Two festivals, two cities.
Festival Cervantino: a venerated, vaunted veteran ensconced in a graceful, petite comely jewel of a town.
Festival Sucede: a scrappy upstart looking to make a name for itself in a sprawling, unruly metropolis.
By the very nature of that master-apprentice dynamic you’d think these two happenings would be mutually exclusive – the first a stately Great Dane barely noticing the tiny Jack Russell terrier threading excited lines between its long legs, trying madly to get its attention.
But, no, it turns out that Guanajuato’s Festival Cervantino – a month-long cultural oleo renowned the world over with origins that go back to 1953 — enjoys playing the benevolent big brother to Guadalajara’s Festival Sucede, just two-years-old and still wiping amniotic fluid off its adorable chubby cheeks; as a part of the Extension Cervantino, Guanajuato is sending a handful of artists to Jalisco’s capital to lend the Festival Sucede a little of its own heft and notoriety. It’s good news for those who just can’t manage to drag their carcasses to the gorgeous former mining town tucked into the silver-plundered hills four hours northeast of Guadalajara.
But Guadalajara has one big advantage over Guanajuato: space. Nowhere was this more apparent than at Festival Sucede’s gala event, which took place at the expansive and roomie Glorieta Minerva roundabout on the city’s west side.
Anybody blissfully unaware of the festival’s opening event who found themselves walking towards the Glorieta from any one of its six approaches at 8 p.m. on Saturday, October 7 might think that somebody had slipped several tabs of orange sunshine LSD into their morning cappuccino; seen looming above the open area surrounding the grim-faced statue of the goddess Minerva were several gigantic balloon sea creatures covered in esoteric symbols and whorls.
These ghostly creatures were lit from below and steered by a crew of French puppeteers, members of the Paris-based group Plasticiens Volants, who were performing their work, “The Pearl.” The spectacle, which was accompanied by evocative music and a dazzling fireworks display, packed the Glorieta and its feeder avenues with throngs of humanity, many of whom were slack-jawed children perched on their parents’ shoulders madly trying to grasp with their chubbyfingers the ponderous creations — which included a jellyfish, an eel, a whale, a lobster-like critter, a multi-colored piscine and a manta ray — as they occasionally drifted down closer to the sea of rapt upraised faces.
Festival Sucede occupies Guadalajara until November 18, during which time 105 locations around the city host a glinting galaxy of events running the gamut from loopy French-Canadian street theater to seminars on important elements of Mexico’s cultural patrimony – chocolate production, for example. However, for those of our readers who wish to taste a little Cervantino action without the Guanajuato commute, the ensuing information applies to those events which are shared by both the Cervantino and Sucede festivals.
Argentinian Chango Spasiuk – together with his sextet – is a major exponent of chamamé, a folk music of northeastern of his country with strong ties to eastern European musical forms. They perform Sunday, October 15, 6 p.m. in the explanade of the Instituto Cultural Cabañas.
Cumbia is a music beloved by club-going Mexicans. Perhaps unbeknownst to some of them is that while Cumbia’s distribution is quite wide, with regional variations popping up from New York to Argentina, it has its origins mainly in Colombia. Sure to agree with that musicologically risky statement is Carmelo Torres, a Colombian accordionist who will play the Explananda 18 de Marzo, Saturday, October 21.
And Damien Rovner y Los Fundamentalistas, a sextet based in Buenos Aires, will offer its own melange of Latin American and European stylings to the birds, butterflies and towering trees of Parque Agua Azul, Sunday, October 22.
Go to festivalguadalajara.mx for day-by-day information.