Thank my friends Margarita, Miguel, and Gustavo of Tadeco Teatro; I, as Black Sea Storm, got invited to perform live during an hour-long radio show in Mexico City at Ventana Pública. I did a few radio and TV shows before, but this was the very first time I was going to be interviewed and be performing my songs during the same live session.
A Rock n Roll Comando Operation QRO – CDMX – QRO
I am currently staying in Querétaro, which is located three hours northeast of Mexico City. I planned to go to the Mexican capital, participate in the radio show, and come back to Querétaro the same evening. I woke up reasonably early. Got ready, prepared my gig-bag. I was even able to make time to play my guitar before leaving the apartment. I headed to the Querétaro bus station. Last time I played Mexico City I used the Taxaqueña hub. This time around since the Ventana Pública studios are located in San Raphael, I needed to make my way to the Mexico Norte bus station. I was actually very familiar with the M.Norte terminal thank to my previous visits to Querétaro from Oaxaca in 2018. I always transited from Mexico Norte. The good news was that there is a bus leaving from Querétaro to DF every 20 minutes. And this only when one reads one single bus company’s time table. If we consider that there are several bus companies, I think there are more rides available to Mexico City from Querétaro than any “colectivo” lines inside of Querétaro itself.
CDMX
It was a smooth process to make it to the bus station in Qurétaro and then to the Distrito Federal. Around 3 PM, I was already in front of the building of Ventana Pública. I rang the bell, but no one showed up to open the gate for me. Since I got there way too early, I was kind of excepting this situation to happen. I took a picture of the gate and the building so I could confirm with Margarita who was coordinating the event that I had made it to the right place. Since I’ve been living without a phone plan for the past three years, I need to plan most things ahead and anticipate potential hiccups. Once I had the photo captured, I headed to the closest place where I could play my guitar. I wanted to run the songs I may have to perform on that night during the radio session. Still, also I never want to lose an opportunity to play. Having my guitar with me in that regard is a blessing. I feel like I never waste my time. Each occasion, when there is some downtime I can play.
Live events acting as a source of inspiration for new material
Lately, I’ve been noticing that the days I have live performances with Black Sea Storm, my approach to playing and coming up with new ideas is enhanced. Being actively performing live events with Black Sea Storm inspires me. While playing the guitar, knowing that I have a radio show that same night in a massive metropolis in Latin America makes me feel like I am doing this for real. These kinds of moments have been very inspiring for me to come up with new ideas and extend my palette of riffs, chords, and arpeggios. It’s a perfect situation where the Black Sea Storm project is feeding itself. Writing songs allows me to play shows. Playing shows will enable me to write new songs which I will be later on performing live. It’s a great situation to be in for a creative person who is continuously hunting new ideas to expand the spectrum of his musical means.
Fruit Intake
The sky was cloudy, and a few drops of rain would fall from the sky once in a while. Not knowing if it was going to rain or not motivated me in playing as much as I could without taking any break. I was able to play for an hour or so. I was actually in a park filled with flee market types of stands. There were also a bunch of food stands serving street food. I had been dry-fasting all day, so I decided to break my fast with fruits and maybe a freshly squeezed juice if available. I saw a man selling “mamey.” This fruit has become one of my favorite ones since my first visit to Mexico last year. I got one. Since I was going to eat it on the spot, I asked the man selling it to cut it for me. Later on, I saw another man selling freshly squeezed juice. I had about a liter / 34oz of grapefruit juice. My third purchase was a simple banana for 4 Mexican pesos. I had more than enough food for this late afternoon breakfast. I decided to explore San Rafael a bit and find a new spot to play.
More Playing & WIFI Hunt
Although very lively, the neighborhood I was in wasn’t very appealing to me in terms of sightseeing. I decided to play some more guitar. I found a comfortable clean bench to sit on at the intersection of two avenues in San Rafael. I played for another hour so. I had the feeling that it was going to rain soon. I needed to find WIFI, to get in touch with Margarita and Gustavo. Gustavo was going to participate in the show as well to represent Tadeco and promote the next Black Sea Storm show in CDMX. I wanted to make sure with Margarita that the building I had found earlier was the actual radio station. Some times with the internet, old information of a location lingers on, and the visible information isn’t always accurate. I really didn’t want to miss the opportunity to play at a radio show for an avoidable mistake like this.
I was able to find a sushi place with zero customers that had WIFI. In a couple of months, I will be completing three years of me living in Latin America. Until now, I never had a phone plan, and I also never had sushi in this part of the world. I really don’t trust how raw seafood may be handled. Yes, I am very much prejudiced on this topic, but I have my own reasons to think the way I think. When I see how on some occasions, cooked food is handled at taco stands and such. Besides having experienced violent food poisoning from chicken last year in Querétaro. I, Ali, the Turkish man, usually eating all kinds of Turkish street food in my own country, have decided to be more on the safer side in this part of the world.
Thank God I only had a couple of health issues since I’ve been living as a nomad, but both times I went through very challenging moments physically. In addition to the violent chicken food poisoning, I got attacked by some tropical bugs during my last week in Oaxaca. It took me over a month to recover from it. I am still experiencing some allergic reactions at times, but I believe the nightmare is, for the most part, behind me now. If at one of the Black Sea Storm live shows, out of nowhere you see me do weird things, like the Michael Jackson’s moonwalk, for instance, you’ll know that it’s just one of the many side effects of the bug attack.
Back to the sushi situation in CDMX, without consuming any products of animal origin, I was able to find happiness with some miso soup, a veggie rice bowl, and discounted 2 for 1 veggie rolls. I personally think the best part of sushi is the combination of rice, soya sauce, and wasabi. With that in mind, I don’t feel like I’ve been missing out much passing on the raw fish.
Before The Show
Once I left the sushi joint for the radio station, it started to rain. If you have read some of my previous posts, this has become classic by now. Black Sea Storm’s live events tend to attract the actual real storm in town. At least on this occasion, it did not matter that much since it was a broadcasted event, and we did not rely on a crowd to show up. I came almost an hour early to the station, thinking that we may be going to soundcheck. I was expecting my electroacoustic guitar to be plugged in and that we were going to make sure that the vocal instrument levels were finely mixed.
Genuine Support
While I was waiting, there was another radio show going on. I decided to quietly warm up with the guitar in the waiting area. Dozens of minutes later, Gustavo showed up. I had met Gustavo at the very first Black Sea Storm show in Mérida on the 13th of July 2019. And now he was going to be present at the very first Black Sea Storm radio show in history. Life presents itself to us with exciting patterns at times. People of El Teatrito Yucatán are good friends of the Tadeco crew, and once a year, I believe they organize a festival together. Playing my first El Teatrito show allowed me to meet Çağrı Yılmaz online. Thanks to her help, I was able to book La Jícara show in Oaxaca and the Tadeco one in late September. And now with the help of Tadeco Teatro I am invited to a radio show to promote a concert I will be playing for the second time in Tadeco on the 8th of November. It’s incredible how a door tends to open another one. The best part of this situation isn’t necessarily to be able to push my project forward. But instead to meet beautiful people involved in exciting projects doing what they do for the love of art. As an independent musician, it’s always a great feeling to partner with other independent entities and, hopefully, grow together in our respective journeys.
The Show
After meeting the hosts Adriana and Augustin, I was told that we weren’t going to plug my guitar. Basically, I was going to play the exact same way when I am performing as a street musician. Everything acoustic, hoping that the microphone that is used for speech will pick up my voice and my guitar with the right mix. Just for the record Spanish is the fourth language I learned in life. (Without counting German and Japanese with which I had scored two unsuccessful learning attempts) I think I am reasonably fluent at this point with Spanish, but to speak it in the context of a radio show is a challenge in itself for me.
I had a blast and got my ass kicked at the same time
The entire experience of being on the radio actually ended up being a lot of fun! That said, it remained to be an extremely challenging exercise for me. You speak for about 15 minutes in your fourth learned language. Then you need to play a rock song with an unplugged electroacoustic guitar and sing in your native language. This for an entire hour going back and forth between music sang in Turkish and conversational speech in a foreign language. I love this kind of new and challenging situations because I know that this is what makes a musician become a better one. The more you play outside of your comfort zone, the more you get your ass kicked, the better you start to sound after a while. I wasn’t very happy with my musical performance and how the songs came out in terms of sound, but I still liked the raw, naked and natural feel of my performance. I think it represented well my current DIY situation of touring Latin America with a 100$ made in China guitar.
I truly loved being a part of this show. I could also sense that Gustavo, Adriana, and Augustin seemed to have a blast as well during the hour we had passed together.
Real de Catorce
During the show, listeners could intervene by posting messages live on Facebook. A true legend of Mexican blues José Cruz Camargo from Real de Catorce was very supportive of the show with his comments. Although I did not know about his work before the show, I was extremely honored that an established figure of Mexican blues would pay attention to Black Sea Storm for an entire hour. Adriana was very kind to share with me her favorite songs of Real de Catorce and José Cruz as a solo act. I started to follow Real de Catorce on Spotify and added their songs to my Rock and Español playlist.
This is one of my favorite ways to discover new music. During my rock career as a bass player, with my bands, we would open for other groups, or other bands would play before us at times. That gave me the opportunity to discover an incredible amount of new music. The best part is that since it’s a lived experience, I tend to remember the bands better than most of the bands I usually discover by only investigating online. When there are a story and a lived memory that goes with the music, I tend to not forget it.
Rock Mission Accomplished
After the show, the rain had intensified. It was pouring over the Mexican capital. Gustavo was extremely kind to give me a ride to the Mexico Norte terminal despite the weather and heavy traffic conditions. It took my bus over an hour to get out of Mexico City. The journey back to Querétaro took a bit more than four hours instead of three. The situation allowed me to get an extra hour of sleep during the trip. After this long day, I had a very positive feeling of having accomplished one more thing with Black Sea Storm, one more step into this fantastic journey. I will be doing something very similar to this experience in about three days. I have the second Tadeco show on the 8th of November in CDMX. On the 9th, I will be playing at a private event in Querétaro, supposedly in front of over 50 restaurant owners in town. I really look forward to both events. QRO – CDMX – QRO II coming up next.
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