I have had a very busy week! This is the first article out of 2 that I’m planning on writing about the exciting events of this week!
You may remember, from the article Abrazos, that my band STRIDE recently collaborated with the Mexican band RockDI to create an album. Well I am .very pleased to tell you that after 3 years of zoom calls, we finally welcomed our lovely Mexican friends to Scotland as part of their European tour this week!
For 3 days, the 2 bands were privileged to spend time together. We first met on Sunday evening for our first ever in-person rehearsal at the STRIDE studio, Berkeley 2. For the first hour or so, the two bands worked in separate rooms so it was not until the last half hour of the rehearsal that we truly got to combine the two awesome bands. As STRIDE walked into RockDI’s room, Mexican lead singer, Alejandro, burst into Twist And Shout, and, within minutes, everyone, Scottish and Mexican alike, were singing and dancing together which felt amazing! This might have been the first time we had shared a rehearsal room, but it definitely didn’t feel like the first time that we had met! When Alejandro stopped singing, we then went onto rehearsing the songs that we would be performing together the following evening. There was something truly magical about young people, who had previously been 500 miles apart, finally being able to come together in a single space and play the music that they created together over video calls for the past 3 years!
On Monday Afternoon, every young musician met at the gorgeous Cottiers Theatre in Partick, Glasgow . I was taken aback as I walked in because it was like an old Catholic Church. On the ceiling was a mural of a night sky. On my left was the performance space which had a dramatic chalky white backdrop with carvings in it. To my right was the audience space with tables and chairs sitting against a background of old fashioned windows, pillars and a back wall which had a balcony with blue seating and some statues. In front of me was an area furnished with black curtains and barrels. I have only ever performed as part of Stride in the CCA (and once, right before the pandemic, in a weird underground room) before, so I really wasn’t expecting a venue of such beauty!
RockDI did the first set of the evening. They sang a few of their own songs, which were all in Spanish, as well as Hey Jude, which they got the audience to participate in. Although the songs themselves were just enjoyed in the original language, the venue had organised a translator so that the things that the band said between songs, such as explanations of songs were translated from Spanish into English so that the band could just focus on their set without having to worry about speaking a foreign language. However, what was particularly interesting about this was the fact that, as with all Paragon events, they also had a British Sign Language interpreter. This meant that once the Spanish had been translated into English, that English translation was then translated into BSL.! Somehow the double translation went very smoothly for all of the set.
STRIDE then took to the stage to perform their set. We had one fully English speaking song (Be Happy) and then about 2 English-Spanish hybrid songs called Nueva Era and Two Pages. After our set, we then called RockDI back onto the stage for a double band all-in version of Rock Of Nations. The staging of such a collaboration meant that the two bands were mixed up. Scots stood beside Mexicans and people from Mexico stood next to people from Scotland, creating one giant band! This integration is perhaps proof that a so-called language barrier needn’t get in the way of friendship or creativity!
On Tuesday, we treated the Mexicans to a taste of Scottish culture with a goodbye ceilidh because, as many of my fellow linguists know, learning the culture of a country is as important as learning the language. People from the two countries spent the night dancing together and bonding. Towards the end of the night, Alejandra, the keyboard player from RockDI approached me and gave me a token of friendship, a little unicorn pin! I love unicorns so obviously I was happy but I was also happy because, despite our different languages and culture, I had made a friend because of the Abrazos project! If there was more things like Abrazos then maybe world peace could eventually be achieved
eemmcg
The Non Verbal Linguist 