If you’re putting something off, there is no better way to motivate yourself than adding something even more insurmountable to your to-do list. On Tuesday I managed to cross off a stream of menial tasks that had been pestering away at me for months: I paid my credit card bill, got my boots re-heeled and even […]
I’ve been back in the UK for nearly three weeks now, and already my research trip seems depressingly far away… It’s frightening how quickly Oystercards, overpriced coffees and frostbite can become a reality, and how your main wardrobe item is no longer your flipflops but your thermal undies. I now fully understand the term ‘hugging […]
Oh, we thought we were so smart… …we had totally cracked the system by arriving at Cali bus terminal at 11:30pm. We would surely be at the front of the queue when the ticket booths selling bus tickets to Pasto finally opened at 3am: the envy of all other tourists; an impressed nod from the […]
Happy New Year to everyone! I hope you all had a fantastic time wherever you were. Hope 2014 has started with a BANG! A little bit of catching up to do this end, but I thought I would cater for those back-to-work-brains by showering you with some wittily-annotated pics rather than another musicology essay (but […]
Students waiting for rehearsal at the dance school Palenquero and the people of Palenque Back in 2004 when I studied Spanish Linguistics at University I learned about a creole language called ´Palenquero´ which was spoken by a very small community in northern Colombia, San Basilio de Palenque. It was a community of about 3000 people hidden […]
Torre de la Reloj en Cartagena’s old town So last week my travels took me to Cartagena de Indias in the north coast of Colombia, one of the first ports the Spanish arrived at during the conquista, and boy do you know it! The verisimilitude to Andalusia was uncanny – white washed houses sprouting wisteria, […]
Rehearsal in the hot afternoon sun in Valledupar So my secret PA was clearly enjoying some annual leave on my second couple of days in Valledupar… Of my five meetings planned the day before, only ONE of them happened! I must be honest that two of them were cancelled by me (!) One thing I am […]
Accordion If you have ever got a bus in South America, you will have experienced the joy that is vallenato – the accordion music that has been dubbed both an epidemic and the best thing that ever happened to Colombia. As alegre as it may be, it’s pretty hard to get some shut-eye on a […]
It was a typical Colombian scene. I must remember ‘ahorita’ does not mean ‘now’, or anywhere close to it! If someone says that something is happening ‘ahorita’ it can mean in a few hours, a few days, even the following year eg. ‘ahorita en febrero.’ If someone says ‘we’re leaving now’ in England you are […]
I can´t believe that less than two months ago I had no idea about the music from the Pacific coast of Colombia: now it seems to be all I am listening to! The Petronio Álvarez music festival back in September was my initiation and since then I have had the opportunity to interview and watch […]
Sarita con su guitarrita 