Without ceremony, Mimo and the other two who’d come with him quickly unpacked their instruments and dove right into the impromptu jam session and it was on… Dolo was laughing as he fiddled away furiously, leading the groove as usual. His bow tore at the violin with such fury I expected the thing to start smoking any minute. Pretty soon the other violinist from Para was trading riffs with Dolo. It was as if the two of them were having an inspired conversation in some advanced alien language that only they could speak. As the music picked up speed and momentum and levitated into that crazy communal magical gypsy telepathy that always happens whenever more than two Roma get together for song, everybody was “getting in” now, one, then another taking incredible individual instrumental solos, while miraculously never straying a note from the big thundering whole.
The accordion player from Para was like an unstoppable machine. The intensity of joy and pure intuitive improvisation was contagious, moving around the room as the waves of sound continued to mount and grow and the wine flowed… The laughter and shouting rose with each new verse and solo flying out of Dolo’s inexhaustible energy field like the dramatic streaks of lightining racing across the sky outside the big wood and glass balcony doors. It was a mystical and transcendent orgy of unrelenting sound and energy. Pure magic.
Hours went by like that. The music never stopped, but there were little breaks for individual players. Mostly in order for them to keep eating and drinking. Whenever one put his instrument down to go for a piss or light a smoke or drink or eat something off the big table piled with food and wine bottles, another one immediately jumped it and kept going in an endless tag team stream that kept the music itself going and going like some big unstoppable steam engine barreling down the tracks… Suddenly it was four in the morning and the party showed no sign of slowing down. I’d already pretty much talked and hung out a bit with just about everyone there over the course of the night- including my esteemed benifactor, Dolo, who seemed especially happy to see me still alive and looking ‘well fed’. Thank God he hadn’t noticed any strange smells in his beautiful house.
The rain had finally stopped and the dawn was looming. Narcisa hadn’t called. That was good. But I still had to be up to take her back to the nut house in just a few hours. During another break from playing, Mimo saw me looking at my watch and gracefully offered me a ride down the hill. I took him up on it and off we went with shouts of ‘de vlessa’ all around.
Home again, I let myself into the dark, silent apartment. Narcisa was out cold. Of course. I thanked God for the evening and, with all the musical fire and fury of my gypsy brethren still ringing in my ears, I set the alarm, crawled up the little ladder to my loft bed, and immediately passed out.
Copyright Jonathan Shaw 2009.
gyspy dreamland…Amazing, Beautiful, Inspiring…The only way to live…
The energy is captured so well in the writing…
A vibration so high….
it will shake the pages…Excellent!
Love the X factor zone which only comes from a conglomeration of spiritual people… love it.