An afternoon with "las matronas" is an attempt to register the cultural diversity of Astoria, Queens through the distinct sounds of the neighborhood... A class assignment that I hope you enjoy reading as I enjoyed writing about this amazing feature of the city.

1. An afternoon with “las matronas”
Every time I close the door of my apartment, and listen to the creaky noise it
produces, I’m ready to conquest New York, or at least that has been my hope
since I moved here a year ago. While I walk several streets in Astoria, the phrase
sang by The Police” I’m an alien, I’m a legal alien” keeps popping in my mind.
Can it be possible that the slam of my building’s door sends some kind of nervous
impulse to my brain, which enables me to listen at this same moment of the day
and at the same place the classic 80’s song? I certainly know that now I have
another vital soundtrack, even though this is not my wish, because as I said
before I’m trying to be ready for New York.
I keep on walking, trying to ignore my mental audio track, and I start listening to
the breeze blowing and pushing the leaves of the trees, which calms a bit my
anxiety. As I step to one of the main streets of my neighborhood, the horns of the
cars become louder as well as the roar of their engines. The first time I came to
Astoria, I was amazed with the collage of restaurants in one same street. If I
chose to stop, I could have a taste of Middle Eastern, Egyptian dishes to Greek,
Colombian, Brazilian or Mexican cuisine. Lately, I’ve noticed that most Latin
American restaurants compete through a war of sound. Each one seeks victory
by raising the volume of reggaeton, vallenato, or any traditional folk music and,
of course, the prize is attracting more customers. I can only guess that this battle
of percussion beats is a symbolic way to express the possession of a desired and
imagined space within the neighborhood. The stereo of a black car plays dance
music and joins the competition. As I get closer to the Middle Eastern restaurants,
I look for a stroller, because I think I might have heard the wheels rolling.
However, I see a lady driving her grocery’s cart. Some steps ahead a stroller
actually passes ahead of me and as it gets further away, I see that the sidewalk
is being paved and I have to move to the right. It’s hardly audible how the
worker gently slides asphalt from a bucket to the floor and then levels it with a
spade. Middle Eastern restaurants prefer to mark their territory by displaying
colorful pipes in the sidewalk, where customers take a deep breath in order to

2. inhale the herbal smoke. Again, I’m lost in the city. I’m trying to find a beauty
parlor that I had seen before, but I don’t have the address. I’m not used to
having this combination of smells, sounds and cultures in one same place. This
makes me I feel as if I were in those dreams, in which one step can lead me to
the park of my own neighborhood in Bogota, but if I step back I can be in
Governor’s Island. The roaring of the engines, the war of sound, voices of people
becoming a constant murmur as well as the stomp of their heavy walk further
that sensation of confusion. I keep hearing the high frequency beep that Metro
Pcs mobiles generate when the keypad is blocked. I just lost my own Metro Pcs.
So I pay attention to the beep, hoping that my phone is actually calling me with
one of its usual sounds.
Without any sort of plan, I end up at a small beauty salon. The hair dryers rise the
temperature in the salon, the hairdressers and manicurists use a higher pitch to
greet the customers and the reverberations of laughter come and go. Their pitch
of their voices is increasingly higher when they recognize that I am Colombian.
Warmth is everywhere. I remember that a professor in college used to say that a
beauty salon aimed to represent the female’s womb. This is definitely the case.
The walls are all pink and the head hairdresser and the owner are like
“matronas”, women that traditionally took care of the Latin American
household, especially of females’ wellbeing. The head hairdresser fits the
imagined physical appearance of a matrona: she is taller than the rest of the
women in the salon, has a robust body and, though she covers most part of her
legs with a long blue dress, you can see that they are strong and hold the long
hours of work. “Doctora Corazon” (Heart Doctor), says one lady. I’m not sure if
she is referring to the matrona, but I can listen their narrations about the
happenings of the week and the lives of other neighbors. The matrona turns on
the hairdryer and it quiets the raspy tone of the nail filer as well as the water
dripping from a rose that washes a clients’ hair. The hair dryers are turned off for
a while, but it is strange how I miss the sound. The common belief is that noises
distract you and, instead, the silence allows you to carry on with your activities. I
was talking to one of the manicurists, as she removed the cuticle of my fingers

3. and one of my hands moved the balls contained in a hot water bowl. But when
the different sounds of the hair dryers faded away (there is a crispier noise when
the dryer is far away from the hair), I immediately got distracted and thought
something was not right in my environment. Maybe I’m too familiar with the
dominant background of any salon, given that I went to a parlor twice a week in
Colombia. Thus, salons and I invented our own silence, it’s a mix between the
hairdryer’s hollering and the rasping tone of the nail foil.
However the hair dyer can’t hush the overlapping voices that come from every
corner of the salon. This can partly be explained by the fact that each one of
these voices can chose to increase their volume and pitch. The parlor’s owner
told me she was from Buga, a small Colombian town, where people speak loud
in public areas, no matter how close or far the listener is. In this town, the act of
speaking with an intense volume is not impolite; rather not being heard is
impolite. “My father and I have great hair,” says a nine-year-old kid to other
children that just entered. A lady sits on the red chair in front of the mirror and it
seems as if she is ready to lead a confessionary meeting. She begins by
commenting to the matrona the trouble she finds in doing a blower by herself
and then narrates the finale of a Colombian soap opera. Suddenly all the circles
of voices make a pause and pay attention to how she becomes a storyteller of
the TV episode. Again I hear the circles of voices and their laughter. A male
customer asks for a hair cut and the buzz of a razor starts and ends in a short
period of time. As the hair salon’s silence and mine is interrupted, other sounds
appear: the stridency of a brush rubbing dying cream to hair lied down on
aluminium, a pop song, a near by underground subway passing through the rails
and scissors cutting hair. The hair dryer is back. I decide to leave and after saying
goodbye, customers, manicurists and hairdressers respond in unison. Outside I
find myself again immersed in a world with unfamiliar noises, I promise myself I’ll
come back the next day to analyze further more the soundscape. I guess my
desire is to listen again to the harmonics, which represent a space where I can
belong and somehow find myself in the city.