Rather dark-sounding for Valentine’s season. But, after all, February 14 commemorates the date Saint Valentine was beheaded some 17 centuries or so ago – a detail Hallmark certainly let fall through the cracks.
photo by Ramin Samandari
But, despite blue-sounding lyrics, the harmonizing voices of Demitasse – Joe Reyes and Erik Sanden – leave you feeling uplifted. Their songs represent their therapeutic approach to recovering from losing their fathers following long-term illnesses.
The other night Joe Reyes said singing them made him feel grown-up, but the expressions the duo wear don’t look it. The pair sports these impish Vienna-Choir-Boys-type smiles while singing, clearly enjoying every minute they are playing together. And it’s contagious.
The sound is somewhere between Simon and Garfunkel, Leonard Cohen, and the Beach Boys on a dark day. Or Elliott Smith on an extremely bright, sunny day. Or John Cale tossing his car keys to Neil Young.
Demitasse’s music went well paired with a hazelnut and arugula salad and a bottle of wine, but form your own opinion by listening here.
Demitasse appears on Tuesday nights this month at the Liberty Bar. The residency comes in advance of the release of Blue Medicine on Bedlamb Records.
There’s no cover, and the music begins at 7 p.m. But don’t wait until 7 if you would like a seat at a table.
In June of 1920 I received the degree of Bachelor of Arts with Honors in Mathematics and Economics, a title which, coupled to the name of Lucius Mirabeau Lamar the Third, was of such resounding grandiloquence as to bring from the assembled students faculty and families (who else would be there in the boiling muggy Texas sun?) a burst of applause embracing, I knew well enough, a component of irony. It did sound good, as some of the movie false fronts look good, but there was mostly air behind it.
From Shards by Lucius M. Lamar, 1968
And this before Lucius M. Lamar, III, (1898-1978) added a law degree.
It is not surprising someone so willing to self-mock would choose a conscientiously pretentious name for the protagonist in a pride-before-the-fall, the-grass-is-always-greener, be-careful-what-you-wish-for fable, So Doth a Little Polly, woven for his five-year-old-niece and seven-year-old nephew.
Jesus Francisco de Assisi Sensontle.
This tale of a San Antonio mockingbird did not bow to monosyllabic rhyming words first-graders could read. No, it was a vocabulary-stretching story rippling with multiple layers of bicultural meaning and accompanying music ranging from “Hinky Dinky Parlez Vous” to Handel.
Sensontle, or Don Sensontle as he preferred to be called, wintered on Alamo Plaza, convinced he reigned over all other feathered creatures. He believed his singing so awe-inspiriting he was “astonished at his own virtuosity” (Notes in the margin recommend the accompaniment of a toy flute here.).
One day a sparrow, Cecil, asked if Sensontle had read the recent news from Austin in the paper:
“A gentleman never reads,” replied Sensontle with dignity, being innocent of that clerical accomplishment.
“Perhaps not,” went on Cecil, ignoring the implication….
The news Cecil the sparrow was trumpeting was that the mockingbird had been proclaimed the State Bird of Texas.
Pompous pride over this tribute soon led to a downturn in Sensontle’s popularity among the birds of the plaza (pompous chords followed by a fast march).
Frustrated, Sensontle flew to a home on Zarzamora Street to visit his caged cousin, Maria Ysabel Dolores Soledad Sensontle, “a handsome and engaging young fellow, whose somewhat effeminate name had been bestowed by his captors under a misapprehension as to his sex.”
Yearning for an easy life, Sensontle negotiated to change places with his cousin for a year.
youtube video posted by zxtkain
A year later Maria returns and perches on the branch of a fig tree near his former cage. Sensontle desperately pleads:
“Kindly release me.”
“Come,” said Maria, “your morals have improved at the expense of your manners. You should ask no labor of me until I have got my wind.”
“I ask nothing save the fulfillment of your promise, which is a sacred duty you should perform at once, tired or not. Be quick, let me out!”
The end of the story is missing, scattered somewhere amongst the shards left in the wake of closing the Mister’s parents’ household. Lost. Along with copies of other “children’s” works produced by Lucius, including “Hardboiled Harry.”
We are hoping the Mister’s great-uncle passed the stories down orally to his own children and are mailing “So Doth a Little Polly” to his daughter tomorrow.
Please. Let us know if Sensontle lived to fly freely lording over the Alamo once again….
This post needs a soundtrack. Nothing would be more fitting than San Antonio high school students belting out mariachi music, so please play this while you read. For Jimmie.
It might be hard to imagine now, but the few businesses opening along the river were desperate. There were times when the only live things walking down the sidewalk in the heart of the river bend were pigeons. Things were so dull, there was even a night when some bored unnamed river operators shot fish. With guns.
Jimmie served as president of Paseo del Rio Association twice, in 1975 and 1984. But assumption of that responsibility is minor compared to his continual presence through thick and thin for more than four decades.
The coldest mornings in December always were the Fridays we placed luminarias along the river’s banks. Bob Buchanan made the coffee, and Jimmie brought the doughnuts. Without fail. For decades. Nancy Hunt, current executive director of Paseo del Rio Association, said that even last year Jimmie rode the bus downtown to deliver sweets to those delivering bags to the river’s banks.
No weather forecaster was more accurate than the first night of the annual Great Country River Festival the first weekend in February. Guaranteed sleet. Jimmie was always there.
The event closest to his heart always, though, was the Fiesta Mariachi Festival. It was his. I believe he was the first and only chair of the festival for more than 40 years. He threatened to retire one year. Paseo even threw him a party to recognize chairing the event 25 years or so. That just made him sentimental and mushy about the whole thing, so he kept coming back. Every year, he gave up four nights of Fiesta to meet the high school students boarding the barges. Without fail. Until this past year. Being 86 is a pretty good excuse for easing up a bit.
Generally Jimmie had the patience of Job. The time he really lost it, although not publicly, was at City Hall. The Paseo’s contract with the city in the late ’70s required we continually appear before Council to request approval for each event.
It should have been routine, but poor Mayor Lila Cockrell had a rather rowdy bunch to try to keep corralled. Those were colorful times.
I could almost see the hairs on the back of Jimmie’s neck bristle as a councilman went off on a rant about gringos being in charge of putting on a mariachi festival.
Then there was without a doubt the most incredible remark I ever heard at City Hall. Councilman Joe Webb interrupted the diatribe: “Mariachis. Cucarachas. What’s the difference? They’re all the same to me.”
Councilman Bernardo Eureste leapt to his feet and challenged Councilman Webb to duke it out. The scuffling councilmen went out in the hall to settle things, but were restrained before striking any serious blows.
Permission to stage the admission-free festival was granted, but, on the way out of City Hall, Jimmie said that was it. He would never go back there and be insulted like that again.
But he kept on volunteering again and again and again. Rain, shine, sleet, heat. No matter.
Gringo Jimmie might not have been known for shouting loud gritos in public, but, in those early years working with Belle San Miguel, his belief in bolstering the talents of young musicians gave fledgling programs in public schools a stage on which to shine. Before there were statewide competitions, the Mariachi Festival was the event inspiring students to strive for professionalism in their performances. Jimmie loved to see students board the barges, proudly wearing their festival medals from each year they had participated.
This spring will bring the 44th annual Fiesta Mariachi Festival. Jimmie was there for 42.
Light a luminaria for Jimmie this holiday season. If it goes up in flame, it’s his unselfish and generous soul flying up to heaven.
Postcards from Barton Springs 