Metro Musicians
by Sonia Pathmedevan
The Metro. A convenient means of getting around the city. However you are often amongst tired and sometimes smelly commuters. One is also a captive audience for many metro musicians and beggars that enter with bandages on their feet and other body parts recounting their financial woes and asking one for their contribution. (I’m confused, unlike the United States, I thought socialized medical coverage provides for all legal or non-documented illegal). As far as I am concerned, if you try to do something productive, such as provide entertainment based on your talents (or sometimes perceived talents), then you would be more inclined to get a tip versus preying on people’s guilt by telling them your sad story. Almost everyone has a sad story in them, but most of us at least try other means of resolving it versus asking strangers for a hand out.
It was a rainy day when I first heard him play on the metro and since music always moves me, the sounds coming from that instrument warmed my heart. I was fascinated with the “tambal” (pronounced “sambal”). I had never seen anything like it before. I gladly tipped him $1 Euro. He caught my ear because, unlike others, he played exceptionally well.
I ran into him two more times. The second time was at the 24 hour Chocolateria where churros and chocolate sobered up the group I was with after a night of drinking. I had run out of cigarettes and had offered a coin to someone sitting in the table next to my group so that I could buy a cigarette. An hour later, my group was still in depths of a philosophical discussion. Trying to stay awake, although all I wanted was to get to my humble abode, I looked around for another cigarette. Smokers can tell, I guess, when one is “jonesing” for a cigarette. He sat two tables away and he held up his pack and questioned with his eyes if I wanted one. This was a cordial gesture, no other intentions were demonstrated, just one smoker’s kindness to another who ran out of cigarettes at three in the morning. The third time, I was at Fuencarral on the way to meet some friends and he was just emerging from the metro with his Tambal instrument. The journalist in me rose up and I asked him if I could do an interview.
We met up at the Chocolateria and chatted over a “cafe con leche templada”.
32 yr Gelle Marian Cocos, a Romanian metro musician, lives in Hostal Rubio. We communicated in Spanish, Italian and my elementary Romanian vocabulary (which surprised him). Being the oldest son, it is his responsibility to maintain his family back in Romania. He returns to Romania twice a year to see “la mama” and his family. His eyes tear up when he mentions “la mama”. I see a gentle soul in him. Due to the poor living conditions and economic crisis in Romania, he has had to come to Madrid to earn some money to sustain his family back home. The story of many immigrants here in Spain. He comes from a family of musicians. His dad plays violin and his 15-year old brother plays the accordion. He plays the “tambal” that looks like a portable type of xylophone. In actuality, the tambal is a Romanian instrument that is a trapeze shaped soundboard with 20 to 35 courses of strings which are struck with two wooden hammers and hung from the shoulders by straps. In English speaking countries it is known as the dulcimer. It was popularized in 20th Century Romania when it was taken up by the gypsy musicians.
If we are to believe him, he earns $300 Euro a day. He added that it was money earned honestly. At the time of the interview I did not have any preconceived ideas of Romanians. I have since learnt, as a result of the shocked responses I have received when I tell this story, that Romanians have a bad reputation in Madrid. They are perceived to be “gypsies, tramps and thieves”. However, my pockets weren’t picked (in fact, he paid for the coffee and bought me a pack of cigarettes) and I didn’t get my camera ripped off (although I was asked how much it cost).
As far as earning $300 a day, is that possible? It certainly is more than many English teachers earn. Well, if you go from one car to the other on the metro and work 12 hours a day as he does, it is conceivable that you would see at least 300 people and if each gave you an Euro….hmmm, maybe I’m in the wrong field.