Guatemalan Musical Instruments
To play this game you simply try to name as many musical instruments as you can from the musical stand above (you …
To play this game you simply try to name as many musical instruments as you can from the musical stand above (you …
In the photo above you can observe several percussion traditional Guatemalan musical instruments like chinchines (the black rattles made from gourds, seeds …
On the weekends you can enjoy traditional Guatemalan marimba music thanks to this family of Kakchiquel musicians. Of course, with the new …
On the weekends or on the most important date for the county and town fair you are bound to find live music, …
Live marimba music makes this Guatemalan family happy as they listen to their favorite songs. You can listen to the live marimba …
When it comes to popular religious celebrations Guatemalan syncretism knows no limits. Watch these short video clips that include diablos, devils, moros …
First of all, I want to wish a very happy Guatemalan Independence Day to all the loyal readers out there! With each …
As I have asked before, how can two simple musical instruments playing uncomplicated and repetitive rhythms create a profound, hauntingly, bewitching and …
In Guatemala, turrón or meringue is the word for well-beaten egg whites and sugar. Now, what’s the difference between merengue and meringue? …
As I have mentioned before, in Guatemala we still celebrate holidays on the actual date they happen to fall on. For instance, …
Here’s your Guatemalan Spanish Word of the Day: turrón or meringue is the Guatemalan word for well-beaten egg whites and sugar. In …
A bakery is not the place where you would expect to listen to live music, right? But, then again, you probably haven’t …
If you want to do street photography you have to be quick and be ready at all times because you never know …
I wonder what would be a good translation for espumillas? A literal translation would be little sponges, but a proper word is …
The Holy Week in Guatemala is a full five senses overwhelming experience. As you follow the processions all five senses are bombarded …
First of all, click the play button below. It’s the sound track for this entry. It’s been a while since I presented …
Marimba music is so deeply rooted into the Guatemala psyche that even the few of us that do not like it, recognize it and feel it; especially if we are abroad, as far as Kinshasa, Congo or in the good old U.S.A. For sure, you can hear marimba music on Calle del Arco on the weekends in La Antigua Guatemala.
The Latin American lottery is played with cardboards of nine images, each cardboard is different, bean or maize counts, and a person calling out aloud the name of the images: La Chalupa, El Borracho, El Catrín, La Campana, El Cantaro, et-cetera. Whoever gets all nine images called out and accounted for with beans or maize seeds wins the lottery, if, and only if they scream with all their lungs LO-TE-RIIIIAAAAA.
A recent addition to the Guatemalan Fair zoo is the pizza kiosk. Just like many other aspect of modern Guatemala idiosyncrasy, pizza has come to stay, but it must evolve, just like chinese food. So the typical Guatemalan town fair pizza is made from a less tasteful dough, only mozzarella cheese and ham; nothing more. You get your slice and normally ad ketchup to it. The Guatemalan town fair pizza stand is, almost invariable, managed by one or tow young indigenous teenagers or young adults with a taste for extremely heavy rock metal music which they blast from a portable boom box. The pizza booth may have posters describing their pepperoni or salami pizza even though they only sell ham pizza. Go figures!
Ferris wheels are another element of the Guatemalan fair. There is at least one Ferris wheel, but more often two or three of different sizes. The Ferris wheel is known here by these names rueda de Chicago(Chicago Wheel), rueda de la fortuna (wheel of fortune) and vuelta al mundo (around the world). Fairs are made up by all kinds of ambulant stands. Fairs are like accordions, they grow or shrink depending of the size of the community or town. All these photos belong to the San Pedro Las Huertas, a small village just outside and belonging to La Antigua Guatemala. At the end of July, La Antigua Guatemala will have its massive fair in honor of Saint James or Santiago.
In November 1st and 2nd Guatemala, like many other catholic countries, celebrates the Day of the Dead (Día de los Difuntos) and the All Saints Day (Día de los Santos). The cemeteries, from the most exclusive to the most modest and humble, become overwhelmed with people bringing flowers, crosses, food and even music (sometimes Mariachi music) to their dead relatives.
Live marimba music at Calle del Arco in La Antigua Guatemala is one those things you can enjoy on the weekends. Besides, …
In the mercado municipal of Antigua Guatemala you can find quite a few booths that offer movie selections similar to what you …
Of all God’s creatures, there is only one that cannot be made slave of the lash. That one is the cat. If …
Today AntiguaDailyPhoto.com is celebrating its fifth anniversary. Also, the CityDailyPhoto community around the world is having the monthly theme day which is …
Llanto sobre la ciudad colonial. About four weeks ago I declared that this is The Rainiest Year Ever out of frustration with …
A few weeks ago I introduced you to the recycling truck of La Antigua Guatemala and hi-lighted the fact that it runs …
The color red is the official color of Nochebuena and Navidad in Guatemala and nothing exemplifies this better than the Pascua plants, poinsettia flowers… TAP to read the entire post and see the full size photo.
Every week there’s something exciting to experience in Antigua Guatemala. This Thursday for instance we had Pre-Hispanic Dances in front of the …
For the Santiago Apóstol celebrations the municipal authorities decided to set up an effigy of said saint on the second story of …
Here’s your illustrated Spanish words of the day: Noche Buena, literal good night, for Christmas Eve. Noche Buena is such an important …
Oh Guatemalans, we are a weird, confused bunch. How do we celebrate a birthday, well instead of playing marimba music, we hire …
A town fair is not a fair without the churros. A churreria is the place where they make churros; [CHOOR-roh] Similiar to …
As every Día de la Raza I would like to share with you the faces of cultural resistance in a world where …
The night of February 1 was chosen as the inauguration of XII Festival Internacional de Cultura Paiz to be held for ten …
Calle del Arco is the place to be on the weekends in Antigua Guatemala if you want to listen to live music. …
On January 21, Under the name of Subida por la vida, there were over 8,000 people climbing Volcán de Agua (Water Volcano) …
La Antigua Guatemala is full of hidden treasures which are visible at plain view. One must be ready to look for them …
I like the ceramic “doble vía” signs and metal frames in La Antigua Guatemala. To be honest, I like all the ceramic …
In Guatemala, October 12 is a national holiday known as Día de la Raza or Day of the Race. October 12 is …
Guatemalans are not known for being patriotic; yeah Guatever! Nevertheless, we do have our patriotic symbols like El Quetzal, our most beautiful …
As you walk around Casa Santo Domingo, you find antique and contemporary artworks one after the other without disrupting harmony and a …
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A few years back LD ranted about all the people she came across wearing earbuds while riding the public transit buses in …
Cutting a cake for an anniversary is quite commom through out the world, including Guatemala, however, here we also have an alternative: …
How do you get people infected with good stuff? I mean, it is difficult for foreigners to visit Guatemala, and, sometimes, that’s …
The wonderful celebration of the 40th Anniversary of the National Council for the Protection of Antigua was held on Nov 20th at …
School bands and parades were the norm to celebrate Independence Day before the December 29 signing of The Guatemalan Peace Accords of …
Below you can browse the portfolio of the photos or stories in other places beyond AntiguaDailyPhoto. AntiguaDailyPhoto referenced or talked about elsewhere …
How can simple instruments and uncomplicated and repetitive sounds create a profound, hauntingly, bewitching and fascinating musical experience? How can Guatemalans explain …
Day one of year four. On the first anniversary of La Antigua Guatemala I shared my goal with you: My idea was …
Oh February, what a magnificent month to visit La Antigua Guatemala. First, you get to enjoy the Día del Cariño y Amistad …
It doesn’t matter what kind of meeting it is, the ice cream men and their carts are always ready to sell you …
Play it and wear it with pride, I am sure, is the advice this father tells his sons. Did I mention resilience …
Regardless of how I may feel about the marimba, this instrument and its waling sound are very important to Guatemalans all over. …
In Guatemala and many countries in Latin America today, May 3rd, is celebrated the Day of the Holy Cross and also the …
Just like the Christmas Season comes with its own set of smells, flavors and color palette, so does the Holy Week celebrations. I can bring to you still photos, slide shows, video clips and sounds. But I can not bring you the smells. Like I said back in the Virgin of Guadalupe Day, … the incredible power of the sense of smell can detonate nostalgic memories… if only the smells could be seized like Patrick Süskind suggested in his masterpiece Das Parfum (Perfume). How could one go about imprisoning the mixture of the smells of copal incense, corozo palms, fireworks, pine needles, moisten saw dust, fresh tropical fruits, palm flower arrangements and sweat into a digital format readily available to download onto your own computer?
The last presentation in the three-day Festival de Jazz en Antigua was the Jordi Albert Projet doing a tribute to Chet Baker …
Every once in a while is good to stop eating Guatemalan food and eat something healthy, like a chef salad from La Fuente restaurant. A salad and the New Yorker Magazine is what I consider a healthy lunch. The article about an unknown photographer by the name of Eugene De Salignac and his photo of painters spreading out like musical notes, on the Brooklyn Bridge, over the sky line of New York, was most definitely the best dessert I have had in a long while.
Even though the new Guatemalan President Álvaro Colom Caballeros, a 57-year-old industrial engineer and textile businessman, was sworn in for a 4-year term in Guatemala City in a ceremony at the Miguel Ángel Asturias National Theater, ceremonies and celebrations were held in the rest of the country too.
New Year’s Eve Celebrations in La Antigua Guatemala:
For starters there are many things that make New Year’s Eve similar and different than Christmas’ Eve. If Christmas’ Eve is celebrated with the family at home at your parents’ home; New Year’s Eve can be celebrated anywhere: a discotheque, a park, the beach or La Calle del Arco, a popular venue in La Antigua Guatemala
Well, well, what we have here… what’s up with that, why are Guatemalans so enchanted with the infamous chicken bus. I mean what makes Guatemalans take on the crappy junk and retired school buses from up north and give them a second life as public transit chicken bus, mobile libraries chicken bus and now as a marimba orquesta mobile unit chicken bus.
Cross-culturization is happening so fast that Guatemala may seemed foreign to those Guatemalans who have lived a few years outside its borders. Walt Disney figures and just about any comic hero like Spiderman, Superman, Wolverine, et-cetera are being absorbed by the popular culture and mixed with their own traditional icons like kites and parades for town fairs. But this cross-culturization is happening at all levels and not only with U.S. trivial merchandise, but with Mexican culture, music, food, novelas (soap operas), et-cetera. For instance, a few year back, I took a photograph of menu board in Panajachel, Lake Atitlán, which advertised the Desayuno Chapín (Guatemalan breakfast) with eggs a la Mexican style
The Guatemalan word for kite is barrilete. Papalote is the most often heard word in Spanish for kite, but in Guatemala barrilete is what people use. The kites on sale at this convenience store or tienda are Q2/$.25. The kite that the little boy was holding yesterday was bought from this store.
Boy oh boy, bagels, English muffins, exotic pastries, all the cookies in the rainbow, the best coffee and Wi-Fi internet access can almost make you forget you are in a Spanish colonial town embedded between coffee plantations, flower farms and volcanoes in the central mountain range of this tiny banana baby-exporting republic known as Guatemala.
While driving over Calle Chipilapa, I was lucky several school marching bands practicing for an upcoming student band competition in La Antigua …
Mother’s Day is celebrated in Guatemala on May 10th. Where do Guatemalans take their mom to dine on her day? But of …
One of the things that I like most about publishing the Antigua Guatemala Daily Photo and visiting the other Daily Photos Cities …
Well, just two days ago I told you how the signing of The Guatemalan Peace Accords of 1996 had put an end …
School bands and parades were the norm to celebrate Independence Day before the December 29 signing of The Guatemalan Peace Accords of …