I took the 80% Family to the African Marketplace yesterday over at Rancho Cienega Park. Nobody calls it Rancho Cienega Park, or at least nobody did when I grew up. It was either 'Rancho' or 'Dorsey', more often Dorsey after the High School right next door.
We parked on Dorsey's grass and paid $6 a head and proceded directly to the food court. I'll tell you straight that the BBQ from Stones was the most popular. Second came the Louisiana cuisine, then the Caribbean and finally the West African. Not surprising.
There was a whole lot more gospel in this year's occasion. It was somewhat surprising, but the difference was clear. The Youth Stage, of the three stages in the park was 100% Gospel Hiphop. OK well 90%. There was some dancing to an old school tune 'Bust a Move' and one on Chris Brown's 'Run It', but they clearly took the time to do some thinking about the themes. Not so however with the filthy, and I do mean filthy petting zoo. I have this nightmare vision about what the planners must have been thinking about when they ordered that up.. like yo brother do you know any rednecks with a goat and a llama? Yeah but he doesn't bathe and the animals are kinda pathetic looking. But we gotta have animals...
Thed did also find a fairly skillful juggler who was performing at the single most commercially themed area at the park. Some water thing that I studiously avoided.
Sometimes the most obnoxious hawker has something actually worth it. I am eating, finally, my Peach Delight which is like a combination of cobbler and dump cake with a pecan crust. All afternoon you could hear this guy yelling about his desert. "It's what peach cobbler wants to be when it grows up!". Over and over and over. He was right. It's the absolute bomb. I should have eaten some yesterday instead of saving it. I would have been in a much better mood.
Instead, I checked out a spacey group called Essence. They were a trio.
The woman sung in a style reminescent of the lead female singer of the
5th Dimension with a slight touch of Neko Case twang which worked quite
nice. The man sounded very much like Jeffrey Osborne. The other woman
did an improvisational dance that was straight out of experimental
theatre - like a combination of yoga and full-body sign language. The
dancer, in black jeans and a flowing brownish / leopardish flowing sari
& scarf emoted with these facial expressions that defy description.
She gave the act an eerie emotional depth. But it was on their second
song where they blew the doors off by adding a lanky rapper who looked
like the Palestinian antagonist in 'The Siege'. Mind you, this is a
gospel group. So their rap about Zion was rather staggering. I was
reminded, as I watched this spectacle, of the exploits of the Diggers. This was theatre.
As it stood I found that there really isn't much to be said for buying African baubles, bangles, beads, scupltures, clothing, carvings, masks, food and music. We have been there and done that. We have got the flavor nicely done. What wasn't in that list was African culture, politics, religion, and philosophy. Instead, you had people wearing the clothes and jewelry selling audiotapes of various loud voices screaming about white people. I'm too much inured to that to even pay enough attention to it in order to make a proper criticism. If I had a good camera, I'd merely take a picture and move on.
I did stop at the Islamic tent and cracked open a copy of an English & Arabic Qu'ran. I can't tell whether or not it was abridged. But next to it was a six volume set for $75. Too rich for my blood. There was only one other person there besides the proprietor, but I didn't engage. It was just good to know that there's that book I have to own sooner or later. Later there were two others having an animated discussion, but I was done for the day and in a hurry to leave.
The irony of the afternoon was found for me that the most rewarding moment of the day came as I decided to leave early. I was prepared to go back to my car and listen to the last CD of 'Fiasco' and it just so happened that there were a couple dozen Africans warming up for a soccer game on Dorsey's field. So I went to have a seat and watched the game. This was a pickup game in a style I've not seen, not that I watch so very much. But it definitely had a different flavor from the Latin games I've seen around the city. These guys are fast, and they play tight with a lot more control on the run than what I typically see.
This is my first YouTube and I took the video with my PDA. They took out the sound. But I think watching real African immigrants playing a real game was a whole lot more interesting than looking at old Jim Crow signs or thinking about buying a mask to hang up on my wall.
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