Why Not Travel With Fiddle in Central America?

Now that I've arrived in a place that's crying out for some good oldtime fiddle music, it seems the ideal time to address the issue of travel with musical instruments, or in my case, why I haven't traveled with my violin on these recent trips to Central America.

Since we were kids in a growing "Suzuki violin family" I had always traveled with my instrument, whether to Disney World or on other family road trips, but especially to Grandma and Grandpa's.  Our parents felt it was important for us to play impromptu concerts for our relatives and friends, but we also had a fairly strict rule in our family:     we had to practice every day, even on family vacations, as Shinich Suzuki always urged Suzuki families to do.

As a young adult my fiddle became both my "passport and bank account" as I used my musical skills to earn money for travel, eventually becoming a globetrotting busker in 1980s Western Europe and 1990s Southeast and Northeast Asia.

 My instrument and the music I played weren't only a means of earning a living, but also served as a great way to meet people of all stripes--especially other musicans and other buskers who traveled along the same routes that I did.  This was a great advantage to me in my globetrotting as well as in life in general.  My fiddle has taken me inside many situations which never could have happened without the very fact that I was a working musician, and mostly outside my home element in the United States.

These are some of the reasons I have always traveled with my instrument.  But now that I've become a teacher, it's been possible for me to join a world of the ordinary tourist.  I think of it as a type of "accidental tourism," to qoute from the novel and movie of that title, because in doing so I felt way outside of my usual element.

When I first started traveling in Latin America in the late 1990s and early 2000s with a couple trips to Mexico, I continued to take my instrument along even if I didn't use it very much.  Colonial cities such as Guanajuato or San Luis Potosi were made for the itinerant musician, but I didn't do any busking there, preferring instead to hear Mexican groups in the streets and plazas of those cities.

When I returned to Thailand for visits in 2005 and 2006 I continued to bring the instrument because many of my friends there are musicians and it was always possible to sit in and jam with them while they worked.  And on my 2007 visit part of my purpose there was to record some 22 fiddle tunes which I did with a couple collaborators on guitar.

So why not travel with the instrument now?  Really it comes down to a couple logistical issues, starting with post-9/11 hassles and airline baggage restrictions.  For a time in the mid-2000s musicians all over America were complaining that the airlines were, in some cases, forcing them to check their instruments in the cargo hold.  Though that era seems thankfully to have passed, more recently the airlines have become very strict about the size and number of carry on bags they allow, and they charge about $25 for each bag over that they require you to check in.

Secondly, my first two trips to Central America in 2008 and 2009 were only two weeks in length.  Because of some uncertainty regarding the difficulties of bus travel in the region, and since I anticipated that I wouldn't use my instrument very much--if at all--  I decided then to leave the violin home and travel only with a small backpack and a day bag.  This turned out to be the most convenient way to get around, but especially on the airlines and on some of the notorious "chicken" buses (they just keep packing them in like Colonel Sanders) in Guatemala, Nicaragua, and neighboring countries.  I have to admit that questions of security also weighed heavily in my mind:  would I lose my instrument to forgetfulness (a life-long nightmare of mine)?  Even worse, would I lose it to theft?  It didn't seem to be worth the risk for trips of such short duration.  Yet I also must admit that I felt very strange traveling without my fiddle on those two occasions.

What about this trip now, which is seven weeks long?  Well, I'm still dealing with the issues outlined above, but a major difference now is I'm taking a lot more time with this journey, so now the question has reasserted itself.  And with my arrival in Perquin, it seems a shame that I won't be able to get to know the villagers and their children by offering up some fine impromptu fiddle music for their entertainment and enjoyment.  Music has always been a cross cultural way to break the ice and form some connection with strangers.  And that I'm not doing so on this trip is indeed a bit disconcerting for me.

This question certainly will pop up again whenever I decided to take more than a week or two in a given region.  I would like to find a way to travel again with a backpack, a day bag, and an instrument, but for the moment I'm glad I don't have to worry about an expensive violin, and how I'm going to transport it safely on the next crowded, rattletrap of a bus I board.