Our doorbell rang today. It was the mariachis again. One of the musicians held down the intercom button to make sure that we, on the other side of the 15-foot-high wall that surrounds our house, could hear their roving street concert. They do this all day long, serenading intercom after intercom with drums and guitars and brass, angling for a 10 peso (about a dollar) tip.
Since we moved to Mexico City four months ago, we have been amazed at its sounds. Mexico is rarely quiet. The guy who collects old newspapers walks down the middle of our street every day between 7 and 8 a.m., ringing a silver bell that looks big enough to hang in Notre Dame. You can hear it for blocks. We don’t jump up from feeding our kids breakfast to run out to the street to sell him a bundle of papers for a few pennies. But others must, because he never misses a day on our street. Newspapers are actually a fairly valuable commodity here. We get a half-dozen or so a day slipped under our front door. But it’s rare that we actually receive them all. Apparently, we are told, somebody comes along with a coat hanger and hauls one or two back under the door, then sells them for 50 cents on a street corner. We suspect that at least once we have bought our own newspaper from a guy on the street.
Then there are the organ grinders. At street corners, in public squares, anywhere that people might have a few pesos jingling in their pockets, there are old-fashioned organ grinders, dressed like something out of Curious George. The grinder closest to our house has an organ that makes a noise that pierces your skull like a dull knife. We give him money just to get him to stop. That noise, like the helicopters that often buzz overhead and the lovelorn tomcats that screech from nearby rooftops all night long, we could do without.
But other sounds are nicer, like the bell ringing faintly on Sunday mornings from lovely old Santa Catarina church in the square just down the street. And some are more intriguing, like the lyrical love story that seems to be going on across the street. There is a young man who is constantly playing music—often a sad, pleading trumpet—to an open second-floor balcony window. We have never seen Juliet come out to meet her Romeo. But he’s not taking no answer for an answer. And so we can always count on a romantic tune to sweeten the afternoon.
Our next-door neighbors seem to keep half the musicians in Mexico in business. More often than not, they have a huge party in their backyard on Saturday afternoons. It’s a sweet ritual. Their hired Cuban musicians, or else mariachis complete with black sombreros and those black “charro” pants with 10 pounds of silver sewn into the seams, start just after noon, playing in the street for the arriving guests. Later they all regroup in the backyard, just over our wall, and play for hours. It’s a nice way to pass the afternoon, for them and for us. And it beats the average Saturday night, when their 16-year-old’s rock band practices, passionately butchering old Nirvana songs.
Then there are the firecrackers, which are to Mexico what champagne is to America: something to pop off during celebrations. A birthday, anniversary, wedding, or patron’s saints day—just about any occasion seems to be a good excuse for sparkling, whistling, boom-boom-booming fireworks. Sometimes the sound is frighteningly loud and sharp, like a small stick of dynamite going off. Other times, when we are up in the middle of the night with a sick child, we can hear the distant thunder of fireworks rumbling until sunrise. Still, what we found jarring in our first weeks here we have come to appreciate as the happy background noise of our new city. It means someone somewhere is having a good time.
A week or so ago we spent an evening in a cemetery in a small village in the poor southern state of Oaxaca, on Mexico’s famous Day of the Dead. People were laughing and singing and lighting off firecrackers as they decorated their ancestors’ graves with amazing displays of flowers and candles. We wandered among the families gathered in knots, drinking tequila and arranging flowers and reveling in a loud party that drew the entire village. Even in that most unlikely place, a cemetery, there were sounds of celebration.
