Buenos Aires is far enough south to be in the temperate zone, which separates this city, and Santiago, in Chile, just across the Andes, from their tropical neighbors just to the north. There are huge psychological separations too—the Argentines tend to see themselves as more European, and by inference, as more sophisticated, than their Brazilian neighbors. Naturally, ahem, musicians and other creative types don’t carry this snobbish attitude around, but in general it is felt and seen in the architecture, cuisine, and clothing.

Though both southern Brazil and Argentina were settled by successive waves of Italians and Germans, among others, the Argentines probably deny that there are also African elements that make up their culture, while in Brazil to the north those elements are still strong and visible and the Brazilians are proud, sometimes, of their African blood and culture. In Argentina the Africans all but vanished, but in truth their influence remains, camouflaged and denied, but intact.

Built on the floodplain of La Plata River, the city is fairly flat, and with the temperate weather and the streets more or less on a grid it is perfect for cycling around. Despite this I could count on one hand the number of locals I saw on bikes. Why? Would I inevitably find out the reason no one else was pedaling around here? Was there some dark secret explanation about to pounce on me? Am I a naive fool? Is it because the driving is so reckless, the theft so rampant, the gas so cheap, and a car such a necessary symbol of status? Is it so uncool to ride a bike here that even messengers find other ways of getting around?

I don’t think it is any of those reasons. I think the idea of cycling is simply off the radar here. The cycling meme hasn’t been dropped into the mix, or it never took hold. I am inclined to agree with Jared Diamond, who claims in his book Collapse that people develop cultural affinities for certain foods, ways of getting around, clothes, and habits of being that become so ingrained that they will, in his telling, persist in maintaining their habits even to the point of driving themselves and sometimes their whole civilization to extinction. He gives a lot of historical evidence—for example, an eleventh-century Norse settlement in Greenland where the settlers persisted in farming cattle, as impractical as it was there. The cuisine or habits of the local Inuit were never adopted or adapted—their diet and ways were just not culturally acceptable—and eventually the settlers all died. This was not a quick settlement either—it lasted for over four hundred years—long enough for them to convince themselves that they were doing okay. Of course, in the era of total reliance on fossil fuels and global warming, Diamond’s history lessons have a scary resonance. So, while we would like to think that people can’t really be so stupid as to wipe themselves out—with the means of survival right in front of them—they can, and they certainly do.

I’m not saying cycling is a matter of survival—though it might be part of how we survive in the future—but here in Buenos Aires it seems so much a commonsense way of getting around that cultural abhorrence is the only explanation I can come up with as to why there are no other cyclists on the streets. My cycling is considered so unusual here that it is newsworthy—it is written up in the local papers.

I mainly visit this city when I am performing, though I arrange my schedule in order to have time to look around. Over the years I have become slightly familiar with some of the music and musicians here. They are some of my favorites in the world, as is this city.

Fishermen lean on the railing. There are kiosks at regular intervals that grill meats for truck drivers and others who want a quick lunch. Bags of charcoal piled by the sides of the kiosks will supply the heat to grill blood sausages, steaks, hamburgers, and various other cuts of the legendary Argentine flesh that sizzles during the early part of the day in anticipation of the lunch crowd. Many of the kiosks advertise choripan, a conjunction of chorizo (sausage) and pan (bread). There’s another offering called vaciopan, which literally means empty sandwich, but it also is a cut off the cow. This is not a place for vegetarians.

Mauro, who plays percussion with me, said, with a disappointed tone, that he felt Santiago, where we were earlier on this trip, was very much an “American” city (meaning North American). I can see what he means: it’s pretty, it’s clean, and there are lots and lots of glass office buildings and little of the messy character, charm, or funk of Mauro’s native Brazil. Mauro pointed out that Chile was one of the only countries that didn’t have slavery. What he might have been implying was that it was the Africans who give South American culture much of its character. Being Brazilian, he would say that. Certainly much of the unique music on this continent, and subsequently of many others these days, is a hybrid of European, indigenous, and African styles. It has been argued that even tango has some African in its family tree. Though musical roots and influences are not so hard to hear, at least to me, cultural influences extend in deeper and subtler ways—in grammar and syntax, in humor, in attitudes toward the body and sex—that are harder to tease apart from every other influence. The past is part of the weave, but often we see mainly the overall surface pattern.

Later that night I run into Nito, a member of the local band Los Autenticos Decadentes. They are a large band that came up in the ’80s along with Los Fabulosos Cadillacs. (As one might imagine, the Cadillacs name is meant both ironically and sincerely; here one can love North American pop culture and distance oneself from it at the same time.) Both bands were initially inspired by the Two Tone bands in the UK and the ska scene there (Madness, the Specials, Selector), as were No Doubt and many other bands around the world. Those short-lived UK bands have more bastard children than is often acknowledged. Both of these Argentine bands rapidly evolved and began to incorporate local influences. Los Decadentes fell in love with regional popular styles—working-class dance music and murga, a kind of carnival music—to which they added contemporary lyrics, while Los Fabulosos Cadillacs incorporated more Afro Uruguayan and tango sounds and rhythms.

Nito and I had crossed paths years ago in New York City when Los Decadentes performed at a disco and I lent them an accordion. Back then the band was viewed by locals here in Buenos Aires as a kind of theatrical comedy band—a bunch of rowdy goofballs, which they more or less were at first. Musically, they weren’t taken seriously, though soon enough they learned to play, stay in tune, and write amazingly catchy songs in a variety of rootsy and popular genres—if you include disco anthems as roots music, and I do, since disco pop is heard in bars everywhere alongside rancheras and cumbias. They soon had hits and became fairly popular.

I ran into Nito in Mexico City after a show I did there, and he amazed the Mexicans with his knowledge of narco corridos, the ballads sung in the north of that country that glamorize the exploits of drug dealers and traffickers. One could draw a parallel in contemporary rap lyrics with, for example, Ghostface Kil lah’s song “Kilo,” but these Mexican songs are performed with accordions and guitars. Nito knew the words to all of them. Now, here in BA, he’s handed me a pile of CDs of Argentine and Paraguayan cumbia bands. I didn’t know such bands existed in those countries (those rhythms are usually identified with Colombia or Mexico, not with these countries farther south). There’s even a bachata band here, something I thought only existed on the Caribbean island of Santo Domingo. He says Paraguay is the Jamaica of South America, though what he means by that is slightly unclear. He’s not referring to the dope. I think he believes they’ve evolved an original slant on music and have a voracious appetite for whatever they hear, from wherever. Their own popular music incorporates and absorbs a lot of music they hear, but they process it and give it their own twist, and it’s hugely influential—at a grassroots level. The music these Paraguayan bands play is not sophisticated in the accepted sense. It’s trashy music for the two D’s—dancing and drinking—but as often happens these outsiders—the musicians from Buenos Aires—are recuperating this low-class music and re-presenting it to a new audience, the way the British appropriated U.S. blues and Detroit techno and sold it back to the United States.

Nito attempts to tell me what the various cumbia CDs he gave me represent. He says, “The words are deep, important, like Leonard Cohen.” Somehow I doubt that it is the appropriate analogy, as this musical style is usually the favorite of poor people, and it reflects their concerns, as rap did at one time in North America. But I can see what he means. There is deep poetry here, in the way we think of blues as being deeply poetic, within its self-imposed structural and verbal parameters. Others might claim that Tupac or Biggie Smalls were likewise unacknowledged deep poets working within the parameters of vernacular speech and phrasing.

Nito said that rock and roll is now viewed as the music of the big companies, as it emanates from the large, usually northern, wealthy countries, and therefore it is no longer considered to be the voice of the people—not even of the people where it comes from. I have to agree that seen from here, contemporary rock is the product of foreign, often North American, multinationals. Their marketing muscle has made it bland, predictable, and ubiquitous. It’s a corporate product that is (or was) being exported. No matter what or who the artist may be, no matter how well-intentioned someone like me might think he is, our music, when it is sold here, is invariably tainted by who is selling it and where it comes from. That said, international “rock” was an important part of the musical diet for a generation here. It’s in everyone’s blood. It’s a lingua franca, even if places like Argentina, far from the northern “source” of rock, no longer look to the north for musical news and inspiration.

Oddly enough, when I first played here it was with a large Latin band, which must have been a bit of a shock to those expecting to hear “Psycho Killer.” We did a lot of salsa, cumbia, and sambas. I did do “Psycho Killer,” but with two berimbaus—a Brazilian one-stringed “rhythm” instrument that is usually associated with the martial art/dance capoeira. I was a little shocked when I played that concert. I thought for sure the various grooves and flavors of Latin music would all be familiar here, even if the current generation didn’t play them, but they weren’t. I was under the mistaken impression that those infectious Latin rhythms I hear all over New York City would be familiar all over South America. Boy was I wrong. Although there are a few—a very few—Latin American artists whose appeal extends across the whole continent (and often to Europe as well) most of the regional styles have, well, regional audiences. There’s a salsa, cumbia, bachata, and reggaeton audience that encompasses the Caribbean basin along with immigrants from there who have settled in New York, but except for a couple of artists, that music, which was for decades a strong part of New York’s musical landscape, didn’t penetrate south of the equator.

So it turned out in a small way that Mr. Psycho Killer was bringing salsa and samba to Buenos Aires! I imagined I would be bringing coals to Newcastle (or “sand to the beach,” as the Brazilians would say). I imagined I had made a big effort to import something that was already familiar or available in copious quantities, but it seems the world is not as simple as that.

Now many of the bands here have increasingly incorporated local grooves and styles into what was once essentially a version, however creative, of northern rock. This, some think, may limit their international audience (though I tend to think the reverse is true). Nito says that he is content knowing that their band may never be “international.” He’s proud that they represent the culture and identity of this region, which he knows may limit them commercially but he feels is right and proper.

I pass through Recoleta. It’s a little like the Upper East Side in Manhattan or the Sixteenth Arrondissement in Paris: elegant, older, European-style apartment buildings with ornate carvings; well-off patricians, mostly older women and gentlemen; fancy clothing boutiques; and upscale restaurants. Here is the cemetery where Evita is buried. The graves in the cemetery are mostly aboveground, as they are in New Orleans, but with a huge difference: these are big, ostentatious tombs—they could be the tombs of kings and queens. The caskets and their inhabitants are even visible through the glass doors of many of these “little palaces.” For that’s exactly what these are—big houses. This place is a neighborhood, a barrio, exclusively for the dead. A whole city, a necropolis. In many of the “homes” one can also see stairs going down into semidarkness where I can just make out more shelves holding more inhabitants. This is where I presume the previous generation “lives.”

In another necropolis—la Chacarita—there is the grave of Carlos Gardel, the famous tango artist who died in a plane crash. The tomb is covered in plaques commemorating his influential work and inspiring example.

There are long avenues of “buildings” in varied architectural styles—art deco, classic Greco-Roman, gothic, modern—block after block, an entire metropolis just for the dead, built on a slightly reduced scale from the real city outside the high walls that surround the cemetery. A few men sweep and clean away dead flowers, while a few visitors wander aimlessly, and a few bring fresh flowers.

Diego, it turns out, is also friends with Juana Molina, whom I invited to join me on my most recent U.S. tour. I’d heard Juana’s second CD, Segundo, and loved it, though I didn’t know her history at that time. Her dad, Horacio Molina, was a great musician, and when Juana was a little girl the likes of Vinicius De Moraes and Chico Buarque passed through their house. The family eventually left Argentina and spent six years exiled in Paris during the dictatorship. Later, with her siblings, she showed a gift for comedy and for inhabiting characters, so before long she had her own TV show called Juana and Her Sisters. She might be compared to Tracey Ullman if one needs a reference. Success proved to be wonderful but also a trap and a huge detour from the music that she had always hoped to write, so a few years ago she stopped doing the TV show and began to perform her quiet, peculiar, and wonderful songs.

The local public hated her initial foray into music. They heckled her and shouted, “Be funny!” Luckily, Ms. Molina heard that she was getting played on the influential public radio station KCRW in L.A., so she moved there and began to acquire a small following. I don’t know how she is received in Buenos Aires now, but with glowing reviews from the north under her belt the locals might be ready to have another listen. Her music is serious, quiet, and experimental, for want of a better word—she didn’t leave TV to be a pop star, that much is obvious.

Sierra also had a photo of another indigenous group, which he had paid to dye their hair blond—a heavily loaded symbol in much of Latin America. In another piece, a truck was paid to block a highway for five minutes. People were paid to fill a room, to hold up a wall, to masturbate. I found this work disturbing. I wasn’t sure if these people were simply being exploited or if the exploitation, being so obvious, was instead ironic and a criticism of the exploitation that exists all around. The ambiguity, for me, was unsettling.

Another artist, Francis Alÿs, a Belgian who now lives in Mexico, paid five hundred Peruvians to form, side by side, a huge line, and they were then instructed to shovel the sand of a massive dune that lies in the desert south of Lima as they inched forward, step-by-step, continually shoveling. Theoretically they were moving the whole dune, imperceptibly, as the massive human chain of laborers made its way across the hill. “Maximum effort—minimum results” was his catchphrase summarizing the effort.

I assume that in some way these works are a comment on both the exploitation of the local labor force and the gulf between rich and poor in many Latin American countries. The exchange of cash for absurd or loaded behavior is sort of funny, and more than a little sad. In an art context it’s shocking—but one becomes used to it on the streets, where people willingly perform tedious and repetitive tasks for very little money. It reminds me a little of bum fights—a rumored L.A. practice in which young men would pay homeless guys on skid row to fight one another and then they’d circulate videos of the results. It was a debasing, disrespectful, and degrading way to treat other people. Getting cash for shoveling sand or memorizing a meaningless phrase may be disrespectful, but it’s hardly as demeaning as getting punched for cash.

The “work” that these artists pay for might be absurd, but it’s harmless. It’s provocative in a sad, fucked-up kind of way. As a poetic response to a social and financial context, these acts seem intuitive, instinctual, but when transposed to an art fair or a shiny gallery or museum in New York City a whole other level of meaning is added. And when billionaires buy and sell art about the exploitation of the lower classes, the layers of context and meaning are maybe not exactly what the artist had in mind.

Apparently there are more women than men in Argentina, so maybe that explains part of it—with an imbalance like that, the women face more competition than they would in most other countries, so they have to try harder to attract a man’s attention. At least that would explain it in Darwinian terms.

I think a similar process operates in Los Angeles, though the context there is slightly different. I don’t know what the male-female balance is in L.A., but I suspect that because people in that town come into close contact with one another relatively infrequently—they are usually physically isolated at work, at home, or in their cars—they have to make an immediate and profound impression on the opposite sex and on their rivals whenever a chance presents itself. Subtlety will get you nowhere in this context.

This applies particularly in L.A. but also in much of the United States, where chances and opportunities to be seen and noticed by the opposite sex sometimes occur not just infrequently but also at some physical distance—across a parking lot, as one walks from car to building, or in a crowded mall. Therefore the signal that I am sexy, powerful, and desirable has to be broadcast at a slightly “louder” volume than in other towns where people actually come into closer contact and don’t need to “shout.” In L.A. one has to be one’s own billboard.

Consequently in L.A. the women, on the face of it, must feel a greater need to get physically augmented, tanned, and have flowing manes of hair that can be seen from a considerable distance. Their clothes are a little (or a lot) too sexy (especially when seen up close) and to add to this effect they strike come-hither poses as they stand or walk—postures that drive the Angelino males to distraction and probably influence much of that city’s creative output.

Why, though, does this building look so different from all the other period buildings? It turns out that the tiles and ornamentation all arrived by boat from Europe and were originally intended for a building in Venezuela, but someone made a mistake, and the boat ended up in Argentina instead. The mistake was thought to be fortuitous, and rather than sending them on their way, they were used for the construction of the Water Department building.

None of the other dogs seem to pay much attention to this sex act taking place in their midst. Barking Blackie is shooed off by the others repeatedly, but he returns, again and again. A twin of the Lab fucker barks, demanding to chase sticks thrown in the water by some nearby people—he somehow seems to miraculously ignore all the fucking and barking and growling around him. This dog can focus! The lovers have unlocked now, and the others pass by one after another and smell the sad gal’s pussy, but they make no attempt to mount her. The two lovers now lick their privates . . . possibly to ease the pain of being stuck together.

Finally, fed up with the outsider Blackie’s aggressive nonstop growling and barking, a muscular member of the group takes the case in hand, grabs Blackie by his red collar, and, while both dogs are knee-deep in the water, attempts to semidrown him. Or at least that’s what it looks like he’s trying to do. Others join in—one chomping down on poor Blackie’s leg. A violent scrum ensues. Blackie, the outsider, could easily be drowned as the others thrash about and hold him down—but no—after a minute or two of violence they all let go of him and there is no blood, despite all the showing of teeth and even what seemed like real biting.

The pack seems satisfied that maybe now he will know his place. It seems they intentionally didn’t hurt him. It was all for show, to demonstrate that they weren’t going to put up with his noise, aggressiveness, and implied threats. The social hierarchy has been reasserted. Blackie stands up, still knee-deep in water, dripping, slightly stunned, not moving. He doesn’t run away. He slowly saunters up the bank to the “protection” of some bushes. A minute or so later here he comes again for more punishment; once again throwing down his never-ending challenge.

One dog pisses on another’s face. No reaction. What! The hierarchies here must be well worked out if the pissed-upon doesn’t even react.

On my way biking downtown from where I live in midtown Manhattan I sometimes pass by a little dog park at Twenty-third Street and Eleventh Avenue, next to the West Side bike path. It’s a triangle of man-made hillocks and humps. The dogs brought there by their owners usually each pick a hump to occupy, and there they stand—one dog on top of each mound, each a king of his own hill. Everybody’s happy. Clever design for a dog park.

I imagine that if there were only one mound in that park there might be more fights—a constant and nasty struggle might ensue to see who would be top dog—but as there are quite a few options available every dog can be king, at least for a little while.

Watching dogs, it sure seems we haven’t “advanced” much from the territorial and hierarchical struggles that they act out so transparently in front of our eyes. The thing about dogs is that their posturing is often just that—Blackie wasn’t really hurt, no blood was shed. Actual violence is truly a last resort. We humans constantly push to see where the boundaries lie as well, but sometimes when acted out on a national or global scale, or when the posturing involves a handy gun or some tanks and cluster bombs, it’s a little too easy to quickly fire off a few rounds and zap the target, knowing there will probably be no (immediate) repercussions. Rather than simply relegating an “inferior” to his or her appropriate position in the pecking order one has eliminated the person completely.

I cycle back to the hotel, where they instruct me not to bring my bike into the lobby. They suggest I ride down into the underground parking area—and from there I can use the elevator to take myself, with the bike, up to my room.

On the table are some tiny books. One is no bigger than an inch from top to bottom. They are published in Peru, and contain quotations and popular wisdom. They are bite-sized. I could eat one.

It’s the mid-aughts, and these days many journalists ask me, “What is going on in New York?” They mean: what is the political feeling since 9/11? I usually reply that New York, after a year or two, has more or less returned to its cosmopolitan, multicultural self, where no one thinks twice if the cab driver is wearing a turban. But the interior of the country, with access only to USA Today and Fox News for their information, well, they are still trembling with fear that Saddam or Osama bin Laden is going to come and steal their SUVs. The lack of information available to the populace that isn’t pure propaganda, and the continual efforts of the Bush administration to keep everyone in fear, has created a nation that wants nothing more than to close its doors and hide and to have other people—the imperial troops—make whatever imagined threat there is out there simply go away. They want someone else to do whatever it takes to protect them from this weird, inscrutable, and invisible enemy that they believe wants to take their comfortable lives from them.

Most of the journalists here, as in Europe, are searching for an explanation from me as to why people in the United States continued to support Bush and Company. It’s a constant puzzle to them how he could have been reelected. A puzzle to me too. As support for Bush and his policies continues in the U.S.A., the press and people here lose what is left of their admiration for the American people, whom they largely have looked up to for their spunk, imagination, freedom, business acumen, can-do spirit, and brilliant pop culture. They admire the democratic institutions of the United States too—but that’s more complicated, because all these southern countries know from experience that it was the United States that helped instigate and support the dictatorships they lived under for decades. So platitudes from U.S. politicians about spreading democracy and freedom ring pretty hollow here—those phrases are recognized as a cover for spreading U.S. influence, power, and business.

I tell them that I am guardedly optimistic. In my recent touring experience in the U.S.A., lots of ordinary people, many of whom indeed voted for Bush last time around, now express feelings that he hasn’t done a very good job, even if they continue to believe that, for example, the invasion of Iraq was justified. I suspect that it will be many years before we know just how bad a job he and his cronies have done. It saddens me, because, like a lot of people, I was inculcated with a kind of faith and belief that the opportunities and the system of checks and balances that the United States seemed to represent were a new political animal on the face of the earth. One that could and did influence and inspire others around the world, for good. That myth of benign and beneficial influence and inspiration to other nations and people was true, at least to some extent. The best of the United States—rock and roll, rhythm and blues, Martin Luther King, and so on—were inspirational in other completely different cultures. But eventually, as I read more accounts of recent history, I became more skeptical. I came to know about the various misadventures the United States had gotten itself into—supporting dictatorships and toppling democracies. I continued to harbor a sense that deep down a moral invisible hand—the sometimes wacky but practical and good-hearted American people—would have the sense to adjust the course and therefore continue to be an example for other nations. In the mid-aughts, I, and it seems much of the rest of world, have had serious doubts about that. Now, with the election of Barack Obama, a huge measure of hope, optimism, and respect has returned, though this poor guy has been handed a country with its economic legs cut off and mired in an expensive and never-ending occupation in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Mercedes is an amazing singer and a larger-than-life personality. She emerged in the mid-to-late ’60s and could be considered a kind of art-folk singer, as she makes few concessions to mainstream pop tastes. In a way some of these songwriters were musically closest to the British folk models in that they looked to their own cultural and historical roots and sounds for inspiration. One might group Mercedes with the nueva trova, nueva canción, or new song, movement, which emerged in the ’60s here and throughout Latin America, and had no equivalent up north—though there was a parallel with ’60s folksing ers who also included songs about politics and human rights in their repertoire. Here, however, to sing about human rights and freedom, at least at that time, was a life-and-death matter. It took a kind of passion and bravery that we musicians up north haven’t had to deal with.

The Tropicálistas in Brazil were jailed or sent into exile. Here and in Chile it was a lot worse. Mercedes was arrested onstage and exiled. Victor Jara in Chile had his hands chopped off and was killed. León was also forced into exile. Mercedes fled first to Brazil, and then to Paris and Madrid, León to Ann Arbor, Michigan.

León looks a bit like Sting, if Sting drove a truck in Patagonia. León is more of a rocker than Mercedes, though they both often add and absorb elements of indigenous music—and I don’t mean just tango—into their songs and recordings. This musical blending, for me, says as much about what these artists are up to as their lyrics do. Their sound says they are proud of their heritage and culture, that they don’t want to simply be an imitation of the internationally popular North American models—and yet they include elements of that music in the mix as well. To me this says that they, and many others, view themselves and the present as a third stream, a hybrid that isn’t exclusively one thing or the other, but can borrow from anything out there. These musicians are defining their identity in a formal way that you can hear instantly. León has also written songs that, like some of Dylan’s, put into words what a lot of people felt at a particular time, and for this reason he’s revered, and a lot of people know some of his songs by heart.

León was, for a time, in a band with Charly García, a classic rocker here, so from Mercedes to León to Charly there is a thread that ties a number of fairly disparate musical strands together. And, at least as far as being influenced, I guess I’m part of that chain now too, as I’m thrilled to know both of them—for their music and for what they represent, culturally and politically.

Mercedes is a large woman, and she has a booming voice that in volume could be compared to that of an opera singer. Her friendly mestizo features contain some indigenous elements—or maybe I imagine this because she often wears a poncho onstage. She and León’s conversation with each other is intense and wide-ranging—from remembrances of Victor Jara to glowing admiration for David Lindley and other wacky and talented L.A. musicians with whom León has recently recorded.

It’s two in the morning now, early by Buenos Aires standards, and we’ve moved to a Japanese restaurant in a hotel. After dinner, as we leave, a group of young girls, who were sitting on the curb waiting for a local teen idol to show up, surround Mercedes with hugs and kisses. They’re more than one generation apart, but even the teen fans know who Mercedes is.

After the sound check Diego, the lead singer, and I stop at a sandwich shop for a late lunch. The café is manned entirely by women, which might explain why it remains open (the men are all glued to the TV sets). Though it isn’t the center of attention there is a token tiny TV sitting on the bar, which competes with a CD of techno music. Diego mentions that he was in high school during the dictatorship. The World Cup was held here in ’78—and he says that some claim it was used as a screen for many to go missing and become disappeared. The government supported the sport event massively and used it as a clever way to disappear people when few were paying attention. One can see today how easy that would be. This would be the time to invade.

Most people were then, and even now remain, in partial denial about what was going on, many claiming they saw or knew nothing—although many sensed what was happening. As a high school student Diego went to visit some friends one day and no one answered the door. It was soon apparent that the house was now vacant, and would remain so. Later his father said that maybe they had been taken. There was a general feeling of paranoia, and Diego says that for a high school kid this fear manifested itself in ways that any schoolkid of that time might worry about—that if your hair was too long you’d be in trouble or if you got caught with a joint you might be picked up. Those typical young hipster affectations could have been viewed by the state as outward signs that you might be a sympathizer with its enemies. So even though these might have been the same concerns of high school kids in many countries, here the repercussions for being picked up for being a long-haired hippie were much more ominous. Everyone was careful; political talk was hushed. Gunshots could be heard on the streets at night—the sound of the military or the police (often they were the same thing) going about their dirty business.

I remember having a similar feeling in elementary school in Baltimore, though it couldn’t have been anywhere near as intense as it was down here. It was during the Cuban missile crisis, and the level of fear and paranoia in the United States must have been high. Of course as a kid you assume that everything, whether it’s abnormal or not, is just the way things are. Only in retrospect do you realize how fucked up it was.

I remember walking home from school. (I would have been in fifth grade—maybe ten years old?) It was about a mile back to my home, and I would usually take a route that passed through mostly suburban neighborhoods of lawns and trees, split-level homes, and clapboard houses. I remember picturing in my mind dark-winged bombers suddenly flying overheard. (Would they be Cuban bombers? Russian?) I imagined that first their engines would be heard approaching, a low ominous hum coming from somewhere in the distance, and then they’d appear over our suburban roofs. As I walked home I would mentally plan my route to possible shelter should this happen. Block by block, I would think to myself, From this block I could make it to Dean’s house, if I run—Dean’s house was maybe a block or two away—then, a little farther on, I determined that at that point my friend Ricky’s house would be a better bet for shelter. The way home had to be calculated, planned, measured, from one potential safe house to the next. It was a frightening passage for a kid. No wonder the movies of that time were the way they were, full of paranoia and monsters. We were all scared shitless and the monster was invisible.

It’s often said that proximity doesn’t matter so much now—that we have virtual offices and online communities and social networks, so it doesn’t matter where we are physically. But I’m skeptical. I think online communities tend to group like with like, which is fine and perfect for some tasks, but sometimes inspiration comes from accidental meetings and encounters with people outside one’s own demographic, and that’s less likely if you only communicate with your “friends.”

I have no romantic feelings for run-down neighborhoods where crack vials litter the pavement and the plumbing barely works. Granted, those neighborhoods typically offer cheap housing and a tolerance for noise and eccentricity, but to confuse the availability of space with the unfortunate circumstances that often make those spaces cheap is, well—they don’t need to go hand in hand.

We walk to my hotel, a few blocks away. The streets are empty. (The football is still going on.) The rain has stopped. Diego asks about hip-hop. I reply that the beats and music are often incredibly innovative and sophisticated, but for the most part it’s corporate rebellion these days. Which isn’t to say there isn’t a lot I like—Trapped in the Closet is one of the wackiest, most creative video pieces I’ve seen in years. Diego brings up Baile Funk—the fairly recent Brazilian evolution of 808 drum machine beats, techno, hip-hop, and funk. (Though it’s more like being pummeled in a violently disorienting fairground ride than getting funky, in my opinion.) We agree it’s incredibly innovative and ridiculously extreme. Diego says the lyrics in the Brazilian case are violent and rough, but unlike U.S. hip-hop the words in Baile Funk are usually from a victim’s point of view.

A history of nightlife!—what an interesting concept. A history of a people, told not through their daily travails and successive political upheavals, but via the changes in their nightly celebrations and unwindings. History is, in this telling, accompanied by a bottle of Malbec, some fine Argentine steak, tango music, dancing, and gossip. It unfolds through and alongside illicit activities that take place in the multitude of discos, dance parlors, and clubs. Its direction, the way people live, is determined on half-lit streets, in bars, and in smoky late-night restaurants. This history is inscribed in songs, on menus, via half-remembered conversations, love affairs, drunken fights, and years of drug abuse.

One wonders if the things that people do to relax—after work and after-hours—is a mirror of their inner state, and therefore a way to see unspoken hopes, fears, and desires. Views and expressions kept bottled up in public, in the daytime, and kept hidden in typical political discourse. Nightlife might be a truer and deeper view into specific historical and political moments than the usual maneuverings of politicians and oligarchs that make it into the record. Or at least they might be a parallel world, another side of the coin.

It’s easy to say in retrospect that the goings-on in the Weimar cabarets prefigured World War II, or that punk rock was a dark reflection of the Reagan era, but there might be some truth to looking at all nightlife that way. Was the simultaneous flowering of both Studio 54 and CBGB, when New York City was at financial rock bottom, a coincidence? Maybe not? Will this latest economic meltdown signal a creative renaissance, a rebirth of affordable and anything-is-possible nightlife? Can one read the present or the future by looking at the dance floor, into back rooms, or at who’s on the bar stools? The myriad restaurants and lounges of the past decade in New York City were often filled with hedge fund billionaires, and the rise of bottle service in discos and celebrity hangouts can now be seen as a harbinger of what was to come. But, yeah, it’s easy to say that in retrospect.

The band at the club, Man Ray, had just gone on. It’s two thirty AM. The band is fronted by a woman who sometimes sings with Charly. Socially, this town appears to be like New York—late shows, people out till morning light—but in some ways it’s even more a late-night hang than New York is or ever was. A vast majority of restaurants are open here till at least four AM—many more than in New York. And the streets are packed at three thirty! The movie theaters have regular shows starting at one thirty AM, and these movies are not The Rocky Horror Picture Show, or some typical midnight movie—even El Rey León (The Lion King) was letting out at three AM! Then, after the movies let out the audience inevitably goes out to eat or to have a drink. Whole families are out strolling in the middle of the night! When do they sleep? As in the larger cities of Spain, people eat late—never before nine thirty—and then they might catch a show that starts in the wee hours.

A city of vampires. Do any of them have day jobs? Do they keep these hours all week? Are there two separate societies—night people and day people? Two shifts, two urban populations that never meet or cross paths? Are they using coke or massive amounts of yerba maté tea to stay up? Or, have they snuck in a little siesta after work while the rest of us were having dinner on New York time?

I fade around four AM and go back to the hotel and crash. Mauro and some of my road crew are out till seven AM—moving on from that rock club to another place that features music they describe as a mixture of zydeco and cumbia, played by DJs. They say it gets rolling around five or six AM.

Glover Gill, leader of the Austin, Texas-based Tosca Tango Orchestra, is here, as I am using his string players in my band, and they have managed to squeeze in a couple of their own dates while they are here. A group of us go to see a traditional tango group at a baroque palace, El Palacio de San Martín, as part of the World Tango Festival in progress here. The palace is an incredible edifice—there is a Beaux-Arts balcony and beyond it a stained-glass panel of St. George killing the dragon. An old-fashioned tango orquestra is set up on a stage and exhibition dancers perform on the dance floor before the public takes over.

The audience, except for us, are all dressed in their slinky finery—all very elegant and sexy. There are some amazing dancers, which is a little intimidating. Later on we go to La Cumparsita, a sort of tourist tango joint in the San Telmo district. There are the ubiquitous pictures of Carlos Gardel on the walls—many, many of them. I have about had it with the Gardel myth. I feel like saying, “He’s been dead for a long, long time—get over it, move on!”

This morning I struggle to wake up. I pedal to Casa del Tango, which is about four kilometers away, joining the string players to observe a rehearsal by El Arranque. I sit in the dark theater seats in their rehearsal space—a modest former theater—watching as they prepare. They discuss arrangements and how to play various sections of the piece. Then they run through a few full numbers, which are amazing.

Later that year some workers decided to restart some of the shuttered factories themselves. The owners, who had abandoned these factories, protested and took the workers to court. The owners and the banks wanted to sell off the assets—the machinery and materials—and make a quick buck. In some cases the workers won the right to keep the factories running—the judges, it seems, sometimes felt that employment was more important than a one-time profit. The factories, a few of them, are now run without bosses; they pay their property taxes, and have begun to pay off their debts. Here’s a still from a documentary called The Take:

This might be inspiring for some U.S. businesses now: for example, newspapers that are saddled with debts due to take- overs by investment funds and forced to declare bankruptcy. One wonders if the workers in those businesses, and maybe even in Detroit, could run the factories themselves. In the 2003 elections here President Menem, who backed the factory owners, eventually dropped out of the race and Néstor Kirchner became president. The present president is Kirchner’s wife, pictured here with Mercedes Sosa. Times change—as they have in the United States.

The distinct nasal twang of an “American” accent echoes through the plane as I head north. I’m flying American Airlines to Miami. The voices exude confidence, superiority. (They don’t sound like they’re very flexible or open-minded, and they’re not.) After the gentle, sensuous vowels of Latin America, this—my language—sounds harsh, cruel, authoritarian.