African Drumming Concert - Etnopercusión

I've now been back in Madrid for over two weeks and am back into the swing of things. What with flying home and meeting friends and family over the holidays I completely forgot about my blog so there are a couple of things I'll be uploading that may seem a bit out of date. The first is the African drumming concert that my friend Cat performed in. Both Annies and I met at the metro station and set off to find what we thought was going to be a concert hall but turned out to be a kind of bar/pub/club underground.

We waited for the show to start on a raised platform to the side of the dance floor, watching the crowd below us. The audience was made up of people of all ages and nationalities and judging by the eclectic nature of the show the organisers seemed to want to cater for everybody. There were crazy international folk dances (one involving a rather dodgy looking Israeli sequence with everyone in Jewish wigs and rubbing their fingers together indicating money...), an impromptu line dancing class that everyone was invited to take part in and at the end a chorus of the theme tune to the Lion King accompanied by ukuleles. Cat's drumming group took to the stage and I made sure I filmed it as I'd promised to try so that her family back home could watch too. I'm not sure about the quality of the video but I'll post it below so that you can all see as well:

We all had a great time and when I arrived back in Madrid after Christmas Annabel and I went to a free drumming class that each audience member was entitled to. After an hour and a half of frantic drum bashing we left feeling pretty dazed but happy and with the beats still reverberating in our heads.