Page 92 - Flathead Living // Winter 2015

Lifestyle
While Dubuque acknowledges music’s math, he strives for a realm beyond num- bers and notations. When he hears inter- views with heroes like Hendrix and Keith Richards, he says they don’t sound like mathematicians or music teachers, but more like Picasso or van Gogh.
“You hear stories about van Gogh cutting his ear o ,” he says. “No wonder he was sensitive. He felt every bit of life.”
Dubuque made one demo CD years ago, which remains the extent of his recording career. Audience members occasionally record videos and post them on YouTube, but Dubuque’s Internet presence is minimal. He doesn’t have a website, just a Facebook page, and in general he’s skeptical of the digital revolution. He doesn’t do iTunes or the like; he prefers to listen to CDs.
“I’m working on being good enough to make an album,” he says. “People tell me I’m already good enough, but I’m
Dan Dubuque plays the charango.
really hard on myself. I want to be great.” Dubuque draws inspiration from his parents, who fought distinct battles in nding their places in the world. His father is a Vietnam veteran who coped with the demons of post-traumatic stress disorder. His mother, Nieves, is an Aymara Indian from the Bolivian Andes who escaped systemic oppres- sion and destitute poverty by getting a job as housekeeper for an ambassador. When the ambassador brought her along on a trip to Miami, she begged to stay. She never returned home except to visit. Dubuque went to Bolivia with his mother in high school and gained an appreciation not only for her struggles but a clearer perspective on his own. Though he was struck by the universal love of singing and dancing there, he couldn’t
get over the rampant deprivation.
“I get it when I see all those Mexi- cans coming over,” he says. “They’re
desperate poor.”
It was his mother who mailed him a
charango when he was dejected in Cal- ifornia. The instrument is widely used among her ancestral Aymara Indians, and it o ered Dubuque yet another pathway into his essential being, as well as another release valve for that being to escape once tapped.
For Dubuque, music has always been the clearest means of both self-under- standing and self-expression. It’s not a gimmick. Those notes inside his head are as real as the blood in his veins and the asphalt on that highway, and just as permanent. The only thing eeting is Dubuque himself.
“I’m comfortable here,” he says, sit- ting on a couch in his living room. “But I can’t stay in one place too long.” FL
DUBUQUE
90 FLATHEAD LIVING S WINTER 2015-16