La Tasca

One of our favorite places in Ajijic is just a block down the street from us, alongside the lake. La Tasca is a restaurant/club with a covered dining area, performing stage, and dance floor. There are also tables on the lawn and some inside. It's a beautiful spot with good food and excellent music. Do check their website for pictures and more information. More pics here. Roberto Cerda, guitarist and soloist, is the proprietor and has sponsored a music festival over the last few weeks. We had the opportunity to enjoy several evenings of very diverse music. Two very special ones were quite unexpected. One evening we were treated to klezmer music (typically Jewish with a gypsy, Eastern European sound). The klezmer band were a quartet from Guadalara (yes) who play in clubs (and for bar and bat mitzvot, of course!) There was a sizable group from the Jewish community Lakeside, and the dancing was riotous. As Bob said, it could have been a bar mitvah or Jewish wedding from anywhere in the world.

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We were treated to an entirely different type of music last Saturday from a professional group who plays pre-Hispanic music. The sound was haunting, to say the least, although there were faster numbers that sounded remarkably like old Gaelic music with the pipes and drums. The wife of the group leader (he's a professor of pre-Hispanic music) is an interpretive dancer--mesmerizing in her movements and recreations of the types of dances that may have been done hundreds, thousands of years ago. The instruments were all made from natural artifacts as they would have been--flutes of all sizes and shapes, drums and tambourines, rattles, turtle shells, and instruments that made sounds that I don't think any other modern instruments could make. View pics here. It was a fascination evening and I wish we could share of it than with just these two video clips.

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One of the best things about living in Ajijic is that there is music everywhere. Every restaurant has muscians that range from solo guitarists to jazz trios, Brazilian, Mexican, Cuban, and everything.