Tegucigalpa

A Christmas walk and a bus driver’s day

A star appears over El Picacho in “Caminando por Tegucigalpa”. The walker in Víctor Donaire’s Christmas song notices lights in the streets, nativity scenes, songs in the neighbourhoods and the cathedral bells. Donaire has said the decorated historic centre he saw in 1969 inspired him to write it.

There is a different timetable in “El busero”, by Café Guancasco: a bus driver gets up before dawn, asks passengers for change and calls out places on his route. In an interview, the group explained that it wanted to pay attention to the work of a driver navigating the capital’s traffic.

Café Guancasco became associated with Honduras’s protest movement after the 2009 coup. In an interview that year, its members described taking their music into public spaces and writing collectively with musicians from different backgrounds, including the national symphony and conservatory. Their bus driver and Donaire’s Christmas walker cross the same city at very different hours.