Troubadours and country tunes, By Mauri Formigoni, A humble, By Elena Arriola

The Tuna Tradicional, local troubadours who carry on the rich tradition of songs from 17th-century Mexico and Spain, delight audiences with their instrumental renditions as well as their vocals. Equally engaging is Carolina Miller, a country singer and songwriter, as well as an animal lover, who has performed throughout Europe and the United States. She is heard regularly on US radio shows, and she is currently working on a CD of Mexican songs. Her latest production is "Grandmother Doll," a collection of gentle songs for parents and grandparents to sing with their children.

Tickets for the SPA benefit concert are available from 10am to 1pm every day in the Jardín. Cost is 60 pesos.

We continue to increase the numbers of animals we take in, and we also adopt more each year. We are planning to increase our facility, improve our cages and visiting rooms, add new equipment to the surgery, recruit more volunteers and have the opportunity to nominate new board members in July and vote for them in August. New board members may be voted in every two years or re-voted if the organization so desires. We need your ideas for fundraising, organizing, building and, as always, adopting more animals. We have begun a program with the city headed by Miguel Kegel together with Amigos de Animales. We work with children from the ages of 7 to 17 years who want to learn how to treat animals kindly, bathe them, walk them, feed them and clean them. We are working on Thursdays after the Jardín visits to continue with seven eager children who may want to make animal care their life's work and are willing to learn everything they can about caring for homeless animals.

Our adoption rates continue to grow every year. Thankfully, we no longer have any old-timer animals still seeking someone after many years. We do not kill animals because they are too old or have been at the S.P.A. for too long. At times, we ask people to hold onto their animals for a few days until a cage becomes available. Animals that exhibit signs of fatal diseases or arrive in great pain and cannot be treated successfully are put down humanely. This year alone, we have adopted out 220 animals, many going to California, Germany, Manhattan, Texas and Denver, and we hope to work with other organizations to encourage this. In one year's time we have spayed and neutered 500 animals, both as inpatients and visiting patients. Each year, we increase adoptions and the numbers of animals we spay and neuter. The work continues every day, seven days a week, 365 days a year. There is a great need for your help.

Please join us for a pleasant day in the country with good people and good music and help us help the animals. We all benefit from this! The day may make you homesick, and it may introduce you to a new form of music you missed in your adolescence.

You may donate more than the requested ticket amount, and you are always welcome to help in any way you care to. For questions, call 154-5930.

Tuna Tradicional and Carolina Miller Concert
Benefit concert for the SPA, Sunday, June 11, 5pm
Pedro Paramo 33, El Mirador, Los Frailes
60 pesos, tickets sales daily at the Jardín, 10am - 1pm

A humble, wonderful present
By Elena Arriola

Creative works are born with a temperament of transgression: Chords that demand the presence of words and words that do not conform with the passive sobriety of ink and paper, poems that seek to create themselves with more noble materials as music or chant.
It doesn't matter whether Sibila Hasse's creations start in the rhythm or the letter, or whether when they are finished they turn into musical poems or poetic songs.

The truth is, they have the deep simplicity of spontaneous creation, without pretension or aspiring to be similar to conventional melodies.

Sibila's sound reconciles the desperate will with quiet resignation; the nonconformist primal scream with the silence of offering surrender and total renunciation: "Please close my eyes again-but this time to the eternal blue."

Songs of sarcastic complaint coexist with others of silent abandon; the rebel's impetus and the humble wisdom of contemplation are united in chord and voice always reflective and melancholic: "I like to look through the window, feel how life goes.…"

Hasse's music doesn't sound like anything I can recall except herself, and though I know her passions (Dylan, Chavela, Led Zeppelin, Nick Cave), they all sink unnoticed into her songs.
But these are not the reasons to attend a concert by Hasse. The reasons are only there, in front of the artist, in the presence of her internal world that offers us a humble but wonderful present.

I speak about Sibila's world from my personal connection to her-from where there is no doubt about her expressiveness, regardless of the medium in her hand. But most of all, I speak from the point of view of the spectator who waits for provocation from any artist.
As a satisfied observer, Hasse has fulfilled all of my expectations.

(Translation from Spanish: William J. Schachte and Kevin Brian Kearney.)

Concert by Sibila Hasse
Saturday, June 10, 8pm, Teatro Santa Ana, Reloj 50, 50 pesos