I sit here writing this review with Dark Side of the Moon pounding through my headphones, inspired by the performance last night. Last night’s show can only be described as incredible; bursting with passion, flare, and underlined with excellent musical control. 'Pink Floyd Sinfónico' was performed on stage at the home of Bolivia's National Symphonic Orchestra in la Paz, the Centro Sinfónico. The dramatic setting was accentuated by meticulous lightning, creating an almost baroque atmosphere. This contrast between old and new was the key to the success of the evening as a whole; the contemporary songs and images of Pink Floyd being performed by a classically-trained symphonic orchestra resulted in an unexpected richness. This richness extended beyond the sound of the music into the imagery and soul of the evening.

Before the evening even started it was clear to me that this was THE place to be on this Thursday evening in La Paz; whether you look at the Facebook group showing scores of people lamenting the fact they couldn't get tickets, or the fact the performance had been extended by 4 nights already. For those who did have tickets there was an anxious tension in the air, with people arriving early and queuing outside to ensure their successful entrance.
I wasn’t sure what to expect. I had listened to the recordings of the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra (RPO) playing Pink Floyd, but I had no experience of a live performance such as this. The director Flavio Machicado kindly agreed to an interview before the show. I asked him about any similarities between these performances and any other classical productions of Pink Floyd. He explained that this production was completely original, and came from the imagination of its creator Alexis Trepp who commissioned the production of the scores (including over a dozen original arrangements), and thus prevented it being contaminated by outside influences. His musical style and interpretation can be clearly seen across the production, making it is a completely unique piece of work. 

Having gone back and re-listened to the Royal Philharmonic recording, I feel that while there are some similarities, the differences between the two are more profound. Firstly, the RPO does sound more like a musical accompaniment, with the vocals taking very much a back seat in most songs but the quality of the playing and the use of string section in place of some of the guitar solos is exquisite. In comparison, the Bolivian performance of Pink Floyd songs was much more ‘in your face’, a true spectacle of lights along with Floyd’s signature circular projection of video imagery. Furthermore, the vocalists were the key to the success of many of the songs, bringing together the band and the orchestra in one harmonious sound. Trepp’s production showed a greater variety in its arrangements, and his influence and exuberance is evident almost everywhere, helping really bring the show to life.
I watched the first half of the show from the ground-level seating, where you could see everything from the concentration lines of the musicians to the flourishes of Trepp's fluorescent drumsticks. This half consisted of a tribute of 'Dark Side of the Moon' played in order, but reworked with the orchestra. The whole of the first half was incredibly atmospheric with rousing highs and gentle lows in the music combining perfectly to leave me in an almost constant state of goosebumps. 

For the second half we moved to the mezzanine level and had a great view overlooking the whole orchestra in its glory. This half consisted of a number of other Pink Floyd hits, and contained my favourite song of the night. ‘Wish you were here’ was hauntingly beautiful and accented perfectly with the harmonies from the female vocalists. It was a final slow down for the audience before the big finale, and as much as I love the huge sound of Pink Floyd and their anthems there was something infectious about this performance of ‘Wish you Were Here’ which I will remember every time it comes on.
It is clear that this production is in large part a reflection of Trepp’s dream, yet it took many people to put it together, organise, and pull off with such success. Machicado mentioned that there were a number of businesses that believed in the project ‘before listening to a single rift’ because they believed in the reputation of the Symphonic Orchestra. Thus, this incredible feat was a success due in a large part to the force of nature that is Alexis Trepp, as well as the orchestra and its supporters. 

So what does this mean for the future? Well in the immediate future the National Symphonic Orchestra will return to performing the classics, but there are always challenges to take on, which have the potential of expanding the audience beyond the usual classical-music goers. Machicado hinted at one such possible production, which involves trying to rescue music from the 19th Century and the historic wars of Bolivia’s painful past. Whatever comes next, it’s clear the orchestra have set a high bar for themselves. To retain their standard and success with a range of audiences, they will have to continue to prove that classical, modern and traditional music can be bridged in innovative ways in Bolivia.

Sophia Vahdati visits San Pedro prison to learn that the games of life played by inmates are not all that different to those played on the outside

Describing all this now makes it sound like a game of Monopoly. And for people who had money, it almost was. . . . But in reality it wasn't a game; this was real money, and real people's lives at stake.

—Thomas McFadden, Marching Powder

On the southern side of the tranquil Plaza San Pedro, a couple of blocks from La Paz’s central artery, and a stone's throw from the Sopocachi district, lies a huge concrete construction awash with uneven off-white paint. Sitting in this sunny square, I look around and see kiosks and market stalls, cholitas selling nuts and chocolates as children and adults lounge around in the sun; if it were not for a small red brick watchtower on the corner of the building and a scrum of police officers, the building would simply blend into the background of the square. But if you venture inside this brick fortress, you will find high-profile disgraced politicians, alleged terrorists, murderers, and minor thieves. This is the notorious San Pedro prison, made internationally famous by Rusty Young’s book, Marching Powder, about prison tour guide and drug trafficker Thomas McFadden’s time as an inmate. Inside, wives and children live with their convicted husbands and fathers. Behind the hype and the horror stories lie tight-knit communities and strong friendships in which a real-life game of Monopoly is part of the inmates’ everyday lives.

CHANCE

Getting into San Pedro as a tourist and a journalist is not an easy process. The days of guide-led tours for travellers looking for a cheap fix inside the prison are long gone. I sit on a small wooden bench clutching my permission slip and passport, watching the long line of visitors, mainly colourful smiling cholitas and young wives with babies strapped on their fronts, being searched. They carry bags of fruit, pasta and even planks of wood. All visitors are searched as soon as they walk through one of the doors past the front entrance; women through the left and men through the right. The entrance hall is intimidating. Men clutch the bars and shout, ‘¿A quien llamo?’, ‘¿Qué nombre es?’ These are the taxistas who make a living from calling for, and finding the inmate a particular visitor is looking for. As I enter with Amaru, the director of Bolivian Express, voices surge up and animated faces turn towards me. A man holds up a wooden board on which small wire motorbike sculptures are fashioned to decorate lighters—he has more sculptures than he does teeth. Around the courtyard are men selling cakes, chocolates, and beautifully sculpted wooden boats and friendship bracelets.

We ask one of the taxis to call for Castillo in Sección Pinos. Two minutes later, the man we are looking for, Luis Castillo, arrives. Dressed in a light blue Club Bolívar football shirt, tracksuit bottoms and trainers, Castillo doesn’t stand out from the group that crowds the entrance hall. His smile reaches all the way to his eyes and he doesn’t seem surprised to see us, despite the fact that we haven’t yet met nor made prior contact. Castillo leads us across the courtyard and through to the Pinos section of the prison. The prison is made up of eight sectors, of which Pinos is one of the more expensive and selective areas. It is clean and nicely decorated, with several cafés and salteña vendors. As we walk up the stairs and into the Pinos delegate’s office, I’m immediately put at ease by the green-and-white linoleum flooring, the Coca-Cola-emblemed chairs, the TV showing a Jason Statham film, a half-eaten tub of ice cream, and two pictures of the Virgin Mary on either side of the room.

YOU HAVE ROLLED THREE DOUBLES; GO DIRECTLY TO JAIL

As a pastime, many of the prisoners in San Pedro play games of chance such as loba and cacho. The stakes are small and rarely surpass five bolivianos a bet. The delegado of sección Pinos, Jorge, describes the afternoons spent playing cards as a form of therapy, of social interaction as opposed to a penchant for gambling. The social and therapeutic dynamics of the game playing, whether it be card, billiards or football, is of the highest importance. Jorge crosses his arms over his US-highschool-style sports jacket, looks me straight in the eyes and explains how it is the director of each section’s job to keep his community entertained and occupied; this is the way conflict and unrest are avoided. He says that the people here are not bad, they simply need entertainment and ways of amusing themselves. The line between prisoner and free citizen blurs inside my head as the amicable men continue to chat and answer questions, and I think how similar the needs of the prisoners here are to the needs of every human being. Simply depriving someone of their freedom does not remove their humanity.

COMMUNITY CHEST

Football is taken very seriously inside the prison. There are four tournaments held each year, and each section has three teams: an ‘honours’ team with the finest players, a ‘special’ team composed of regular players, and a veteran team (mutuales) for those who are older than 38. ‘The aim is for everyone to be able to play’, explains Castillo, who is now a member of the Pinos veteran team.

In his book Man’s Search for Meaning, Viktor Frankyl consulted psychiatrists in prisoner-of-war camps, who said that ‘only those who were oriented toward the future, toward a goal in the future, toward a meaning to fulfil in the future, were likely to survive’. The idea of sport and game-playing as a form of therapy is visible everywhere you look in San Pedro prison. It is an important part of these men’s lives, and the responsibility and organisation that is left up to them allows them thrive and have a more fulfilling existence in the prison.

It’s a controlled state of anarchy in the prison. From the pitch rental for football practice (five to seven bolivianos an hour) to the purchase uniforms for the first team, social activity breeds companionship and personal improvement. Castillo recounts how he has seen many good players leave the prison with more passion and skill about their game than when they entered. Star players are even transferred between teams, although this means that an inmate has to sell his cell (everything, including housing, is for sale in San Pedro) and move to another section.

GET OUT OF JAIL FREE CARD
The games of San Pedro are not without their own bargains and deals. Certificates that state that two days of work or study have been undertaken reduce an inmate's sentence by one day. These get out of jail cards are not so much free or organised by the penitentiary system; they are signed and sent off for approval by the delegates of each section. Jorge explains how the close-knit nature of each community breeds personal responsibility and its own form of justice. ‘Everyone knows everyone else and their families. We are all friends here.’ He says that the delegates’ and the public's opinion of an inmate can be as important as the ruling of a judge with regards to early releases.

THE BANKER

With the property cards that are given to an inmate once he purchases a cell —which can be mortgaged when an inmate falls upon hard times— this game of Monopoly is little different from the board game, or the game of life that we are all playing where money is power. The phrase ‘money is everything’ keeps emerging from everyone’s lips, from the Italian anthropologist Francesca Cerbini, who authored a study of San Pedro prison called La Casa de Jabón, to the prison psychologist, Magali Quispe Yujia, and even the delegate of the Pinos section, Jorge.

Money is needed for everything: to advance your trial, to buy equipment to further your profession, as well as to pay for your living expenses, from accommodation to food. To me, the prison seems like a collection of small societies. Jorge’s explanation of the internal rules, maintenance and management appears to be a working example of anarchism. The prison does not need a centralised control system because the prisoners fulfil that role themselves.

As we leave, we hug Luis and Jorge, promising to visit them soon and to hopefully watch a football match in action. On the way out, Amaru comments on Luis’s Club Bolívar T-shirt. Luis shrugs and admits that he’s actually a fan of The Strongest, La Paz’s other big league team. ‘I’m only wearing it because someone gave it to me’, he explains. We pass a child dressed in school uniform on the stairs and another toddler playing around on a toy bike as we return to the entrance hall. All my initial fear has vanished. In fact, I’ve felt more endangered in some nightclubs in London. The unease and fear comes from us, the people from the outside. The vast majority of the prisoners in San Pedro are simply trying to play at living, just like the rest of us.

Pasanaku devises a game out of saving money. A group of players is formed, made up of family, friends or colleagues. Each member of the group puts in an agreed amount of money each time the group meets and after every Pasanaku one member of the group wins all the money donated. Eventually everyone wins back the total amount of money they put in; there’s no risk and no losers.

Pasanaku is a classic example of Ayni, the traditional practice of mutual support in indigenous communities. The word Pasanaku means ‘passes between us’, which is indicative of the sentiment of reciprocity that underpins the game. In the Andean world, the community is the base of society, coming before individuals who from birth are embedded in a network of complex relationships. Reciprocity is therefore paramount, as it engenders mutual respect, justice and solidarity. But how far can we begin to consider economic reciprocity as not only cultural tradition but as a fundamental economic strategy?

In Pasanaku you play with those who you trust—your friends or your family. From my perspective at least, the coupling of finance and trust is crucial and, conversely, its absence deeply troubling. 5 years on from the Credit Crunch, its painful learnings still resonate in our society. Distressing photographs come to mind depicting of desperate people queuing in the cold outside their bank hoping for reassurance that their savings would be, well, safe. The media brimmed with tales of poor souls who withdrew their life savings in sad brown envelopes, due to the fear that they would be the next to lose out. Comparisons were constantly drawn between the present and the 1929 Wall Street Crash, and as a naïve 14 year old sitting in front of the telly wearing a crudely un-funny slogan t-shirt and lacking any tangible knowledge of Economics—or even my own bank account—I was terrified that we had entered the next Great Depression. Were there to be Breadlines and Hoovervilles arriving in my leafy middle-class corner of South London? More importantly, would I ever be able to afford the UGG boots and Abercrombie Hoodies that my puerile 2008 dreams were made of? I vividly remember the media frenzy of the Credit Crunch and the fear it instilled in my parents. Still now I am confronting the lingering anxiety it left looming over my generation.

As a society we entrusted our savings to our banks and bankers, who in turn played games with our money and lost. Bankers and stockbrokers were quickly seen as reckless gamblers who had no consideration or compassion for those whose money they were playing with. So surely we could learn a lot from Pasanaku, as a financial system that values the importance of trust above all else.

And yet in England we hate to mix finance and friendship. In our culture of individualism one’s financial situation is not something one speaks about. Doing so remains taboo and stigmatised. Even in marriage, some debts remain hidden and irresponsible spending is too shameful to confess, even to a spouse. Admitting to my closest friend at University how far I have eaten (or drank, as the case may be) into my overdraft would be excruciating. However in Pasanaku, you confess your finances and accept the support of people in your social circle. Every Pasanaku player I spoke to admitted that they will readily bend the rules if a member of their group needs the money at that time. The obligation only lasts as long as the cycle, and as a microfinance strategy it is based entirely on trust—no written contracts are exchanged—and is kept completely separate from the banks or government.

La Paz is a city where traditional Andean cultures are in full synchrony and confusion with what some of us recognise as the modern world; where a stern-faced Cholita crowned by a hat balancing askew (on plaits that swing by her waist, adorned in kaleidoscopic layers of skirts), will sell you an iPhone charger. Pasanaku has thrived in La Paz, escaping its status as a cultural relic and surviving to the present day as a widespread saving strategy and social activity. The many Pasanaku groups that are played in workplaces are a vivid example. I met Eulogio Callisava, at work on the 3rd floor of a skyscraper in the centre of the metropolis. As a player of Pasanaku for the last 3 years, he confirms that it is a common activity across the city’s offices.

Teresa Conesa has been playing Pasanaku for 6 years now, in a group composed of other mothers from her son’s school. She sees the social dimension as the most fundamental aspect of Pasanaku. Unlike other social arrangements, Pasanaku is an obligation and a commitment and because money is involved she knows that her guests won’t find an excuse not to turn up. So the players are knowingly not only investing their money but also investing in spending time with loved ones. Teresa firmly views Pasanaku as an obligation although 'maybe because you do it with your friends it’s fun… an obligation mixed with fun' and she eventually admits that it is definitely more fun than about the financial dimension involved. Giggling, she recalls one Pasanaku group that became an even grander occasion by playing in fancy dress.

The stereotype is that Pasanaku is a Ladies game. When I asked Teresa about this, she suggests that it is mainly women who want to have a night away from their husbands and children. She knows of some women who have a different Pasanaku every night as an escape from their family life, and their husbands can’t argue with it because it’s a serious financial commitment. Telma Cuentas believes it is more popular amongst women maybe because women are more concerned about saving money than men are. Telma’s perspective is certainly in line with theories which state that the hyper-masculine culture of banking and finance being partly to blame for the financial crash. The same theories that recently prompted the British Member of Parliament Tessa Jowell to proclaim, on live television and rather spontaneously, that had more women been in charge of big banks, then the financial crisis would never have happened. The game I observed was pointedly women only. As if he were an endangered and elusive species, I only caught a glimpse of the husband arriving at home. He himself only managed to drop off his briefcase before disappearing upstairs—without dinner—and we returned to no man’s land.

A pasanaku group I spoke to meets once a month. I was able to join them one
evening in the living room of a beautiful house in Zona Sur (La Paz’s Chelsea, notorious for a distinct accent, preppy teenagers, and a prevailing Western influence on consumption and aesthetics). A log fire glows in the corner while the ladies are buoyed up upon a powder-blue sofa set. The women themselves are as immaculate as the lounge they are set in. Their hair is neatly coiffed; nails impeccably manicured and in an act of adamantine female solidarity they parade in stiletto heels, undeterred by Zona Sur’s tumultuous pavements. Immediately, they admit that the game is mainly an excuse to gossip, 'That’s it!' one woman howls. And she’s proven right; over the course of the evening the amount of money that ‘passes between’ the women pales in comparison to the expanse of gossip that flies from their lips. They talk about children; theirs, other people’s—who’s married, who’s put on weight and who will 'only be cute, but never handsome'. Over a lavishly arranged dinner, when someone begins to lament the onslaught of ageing they shriek with laughter about Botox becoming an appropriate and well-deserved trophy for a lady approaching 50. While the others are distracted, one woman is singled out by a head of golden highlights for the privilege of speaking in hushed tones about some inscrutable scandal. For these women the social dimension of Pasanaku is its allure.

My initial scepticism couldn’t quite swallow that this game could be so successful when only based on trust. What about humanity’s collective and uncompromising fundamental selfishness? Surely, over the past centuries this ancestral system has been exploited by the occasional flake or usurper. My probing questions on this point are met with blank stares, or nervous laughter. Hazy stories are recalled of a friend who had heard of someone who had left the country with all the group’s money. It is agreed that it can be awkward when people owe each other money. Some anecdotes involve people forgetting their hosting duties and thus betraying the code of reciprocity, serving biscuits and crisps found in an uninspiring last-minute supermarket dash.

Despite my best efforts to undermine the ancient Andean wisdom, I didn’t manage to do so. There is a lesson to be taken from this ancestral game. Perhaps just the sentiment that Teresa pointed out, when she emphasised how important it is that you trust the people you play with and that you have fun, 'otherwise it is a waste of time and money'. Perhaps if we make sure we play with people we love and trust, and ensure we are doing so for fun, then we can all be victors in the games we play.