The daily life in Mexico City is filled with rituals and ancient customs reinterpreted for the present. Living a modern city built over pyramids, the constantly changing shape of symbols evoking historic sentiments is a guide for our people to hold identity while trying to evolve.
Barrel Organ Grinders are part of Mexico city’s downtown visual and sonic landscape. Their craft dates to the 1800’s when these boxes provided the social democratization of music by playing folk songs in public plazas and squares. It was an entertaining act of street culture with dreamlike arpeggios. Today, surviving out of nostalgia, the same out of tune old instruments struggle to coexist in the loud contemporary setting filled with speakers, machine sounds and quick moving people. The job with a daily rent of german equipment, the unappealable assignation of turf and a few families hauling most of the instruments reveal a darker side of cultural inheritance and make us reflect on the cost and contrast of the rituals we hang on to.
The Daily Grind is an exploration on traditions and the underlying systems which hold them together and enable their repetition through time.
To find this story I portrayed the unaware Organ Grinders in their former stand, with a theatrical stage as if they were the only providers of heavenly musical sound, remarking the code of colors which highlights the resemblance with their surroundings appearing as ghost like musicians switching in and out of the shadows of the past.
Their sound is the sound of dreams, the repeating arpeggios of a music box with a sense of circus magic, notes so delicate they travel the streets without revealing its origin.
Bashing through the loud and busy downtown crowds, the listener is captivated before he is aware and ends up facing a sharped dress musician with a begging hat as their mean of survival.
The Mexican society craves rituals & traditions. Having a rich cultural background, the traditions are carried out through time with an overlapping of customs based on rituals. In the Main Square, you can see revivals of old Aztec dances, Organ grinders and TikTok dancers.
The Organilleros use a special uniform based on the soldiers of the Mexican Revolution of 1910. Their elegance is part of their ritual, it justifies their existence and profession, a well-dressed beggar or a Music Maestro, their colors merge up with the buildings and surroundings making them part of the city's landscape.
Old traditions living in the new world, The organ grinders are relentless to leave behind a ritual which brings in todays income.
Mexico City's downtown feels like a trip to the past: the monuments, the buildings and allusions but also the infrastructure. The glimpse of a modern young man is contrasted with a typical 80's bus still in public service.
The job of Organilleros in Mexico remotes to the Revolution days of early 1900, since then, it has become a tradition to play the instrument and while there are labor unions around it, it has also become the structure of mafias, where groups of families gather & rent the boxes, the rights to play them and the specifically assigned corners and plazas. From grandfathers to their grandchildren, the husbands of their daughters and cousins, Organ Grinding creates social links and establishes hierarchies as a modern business.
Old traditions living in the new world, The organ grinders are relentless to leave behind a ritual which brings in todays income.
In the 1900's the Organ music was the only playing sound for the people in the streets, its first approach to music and a means of impeccable entertainment. Today, it’s out of tune and old folk rhythms collapse with the sound of cars, music from the shops and public announcements. The grinder is left to point out a ritual more than its outcome, to crave on a memory by stumbling in the present.
The Organ Grinders are extremely proud of their profession. While they believe they are preserving an important tradition in Mexico it also serves as a steady job with no experience needed for people with dark pasts or no education. They emerge from the shadows to play a role in history.
The Music instruments are gathered in houses around the Downtown area where some Organ grinders are provided a place to stay or where families of Organ Grinders live. Daily, they come and go in two shifts covering the morning and afternoon.
The Organilleros rent their instrument by the day to a few groups and persons gathering tenths of boxes. These instruments were mostly made in Germany during the early 20th century. As a very complex box of music with estimated value of around USD $10,000, they are completely unattainable by the player who becomes tied to playing it to pay the daily rent and earn money to survive.
