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.