I have come to communicating my actual role is to convince a few people that I am student. A “journalism student,” of course.

Barras hate journalists because journalists tell people what barras do. To be fair, I do believe that they exaggerate. They predict violence at almost all rivalry matches, even though the majority are peaceful. They run complete and deep coverage of fights but almost never mention the songs, the parties, or the occasional social work that the barras organize. Many barras are nevertheless perfectly willing to treat a journalist well if it will get their name in the paper or, better yet, their picture on T.V. But ask them about violence at the stadium and the journalist inevitably comes high up on the blame list, though he usually trails the police. A fight is never the fault of the barra himself. Each side of every soccer fight in South American history was defending itself, just ask it. Neither side started it; “it started.” “It started” because the police hit the hooligans first, or because the papers wrote so much about the violence that it became “inevitable.”

So my status as a “journalist” makes me a bit nervous. It makes it hard for me to approach the fat men. I don’t think I am in any danger but I do think they will lie to me, withhold things from me and, worst, be bothered by me. I really do not want to bother anyone. Given that this is a very individual project that really only benefits me, it is hard to justify its bothering anyone else. I think if my friends from La Boca knew just now how much I would hate to be a bother, they would admit that I am not a journalist.

Still, even if I cannot claim any in-the-service-of-others “need” to talk to the hooligans, I really want talk to the hooligans. I am full of questions. Why do they sing and swear the way they do? What made them fans of their club? Did Dad teach them, or did they choose and why? And, what, exactly, is it that makes these men with families and good jobs, murgueros who love their neighbors, go out every Sunday ready to beat and maim? I know their children. I see them kiss their wives. They invite me to play soccer and eat asado with them Friday nights. They are, if vulgar and not always nice, still hospitable in their way and, in my personal experience, not bad people. But they are also, in the eyes of many Argentine outsiders “the worst this country has to offer,” “basically a mafia,” “drug dealers,” “the dark side of the nation.”

My curiosity, my appetite for the adrenaline-filled, fascinating, and, yes, exotic experiences I have with the barras keeps me going to the stadiums and the bars and even the Murga rehearsals. Sometimes it even gets me to bother them. My timidity is great, but my curiosity is great as well. For the time being, it is at least great enough to keep me dancing, Wednesdays and Fridays, in a rough neighborhood, with “dangerous” people, and without even a hint of talent.