My First Tambourine

My First Tambourine

photo by Simone Weissman 2.6.2015

When I was 18 in 1965 and studying art at Universidad de Madrid, Spain, and at the Prado Museum, I traveled to the Spanish walled city of Avila to watch the bullfights and party with the toreadors.

As a memento of my fun adventuresome time, I purchased this pictured painted tambourine, and then back in NY in time for college, presented the tambourine gift to a young gal, Simone (maybe 10 years old), for whom I babysat. It was that babysitting money that got me my ticket to Spain. 50 years later, Simone still has the timbrel. This for me is my 'Love Story'*, touching deeply my heart.

In Spain, for myself, I purchased a kinetic jingly tambourine gold charm, still on my charm bracelet. Didn't know at the time that I was allowed to actually 'play tambourines'. I watched the flamenco dancers play them.

I bought my first tambourine for myself in 1991 when I traveled to Sibolga, Indonesia with Simone's mother, z"l. Or was it the first hand-made primitive tambourine when I purchased one possibly earlier from a church woman in the island of Jamaica.  I'm still regularly playing lots of timbrels today!

(Photography warning: While in Spain and photographing from behind a low bush, Generalisimo Francisco Franco, the gendarmes/police confiscated my camera because it was illegal to shoot the Generalisimo.)

Note from Simone: Thank you Joy! I looked long and hard at this when I was packing up my ancestral home and I didn't want to let this go—I had no idea of the story behind it but I knew it was from you! I had it in my room as a child and then it lived on the shelves behind the bar in the basement, along with souvenirs from our family's travels.

*  Love Story Week # 6 (52Frames)

http://joys-favorite-fotos.blogspot.com/2015/01/submissions-to-52-frames-2015.html