musical education, pt. 2

Munchkin entered first grade at the height of the pandemic. Facing school closures and restrictive social bubbles, we homeschooled him for part of the year. Being the one to teach our little man to read and make sense of arithmetic remains one of D’s most rewarding parental memories. We never formally “game-schooled” — there is a movement that incorporates strategy games into homespun learning curricula — but we did (and still do) play a ton of board games with Munchkin, helping him develop logic and strategic thinking skills through gameplay. Had he been a little older, we may well have incorporated a song-based module into his curriculum as well. The little man is now approaching the end of fourth grade, and D’s music class is very much in session.

final chapters

If our Semana Santa trip represented the opening lines of the closing chapter to our San Jose assignment, D penned a couple more paragraphs last weekend at the Finca Fest — Costa Rica’s annual celebration of local ska, punk, and reggae talent.

carnaval toda la vida

In the spirit of self-medication, the morning after we had returned from the Savegre Valley, D repacked his bag for another trip and headed out to the airport…where he wound up spending the better part of the day. That last part wasn’t part of the plan, of course, but sometimes them’s the breaks. Travel often enough, and you’re bound to run into all sorts of flight delays. Tropical storms, air traffic controller strikes, volcano eruptions — we’ve endured our fair share of exotic travel inconveniences over the years. This time, it was a simple mechanical failure that delayed D’s flight to Bogota from its mid-morning scheduled departure time. San Jose’s is a small airport and, despite Costa Rica’s popularity, not a regional hub. By the time a replacement plane was identified and the passengers boarded, it was 3 p.m.

walking contradiction

We are wonderfully contradictory beings. On the one hand, we want our children to grow up to be independent-minded; to experience the world for themselves and determine their own path; to succeed where we failed or perhaps never even dared to try. On the other hand, we don’t want the apple to fall too far from the tree either, so to speak. We want our kids to reflect our values and our passions. We love it when they cherish the same things as we do, root for the same sports teams, and share an appreciation for our favorite pastimes. Ever see a parent beam while referring to their offspring as “a chip off the ol’ block?” Parents may intend to convey a sense of pride in their kids’ accomplishments when they say that, but really they are just proud of themselves for seeing their own reflection in their progeny.

uncomfortable, yet unforgettable

The Red Hot Chili Peppers graced Costa Rica with a two-hour performance last night on the eve of Anthony Kiedis’ 61st (!!!) birthday. It was a rainy, muddy affair, calling to mind several other similarly messy concerts D has attended over the years. Overwhelmingly, we prefer small club shows to arena tours. The ability to get up close and personal with his favorite performers — to share in their joy on stage — was one of the things that drew D to ska and punk in his high school years. Even the Supernova International Ska Festival, which D attended for the second time in September, maintained that intimate feel, with attendees numbering only about 5,000. Of course, for big-name bands, stadium shows and mega festivals offer the only realistic options to see some of our favorite acts live.

Supernova highlights

Over three days of wall-to-wall music, this year’s Supernova International Ska Festival felt like a curated tour through the full arc of ska’s history. There were original Jamaican legends, like the 86-year old Stranger Cole, whom we had had the pleasure of seeing in Costa Rica a few months ago. Two-tone heavy weights Bad Manners headlined the final night of the festival. Third-wave pioneers that fueled D’s personal love of ska featured prominently on the bill. Bands signed to Bad Time Records — the laboratory of emerging talent in the U.S. ska scene today — enjoyed a consolidated block of playing time right in the middle of the festival line-up. And there were also several great international bands, ranging from El Salvador and Mexico to Japan.

scenes from Supernova

This past weekend, which D spent at the Supernova Ska Festival in Virginia, was pure magic — a 72-hour dream of musical delirium and loving community from which D was rudely wakened late Sunday night by American Airlines alerting him to an eleventh-hour delay that completely derailed his return to Costa Rica. It took two hours of post-midnight phone calls and a scramble to purchase last-minute tickets on another carrier to sort out the mess before D could return to his post-festival reverie. Words and photos don’t do the Supernova experience justice, and videos only barely hint at its transcendent joy.

musical education

“Can you play Amy Winehouse or Voto Latino or that band with the Red Intro?” Munchkin has requested every afternoon without fail these last two weeks in the car on the drive to the kids’ after-school activities. Not to be outdone, Junebug immediately pipes up with song requests of her own: Mario Neta by Uruguayan rockers El Cuarteto De Nos or “the wizard song,” which upon further interrogation turned out to be the Nina Simone classic I Put A Spell On You. Extensive negotiations follow, during which Munchkin jettisons these newer favorites in favor of the handful of punk rock songs he knows, firing off a rapid-fire playlist of 90’s hits that always brings a smile to D’s lips. Slowly, a delicate truce emerges, the Fugees’ Ready Or Not currently enjoying strong consensus status among our backseat navigators.

time marches on

A glitch in the matrix has our blog stuck in July, midway through our Colombia trip. This tends to happen when we have a lot of travel tales and wildlife photos to share and not nearly enough time to process, organize, and publish it all. The Colombia travelogue is likely to unspool for quite some time yet, but in the meantime life also continues apace. The kids returned to Costa Rica after spending five glorious weeks in the States with their grandparents and cousins, a new school year kicked off, and we’ve eased back into our San Jose routines after a fun but all-too-short summer break.

bicentennial beats

This year marks a bicentennial of sorts for San Jose, though one could be forgiven for sleeping through the occasion considering the city also celebrated a bicentennial ten years ago. Established in the early 18th century, San Jose was not founded by formal degree and lacked a city government for the better part of its first century of existence. In 1813, San Jose was formally established as a city, but the momentous occasion was short-lived. Upon learning of this development, the Spanish monarch annulled the proceedings the very next year, and it took another six years for the city title to be restored. Three years later — and this is the occasion celebrated during the 2023 bicentennial — San Jose became Costa Rica’s capital, one of the youngest capital cities in Latin America by year of conception.