CAMINO DE SANTIAGO
In their footsteps followed a 52 piece, all-male, Glee club aged between 18 and 22 years old. Walking the Camino en masse, the collegiate choir from Indiana’ s University of Notre Dame performed in the various Churches they passed on the way.
“ The Galician folk songs went down really well,” choir director Daniel Stowe reveals.“ We also sang a lot of Spanish Cathedral songs and even some songs from medieval pilgrim manuscripts.”
Clearly the musical tour was influenced by the surrounding culture, Stowe explains that it was the ready access to it that made the pilgrimage so appealing.“ The Camino is a fantastic mix of nature on the one hand and anthropology on the other. Instead of trekking in isolated places, it actually allows you to experience the local culture as you pass through it.”
Eagerly pulling on this cultural context, Stowe however admits:“ We did throw some barber shop songs in every now and again.”
An underlying religious motive cannot be overlooked in the Glee Club’ s pilgrimage to Santiago. Stowe says:“ Notre Dame is a Catholic university for whom the Camino has a certain resonance.”
The choir from Indiana are not unique in this respect. Indeed, a large number of pilgrims continue to do the Camino for religious purposes. Salvador Aguado, a priest from Valencia, has done the pilgrimage three times.“ I did it for my faith, which I found helped me a lot along the way.”
Travelling incognito, Aguado gave the two Spanish couples he had met and travelled with on the road a shock when they all arrived at Santiago de Compostela Cathedral. Leaving them in the congregation, Aguado donned robes to join the other priests at the altar. Laughing he says:“ They couldn’ t believe their eyes.”
By no means a lone priest on the road, Aguado reveals:
“ You can tell in the mass which priests have done the Camino and which haven’ t from the shoes they’ re wearing under their robes.”
It is the opportunity to meet such priests, choirs, or other assorted individuals that motivates many people to do the pilgrimage to Santiago. At 29 years old, Christopher Sanders took a sabbatical from his management consultancy job and decided to do the Camino.“ I thought it would be a productive way to spend my time off,” he explains.
Sanders soon found himself walking with a Finnish historian who had just beaten cancer and a 63 year old Brit who had recently retired from the real estate business, amongst others.“ It a fascinating phenomenon that cuts across all cultural and socio-economic categories,” he says.
The interesting array of people he met on the road led Sanders to do the pilgrimage again six years later. This time he was accompanied by his wife and toddler.
Writer Bill Walker from North Carolina also repeated the Camino and much for the same reason.“ With so many people coming from around the world to do it, you find such an exotic human tapestry on the road,” he explains.
Crammed into the confined communal spaces of the pilgrim hostels or albergues, the various cultures must find a way to co-exist.“ It is a grand social experiment,” Walker states.“ Everyone has to learn how to get along properly.”
On the three occasions he has walked the Camino, Walker has found that pilgrims are more than able to live and walk together.“ Though there is this true polyglot of nationalities, nationalism recedes entirely,” he explains.“ People are nicer to each other on the road than anywhere else.”
“ The Camino is the cat’ s meow,” he proclaims.“ It is an old way of travelling, but the way for the future.” isaac alvarez brugada
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