Notes on a culture displaced

Many evenings my wife and I stroll the waterfront, greeting friends along the away and taking in the evening's sights and sounds. One thing we can't help but to notice in recent years is how our local wandering musicians are having a harder and harder time making a living because it seems like every restaurant with any foreign tourists hires its own musicians, most who aren't from here or aren't even Mexican. So now our local musician friends sadly sit idle most evenings growing poorer, and their families are suffering because fewer tourists are hiring them to hear their songs. It breaks our hearts to see our beautiful culture slowly but surely being displaced and lost forever.

It used to be almost every afternoon during siesta and every evening we would be serenaded by the sound of local musicians playing romantic baladas at restaurants on the beach in front of our home, one of the little pleasures we treasured so much over the decades, but in recent years we hardly ever hear a local musician play any more. And even Mexican musicians from other places are playing music that frankly sounds foreign to Zihuatanejo (actually heard "Oh When the Saints Come Marching In" the other night, complete with loud drunks accompanying, thank you so much).

The congo and bongo drum music mentioned in another thread is just one such example.

If any of you even give a sh*t about any of this, maybe you can help by showing a preference for restaurants without house musicians where wandering musicians play. I don't know. I mean, y'all can hear U.S. music anytime, can't you? But it's not every day you can hear live Zihuatanejo musicians play the songs of our local culture, even if most of you can't understand the words (or is that what the problem is?). But hurry because it seems there are fewer duos and trios left, and I don't know how much longer they can hold out with such little work as our seasons grow shorter and more out-of-towners bring their foreign culture with them.