First of all, let me just say this: buying a trumpet in Spain is not like popping into a music shop in Leeds and having a polite browse while someone plays Coldplay on a Casio keyboard behind you.
No, buying a trumpet in Jerez is a mission. It’s part scavenger hunt, part social test, part bizarre jazz pilgrimage with absolutely no guarantee you’ll end up with a trumpet at all.
It started because I got itchy.
Not physically (though the heat here has done odd things to my elbows). I mean musically. We’ve been going to this little club near the old market on Wednesday nights, and I’ve been sitting on my hands like a good retired teacher. Listening. Watching. Respecting the local scene.
But last week a young lad borrowed the house trumpet and I couldn’t take it anymore. His tone was all over the place—tight embouchure, no breath support, valves sticking. I turned to Sara and whispered something like, “He’s trying to play Blue in Green like it’s a foghorn,” and she gave me that look. The one that says: You’re going to do something ridiculous again, aren’t you?
So the next day I went looking.
Google Maps gave me two options:
- A pawn shop that looked like it hadn’t seen brass since the Civil War.
- A “musical instruments emporium” that turned out to be one shelf of mouthpieces in the back of a stationary shop.
I asked the man behind the counter (who looked about 104) if he had any second-hand trumpets. He blinked slowly, then led me to a cupboard and pulled out something that might once have been a trumpet but now resembled an angry plumbing accident. Bent bell, rusted valves, mystery liquid in the spit valve.
I asked if I could test it. He nodded, produced a mouthpiece from his pocket like a magician, and gestured to a tiled back room with a single plastic chair. I played one B♭. The sound startled a cat out of the ceiling.
I didn’t buy it. I couldn’t do that to my lungs. But it lit the fuse.
Now I’m obsessed. I want a trumpet. A proper one. Just to have. To hold. Maybe to play again. Maybe to remember.
It’s strange—I spent years around these things. The school cupboard had eight old student models in it, most of them missing at least one valve spring. I used to write their serial numbers on masking tape and stick them to folders. Property of Room 14 – Do Not Touch Without Permission.
And now I’m wandering through Andalusia trying to find one like some sort of brass-soaked Indiana Jones.
Last night, I went back to the jazz club. Not to play. Just to listen.
The guy with the dodgy embouchure was back, but this time he’d found his breath. Still raw, but there was something in his phrasing—a kind of reaching—that felt honest. Made me smile. Maybe he found a new trumpet this week. Or maybe someone told him to slow down and listen.
Reminded me of that first night we found the club, when the music came up from nowhere and the walls sort of… shifted a bit. I wrote about that one here, if you missed it.
Anyway, the hunt continues.
Someone at the club mentioned a man in El Puerto who sells refurbished brass instruments out of his garage. No website. Just a phone number and a warning: He only speaks in Cádiz dialect. Good luck.
Sara says I’m not allowed to buy anything with more than three visible dents.
We’ll see.
