Musicalion

The set-up

This weekend was all about Musicalion, an arts, music, and dance festival in Panama City's version of Central Park, called Omar Torrijos Recreational Park. Best of all, it was completely free! On Saturday, I drove out with some of the roommates at around 6:00 pm for a night of Panamanian folk music and dancing. We parked at the edge of the park, at right around dusk, which made for an insanely cool entrance to the event. We had to walk quite a way to get to the amphitheater where everything was going on. Omar Torrijos is virtually unlit, and so we were weaving between empty gazebos and parks buildings, following the growing sounds of music and feeling the rumble of the speakers stronger and stronger on our feet. It felt like I was in a movie or something, heading to some underground party. Then, upon cresting a hill, the illuminated stage burst into view. Quite the sight to behold.


There had to have been at least a thousand people there. All arranged in concentric arcs, spreading out onto the increasingly steepening hillside surrounding the stage. We found a spot in the grass off to one side, but fairly close up. The performances went on for a couple of hours, most of them involving women in long, flowing dresses with huge skirts and men dressed like sailors. I most enjoyed the dances with only one or two performers; I had a hard time following what everyone was doing in the larger groups. For the most part the music was pre-recorded, but towards the end of the night, two extremely talented kids, maybe 12 years old, sang to live guitar and blew me away. The vocal range each of them had for the song was unbelievable! Easily my favorite performance of the night. Short video included, of course.

Sunday night, the closing night of the festival, was the main event and there were easily twice as many people in the audience as there had been the night before. The headliner of the night was Ricardo Velasquez, who, coincidentally, is our neighbor from across the street. Pretty much every evening we can hear him practicing. The first few times I heard his voice I assumed someone had a stereo going! He's that good. Ricardo is an up-and-coming baritone and actually pretty famous here in Panama. The audience was going nuts for him - screaming and hooting and everything! This time, only Carson (one of the grad students) and I wanted to go, but we also picked up one of her friends from STRI. Oh, and we brought Tosca too, Ricardo's pet Jack Russell (appropriately named after an opera). Carson had offered to dog-sit for the day since Ricardo would be out preparing for the event. It was a very weird experience seeing so many people go crazy for this singer and having his dog sitting in my lap for half the night. Felt like we would get overrun if the crowd found out!

Tosca taking a nap in the middle of the performance!
I guess she gets to hear it all the time

I was more in to the performances on Sunday than those on Saturday, mostly because of the shift towards more live music. In addition to Ricardo, there was a Mariachi, a small orchestra, and Ricardo's uncle (he also seemed to be somewhat famous). Everyone was spot-on and even though none of it was any style of music that I really listen to, I was very impressed and thoroughly enjoyed myself. My only regret for the weekend was not bringing any food or drink to the festival. What was I thinking?! Supposedly there were vendors selling snacks and beers but somehow they managed to evade me.

This is my first time trying out the videos here, so I'm keeping my fingers crossed that they'll work!