Friday, August 31, 2012

Peruvian Charango Performance, Mobile Version


Street performers aren’t limited to intersections.

Oldest and I had hopped a bus to the oceanfront.  Given previous horror stories about the public bus system in Lima, I had pocketed enough for cab fare.

It is not unusual at all to see people hop the bus, deliver a sales pitch, and dismount a few minutes later, after making their sales.  Candies and nuts are the most commonly proffered, from impoverished yet entrepreneurial folks who buy in bulk and sell at a small markup.  We have seen costume jewelry, and some nicer silver stuff, and once I saw a man peddling special invisible-ink markers, with a UV-light – this gizmo was designed to detect counterfeit currency.  Since Peru is a leader in this industry (Hey, ya gotta be #1 at something) I wish I had bought one – but I haven’t seen them since.

Entertainers are also common – we have been entertained by comedians, and have considered paying generous tips to awful guitar players if they would just get off the bus.  Once a filthy old man produced a ballad with an old violin that would make Clint Eastwood misty-eyed.

Today’s entertainment was a young woman, perhaps in her mid-twenties, with a charango, an instrument very similar to the ukulele.  As is common here, she had affixed a pan flute to the neck of it, so she could play them both simultaneously.



After this performance, I of course offered her a coin.  50 centimos is common, or about 19c, but I gave her a Sol, or about 38c.  Strangely enough, after she accepted the coin, she reached into a shoulder bag and handed me two small boxes of mint candies.  She had an unusual marketing technique going – she wasn’t selling her music, she was selling candy.  She was just using the music to get ahead of the hundreds of other candy-sellers.

She sold quite a bit of it over the next minute, and then she was gone.

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