It’s difficult to begin counting the ways that Bolivia has the power to overtake the senses. But I’ll take on that fool’s errand and start a list:
A walk through La Cancha, Cochabamba’s famous daily open-air market – the country’s largest – will inundate your eyes with the crowded sights of vendors selling everything under the sun, from vegetables and livestock to clothes and car parts. The world-famous Carnaval celebrations in Oruro flood your ears with the wild musical history of Bolivian folklore. Neo-Andean cuisine pouring from the newest kitchens in La Paz and Santa Cruz offers the jet set traditional, local ingredients presented with modern flair, creating new flavours for diners to savour. A pre-dawn arrival to the ceramic and glass bus terminal in Potosí can deliver a soul-searing cold your body has never felt before. The smell of burning palo santo enticing your nose at a cha’lla at the top of La Cumbre, the desolate, rocky mountain pass you reach on your way down to the greenery of Los Yungas and the Amazon, is one you will never forget.
I could go on and on.
In this issue of Bolivian Express, we used our senses as our guides to share some of the most memorable stories from Bolivia. We are celebrating the incredible diversity of this country, and telling stories of what we find to be essential Bolivian experiences.
We learn about a history of the recorded music of yesteryear, and two fanatics’ efforts to preserve precious pieces of musical history. We visit a theatre where children without hearing are learning to perform their experiences and allow audiences to understand what it might be like to live with disabilities. We take a charango lesson from a master, one who cannot see and uses his ears, hands and heart to feel his music. In La Paz’s Zona Sur, we get a close shave with a barber offering old-time quality to the city’s up-and-coming. And we visit an Italian restaurant that combines tastes of the Mediterranean with warm Bolivian hospitality.
While thinking of the sensory experiences Bolivia has to offer, it is important not to leave out its more mystical side: yatiris telling fortunes; human skulls protecting their caretakers; the Andean cosmovision providing new ways to see the physical and metaphysical world. With otherworldly activities carrying on amongst modern life here, one can become tuned in to one’s sixth sense, looking inside oneself to make one’s own reality of this place.
As you sit back and read this issue, hopefully we will awake all of your senses, and you will be prepared to take in from all sides everything Bolivia has to offer. There are many places to go, and even more stories to create. Give it your all, and with your five physical senses, and your sixth one for good measure, you can experience Bolivia for all that it is.
Then you can start making your own little list.
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Photo: Nick Somers and Sophie Hogan
The Vinyl Collectors Saving Generations of Music
Many aspects of life have been lost to history's clutches. There are arts, people, and even whole cities that are forgotten because of time’s relentless passing. Music is one of the most common things that has surrendered to the passing of generations; whether they were not released, mindlessly left unrecorded or only played so that few people would hear, countless pieces of music have been abandoned.
Fernando Hurtado Valdivia and Isaac Rivera Cuevas, two men in their 30s from the Miraflores neighbourhood of La Paz, have done their best to change the fate of some of this lost music. These paceños have been friends since childhood and share a passion for the art of music. Their project, Ajayus de Antaño, or ‘Spirits of Yore’, has become well known throughout the city for the preservation of countless records from Bolivia’s musical past, going back to the 1910s. Their selection of vinyl recordings run the gamut from Bolivian foxtrots and popular orchestral pieces to songs celebrating La Paz's star football clubs, The Strongest and Bolívar.
We sat down at the computer as Fernando set up his new turntable, from which he transfers the music into a digital recording. The first few seconds were simply just crackling from the needle, the new technology not affecting the antique sound of the record. When the music began, it was clearly from an era long before most of us were around. It was a piece from the 1930s, sounding like something that might come out of a saloon. The crackling continued behind the music, which made you want to tap just the one foot; it was something you could listen to while having a relaxing drink in a bar somewhere in a small town on the altiplano. If any music needed to be immortalised, this was most certainly it.
‘We came across these two guys who had a bunch of vinyl with them in the street. . . They had their record player and a speaker on a little table, and they sold us some of the discs they had.’
– Isaac Rivera Cuevas
‘I wasn't all that interested in Bolivian music at first. It was just a little too weird for me,’ says Isaac. 'I like metal a lot, from Norway and Finland, a lot of the heavy music that comes out of Northern Europe, especially because they sing about their own traditions. They have pagan traditions, and there's a lot of folkloric metal, and for me the fusion of the two is really cool.’ It was from this starting point that Isaac thought to explore the folkloric traditions of Bolivia. Since then, he and Fernando have delved into a variety of bands and singers from across the Andes. Today, their collection is extensive, and vinyl discs fill the bookcases in a small room of Fernando’s Miraflores apartment. The records are from labels like Columbia, Mendez, and Victor, the latter also being the company that made the original turntable that the pair own.
Both Fernando and Isaac found their passion for music in similar ways. Fernando’s aunts influenced his love for rock music when he was just 11, giving him a mixtape full of Pink Floyd, Led Zeppelin, and the like. Isaac remembers a specific moment when his love for music started: 'I went to this underground concert at the Casa de la Cultura, and I was quite nervous because there were all these mad rockers around me and I was just standing there, this 10-year-old, terrified. When I was 17, I really got into it, buying myself black clothing and band T-shirts.’ Their mutual devotion to music led them to become impromptu collectors.
'We came across these two guys who had a bunch of vinyl with them in the street,’ Isaac says. ‘They were older men. They had their record player and a speaker on a little table, and they sold us some. We'd record the music from the vinyl onto cassettes in those days. We managed to put together a pretty good collection of vinyl from those two.’ They began collecting music in 2001, and by 2011 they had hundreds of records from many different sources, ranging from Bolivian fusion to international music, all played at 78 rpm. They went to music shops, hidden nooks and crannies, and even to people’s homes to buy the records.
By the time 2012 rolled around, the two began to digitalise their new collection, but not before running over some road bumps. 'It was difficult to digitalise them at first because the discs were so fragile; the first few times we tried, the discs broke because they just couldn't handle being played and recorded after years of sitting doing nothing,’ Fernando remarks. 'After a couple of tries it was okay, and we started the process properly.’
Their mission now is to begin elaborating on the history of the music.
They created a Facebook page to spread the word about their project, as well as a blog. Now that most of the digitisation is complete, the pair is working to get the music out to the public. 'After a while, we noticed there wasn't really anywhere in La Paz to save and listen to this sort of music, so we began to upload the digitalised music to YouTube,' says Isaac. Now their channel has over 250 subscribers, and the archive has been featured in the daily paceño newspaper Página Siete.
Their mission now is to begin elaborating on the history of the music for the wider general public, and research has been their task since 2014. Their plan is to write a book to complement their digital collection, a project that they have tirelessly been devoting themselves to. Fernando and Isaac are working on their project with fervour, and are excited to explore, learn, and tell about this music for years to come.
Isaac and Fernando’s project, Ajayus de Antaño 78 RPM Bolivia, has pages on Facebook and Blogspot, as well as a channel on YouTube.
Photo: Julia Mcgee-Russell
A sensory marvel put into perspective
People experience some of the most surreal feelings while on the Salar de Uyuni. Beyond its apparent nothingness and rich amount of resources, including thousands of tons of salt and massive lithium reserves under the salt crust, the Salar is a place unlike anywhere in the world in terms of how it deceives your senses.
A select team of filmmakers from the United States wanted to shine a light on the ongoing conflict between the salt gatherers on the Salar and the Bolivian government, which is straining their livelihoods by harvesting lithium. They eventually produced the harrowing documentary, 'Salero'. There were eight shoots over six-and-a-half years, and they have finally produced the movie that will premiere and tour in Bolivia throughout May.
'My first exposure to the Salar and the salt flat was the surfacing of lithium reserves in Bolivia,' says Mike Plunkett, the film's director based in New York City. 'It was on the front page of every publication,' he adds. Mike remembers seeing a photo essay in the New York Times, which drew him so much he couldn't resist taking a trip there. 'It was such a surreal and visual place that felt like a lunar landscape. If I could find a character to surround it, I thought it would be a fascinating project.'
He found Moises, a salero, or salt harvester, hailing from the village of Colchani, now a popular tourist destination. The movie depicts Moises’ simple life, dedicated to hard-work and family. His problems mount when the government begins lithium extraction and salt prices crash, forcing him to realise that his way of life may have become obsolete. For years, Mike had been following Moises’ story, giving him ample time to develop his own relationship with the Salar.
'I hadn't experienced anything like it,' Mike recounts. 'If I had to compare it with something, it would be like going out in a boat way into the ocean. It's really disorienting and hard to judge distance, and it became immediately apparent that if we were going to do this story there was a lot to learn and discover.' Despite the amount of time he and his crew spent on the Salar, there was a new sense of awe with every day of filming, especially when Mike decided to spend some time alone with the salt.
'Our producer, Noah Block-Harley, and our guide dropped me off for around three hours to do a time-lapse alone, in the middle of the salt flat. If you don't have anything else around you, it's completely silent, there's no life, no wind, nothing,' Mike remembers. 'It's unsettling, because you're alone with yourself and there's no way to escape that. I started talking out loud, shouting and rambling for three hours,' he says, chuckling slightly at the memory. 'When I got back, I realised that the sound on the camera was actually recording the whole time. I have since deleted those audio files.'
Mike and Noah remember when some French tourists were trapped out on the Salar after their car collapsed into the salt crust. One walked to the edge of the Salar to find help. 'When she reached us she was almost delirious,' Mike recalls. 'Moises and his brother had to drive out and save them. People can really die out there, because it's so easy to get lost.'
The bizarrity of these experiences tells of the contradictory feeling the Salar can produce in those who encounter its vastness on their own. It can simultaneously make you feel as if you are the biggest thing in the world and the smallest thing in the universe. 'It's both frightening and empowering,’ Mike says. ‘I've never felt that way before. It's more different than anywhere else I've ever been to, in terms of the way it affected me.'
'I was out there for hours...It's unsettling because you're alone with yourself and there's no way to escape that.' – Mike Plunkett
The experience of the crew, who were not just taking in the Salar as tourists, demonstrates just how perilous and breathtaking it can be, even after six or seven visits. They show that it does not matter who you are or where you're from, this vast and beautiful landscape can make you lose faith in your senses.
The feature 'Salero' will be screened in various parts of Bolivia throughout the month of May.
Photo: Nick Somers
A lesson with the maestro
Agustín Alonso has been busy tending to his nest. A short walk up from Plaza San Francisco, family-made instruments line his workshop like banks of exquisite wooden wallflowers, while at the far end of the room sits a cluster of miniature furniture. Before entering, I perch in the courtyard below and listen to intricate musical phrases furiously strummed by this charango virtuoso. The song eases down to a harmonious end. It’s time for my first lesson.
Having tried and failed to graduate beyond three chords during my teenage foray into ukulele-playing, I pity Alonso; he’s got a tall order on his hands. However, much to my surprise, the expertly crafted lesson plan – which systematically tackles traditional rhythms, a discombobulating spectrum of chords, and the chromatic scale, too – sees us cover more ground than anticipated.
Born in 1961 into a family of Cochabamba-based musicians, Alonso has been blind all his life. True to clichéd imagery, this maestro has that intangible, guru-like quality where he seems to see through his other senses. In intermittent moments of wizardry, he tells me that the charango we are playing is too small for me, that I am using the wrong fingers to strum it, and asks casually whether the sealed thermos flask placed momentarily on his counter is coffee brought for him.
Thick-set, with wide facial features and a middle-parting that wouldn’t look out of place in a ‘90s boy band, the most striking aspect of Alonso’s appearance is his right thumbnail. It is enormous. While his talon dwarfs most guitar plectrums, mine was gnawed feverishly down to the cuticle during a particularly tense game of monopoly the previous week. Alas, we have bigger fish to fry.
He tells me that he began to learn the charango at 15, 40 years ago. ‘I love it because it is in my blood,’ Alonso says of music. ‘My grandparents made and played charangos, so all my life I have been surrounded by them.’ What began a pastime became a career. ‘When I got older, educated, aware, I discovered artists and I decided, “I want to be like them”. I said to myself, “One day I will be great”. My life began in that moment.’
Alonso speaks with reverence about the great maestros, his idols – one in particular: ‘I found a lot of inspiration in the work of Ernesto Cavour’, a Bolivian charango legend 21 years Alonso’s senior. What he learnt from Cavour he then married to a central desire to bring community to his musicianship, and thus began teaching. ‘I said, “It’s wonderful that I play the charango but I want my friends to play with me”. So I taught one friend the charango, one the guitar, and another the quena.’
In moments of beautiful poetic reverence, Alonso refers to himself and his instrument as ‘we’, as ‘us’, as one. When I ask about his dreams, a question he professes to like because ‘a dream is not an occupation, a dream is something that you always hold close’, he expresses a will to share his music. ‘I have dreams of travelling, doing concerts and conferences of charango, speaking about my life; this is my world of dreams. I understand that many friends of mine go to play abroad because they earn money, but I don’t want simply to earn money, I want to spread the charango.’
This maestro has that intangible, guru-like quality where he seems to see through his other senses.
‘I invite all the youth to keep playing it,’ Alonso says, as he leans forward in his seat at the end of our lesson. ‘I ask the governments of my country, municipal, departmental, and central, to interest themselves more in the charango, to safeguard it, to spread and promote this instrument. We are the country of charango. We have to promote and defend that.’
When, if ever, this maestro hangs up his instrument, he does not want his legacy to be that of a ‘blind charanguista’. ‘People often ask me, “What is the charango for you? Is it your guide?” No. I guide the charango, my heart lives inside its body and leaves it in pure sound. The charango is the instrument that allows me to share what I have in my soul: the message of love, of care, of hope, sometimes even sadness.’ Alonso is philosophical about his blindness: ‘It is a problem, not an insurmountable obstacle. It is a problem and every problem has a solution. The eyes are not what play. You play with your ears, your hands, with you hearing, your touch – I am illuminated by the melody, the music, and my passion for both.’
