Back in the Fold

Humility comes thick and fast in a country such as Colombia. On Saturday we went to visit a project called 'Red Loma Sur' in the southern Bogota community of San Cristobal. The long drive through the labyrinthine streets lined with red bare brick houses gave me another glimpse of the difficult life of those that dwell there.

For me this was an important journey as it took me to meet with a group that we have not been in contact with for a while. After our first mission to Bogota the studio that we set up got moved to this district of the city to be used by more people than it was reaching before. Thanks to a donation from Christian Aid, Red Loma Sur started to build a studio on top of the house of a friend of the collective. That is the point that we lost touch with the group.

We went to visit them and find out exactly what they have been doing with the equipment that we donated to them. Unfortunately the studio is not yet finished, it still has a bit of work yet to do but is well along the way. To my delight we heard from the group that they had been working hard by using the equipment to produce 'live' radio shows by setting up in communities and running live shows on a stage with local participants forming part of the show. This a form of direct action that they are able to do with the equipment as they unfortunately do not currently have a means to broadcast.

However the recordings that they have made are going to be shared with us and we will put it out there for others to listen. This was a great first step in bringing this fantastic group of people back into the FairTunes family. We are going to send one of their technicians to our upcoming workshops to learn more, and help them out in whatever way we can to build another FairTunes studio.

We see this as an important part of the project that we have been developing in Bogota. This smaller studio can operate on a local level and work in tandem with the larger more central one that we have.

Big City Trip

I had the great pleasure to meet a fantastic person the other day. Reynaldo Jose Urueta Restrepo is a young man of 18 from El Salado with a bright future.

Over the past year and a half Reynaldo has been learning different aspects of studio engineering - radio and music - from the workshops and classes that have taken place in the small town. Perhaps the most amazing part of this is that Reynaldo had never even used a mouse or a computer keyboard before his first studio session with our very own Nick Minton. Now Reynaldo is in charge of the studio activities for his community.

Reynaldo is currently in Bogota - his first visit to the Colombian capital - looking for a place to study studio engineering. Inspired by what he has learned so far in El Salado, Reynaldo now wants to advance his learning and make a career out of it.

Fundacion Semana, a foundation who we worked closely with in El Salado, are helping Reynaldo to find a scholarship in a Bogota university to study.

For him this trip to the big city has been one of discovery and amazement. It is really cold for him here compared to the constant heat of his home region in the Caribbean interior.

We are going to see more of Reynaldo and introduce him to Pacho, our studio engineer in Bogota, so he continues his learning to take back to El Salado.
For the time being Reynaldo wants to continue the project in the 'Coco Salado' project in El Salado, which uses the FairTunes studio to make and broadcast radio programs around the local community.

Exciting Times

It's quite amazing being back in Bogota, each time I come back there is more to see and like.

As ever, I find it is the people here who make it such a special country.
It was great to spend some time in the Bogota studio watching a young punk band record. Pacho, our new studio coordinator and engineer has really taken up the mantel and has been busy recording 4 bands over the last month. Furthermore, he, along with a few others, will be starting a new program of studio workshops giving participants basic skills in a number of disciplines.

It has been great spending time with Pacho and the rest of our dedicated crew over here and to be able to plot the next year in the studio's development.

Another exciting development is that we are helping the amazing Carmelo Torres to release his first album. Carmelo has contributed on countless other albums playing accordion for other artists. He is regarded as a pioneer in style and has been a major influence for traditional musicians all over the country.

Much of the album was recorded in our El Salado studio by Laurie Sauloy, a FairTunes engineer and one of our program coordinators in Bogota. The rest of it was done by her either travelling to record sections of music, such as bass tracks, in different parts of the country, or in our studio in Bogota. The album is currently being mastered and we will have a unique product for Carmelo to distribute to his fan base.

Speaking with all the people that have helped to make this happen really demonstrates the unity that musicians and those connected with them have in this country. Without such togetherness much of the truly important musical culture that exists here would not come to light.

Back in Town

It's a great feeling to be back in Bogota after such a long hiatus.

I am here to plan the coming year of the studio with the crew here and work with the new project coordinator that we have here. Lots of meetings, interviews and planning over the next week.

The Bogotrax music festival is in full swing at the moment so the city is awash with dance music aficionados from around the globe and, of course, Colombia.

With lots of positive discussion so far, this could be a really good year for FairTunes in Bogota.

Tim and Jon leave Colombia

Having arrived back in the UK some days ago events in Colombia seem a distant way off now. Tim and I worked through the unbelievable heat in El Salado, much to the amusement of the locals, and finished the studio cabin in plenty of time. After a few days Caribbean rest in Cartagena we returned to Bogota where Nick was completing the second set of workshops for 'Hip Hop al Parque' and the 'Orquesta Filarmonica Bogota'.
Alongside Nick was Mike Cerda, a Venezuelan hip hop artist and producer, who worked really well with Nick and we are truly thankful to him. Nick and I also went back to visit CIREC, the charity with whom we were working in El Salado. Although I ad been before I was completely blown away by the work they are doing there when we took a tour of the centre. We have now signed an agreement to work on future projects together, which is an amazing thing for us.
Nick is still out in Colombia teaching classes, and has now been joined by Kary. Unfortunately Tim and I had to come home but hopefully the work we have done will lead to more projects out there. Before I go I need to thank several people who made this trip a success:
Tim Giddings who came out and gave up 3 weeks of his time.
Diego without whom the Bogota build would have been ten times harder.
Angelica for all her hard work.
Richy for giving us a great opportunity and, of course, his hard work.
Alix and the rest of the Boogaloop crew.
Lola for her help and a roof over our heads.
CIREC
Orquesta Filarmonica Bogota
Anyone else I have forgotten.

Armadillo Surprise

Its been a couple of days since we left El Salado for the easier climes of Cartagena -now with added sun- but its memory will last for a long time. Before we arrived people had been telling us that we were going to working in hot, uncomfortable conditions. We didn´t quite realise how difficult the conditions were going to be.
The little building in which we built the studio had newly been refurbished with a tin roof and tiled floor. The tin roof, suffice to say, turned the room into somewhat of an oven. It was ridiculous, we couldn´t even think on the first day of working there. It probably didn´t help much that we were using unfamiliar materials and very few tools to do the job. I mean, we were using wood, but it was somewhat different to what we are used to.
When we arrived we were shown a pile of recently cut wood that we could buy from a local guy. As it wasn´t enough the next morning we put in an order with the guy and he promptly went out to the forest with his chainsaw and cut us the wood we wanted. After a day and half wait the wood was eventually delivered on the back of a donkey. Simple.
Indeed, life is fairly simple in El Salado. You get up early , go about your work and live off the land that is certainly plentiful around there. A lot of people don´t want for much: if they want fruit or veg they pick it, if they want meat they kill an animal or go out and hunt it. We were given a meal of armadillo one evening, nice but a little stringy, which was a first for me. On the subject of food, Tim managed to get a name for himself, as the man that didn´t eat yucca. Yucca is a staple here, like bread or potatoes are to us. When the guy we were staying with, Negro, was told by his wife, Isis, that Tim didn´t eat yucca he exclaimed: "Then what does he eat the? Rats?"
If people want anything else they have to make the trek into town in one of the various battered jeeps that service the community. When we needed glass we put in an order. It took two journeys to eventually get the needed window, the second I had to go and insure that it arrived up the incredibly bumpy track undamaged. Apart from that things went quite smoothly for us, we tried to work when it was a little cooler and siesta around the middle of the day. Only my computer came off badly from the ordeal: it died with an electricity surge.
We got quite used to the easy way of life and the constant noise of animals from before dawn till after dusk. We seemed to be welcomed for the most part with what seemed like half the town popping in to watch us work for a while. They appeared to like what we did and they even lent a hand and killed the deadly snake that was in the garden behind our building: one bite and its death in 2 hours; when the nearest place with anti-venom is about 2 hours away its a risk not worth taking.
All in all it was a successful first part to the mission. One of the lasting images I´ll have of the dusty track main road is Edgar whooping in to town on the back of his horse in the relative cool of late Sunday afternoon. I hope we can leave them with something too.
Back in Bogota Nick has completed his first workshops and has already started his second lot. He informs me that the first group made a pretty good track that we will soon put up on our website.

El Salado

It feels somewhat a privelage to be able to come here and be able to spend time among ther people who work here. As I mentioned before El Salado was subject to an horrific massacre 10 years ago. Paramilitaries came into the town and killed 64 people over 3 days, but it is the manner in which they committed their brutal acts that was so shocking. After they left so did the majority of the people. The town went from a population of around 8000 to around 400. Now there are just over a 1000 people here and charities like CIREC, with whom we are working, are encouraging people to return and trying to ensure that another atrocity does not happen again.
Richy, who invited us here and who is also part of FairTunes Colombia, has been setting up a media program which includes workshops in radio, music and photography. The long term goal is that this can be handed down to the people of El Salado and they can run theri own radio station and have the facilities for other projects as well.
I guess the horror truly hit home the after speaking to 2 different inhabitants, who happen to be cousins. The first was Edgar, a local farmer, who declared to us that he wanted us to hear his story after sharing a few drinks with him one night. Edgar escaped 2 massacres in the town, the 1st in 97 when he was out when the paramilitaries came looking for him. The second time in 2001 he was in town when they came. The paramilitaires killed the 2 friends he was with whilst Edgar fled from house to house as the men came looking for him. Eventually Edgar found a hiding place for three nights in a drain where he lay covered in excrement as he listened to the chaos going on around him. For three days the paramilitaries butchered people, forcing them to line up as they killed ever 30th person, and making the women parade in gross beauty pageants to see who would be raped.
Once some paramilitaries were chasing a chicken and it sought refuge where Edgar was hiding and he thought his time was up, but fortunately the chicken moved away and he remained undetected. Edgar was lucky and he and his family fled but he returned to tend his land and animals, but unfortunately his wife would not return and now he has no contact with the daughter who was born just one month after the massacre.
It was amazing that Edgar wanted to tell us this, the community doctor who was there said that he never talks about what happened to him to anyone. Indeed, many people are afraid to tell outsiders what occured on those dark days for obvious reasons.
Gilbert spoke about the atrocities but was tewarful when he did so. He escaped into the surrounding hills but many of his family were not lucky enough to do so. I will not mention some of the things that Gilbert told us that happened to some of his relatives, they are unspeakable.
Gilbert is now a proactive leader in the community, in charge of the education of young people. He works directly with CIREC and the projects they are undertaking. Hopefully in the future projects such as this will prove to the displaced population of this town that there is no longer anything to fear and that it is possible to build a life without the possibility of being hacked to pieces in front of your own family.