Music, says Joey Burns of Calexico, is “part of remembering the dead
in daily life.”
Every time he picks up his old black-and-white accordion, he
remembers his grandfather.
“My mom’s dad was a doctor, a German-American who played accordion,”
Burns says. “He gave me the accordion before he passed. I play it on
all our recordings.”
Playing the old-timey instrument is “challenging what’s cool,” Burns
says. “It’s part of connecting with my grandparents.”
He keeps the accordion in the corner of his dining room, in an old
house in the Tucson barrio. He takes it out of its case. It’s a
beautiful instrument, but Burns doesn’t take it on tour; it’s too
precious. But he’ll play it for the All Souls Calexico concert Sunday
night, Nov. 8, at the Rialto, when the theater will be decked out like
a massive Día de los Muertos shrine.
The concert by Calexico and friends, including Sergio Mendoza y la
Orkesta, Salvador Duran, Amparo Sánchez and Molehill Orkestrah,
will be filmed in its entirety for the indie movie Flor de
Muertos (flower of the dead).
Ordinary Tucsonans at the procession might find themselves in the
movie, which should debut in a year or so. The movie’s director, Danny
Vinik, a Tucsonan best-known for the punk documentary TV Party,
will also film the All Souls Procession and its grand finale.
“The best costumes will be in the movie,” Vinik declares, only
half-joking. His director of photography, Lisa Rinzler, a high flyer
whose credits include work for Wim Wenders and the Hughes brothers,
will have cameras positioned all along the parade route. And the camera
operators will follow Calexico after the procession when the band
members, costumed in early 20th-century woolen suits, may—or may
not—march down Toole Avenue, leading merrymakers to the
Rialto.
“That’s the beauty of it: We don’t know what’s going to happen,”
Burns says with a grin.
Flor de Muertos takes its name from the yellow marigolds that
Mexicans place on the graves of their ancestors on the Day of the
Dead.
Last week, Vinik and Rinzler shot scenes in the abundant marigold
fields around Magdalena. On the actual Día de los Muertos, they
took the members of Calexico—including Burns, John Convertino,
Jacob Valenzuela and the three guest artists—to Nogales, Sonora,
to film in a cemetery by night.
Darting back and forth across the border, the film will be a
“meditation on the cross-cultural collisions around death, with the Day
of the Dead and the All Souls Procession as the base,” says producer
Doug Biggers, executive director of the Rialto Theatre Foundation (and
former editor/publisher of the Tucson Weekly).
The border will serve as a metaphor of that clashing and melding.
And the soundtrack will be Calexico’s music, an unpredictable mix of
Spanish guitar and electric distortion, rolled up with rock ‘n’ roll
and shot through with mariachi brass.
Co-producer Ted Abrams, a city magistrate and a member of the Rialto
and Loft Cinema boards, came up with the idea several years ago. He
imagined a “film with Calexico in the context of the Day of the Dead,
and capturing the procession,” he said.
But Abrams also was familiar with the dark side of border life. He
had worked out on the Tohono O’odham Nation as a public defender, and
daily took the long drive through the desert to Sells, through the most
deadly migrant corridor in the United States.
“Every day, there would be people running across the street with
clothes (in a backpack) and a jug of water,” he says. “Or the Border
Patrol with people face-down.”
A movie, he thought, could be about the “craziness of the border”
but also about the “positiveness of Mexican culture. Without it, Tucson
would not be what it is.”
Director Vinik has just a 10-page script, and he expects to shoot up
to 40 minutes of film for every minute that ends up in the estimated
90-minute movie. What storyline there is continues to evolve. Caught
last week in his barrio office, where the cell phones were buzzing
every few minutes, he tried to put into words his poetic vision for the
movie.
“It will have elements of the ways and passages in people’s lives,”
he says. “Some of it, we’re staging. Some, we’re finding in real life,
weaving and mixing.”
A former manager at Club Congress, Vinik says he considers the All
Souls Procession not so much an offshoot of the Day of the Dead as a
“very Tucson celebration.” But in Tucson, he adds, “We’re very
close to the border.” He’ll look at “how people remember the dead. They
make altars, whether it’s a Latin altar or a few pictures on the
piano.”
Partially a documentary, the film will allude to the tragedy of the
border dead—the final count of migrant bodies found in Southern
Arizona this fiscal year is 206—in a “lyrical and poetic way.”
Likewise, it will look at the border wall through the work of musician
Glenn Weyant, who “plays” the border wall with chopsticks and a cello
bow.
Once he has a rough cut, “We’ll get with Calexico,” and Burns and
company will compose a score.
Biggers predicts the movie, with its unique look at borderlands
culture and the added attraction of a filmed Calexico concert, will
find a slot in movie festivals and a ready market. Proceeds will
benefit a trio of local nonprofits: Many Mouths One Stomach, organizer
of the All Souls Procession, which is strapped for cash; the Loft
Cinema; and the Rialto itself.
Burns and his fellow Calexico-ers have been in movies
before—including I’m Not There, about Bob Dylan’s
life—and he’s happy to bring his music to this project.
At last year’s procession, he says, he was reminded of his own
beloved dead.
Mexico has “more of a natural way of looking at death,” Burns
continues. “It makes sense that the downtown arts scene sees this and
makes it their own. It’s about paying respects, about being together,
about what is so important in life, remembering those who have left us.
It’s not just a parade. It’s about remembrance.
And then he picks up his grandfather’s accordion again and begins to
play.
This article appears in Nov 5-11, 2009.