To go to work, shopping or class. The tram is part of the daily life of the people of Tenerife who live in the metropolitan area and its use is so ingrained that sometimes they do not even notice what they do during those minutes of travel. They may send whatsapps, read the newspaper or talk to the person next to you. Although in reality, that does not matter. The journey is usually just a procedure within a routine that is too assimilated. Until one day, two voices take them out of their world and return them to where they were: “You have probably already / about me / and in the meantime I / will keep waiting for you”. The Mexicans Carlos ‘Guateque’ Sánchez and Pablo Arreola they sing the great song by Juan Gabriel, but in the version that won the Maná group a Latin Grammy, between smooth movements on the rails and the public address system announcing the next stop, Plaza Weyler.
Carlos and Pablo met 21 years ago. They both played in a Latin American rock group in Mexico City, with which they also used to perform in the subway. Later they moved to the Mexican Caribbean, where they found a partner and decided to separate their paths. When Pablo was single last year, Carlos told him about Tenerife, an island “with a very good climate” where he came to live twelve years ago with his father José Luis Sánchez Camacho, the last requinto of ‘Los Panchos’.
Here the two friends have met again to sing again on a tram under the name of ‘Chango Mantinga’, a group through which dozens of musicians have passed in recent years. Playing the bongo, the guitar and the Cuban tres they seek the “generosity” of the travelers on each journey in order to survive, but what they really would like is to be able to sing in the streets and terraces of the Island, where until now “if you play, they call you to the police “says Carlos, who over the years has lived through all kinds of situations while trying to “humbly earn his bread” thanks to music.
“I have already cured myself of fright thousands of times, either with the yelling neighbor or with the racist comments. Since we are not from here, they call us Macchu Picchu“, Complaint. Carlos believes that, apart from xenophobia, what moves those who do not want to hear a musical note in the streets is “that annoyance felt by those who do not do well and want others to do the same.” In the end, “there are only a few picky eater, but they have achieved that a bar cannot even put on background music ”. For him, what exists in Tenerife is a “repression of street culture” and, especially, “of live music”, at a time when people want to start leaving home after more than a year restrictions due to the pandemic.
The artist believes that there is also a double standard on the Island with respect to noise in the street. He lived in El Toscal when the blockbuster was filmed Bourne and remember that there “the explosions and the blocked streets” were “welcomed by the neighbors.” He also assures that at Carnivals “the same people who complain the rest of the year, dress up, play the music at full volume and boast of being partiers.” The irony of it all is that most of the songs that ‘Chango Mantinga’ includes in its repertoire are usually the most acclaimed at parties: “Canaries are very fond of salsa, bachata and merengue.”
They sing songs like Black tears, Tula’s room, Guantanamera or Plastic “Because we know what people like and the day we don’t sing them, they ask us for it in a very good mood,” explains Carlos. Tula’s room He came to interpret it together with the Dominican trumpeter Nilo Caparrosa on Castillo Street, very close to where the mural that honors the musician who died in March of this year is today. The Mexican remembers when “Al Capa” was thrown out of all corners and that one day a neighbor even came down from his house to shout in his ear: “Get out of here.”
These days, artists talk about the lack of cultural initiatives in a tourist destination like Tenerife. Although it is also essential for them to recognize “what is done well”, such as the last Full Moon in Santa Cruz, where the City Council had street musicians for the program of events. Pablo and Carlos ask that initiatives like that be repeated every week and, above all, that permits to act in restaurants be simplified: “If there is music in a bar, the clientele comes in and spends. And if she is satisfied, repeat. This is how it works in Cuba and Mexico and, thanks to that, the local man pays his workers and musicians ”.
