GM at the hotel before his concert
It was too hard to keep up this blog while in San Jose, so the next few installments are after the fact... first about GM's performances:
Friday afternoon GM had his last rehearsal with Amarillo, Cian y Magenta. He was on fire, the band was tight, it promised to be a hell of a show. As the rehearsal wrapped, GM delivered a very heartfelt thanks to the boys in ACyM for this opportunity to work with them. Hearing his voice crack with sincere emotion almost made me lose it myself. So much for the objective observer. Then as GM went to use the bathroom the sound of shattering glass destroyed the maudlin mood. Somehow GM had caused the bathroom mirror to fall and shatter! Bad luck? Time would tell.
Later that evening, at the concert venue, GM shows up to do a little pre-promotion for his show the following night. As a very cool calypso-jazz band is performing, GM pulls a stunt that I can only admire. He walks into the camera pit (the area right in front of the stage that is for photographers only) and goes over to someone and offers an autographed picture of himself. Now remember that practically nobody in San Jose knows him yet. But when the crowd sees someone signing autographs they get excited and suddenly everyone wants one. So a little GM-mania breaks out as people flock to get an autographed picture from this rasta guy. Talk about stealing the show... only The Grandmaster would have the nerve to show up and sign autographs during someone else's concert!
As the band wraps their set, the technicians play the video for Pressure on the big screens (of course this too was pre-arranged by GM). Into the mass of people goes GM, dancing amongst his legions of brand new fans, leading them in a sing-along of "Pressure... Pressure... Presssssssuuuuurree!". Later that night GM admited to me that he came up with the idea for the publicity stunt the night before. And here I was beginning to worry that GM was not taking this opportunity in Costa Rica seriously.
Come showtime Saturday, GM starts to show signs of genuine stage fright. Nothing to be alarmed about, but it is good to see that performing in front of about 3,000 people is enough to make even The Grandmaster a tad nervous.
Backstage butterflies!
As the band strikes the opening chords for "Pressure" GM takes the stage. He is on tonight. In mere moments he has the Costa Rican crowd in the palm of his hand. He's using every bit of Spanish he can remember to work the crowd, and when that fails him he makes up his own form of Spanglish. But somehow it is working. They love The Grandmaster.
And so the set goes. The band is smoking and GM is really working it. Problem is somewhere along the way they got out of sync with each other. GM is dubbing lyrics to his poems over the wrong songs. The crowd doesn't notice anything awry, but ACyM is obviously alarmed by this deviation from plan A. Things kind of fall apart when GM finishes "his" set and leaves the stage, leaving the band unsure of what to do next. They quickly recover and in a few minutes GM returns for his encore, of course non of this is how the set was planned to play out.
The whole experience would leave the guys from ACyM a bit shell-shocked and on Sunday they chose to perform sans GM. The Grandmaster instead would play 2 songs with Malpais, another band from Costa Rica, and everything goes very smoothly for all parties.
The Grandmaster perfoms with Malpais on the last night of Papaya Fest
GM would have the last word at Papaya Fest, literally. During the big "we are the world" grand finale on Sunday, all the performers joined together on stage for the closing number. It was one of the Papaya's songs, in Spanish, and each of the featured artists took a turn on the mic. GM of course not speaking Spanish had no idea what the lyrics were so he could not sing along. But just as the song came to a close, GM grabs the mic and breaks into a line from his poem "I Cry", then thanks Costa Rica and bids everyone good night. Only The Grandmaster would pull something like that!
