La Virgen de la Macarena

The Old Oligarch has a post that mentions his learning "more than he ever cared about the Macarena." One thing he didn't mention was the bullfighting connection to the Macarena. As he correctly notes, the song is named for a quarter of Sevilla, which is named for its well-known and revered statue of the Blessed Mother.

Someone once wrote a tune (it may have originally been a hymn, but is used intrumentally nowadays) called "La Virgen de la Macarena." It is one of those searingly emotional saeta-like Spanish tunes, with a haunting melody that is generally assigned to the trumpet. When you hear it, the little hairs on the back of your neck stand up.

In many bullrings the band plays "La Virgen de la Macarena" when the matadores have entered the chapel of the bullring (as my distant cousin by marriage (second cousin of the fellow who married my second cousin - you tell me the exact relationship), who is a Portuguese matador, says, "there are no atheists on the sand").

The Tijuana bullfight orchestra, which has had its ups and downs, but remains an outstanding ensemble, plays this tune with particular brilliance. Their trumpet soloist is phenomenal and sends that melody out over the ring in such a way as to make all time and space stand still. Suddenly the Corona and melon and chips vendors seem to disolve. The villamelones who are there to ogle the girls cease to annoy. One is no longer sitting in La Plaza de Toros Monumental La Playa in Tijuana, a strange outpost of never-never land on the Pacific Ocean, but in the timeless universe of the bullfight, indeed of all Spanish history.

For a few minutes, when one is sitting in the sun (or shade, although on some days it all seems like Sol) at the bullring and "La Virgen de la Macarena" plays it all fits together: Santiago Matamoros, El Cid, Juan Belmonte, Cortez, Fillipe II, El Escorial, Franco, Picasso, Goya, Cervantes (minus the hand left at Lepanto), El Cordobes, flamenco, insufferable royal bureaucrats creating ever more byzantine social divisions, intense piety, equally intense anti-clericalism, the whole tapestry of Spanish culture seems to unfold in that trumpet solo.

Then the solo is over and you hear "cerveza!" and "ayiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiii" and "que un cabron!" and you are back in Tijuana and it is not Juan Belmonte on the sand, but Cesar Castaneda (who, as I have said before, can be quite good) and it is not Goya drawing from the Sol General, but a drunken San Diego State student on a long weekend making eyes at the pretty girl, hoping that the pretty girl's boyfriend, the fellow with the parrot and goat and rooster on his shirt doesn't notice.

You will have to hunt to find a good recording of the song. I finally found an almost tolerable one on a record of Bullfight pasodobles as played by the Mariachi Silvestre Vargas. If anyone has a better recording than that, please let me know.