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.

Journey to El Salado

Sometimes a journey can be so eventful that it is hard to piece together chronologically. The road to El Salado is a reasonably long and arduous one; not so much in distance, more in effort and conditions. Indeed the last 25km took over an hour and were, quite honestly, the worst roads I have ever been on. That’s not to belittle the poor conditions of the other roads that we travelled on, but the last leg was certainly memorable.

The trip started out easily enough, we were collected from our sea-front hotel by Hector in his rickety old green Jeep. The trip out of Cartagena took us through a different side of the colonial city from the tourist trap that is the historic centre. On the way out we passed through the bustling popular market aside the bird filled waterway, with pelicans and vultures competing for flotsam and jetsam flung from the dirty market stalls that litter the roadsides.

Out of town the monotony of the journey was broken only by the frequent jolts that shuddered through the ancient vehicle every time we hit a pothole or when Hector swerved out of the way of an oncoming juggernaut. After a couple of hours we made a pit-stop in a village called ‘Villa Alegre’ (Happy Town), never a more inappropriate name has there been, to buy some cigars off a 94 year old woman who needed some money. Apparently the locals call the village ‘Barrio tristeza’ (neighbourhood of unhappiness) and it is easy to see why. The community consists of two opposing lines of tiny houses stretching up the hill into the distance, in between is possibly the poorest excuse for a street that ever there was. The town is inhabited by an exiled community, displaced due to the war that has ravaged the country for decades, and housed by the authorities in the their current dwellings. Unfortunately they have now been forgotten and are so poor that they don’t have the means to return home.

Richy , our guide on this venture, and the charity CIREC are working with this community and are searching for ways to repatriate them to their land and end the painful existence that has been forced upon them. As the kids played happily in the rueful street it was a stark reminder of the human cost of the wars that blight Colombia.

Onward from this brief pit-stop we were taken to a small town called ‘San Jacinto’, which is at the heart of the music of ‘la Gaita’, an indigenous type of flute, that includes the famous Cumbia music. We visited Fran and his family house where he continues to make traditional instruments and promotes the music that has been handed down to him over generations. Fran told us about the intricacies of the music and it became clear how important this tradition is to the local people and the maintenance of their culture. Hopefully we can help Fran out in the preservation of this amazing form of music.

We then went to visit Carmelo Torres, a famous accordion player in Colombia. We sat in his house and listened discs of him and his band. Apparently the accordion arrived in Colombia after a ship laden with the instruments sank off its shores and they were all washed up on the land. The resulting sound that developed among the local musicians is a far cry from the folk playing that we hear back home. Carmelo is a proponent of his local culture that is, unfortunately, dying out with his generation.The kids are now saturated with pop music and are no longer interested in their own heritage, well most of them at least.

After a change of jeep and an additional driver we were onward bound and we found ourselves in Carmen de Bolivar, the region's second city.There we bought some equipment and materials to take up to El Salado whilst our drivers hit the bar in quite spectacular fashion. It was now dark before we head off again up the at times unbelievable muddy track. Credit where it's due the driver did his job well. However, it can be a little unnerving in such occasions when the driver is swigging as much whiskey as you are and is handling it a little less well. Still we arrived safe and sound and are now safely in El Salado and building the studio. I will write more on El Salado but for now, if anyone wants to, you should google the town and find out about the massacre that happened here 10 years ago. Its pretty horrifying.

For now I'll leave with the thought that maybe we can help some of the people that we met on our journey with their mission to preserve their music and culture for future generations.

Another Wet Holiday

There's something about my trips to the Caribbean that don't quite match the archetypal holiday away in the tropics. The first time I was in the region was a number of years ago in Cuba when, as chance would have it, there was a cyclone. Here in the Colombian Caribbean city of Cartagena things are not so different. I have been well informed that it is winter here, despite the considerable heat and stifling humidity, due to the fact that there happens to be a lot of water falling from the sky. Ridiculous amounts in fact, in tropical storm proportions.
So our one day holiday by the sea has been somewhat scuppered before our journey to El Salado today. Before we head off proper we have to go and collect some materials from the market here in Cartagena. Our journey will take at least 4 hours in jeep and is supposedly an arduous one.
Nick is back in Bogota teaching the last day of his first set of workshops, the feedback was good when I was there, the kids seemed really happy.

Hip Hop al Parque

Well eventually, and with a considerable amount of effort, we have just about finished building the studio in Bogota. At this very moment Nick is teaching the first workshop in our new studio for the benefit of kids who are involved with the 'Hip Hop al Parque' festival, which is going to some great effort to insure that there is some sort of lasting benefit for the deprived youth of the city. The festival is run by the 'Orquesta Filarmonica de Bogota' in conjunction with the local Mayor, and is a great chance for youth across the city to learn from music professionals in a number of organised workshops.
The conference that we did on Friday was fantastic. Despite our initial nerves in presenting our project in Spanish to a group of kids that come for truly difficult backgrounds, we managed to pull it off. The kids were really interested in what we are offering and the session ended up in a dialogue between them and Nick about music production we me somewhere in the middle translating. Better still is that a number of these kids are going to be attending our workshops.
I suppose it is somewhat indicative of the desire that some of these kids have to learn more about studio production for their own music that they even turn up at all. Most, or all, of them come from areas where they have nothing and live under constant threat of violence from paramilitary organisations that operate in the marginal areas of the city. Giving up their time that could be spent earning a little money shows what music means to them and demonstrates the positive effect that it can have on their lives.
We have also been taking in some music this weekend, enjoying the local group 'Papaya Republik' as well as lots of 'Gypsy Cumbia', a local fusion of Gypsy punk and native Cumbia rhythms. Now that the work is finished Tim and are relaxing for a couple of days before the second leg of our journey whilst, for Nick, the hard work has just started.

Arc Eye Welders

Well we're knackered but things are moving along nicely now. In fact we are getting to a point where the studio is not far off being installed with equipment. A good job too seeing that it has to be ready by Monday morning. We are working long hours without much respite but, thanks to Tim and Diego, the relentless work is starting to see good results. Due to the fact that we are inside building day in day out, at time it seems like we could be anywhere. However, as soon as I lift the shutter to the building and poke my head out and look left up the street, the magnificence of the Andean peaks that loom over the city remind you exactly where you are.
Bogota's weather is strangely reminiscent of home, albeit on an extreme level. The mornings generally seem to start off with beautiful sunshine but, by midday, we are usually entertained with the thunderous sound of torrential rain slamming into the corrugated roof above our heads. The smog doesn't help either; locked into the city streets by the ever-present mountains to the east.
We are getting there though and today the main building should be finished and we will be on to the soft furnishing stage. Yesterday our day was interrupted by a pair of welders who were in the building installing some steelwork. To say that their methods are a little different to what we are used to to would be an understatement. They came in , hooked a couple of cables, literally, into the mains and began welding staring straight into the arc of the of the weld without goggles. Its quite difficult to fathom the conditions some people are willing to work in, but then, health and safety are hardly top priorities over here.
Nick arrived a couple of days ago and he already started to get hold of equipment and install programs onto the computer. Today we have to speak at a conference for Hip Hop al Parque introducing FairTunes to 150 kids from the barrio's as well as officials from the city and festival leaders. Neither of us are really known for our public speaking so I'm looking forward to it being over really. Then we can get back to setting up the studio.

Foam Party

At times it's hard to fathom how people survive in the face of adversity. For instance, over the last couple of days, we have been out in Bogota collecting materials to build the studio and have witnessed people with horrendous deformities carrying on with their lives by collecting money and surviving in the only way they know possible. It is a far cry from Britain where the welfare state provides for anyone with a cold, let alone a life changing illnesses.
In a way their plight is indicative of the way Bogota functions as a whole. The society, to a large extent, functions in the face of adversity. We have found, for instance, that we are able to get hold of anything that we want to build our studio, we just have to approach everything laterally. We are used to building in a certain way and being able to get hold of what we want in a certain manner.
However, in Colombia, things are not as easy for the untrained foreign eye. To counteract this we have employed a local friend Diego, who has a lot of experience of building studios, to help us get hold of what we want. He has helped us traverse through the myriad streets and areas of the city to find exactly what we need. But, this being Bogota, we have had to approach certain things as a local would do. We bought some second hand tools the other day as good tools cost the earth over here. Unfortunately the drill we bought broke quite quickly. The next day we took it to get it fixed in the engineering district of the city. It was incredible to witness exactly how this part of the city operates, I mean you can get anything, fix anything, do anything, as long as you know where to go. People who survive on very few means are able to achieve what we take for granted, they just have to make sure they can get by with what is presented before them. Here is a culture that will fix anything, the polar opposite of the disposable culture that has grown in the West.
Without the help of Diego we would have been screwed. When we said that we needed insulation for the studio walls he said that he had just the thing in mind. A little while later we were stuffing a van full of foam offcuts in the foam district of the city (where else?) and sending it on its merry way for a price so reasonable I don't want to write it down.
So here we are with another day dawning and more work to do. Our time is precious and the schedule remains tight but we are getting lots achieved in a short space of time with the help of our friends.

Begin Again

I guess that I didn't really explain before what we are doing back out in Colombia again. We have come out to set up 2 recording studios: one in Bogota and the other in in a small town called El Salado near the Caribbean coast. I am out with Tim Giddings and we are the advance party to actually build the studios. The first one is our own studio in central Bogota and will be available to musicians from low income backgrounds, and when I use that term over here it truly means low income.
My mission is also to sign some agreements that will create FairTunes Colombia as a legal entity and will empower some people over here to represent us properly.
As mentioned before our first mission is to set up the Bogota studio before the 4th October when Nick Minton is to begin some workshops in conjunction with a local Hip Hop festival called 'Hip Hop al Parque'. The festival is a city-wide music event pulled together by government organisations who have invited us to work with some underprivileged young musicians in return for some financial support for the running of our studio.
We have a lot to do and, due to us losing a day (see previous blog) we are well behind as we haven't been able to buy the materials or the tools we need yet, as it is the weekend.
However, we are confident that we can hit the ground running and have sourced some tools already and cleaned out the studio space that is housed in a new music venue called 'Boogaloop'.
Luckily for us we we know some amazing people over here from our previous visits and we now have a solid local team who are helping us out in a variety of ways. So, for us, the hard graft starts tomorrow and we can hopefully start something big here before our journey to El Salado where the crazy part of the trip really begins.

Back Again

Lady luck at times appears a little whimsical as to where her gaze falls, and it certainly wasn't shining on us when we left the UK on our journey to Bogota. More to the point French air traffic control was on strike which meant that French air space was closed and we missed our connecting flight in Madrid. So after a night in a hotel on the outskirts of the Spanish capital we caught our flight and arrived safe and sound in Bogota. This time we sailed through customs who, for some reason, appeared not to be paying much attention to the screen when our equipment laden bags passed through the x-ray machine. So lady Luck was at last taking notice as we rushed a little disbelieving through the airport to meet our welcome party.
As soon as we left the airport building I was rushed in a car to meet with the founder of a charity called CIREC. It was a little overwhelming at first but eventually the importance of a collaboration with CIREC became apparent. We are going to be setting up a studio with CIREC in a place called EL Salado, and this was an initial coming together to become aquainted with each other.
CIREC is an amazing organisation that works on a variety of projects, in particular rehabilitating landmine victims from around the country. They make prosthetic limbs for the victims and have at their headquarters the facilities for said rehabilitation. As I was given a tour of the facilities I was really struck by the importance of their work - 2 people get blown up by landmines every day in Colombia - and came to realise how important it is for us to collaborate with them. I will write more about El Salado and what CIREC are doing there, for the moment we are starting to measure up the space for our new studio in Bogota and have to get to it, so I'm off.

Colombian Music

Before we went to Colombia I think I had a preconceived idea about what to expect there. I have lived in a Latin American country before, Peru, and I thought that I had seen it all before; the poverty, the corruption, the history that shaped the country into what it is now etc. I was wrong, Colombia is very different to many of the countries that have visited and spent time in, and for one particular reason: the violent past that effects the present of so many countries, is still very much a problem in Colombia today.
Of course history plays a massive part in all this, and many of today's problems are a result of the legacy left since Colonial times and the great inequality that it caused. Colombia is rich in both natural resources and people and this has caused much suffering to many. But there is also another legacy that has been left by this violent and miserable past that is just as powerful: music.
It is unbelievable how rich Colombia is in musical output, from the the black African beats of the Chocó coast to the traditional Vallenatos and the modern hip-hop happening in the cities, music is everywhere. It is such an important part of life for so many people in Colombia, providing hope and entertainment for the whole country, as well as an outlet for poeple's feelings and thoughts. Through music so many people can find something to divert them away from the reality of life and the inherent problems that are abundent in this country.
What we want to do is to help the so many talented musicians to try and achieve their some of their potential. We can't promise success, but we can offer services and possibility. We can help provide studios that can record the so many different types of music that is part of Colombia's rich legacy. Along side this we can provide education in technology that is otherwise unavailable to the vast majority of the country.
If anyone reading this wants to help and can really offer something to help us to help Colombian musicians please get in touch. Visit www.fairtunes.org for details. It has been a major pleasure for me to have the chance to visit Colombia and get to know the amazing people there who are fighting for human rights and equality every day. I hope you can help us to help others.

In The Studio, At Last.

I had intended to write this before leaving Bogota, but due to a fairly hefty storm on Wednesday most lines of communication down that day... so here goes.
Monday was spent in several meetings dotted around the city, including the Ministry of Culture. Tuesday was the big day, the day we finally were going to get people into the studio and christen it. The morning passed swimmingly, Nick went to the Semillas building to give the studio a lick of paint whilst I spent the morning working on the written side of the project with our host and (one of) partner in Colombia, Angela. We were due in the studio at 2pm with all of the electronic equipment, we couldn't go earlier due to morning classes in the building.
At around midday our carefully laid plans started to go slightly amiss. First, due to a communication breakdown, we discovered that the guys who were going to come and play hadn't been confirmed. A bit of a problem seeing as it was our last possible day to do anything. Phone calls started flying out left right and centre in an attempt to lock down some musicians. We managed to get Diego from Vivo Arte to commit and come down to play some bass so we would at least be able to do something and have some footage of it in use.
We then called a cab, asking for one with a big boot to fit the kit in. When it turned up I knew that we weren't going to get the run of the green, today of all days. Whilst the taxi arrived on time and with a big boot, said boot was full of a massive gas fuel canister. Brilliant. So off we set with almost all the equipment on our laps. Until the taxi stalled and fluid started leaking from the engine.
A few concerned minutes later and the driver managed to get us going again, not without a lot of traffic soundings its point of view on the way past. The rest of the journey turned into a bit of a joke, for us, and we eventually arrived at our destination. With the gear safely in the studio we went out for a quick bite to eat and returned to set everything up. And here's where events began to turn farcical.
When we got back to open the door, one of the young girls who teaches at the school managed to snap the key in the door. A couple of minutes later we began to be inundated with local hip-hop artists who had responded to the calls we had made earlier. Eventually a locksmith was found and the agonising hour long wait began whilst he set about drilling the lock, breaking the drill, fetching another and eventually we were in.
Now we were up and running. It was amazing, for a good few hours we had the place full and recorded first Diego and a singer, followed by two groups of young rappers. These guys were really good. They are all young guys from Ciudad Bolivar and they truly had a lot of talent. The lyrics were slick and had a gritty message that told a lot about the reality for kids growing up in a barrio like theirs. Nowhere can be found the bling bling that we here from other parts of the world. These guys are respectul and really want to get an important message across.
As is to emphasise what we were listening to in the studio, outside the whole barrio was out to bury a local restaurant owner who had been murdered by some thieves at 8pm on Sunday. The procession was vast as the vehicles and people on foot passed noisily past the Semillas building and toward the semitary nearby. Life can be cheap in areas like this, although not to the people who live there.
On the whole, for us, it turned out to be an amazing day. We achieved what we set out to do, and we even managed to record a few acts as well. Now the studio is being left in the capable hands of the 'Por Nuestros Medios' communication school. Each Saturday they are going to spend the morning teaching people how to use it and in the afternoons record people in it. We cannot be more pleased, with the very little that we set out with, our goals have been achieved thanks to the effort and hard work of the amazing people we have met.

Tejo: a drinking mans game

The excitement of the May Day occurances has well and truly dissipated from the streets of Bogotá. Up in the Candelaria district, where we watched riot police and youths exchange gifts so courteously from great distances the other day, the park is now its usual throng of flea market stalls and Sunday strollers. In fact we even saw some police happily conversing with some hippies about their enchanted bangles. Quite a reverse from the action the other day.
So, at least on the surface, peace reigns on the sunny streets of Bogotá once more where we have been running around trying to get in as many meetings and finish off what we set out to accomplish over here. Yesterday, whilst Nick was putting a few finishing touches on the studio we are making (it´s only lacking a lick of paint now), I was visiting Patricia and her youth radio workshop in Suba. I already explained about `Suba al Aire´s´ struggle to obtain a license to transmit radio legally so I won´t repeat myself. I was invited by Patricia to go Suba´s casa de cultura (cultural house or centre) to see what goes on there and to visit her youth community radio workshop.
The program they are running there is fantastic and is open to all local kids for free. I saw a class of kids that was being led by a former pupil of Patricia´s and they were really getting a lot out of the it. The great thing about the set up is that now past students are staying on to take up the mantel and pass on their knowledge to the younger kids. The project is really providing the kids with an alternative as the young teacher informed me. Without this he would have no choice but go into low paid construction work, now he comes into contact with technology and new forms of self expression. The highlight of the trip for me was probably when I had to sit down in front of the class whilst they fired questions at me for what was probably about 10 minutes. For them it was contact with a world that they know very little about. For me it was humbling to be on the recieving end of questions. My companion Angela was also interrogated, although to a lesser extent, and she is planning to link up an exchange withSuba al Aire and the kids that she works with so that they can work together. Links such as these are really important, as Patricia explained to me, as they demonstrate to the kids that they are not alone in what they are doing.
The cultural centre as a whole is great, providing classes in art, literature, radio, vidoe and music for around 200 kids and youths who use the facilities. Unfortunately, due to lack of funds, they currently have only one computer for the whs the radio class came to an end, the computer was promptly unplugged and whisked away to another deserving destination. Suba´s cultural centre has such a great link with local musicians and music projects that this is definately a location that we aim to work in in the future.
Today we went back to visit the L-Mental workshops to do some filming. We also took with us a pc full of music software and a Yamaha sampler to kit out there studio with. When we visited last week they were borrowing a pc and didn´t have enough equipment to do much work with. When we gave him the equipment an emotional Natas told us that it was like Christmas. He can now get a message out to all the groups he knows and they can get back into his studio and do some recording. It really feels like Fairtunes can make a differnece, albeit small, already.
Education and the passing on of information and experience is crucial to what we are trying to achieve. This much has been demonstrated to us by all the groups that we have visited. As such we were given a little lesson last night after being up in the `Nuevas Semillas´ (New Seeds) foundation in Juan Pablo II, Ciudad Bolivar. We are getting quite used to spending time up there and last night we were taught how to play tejo by the teachers that work there.
Tejo is a game that involves drinking lots of beer and throwing heavy metal discs down a hall onto a soft clay target at the end. Despite the obvious dangers we had a great time, it was a real experience and I felt like we made some great bonds with the people there. Some of the other locals weren´t too sure though, our tejo playing is definately not up to scratch yet and their amused glances certainly let us know that. Despite our lack of natural ability for the national working class game we are continuing to make some great links with people. Time is running out and we´ll soon be back and trying to get the ball really rolling.

Pinch, Punch, first of the month and no return

May Day marches are traditional all over the world and Bogota is no different. Here, however, the police seem to act with a certain amount of impunity that is rarly seen elsewhere (unless we count the recent G20 debarcle in London). Three years ago the police came out in such force that they killed a young boy who was peacefully taking part in the march.
Swine flu is on the agenda everywhere and, despite no confrimed cases here yet, the face masks are out. The government even tried to stop the procession due to risk of the infection spreading. Hmmm, nice try.
The march is undertaken by union members and other civil rights groups who take the time out to demonstrate their general disgust for the way things are run here. Today was no different. We knew several groups that were taking part: 'Por Nuestros Medios' were there with a gazeebo and some of the kids they are teaching who were interviewing passers by and some of the marchers. Some other guys that we know pitched in and hired a truck and a sound system to parade in. They were championing several good causes: the first was the death of a young boy, Nicolas Neira aged 15, three years ago - his father Yuri complained to the police and then began to investigate seriously the death of his son. He found out that his son died due to multiple blows to the head and he started to kick up a fuss. The long and short of it is that Yuri has been chased from the country by both threats made to his life and actual attempts on it- The second cause was what is here called 'Falsos positivos' (false positives). This is where the army pick up youths and take them to other cities, dress them in revolutionary gear and kill them before claiming a moral victory for the armed forces. This caused quite a following behind the truck and it is in itself quite a dangerous ploy to so blatantly challenge the authorities here.
The general feeling I took from the march was positive. Our friend Richie, who helped organise the truck, never looked comfortable and said that he was worried about what could happen. Relax I said, it's all going smoothly. As Nick and I wandered up and down the parade I was almost constantly filming. It was amazing to see such an array of colours and hear such great music. Everyone was highly negative about the current administration and the way things are run out here but it was peaceful all the same.
Until our truck came to a certain point a little ahead of us. I was still filming when someone smashed the window of a bank and then the mod passed by police with riot shields and it all kicked off. A water cannon sent most of the crowd running back towards us and we turned and took flight too. Our truck promptly left the march - it turned off the street and sped away - leaving an army of punks running left right and centre.
Nick and I headed up into the old town in search of our friends and stopped on a small side street to make a call. Suddenly the street was filled with police motorbikes, dozens of them, with riders on the front and what are known as robocops riding pillion. You can probably imagine what they look like, heavily adorned in black armour and helmets and with weapons to boot; really they are called ESMAD, a form of extreme riot police. I was filming it all and it was intimidating to say the least as they passed on down the street, stopped, turned around and then passed back by us. Following the commotion was easy as the loud bangs of tear gas shells being fired came from the streets just around the corner from us. Several street battles ensued but we only stayed around to film the goings on: the robocops would charge the youths who would run away before the motorbikes swooped down to pick up the robocops and take them to the next group.
As teargas began to sating our nostrils it was a welcome sight to see a group of peaceful clowns succesfully see off the confused robocops with whistles and dancing. After that we headed toward the truck where the party had begun under the watchful eye of Swedish international observers.
Richie was right, a couple of days before he had said that there had been real tention in the capital over the last few months and that he thought it might boil over. It did, and it was interesting to be witness to it, thankfully we look so much like gringos that the robocops payed us no attention. Their targets are the people who protest on the streets once a year in a vain attempt to better conditions in this country. Fortunately no one was seriously hurt for their cause this year.

Catching Up

Well we have nearly finished building the studio. It just needs a bit more sound-proofing which Nick is going to do tomorrow whilst I am in Suba visiting some workshops of 'Suba al Aire'. Nick has also finished teaching the guys how to use the studio, which we are going to install early next week and hopefully record someone.
Apart from that we have been busy having more meetings. Yesterday we had a very positive one with the British council who seem to be interested in the project and offered us help with importing equipment; something that has been an issue since we landed.
Apart from that there is a little something about May Day, but I think that deserves its own blog so I'll end this one now.

Getting There

It doesn,t feel like we have been up to much over the last couple of days, but upon reflection I suppose we have really. We spent the whole of yesterday looking for materials to build a small soundproofed room in the community centre in Juan Pablo II. Eventually we managed to get enough to make a start and today we started building it. Now it feels like we have truly made a start on the project.
We left the centre as dusk was falling and we really saw the barrio in a different light (no pun intended). Before when we had visited it was generally during the day and with at least one other Colombian with us. This evening we were alone with a load of hired tools and the place was really buzzing with people. The atmosphere was fairly electric and we had one or two knowing looks thrown our way. Despite what most people say about places like this we have never felt threatened; everyone is so friendly here and easy to get along with. Having said that we have been down a couple of streets at night which we then took taxis out of.
Anyway, the long and the short of it is that we have started building and Nick has finished teaching people to use the studio and we are well on our way.