A Tale of Two Weddings

I’m not going to get into the usual chat about my work and how its going, or whether teaching little children to sing “The Eensy Weensy Spider” is a responsible use of my time on earth. This is going to be about Grupo Winari (there’s a tilde over that n, and it means “growth” in Kichwa), and how it is taking me around the Ecuadorean Sierra playing the guitar, something I never could have imagined when I decided to come down here.

The group has been growing steadily, from its original lineup of Vicente, the band leader and major musical talent, and his brother Pablo, Tolte’s carpenter, and a rotating group of percussionists who couldn’t keep a beat. I think I signed on about a year ago (an American Jew in an Evangelical/Ecuadorean folkloric band, that’s novel), and not too long after that some of the church kids joined in, most notably Solomon, who is learning to play various sizes of pan pipes, and Rocio, who solved our percussionist problem because she can sing and keep a beat at the same time, maybe the only person in Tolte with this talent, apart from Don Vicente, of course. When I returned to Tolte in August, the group had found a new charango player, Wiliam, from Alausi. On Friday, as we got ready to rehearse for weddings in Palmira and Canar, we also had Rocio’s cute little sister Diana trying to figure out how to play the guiro, a wooden tube with a notched surface that you rub with a pointed stick, and Jose, displaced percussionist and my former housemate, as an additional singer.

Practice with this extended group took three hours, during which time we covered, I think, three songs. Getting everyone to start and stop at the same time, while the various percussionists kept a beat, was sort of brutal, though things improved when Rocio showed up. There was also a “nerves” element, as we were learning one completely new and another almost completely new song to perform the next day. But I caught on quickly to a song I couldn’t figure out in the previous practice session, and, although there was a lot of repetition and a few broken finger nails, I figured I could do what needed to be done in the next two days. But as we were leaving, Wiliam said that he couldn’t come on Saturday, and the kids also seemed to have work to do at home, so Vicente and Pablo invited me to go with them to the Palmira wedding, and all of us would go to the Canar thing.

The Palmira wedding was a family event for Pablo and Vicente. Their mother came from there originally, but her family moved to Tolte about 50 years ago for reasons that their father could not make clear to me. The family was not really from Palmira, either, but from a tiny village smaller than Tolte up in the mountains above Palmira, in the heart of the Ecuadorean Sierra. We were supposed to leave at 8, but by the time we got organized in the back of their brother-in-law Francisco’s truck, it was closer to 9:30, and I think we reached the little village of Chausan around 11:30.

Pablo used the words “National Geographic” to describe what I saw when I entered the ceremonies already underway in Chausan, and his accuracy made me laugh. There was a brief moment, I have to admit, when all eyes turned toward me with but a single thought: “Gringo!” and I looked back thinking, “Indians!” Chausan is much, much more traditional than Tolte. Everyone was dressed in their finest wedding party best, brilliantly colored blanket-weight shawls and long narrow skirts for the women, ponchos and dark pants for the men, fedora-like hats for everybody. People were speaking primarily Kichwa among themselves, and this was also the language of the religious service. Because this is an Evangelical family, there was no trago, but there was food, which seemed to be used as a kind of trago substitute.
They brought us into a little house built in the traditional fashion of the area, which doesn’t include adobe because the soil hardly contains any clay. At a guess, I’d say it was some kind of lake shore or river bed soil, very silty and soft, unlike the soil of Tolte, and in spite of being about 3000 meters up in the Andes. I think the word that they used for this kind of mud wall construction is “tapia,” but I’m not completely sure. In any case, the smooth earthen walls run up to a roof of straw supported with wooden poles. There were no windows, but there were a sheep carcass and a pig’s head hanging from the rafters. And that’s where the food started. First, chicken and rice, then sheep soup, then pork fritada and rice. I think Pablo, Vicente, and I played three songs between the sheep soup and the fritada. By the time the fritada came out, almost everything was going into the thoughtfully provided plastic bags so that we could take it home.

As we ate, the fellow who was padrino to the new couple started talking to us about “chopa,” a doughy mixture of machica (barley powder), sugar, and chicha. This was something that I think even my friends from Tolte had never heard of. It wasn’t long before we saw the Chopa in all its glory, though. Four huge bowls of the stuff were set out on a table, along with the usual assortment of Andean comestibles, chickens, guinea pigs, favas and corn, rice and peas. The abundance was, according to the pastor officiating, to represent the idea that the new couple, with the support of the community, would never go hungry. The funny part was that the coupe and padrinos were supposed to eat everything on the table, something I doubt they could do even if they were anacondas. But they dug in with a will (remember, we had been eating al morning), but soon began sharing out all the food to the assembled village. As a visiting gringo, I was among the first served, along with my Tolte friends, also considered visitors. It seemed sort of imposible, but eventually all of the chopa and other food was eaten, and the rest of the afternoon was spent identifying long lost cousins and other family connections between the Toltenos and the residents of Chausan. And, before we hit the road, we were given a container of chicken and rice, three liters of soda, and another 3 liters of chicha for good measure. Amazingly, we made it home without anyone exploding.

The next day was Sunday, and we had a wedding to play in Canar, a little over an hour to the south. We weren’t going into the heart of Canar, only as far as Zhud, which for some reason some of my neighbors call Gun. The wedding was at 4, so we decided to gather at 3. I think the idea was that we would take Pablo’s little mini truck, the Boogie Woogie, although with eight band members, additional family members, and all of our instruments I didn’t see how that was possible. Of course, it wasn’t possible, and when I got to Vicente’s house at 3 we talked about looking for someone with a bigger truck. But we didn’t rush, because no one else was there yet, and we didn’t know where Pablo and the Boogie were.

At 4, we had identified someone who could give the whole band a ride, but the whole band was still not there. Pablo was just bringing his family up from the hacienda in the Boogie, Rocio and Diana were in their house, although they were close, since they live next door to the church. I was waiting on the church porch with a couple of the other kids who play with us. I think it was about 4:30 or 4:45 when we all finally got into Antonio’s truck and headed for Chunchi to pick up the charango player and his family. By now it was densely foggy and raining, and I was relieved that we were in a covered car and not all hanging on to some part of the Boogie. But with one thing and another, it took almost half an hour to find the charango player, and it was about 5:15 when we headed for Zhud.

When we got to Zhud, there was a roadside stand selling fritada. Apparently this is a fritada of a very high quality, because everyone considered it essential that we stop and eat some. It was good, although I think there were bad consequences later from having eaten it. But it was all very festive, and we got to the wedding at 6:40. Apparently, this violated some unwritten lateness limit that none of us had ever run into before, because they would not let us play. The charango player and I would up playing some of the popular music that I play with ESTASIS while we sat in the back of the truck, but that was about it. So we never did make it to the wedding in Canar, and I can’t tell you anything about how it compared to the wedding in Chausan. But I guess I can say that getting a band of Toltenos anywhere does require more time than one might expect.