A City Of Music
But the point of this piece isn’t to ramble on about my band and our new EP (which you can listen to here, by the way… apologies for the shameless plug.). I want to talk about the abundance of live music in Mexico City. Upon reflection, it’s one of the reasons that moving to this city has meant so much to me. I love live music. I go to see it as much as I can. Everything from punk and metal to folk music to mariachi and polka music. There’s so much of it here and I’ve been doing a lot of thinking as to why. The simplest explanation is that it’s part of the culture. People here love to celebrate and dance and a good band can help facilitate that. But so can a DJ with a good playlist, so it has to be more than that. One theory I have is that the climate helps. Back home in Canada, as well as large swaths of the United States, for at least half the year it’s just too darn cold to venture outside at night for anything other than an extra special event. Sure, I’d be willing to brave the cold in January to see Bob Dylan, but I’m far less likely to get weighed down by all my winter gear just to go check out some local band at the bar down the street. Here, that isn’t really a problem. A light jacket and an umbrella will get you through the coldest nights.Big Numbers
And on top of all of that, there’s the sheer number of people. Mexico City proper has about 8.84 million people, while the Greater Mexico City population is 21.3 million people. The entire population of Canada is just over 36 million people. The concentration of people here means there are simply more eyes to see musicians perform. Couple that with the number of bars and restaurants in this city and it starts to seem silly that there aren’t more musicians plying their trade. Indeed, there are much more opportunities here for musicians than I was used to back home. Within my first six months here I was contributing backing tracks for the Mexican version of The Voice and sitting in as a session player for a famous Mexican singer’s Christmas album. It helped that there weren’t really any other banjo players around, but it has also proven indicative of the place music has in this city. The culture and climate create the perfect conditions for it to thrive.Ty Trumbull, from his base in Mexico City, covers the entrepreneur’s journey and business continuity for ChannelE2E. Each Tuesday or so, he offers views about his adopted hometown — his personal Dispatches from Mexico City. Oh, but sometimes he pops up in his home nation of Canada.
