In the absence of Carnival this winter in Tenerife, a group of different formations will ‘kill the bug’ in the contest in Las Palmas de Gran Canaria that begins this Wednesday. The percussion room at CrazyTrotas, where Los Payasos Alborotados are rehearsing on loan, shows this symbiosis. Together with the locals Fran, Álvaro and Jonás, Carla and Adrián, from Trabachones, join. And they are not the only chicharreros.
The adult murga Los Payasos Alborotados, founded by Jonny Alonso and Juan Carlos Roca to go out to the Carnival 2020, lived an intense day last Saturday. And not only because of the continuous rehearsal session, which started in the morning, with the arrival of the dozen chicharreros who collaborate in the project of this edition to face a rehearsal that intensified in the afternoon until trying to leave everything nickel-plated, but because it formalized the change at the head of the direction.
Five days before the critics contest and parade in the Santa Catalina park –Wednesday 2nd and Thursday 3rd, with their sights set on the final on Saturday 5th–, Los Alborotados place their trust in Alberto Arencibia, director of TrapaStar –the most special murga of Carnival– so that he will lead the group, replacing by Jonny Alonso, a decision that is due to internal reasons. “This is what is happening right now,” adds Juan Carlos Roca, the president, who limits the changing of the guard in the murga to internal reasons and appreciates the involvement of his companions to continue pulling the car.
Alberto Arencibia Pulido, who since 2009 he was a member of Rockefeller and Totorotas, He joined Trapasones in 2013. Linked to the world of football – with Bañaderos, where the coach left precisely three weeks ago and also had to assume this responsibility – he participated in the Las Palmas I + I (Illusion and Inclusion) project. Hence the idea that creating the street band TrapaStar, made up of people with functional diversity, after Juan Hormiga, the president of Trapasones, gave it all the facilities to integrate into society with the only condition that it be managed by Alberto Arencibia himself.
“Most of the twenty members come from soccer, although later more were added,” he says, referring to the foundation in 2018 to debut in the Carnival 2019 and go out again in 2020, when the break came due to the pandemic. On the 15th, Los TrapaStar will meet again with the stage at the integration gala, where they will perform entrance and farewell.
It is the most social facet of the new artistic director of The Rowdy Clownswho last Friday led the group for the first time and the next day received the task of continuing with the baton.
The murga presided over by Juan Carlos Roca lived a hectic Saturday, which began by collecting the first murgueros from Tenerife who collaborate this year in the project at the port, with Christian Mapesi as harmonizer, and the tandem of the lyricists Bruno Pérez Barrios and Roberto Arias . It is enough to see the little percussion room in the CrazyTrotas premises, where they rehearse on loan while waiting to have their own headquarters, to see the integration of Canarian and chicharreros: together with Fran, Álvaro and Jonás, who play at home, the visitors Carla and Adrián, from Trabachones. «Álvaro is our child prodigy», comment the companions, to praise the musical training in piano that this young man who came from Gran Canaria is taking at the Gran Canaria Conservatory. Fuerteventura.
«In total we are forty-five components: thirty-three singing, six on percussion and the parody challenge», they explain, to specify that some member from Tenerife, such as José Alberto Vázquez, from Zeta-Zetas, had to opt for appearing in Los Alborotados when its director, Javier Lemus, gave him the choice between singing in the ranks of one or another murga. Although the preparations for Los Alborotados began in November, José Alberto had already been rehearsing with the murga since January and preferred not to leave them lying around, even if it was at the cost of not being able to get on the Tenerife with his murga The same does not happen with those who participate in the parody, in the case of Roberto Arias, Brito or Minguito –the latter from La Traviata who saw the light in the carnival 2022 in Zeta-Zetas. The reason? As Lemus himself made a parody with Twittys in 2020, he allows this same license to his companions.
Roca appreciates the collaboration that has been added by both CrazyTrotas like Chacho Tu and Tramposas that they have been given all kinds of facilities so that Los Alborotados can rehearse in their premises in the former Manuel Lois Marine Corps barracks, while waiting to be able to enjoy their own headquarters. “That is already on track,” Roca ditch.
The president of Los Alborotados explains that he decided to create the project together with Jonny Alonso “tired of going to murgas on a winning horse.” In 1987 and 1988 he came out in Marchosos, to later found Trapasones and Twittys, to join Totorotas; before he had militated in Atrabancados –a neighborhood murga, in the eighties–. The greyhound comes from caste, since he is the son of Eladio Roca, who was the musical director of the Río Bamba comparsa, and also his mother, María, made lots of costumes for the murga.
Roca met Domingo Santana in the Marchosos, who this year celebrates his 40 years as a murguero in the Carnival, and with whom he precisely coincided again in Alborotados, in 2020. «I left with 23 years in Marchosos, and Roca was 15», he specifies Mingo, the veteran of the murga, who was director of the Revoltosos children’s murga for five years, a murguero DNA that you have spread in your family. He is the uncle of the former director of Golisnionas, Abenchara Santana. In addition, his eldest son has participated in Serenquenquenes as an extra and the youngest, in Los Guanchones de Agüimes. “The one in the middle went to Lanzarote and he doesn’t want to know anything about murgas,” he comments almost like resignation, with a dose of humor. But for humor, let them call Arcadio, who encourages the group in the final stretch of the contest.
