One-armed Octogenarian Violinist Lights Up the Big Screen
A visit with Ángel Tavira, star of El Violin
Dear Reader,
When a violinist wins a Best Actor award at the Cannes Film Festival, it is certainly a coup for musicians everywhere. That don Ãngel Tavira made his acting debut at age 81 is remarkable, but that he did so without the use of his right hand is simply astonishing.
Tavira played the lead in the feature film El Violin as the dignified elder don Plutarco. Set in the 1970s amid a brutal occupation of a Mexican indigenous mountain town by government soldiers, the film follows Plutarco as he manages to infiltrate a checkpoint by befriending the commander with his one-handed violin playing. "[The commander] liked it and asked if I could instruct him," says Tavira, explaining his character's role. "I agreed, but in time, they discover that I am collaborating with the guerillas." Each day, Plutarco smuggles ammunition to the guerillas in his violin case.
In 2006, Tavira's performance won the Best Male Performance award in the Un Certain Regard division at Cannes and Best Actor in a Latin American Film at the prestigious Festival de Gramado in Brazil. El Violin, the first full-length feature from Mexican director and lifelong violinist Francisco Vargas, is still picking up awards and nominations from Mexico to Beirut, from India to the Arctic Circle.
A few years ago, I had the great fortune to study with Tavira at his home. He is one of the principal masters of the beautiful violin tradition of Tierra Caliente, a sweltering and dusty lowland region a few hours by bus to the southwest of Mexico City. Although Tavira has spent his life performing and preserving the tradition, he no longer lives in Tierra Caliente. Many years ago, he moved eastward to the city of Iguala where he made a living as a general music teacher in the schools. As a teacher, he drew from traditional material to develop his own instructional books for students.
Like most people I met while visiting the region, don Ãngel and his wife Elpidia host selflessly and graciously when visitors arrive at their typical Mexican suburban home. Elpidia served us an unparalleled mole dinner, and we settled in for lessons the following morning. When teaching, Tavira will often listen to a student play a tune, correcting mistakes if they arise. Other times, he might remember an old melody and quickly write it out. The day I visited, he paged through volumes of manuscripts until he found a suitable piece. Moving to the shady front porch, he handed the second violin part to my traveling companion and instructed me on guitar accompaniment. Then, he gracefully tied a ribbon around his right forearm to affix his bow and began sailing through the tune.
I had arrived in Mexico inspired by the work of Seattle fiddler Paul Anastasio, who essentially put his life on hold in order to document the music of Tierra Caliente. Anastasio frequently visits Tavira, often calling on his expertise to help identify obscure pieces. Tavira maintains a large archive, each piece delicately written in pristine notation with his left hand.
Beautiful musical traditions grace every corner of Mexico, and the Calentana style of Tierra Caliente is particularly harmonically rich and rhythmically diverse. In one session, you can hear danzones of Cuban origin, hints of European classical or Gypsy melodies in paso dobles, waltzes, tangos, fox-trots, and boleros. The fiery 6/8 sones and gustos are laden with syncopation, culminating in a series of expressive adornos or ornaments woven together, usually in an improvised fashion. Tavira has compiled an encyclopedia of such adornos.
From urban Iguala, a twisted highway winds through cragged mountains. Stepping off the bus in Tierra Caliente feels like stepping back in time. The commercial center of Ciudad Altamirano is home to 25,000 people with a bustling market stretching down several blocks of alleys in the center of town. Truckers stop on its outskirts to rest between long stretches of desert highway. A certain lawlessness reigns—obeying traffic lights seems to be optional, and simply playing a bar gig can carry a risk. One violinist caught a bullet when he refused to play an encore.
A few miles to the east, Tavira's hometown of Corral Falso and the neighboring village of Tlapehuala form the cradle of Calentana music. "I loved music as a child," he remembers. "I had many cousins and uncles who played. Almost all of my family were campesino musicians."
Tavira was very young when his grandfather, composer Juan Bartolo Tavira, passed away in 1929. Juan Bartolo was an iconic figure who played both violin and guitar, but his primary instrument was a small folk harp from another part of Mexico. In the villages along the Balsas River, the harmonic complexity and variety of rhythmic texture that mark the local musical traditions blended with Bartolo's compositions. In the cemetery by the river, Bartolo's crypt has saplings growing out of its side.
Don Ãngel studied ear training even before beginning to play violin at the age of nine. He lost his hand at 13. "It was a firecracker," he says, "Here they throw firecrackers at celebrations. Afterwards I stared at my hand for a long time."
Anastasio explains, "He didn't play for a while, and when he picked up the violin and tried to play again the first time, he got angry and threw it across the room and smashed it."
Tavira eventually learned to affix the bow to his arm with a ribbon. "It's a tremendous inspiration to all of us who whine about little physical things. He has to use the entire arm to go from string to string, so he doesn't have the [normal] flexibility. That being said, he really knows what he's doing and he can really get around.
"He plays a lot better than many of the two-handed players."
The story of how Tavira's character in El Violin lost his hand remains a mystery. When the commander asks, he responds by questioning the occupation. The film powerfully emphasizes this element of ambiguity, resisting definition of time and place. Starkly reinforced by the black-and-white presentation, El Violin captures the archetypal essence of indigenous and campesino struggles across several decades of recent Latin American history, including the present.
The film begins with a wrenching scene of torture and rape by government soldiers during the opening credits. Vargas shows little detail, but clearly establishes the context. The film immediately cuts to don Plutarco, his son, and grandson boarding the bed of a truck and riding into a town to busk for tips and sleep on the street. The setting reminded me that many of Tierra Caliente's masters still live in abject poverty. Even the region's most revered violinist, the recently deceased don Juan Reynoso, played for tips before winning Mexico's highest arts award.
Vargas, the director, first encountered Tavira while filming his 2004 documentary Tierra Caliente . . . Semueren los que la mueven about the indignities faced by the master musicians of Tierra Caliente. He then chose to feature Tavira in a short version of El Violin.
"First, he told me that he was going to make a short film," Tavira humbly explains.
The success of the short film landed support for the full-length version. "When they liked it," Tavira recalls, "he told me he'd like to make a full-length feature film. I said, 'Why not?'"
"Very quickly, he realized how to do the job," says Vargas, "and very quickly he became just like any other actor."
Elements of Tavira's personality shine through his character—his dignified speech and demeanor, and his passion for spreading the joy of music. Today, several arts programs are addressing the erosion of Calentana culture: Anastasio collects instruments for Fiddles for Tierra Caliente, a project of the Seattle Folklore Society, and Vargas is pushing to attract support for a school in the heart of Tierra Caliente.
For his part, Tavira has been sowing the seeds of cultural renewal for many years. He proudly performs with several of his sons and grandchildren under the name Ãngel Tavira and his Children.
I hope to have the honor of seeing them perform when I arrive for another lesson.
Sincerely,
Matt Sircely
