Finally got a chance to watch this documentary about Afro-Venezuelan culture, of which I was featured in a small segment playing the guitar last May for the officially recognized month Afrovenezolano. The documentary was filmed and produced by a friend of mine, Maria Marcano (the girl featured on the cover) who works in the Ministry of Education as a producer as a television producer as well as an active University student. It doesn’t suprise me that she never actually gave me a copy like she’d promised; like most Caraqueños she is typically very hard to get a hold of and in the moment makes alot of promises and plans that never come to fruition, it’s a cultural thing. But oh well, all is forgiven, she is beautiful and friendly after all so I cant stay annoyed for too long.

I was amused and kind of relieved to find that my part in the short 20 minute documentary consisted of about 3 seconds. I wasnt prepared when we recorded in Bellas Artes and was never happy with what I improvised in the moment. I also think that apart from being born in Africa I had very little relevance to the themes presented in the documentary and felt kind of akward about being in it. The documentary itself was a pretty good concise look at the coastal african descendent culture, talking about the different customes, a little bit of historical background and the current racial issues and a bit of typical boring government educational information. My only criticism is that it lacks that little touch that makes a production seem complete. Apropriate supporting images and more original stock footage; the most interesting parts being lifted from an old documentary comparing the culture in the coastal town of La Sabana with a coastal town in Africa. I would have thought that with the amount of time she had to make it might have turned out a little bit better in that regard but in any case apart from that, it serves as an interesting introduction for beginners. I myself am quite conscious of the editing issues behind making a documentary as I have eight digital tapes of people playing in the metro lying around waiting for me to edit, and I still feel like I’m lacking in material!

I spent the weekend of the 19 – 21 at a countryside property to the north east of Caracas in the Barlovento region of Venezuela. Apart from being a much needed escape from the city’s chaos, it was a good chance to finally meet someone from the Calle y Media collective that made the documentaries Fourth World War and the excellent Jesus Y El Viejo (both subtitled in English). I had been trying to track down someone from this collective for ages and in the typical way of finding something when you’ve given up looking for it, I got the contact courtesy of an American friend Amanda, who is living in La Vega, one of the barrios of Caracas known for its radical activity both political and cultural.

We travelled in a group of four, I was introduced to Amanda by another American staying in the same posada called Nat. Those two knew each other through living in Ethiopia while growing up, their parents worked for USAID, our other companera Rio, was part of the same solidarity activist group that had brought Nat to the country. An anti-war collective that included ex soldiers from Iraq and Vietnam as well union organizers, students, community workers and other like minds. Almost all are now back in the United States, Nat staying on until December, one of the ex soldiers Benjamin David Lewis (or Benji), is staying in latin america indefinitely and sharing the room with me, and Amanda here as part of her own univeristy scholorship program.

I wont go into too much detail about our weekend in Barlovento as the video captures the scene,  a relaxed weekend spent with interesting and motivated folk. Marcelo of the Calle y Media collective and his partner, welcomed us into their lovely property, made us feel at home, let us camp at the cabin that will eventually become their permanent home and shared a bit of their lives and revolutionary ideas with us. We did our best to reciprocate, amongst other images in the short video is the scene of various people helping to  clean up the local community school that is currently closed and had been left in a state of disrepair for some time.

The video was shot by Luis, an anarchist friend of Marecelo who came down to visit for one day along with his girlfriend and pleasant suprised me by capturing our weekend in this nice little edit.

I left some links here, firstly of the group of pro Bolivarian revolution anarchists from La Vega that Luis belongs to. Their website is Toparquia, a blog run by a collection of Socialists and Anarchists

http://toparquia.blogspot.com/2009/09/conociendo-el-cumbe-caribe.html

http://toparquia.blogspot.com

Also put in a search for Toparquia in Youtube to come across their channel and gget an idea of some of their videos which include everything from music to protests to video collage and politics

another link that would be very important to share is from the Fourth World War documentary by the Calle Y Media collective. Its a very good introduction to whats been happening in this country in the last 20 years.

Fourth World War can be found here – http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-JuvdqM6VAM&feature=related

If you can find “El Viejo Y Jesus” I would strongly reccomend it. It tells the story of two homeless Caraqueños that Marcelo met years ago. It follows them, their daily routines trying to eat and survive as well as their startlingly lucid political and social insights, all set against the backdrop of the tumultous events of 2002 with the media coup/dictatorship as well as the rather unbelievable ignorance and classism of the upper classes of Venezuela.

"450 years of tradition" says the local government billboard, in an attempt to promote what to the indigenous and those who know their history as 450 years of genocide, poverty and colonialism. In Merida it is these holes in the collective conciousness that make revolutions necesary and for this same reason promted the Momoy collective to organize a day of music and poetry in a public park. An attempt at recuperatating the lost roots, at educating and fostering communal spirit, a deconolization. The location for the event, parque la isla (Island park), the program; various open music jams and performances as well as poetry readings, puppetry, art and artesania.

 

Hitching a ride into town

It couldn't have been a more  beautiful day of sunshine to start off the morning, I didnt bother to wait at the stop for the bus and went walking on towards the next where I was called over by a father and son in a small truck. They kindly offered me a lift though they were going in the opposite direction to Tabay, I rode with them until we got to the highway at the top of the valley and got out to cross to the side that heads towards Merida. I was on a good hitchhiking streak today; straight after getting out of the truck a small white car stopped and offered me a ride into town. The driver was a young male university student called Javier. He stopped the car for a minute to frantically look for his cigaretes searching under all the seats not remembering where he'd placed them, all the usual signs of a pothead. As we got moving along the snaking mountain highway a friendly conversation started up. Javier seemed like a nice guy, telling me about how he knew a lot of travelling musicians and artesanos and had a personal interest in theatre, something of a novelty in this barrio where the youth here are fairly unengaged in all things creative or artistic. The conversation moved on to the topic of his brother which he spoke of as having been a musician before casually adding that he was desceased, that "they'd" killed him. He pulled out a small photo from inside the glove compartment and showed it to me, without wanting to be too nosy I asked him when this had taken place thinking that he'd meant a long time ago due to his frankness on the matter

“Didnt you hear the news about the student who was killed? That was my brother!” I was a bit shocked to be in the car with the brother of that particular student who had been killed during the protests a few weeks ago. Of course I'd heard the news but I never expected to meet a face behind the headlines. The police had done it according to Javier, he tried to explain to me how but I didnt completely understand (perhaps a rubber bullet to the head or at the very least some kind of hit to the head?). He was incredibly cool about it openly talking about the tragedy and of his brother as a role model. We continued conversing changing the topic to less sensitive matters such as my travels through South America playing music and experiencing different culture. Once we arrived in Merida he dropped me off a little bit out of the centro giving me instructions on how to get to the park as well his number to perhaps catch up for a few beers sometime in the centro.

In the park

To get to the park, one has to walk across a narrow bridge over a small valley that seperates ‘the island’ from the main avenue that leads to the centro. Parque la Isla is a large park with a water park in the middle where people can take a ride in pedal boats, as you'd imagine this is a place designed for families. I walked through to the other side of the waterpark to an ampitheatre where the stage was located. The scene looked kind of funny, the Momoy collective was still setting up the sound, Abram was in typical stressed out gig mode frantically running to and fro plugging and unplugging cables and looking like the whole world was about to fall apart. It wasn't even midday and barely anyone had arrived. The stage itself was quite unique, its sides were suspended over the water of the theme park and positioned directly in front of the large but empty theatre. After about an hour it was decided that the PA didnt work and so it was necesary to improvise using one of the amps as a PA system, never a great option but the best under difficult circumstances. Since it was still early I sat down to relax and wrote down stuff in my diary on the grass nearby. I didnt end up working with the guitar instead spending my whole day in the park but was lucky enough to run into Bruno, an Argentinian musician, who paid me another 20 Bolivares for a sleeping bag that I had sold to him (dont know for the life of me why I am selling my only sleeping bag).

The day was billed as a day of desconolization and healing on the flyer. Of poetry and music and artesanias en el parque with the obvious intention of historically educating the community, but as with many of the events concerning the Momoy collective, the ideas were somehow lost in the process. The whole day was practically just a bunch of hippies playing/jamming for the point of it in front of the public for hours and hours, totally boring. I opted out of it instead sitting on the grass with Alex and Daniela, a travelling venezuelan couple, The most involved I got for the first part of the afternoon was to occasionally sit on the floor up on stage next to the drumkit playing percussion in tandem with my friend Andres, a really talented but inexperienced drummer.

More photos can be found here at the blog of the Momoy collective - http://cooperativamomoy.blogspot.com/2008/07/advertencia.html

It was great to spend the afternoon surrounded by lots of friends, in the sun. I didnt feel inspired to play a song because the musicians on stage were the same old people and friends of MoMoy, effectively playing the same horrible plodding reggae rythym regardless of song. Just play for the sake of playing without trying to communicate anything or do anything interesting between them. It all sounds great to decolonize ourseles with a day in the park but it seems to me like Momoy lose the message in the process just like what happened at the poetry festival I went to in the university. The focus should have been poetry but once they showed up it degenerated into another godawful hippy jam that detracted from what we were all there to see which was the damn poetry!

I did eventually put my money where my mouth is and conspire to try a Hip Hop/De La soul influenced improv with a few specific musicians waiting till the time was right i.e. the same musicians/hippys got bored. Alex y Daniela were convinced to do some of their own original songs afterwhich I got up to play electric guitar with Alex on bass and Andres freestyling. That I think worked well as we’d sing a chorus then the others would imrpovise a rap or sing accordingly. I spose I felt a bit like a dick motioning people to enter and exit since they looked at me like a band leader, but it was better than some of the music before hand where everybody would just sing and dominate each other without listening and feeding off of each other. It would be the only song I played the whole day.

After my one song the rest of the day picked up. Bruno and his girlfriend played a really interesting mix of Balkan and cuban inpsired music (a very typically Argentino mix) that along with Alex and Daniela’s music and the theatrical circus set of porteño (porteño being people who come from the port city Buenas Aires) Danny, were the highlights for me. Not to mention the fact that alot of the kids from the Momoy music class participated in the jam, I cant forget the little 7 year old keyboard player who was holding it down for most of the afternoon, he was like a natural rockstar, totally modest of his abilities, hiding behind his sunglasses, the play it cool type.

One of the last performers late in the afternoon was a hippy Rasta guy who arrived and proceeded to shout at everyone in ragga about how personally bankrupt we all are, but in a really negative fundamentalist houlier than thou way. There’s something I really hate about this guy, if I were to rate him under my 3 types of annoying rastas I would file him under - fundamentalist moralistic hippy type. The other two being the pot smoking Bob Marley fanatic hippy  who found rasta, and the white man that desperately wants to be black.

The concert jam finished with a bit of harmless subversion when the security guy turned off electricty trying to shut down the show and close the park despite there being a heap of people in the ampitheatre and on the hills enjoying themselves, the musicians continued an acoustic precussion jam defiantly for a while before finally halting up proceedings

Hanging out with Jana, getting home

Afterwards I left the concert with a real nice girl called Jana, a friend of Adriana (Adriana being the girls on the left in the photo above), originally from Caracas, I must admit that I quite liked her even though I found her to be a touch strange. We headed for the park Las Heroinas, in the centro and while there we saw a colombian painter I knew and it turned that they were ex's, as she told me afterwards. Suprising given the age diference, she must be about 18 and him, well into his 30s, they had met over the internet and she had even visited him in Bogota before he relocated here to be with her, it apparently ended badly. I was having a nice time hanging out with Jana, she even shouted me a pizza at the local bakery (something quite unheard of in Merida, a girl shouting a guy a pizza).

Once she left I stayed in the park hanging out with the numerous Argentinean artesano friends of La Joya. Though I enjoyed the company I eventually became impatient ultimately not liking the atmosphere in plaza heroinas. Eventually as a group we managed to get our shit together to leave the plaza for the bus stop of La Joya: When we got there we found out that the buses had already stopped running, I forgot that today was a public holiday – the celebrating of the Independence of Merida (450 years of tradition!). The only option was to catch a bus for Tabay and get off in the middle of the mountain highway at the valley entrance to La Joya. One of the stragglers in our bloated group named Jarvi (pronounced Harvey), an alcoholic poet, momentarily disappeared and then later reappeared just as the bus was leaving. Typicaly drunk we watched with amusement as he, in his own pathetically poetic romantic way, tried to chat up a sweet girl in the seat next to him who listened politely but uncomfortably to his ramblings. I got a little stressed in the journey by people not listening and trusting that I knew where we were and constantly bugging me every five seconds like children to ask if we were there yet.

When we got off the bus the Argentinians became even more annlying. We were in the entrance to the valley, the barrio of the El Arenal at the bottom and ascending the mountain on the other side La Joya. Everyone at once started bitching and arguing acting as if we were miles from anywhere when in reality we only needed to walk a small distance to get home. But with my luck today we managed to get an ultimate hitch part of the way in a big truck and then finally finishing with the best part of the whole day, the polar ice beers. The most beautiful of all, an Argentinian girl Maya, shouted me one, it had been so long since I'd drank a beer, I dont think I have hardly even dranken a beer since I got to Venezuela, just got accustomed to drinking the cheap crap that Jarvei and the other alcoholic artesanos of La Joya always seemt to buy.

We talked a little about drugs; Alex likes to smoke crack he tells me with a big smile (joking of course, or was he…?) which somehow led on to the inevitable conversation about politics (!?). Since regional state and city elections across Venezuela are up in November the campaigning and sloganeering has started in ernest. One of the Oposition candidates William Dávila (the one being supported by señor Ajeo of the house in La Joya) was apparently the govenor of the state Merida a few years ago and according to them extremely corrupt, alot of public money disappearing into overseas bank accounts. Merida being a very wealthy state recieves alot of public funding as well as tourist dollars but with alot of projects that simply never got made thanks to the corruption.

All this Alex and Daniela told me at my nagging persistance although I sensed that they’re not the type of hippys that care about politics, easier to extract blood from a stone. Their afternoon I’m sure would be better spent relaxing to a nice pipe of crack!

My emotions are conflicting,

I feel an irreconsilable sense of loss and inpiration and I’m unsure exactly what to do with it.

It was last friday evening, somewhere in the midst of an alcoholic haze, fueled by a sense of frustration and impotence, that I lost the only possesions I hold truly dear to me here in South America.

A week has passed and I feel like I dont know what to feel. I lost everything. Not the first time. My large backpack containing all my clothes and photos somehow went missing from the lock up of an Argentinean hostel while I was vacationing in Bolivia. Of course the photos cant be replaced, but clothes are just clothes (no matter how unique). I just had to get on with the situation, deal with it, or dont.

But this is different

Everytime another idea swirls through my head, I have no motivation to try and act on it. I feel no conviction to write down anything at the moment, it all feels pointless.

Two years of my inner most life went walking from the post gig turmoil of the bar on Friday night. Every word, every lyric, every interview, every idea, every recording, every typed up document, every contact, everything.

It feels even less pointless to be bothered posting up these photocopied public anouncements around town, like I can expect anyone is going to return anything. Everything is completely of no commercial value to anyone, but who knows, maybe you can make a cheap buck out of a two year old rotting backpack.

So for the time being, everything seems useless.

The best I can do is to look around and see that I am, as has been almost routine in the last four months since leaving the monotouny of working life in Bogota, surrounded by creative types who want to do something with me, musically at least. A gig is a gig.

It dont console me enough,

I have lost too many ideas

Neiva, Colombia.

I got interviewed yesterday morning and did a short performance of a couple of songs for my friend Diego’s radio show. Diego is a friend of Kike from Bogota, and through that ive been hooked up with a place to stay here in Quito and an excellent host. A rock n roll musician in the punk band Antipatikos, he works at a catholic radio station by day and makes weekly radio shows from his little bedroom set up by night!

You can listen to me being interviewed in Spanish, at 8pm tonight Ecuadorian time which for anyone I know in Australia I suppose that would be something like midday Australian time.

If you miss that then I will at least try to get an MP3 version and somehow upload that if possible

—–

http://www.radioce.com/

the show is called ‘hablando al aire’, enjoy!

—–

and here is the link to Diego’s band, Antipatikos.

http://www.myspace.com/antipatikosrocknroll

Have I ever mentioned that I hate skinheads? Nope? Well, I do. Out of all the subcultures out there the skinhead movement has to be pretty high up there in terms of contradictions. Sharpie, bonehead or just good ol fashioned apolitical, whatever the contradictions of the movement, they always tend to be stupid and ignorant. I won’t get into a long winded explanation of my views on this subculture, that can wait for a rant in some obscure zine somewhere, what I will say is that while I was in a recording studio yesterday I read a rather disturbing article in the newspaper El Tiempo.

It turns out that only a few blocks from here (the recording studio) a group of about thirty skinheads murdered a guy out the front of a restuarant and the police of course did nothing. The neighbourhood this took place in is called Chapinero, its a pretty wealthy place, by no means a run down area. The unfortunate victim was Julián Javier Prieto, a twenty four year old who was studying part time in the Universidad Santo Tomás and Universidad Nacional. The story goes that he had just finished playing a gig with his hardcore band Pitbull last Saturday night and after accompanying his girlfriend to a taxi, was set upon by a group of skinheads looking to beat up anyone that remotely looked like a goth or emo. Without reason the skinheads beat him brutally, the rest of the band tried to save him but to no avail, one member even got stabbed badly in the back trying to rescue his friend.

It may suprise you to know that there are skinheads in Colombia, but there are more skinheads here than I ever saw in Santiago, probably more than I’ve ever seen in my whole life. Stupidly basing themselves on such a stupid copy of English skinheads, they look fuckin’ ridiculous. Here is a link to some articles about it (in Spanish), hope you can understand:

http://www.eltiempo.com/bogota/2007-09-11/ARTICULO-WEB-NOTA_INTERIOR-3717117.html

I remember seeing first hand one night in Melbourne what these non-descrpit newspaper headlines means. My headline read ‘man gets stabbed’. More like man is lucky not to be fucking decapitated! Not a pretty site believe me.

It’s funny since I just got back from walking around the centro of Bogota, which in itself is quite dodgy, im sure not much of what goes on would get reported as news. I can remember recently seeing a news report on TV about some guy in Cali ( a city south of Bogota) shooting someone because he lost 1000 pesos in a card game. Do you know how much that amounts to?

50 cents.

50 CENTS!!

http://www.theage.com.au/articles/2007/07/04/1183351243691.html

Here is one of my favourite poems of his called Farewell:

1

Desde el fondo de ti, y arrodillado,

un niño triste, como yo, nos mira.

Por esa vida que arderá en sus venas

tendrían que amarrase

nuestras vidas.

Por esas manos, hijas de tus manos,

tendrían que matar las manos mías.

Por sus ojos abiertos en la tierra

veré en los tuyos lágrimas un dia.

2

Yo no lo quiero, Amada.

Para que nada nos amarre

que no nos una nada.

Ni la palabra que aromó tu boca,

ni lo que no dijeron las palabras.

Ni la fiesta de amor que no tuvimos,

ni tus sollozos junto a la ventana.

3

(Amo el amor de los marineros

que besan y se van.)

Dejan una promesa.

No vuelven nunca más.

En cada puerto una mujer espera:

los marineros besan y se van.

Una noche se acuestan con la muerte

en el lecho del mar.

4

Amo el amor que se reparte

en besos, lecho y pan.

Amor que quiere libertarse

para volver a amar.

Amor divinizado que se acerca.

Amor divinizado que se va.

                        5

Ya no se encantarán mis ojos en tus ojos,

ya no se endulzará junto a ti mi dolor.

Fui tuyo, fuiste mía.

Tu serás del que te ame,

del que corte en tu huerto

lo que he sembrado yo.

Yo me voy. Estoy triste:

pero siempre estoy triste.

Vengo desde tus brazos.

No sé hacia donde voy.

…Desde tu corazón me dice

adiós un niño

Y yo le digo adiós.

Pablo Neruda