Jack Radio #114 by Jack Radio on Mixcloud

Jack Radio – The best new music from Colombia and around the world. This week we feature music from acclaimed Cali-based ensemble Tamborimba.

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By Jeff Guerra
Photos: Raúl Tobón

A deep and thorough understanding of origin is a powerful tool in the formation of identity. When man first stood upright on the mossy planks of good green earth, he asked where he had come from as a means of understanding who he was.

Some of today’s most powerful works of art continue to explore this same question; in Colombia, none more gracefully than those produced by the Sankofa Afro-Colombian Cultural Corporation. Founded in 1997 by its current Director Rafael Palacios, the organization seeks to build and maintain a bridge between Colombia and the African continent through artistic creations that use dance to illustrate ancestral foundations while also addressing contemporary day-to-day life. Sankofa is an African term derived from the words SAN (return), KO (go), and FA (seek/take/retrieve), and is symbolized by a mythical bird that flies forward with its head turned backward.

Promoting the value of looking back is a powerful idea in a country whose recent past is in many ways still too painful to reflect upon, but Colombians are resilient people, and their cultural leaders have long since realized they must confront their past in order to move forward. Sankofa is surely one such leader, and they have chosen the creative arts as a means to make the point that the only way forward is together.

Indeed, celebrating Afro-Colombian heritage through the arts provides salient commentary on the greater Colombian social landscape: despite having the largest Afro-descendent population among Spanish-speaking countries, the nation has yet to wholeheartedly embrace this rich sub-populace as its own in a meaningful social or economic way. Rather than deny their roots and beg for social inclusion, Sankofa have gone another way, fortifying the link to Africa as a means of elevating community pride and thus ultimately the cultural value we can realize with a racially integrated Colombia.

The quiet dignity inherent in this path is a reflection of its leader; formally trained in the disciplines of ballet, modern, jazz and both traditional and contemporary African dance, Palacios has performed in numerous productions across Latin America, the United States, Europe and Africa. This experience combined with a similarly impressive background as a creative director and choreographer imbues Sankofa with the sort of credibility required for such an important undertaking, especially given its potential in the international spotlight at a key moment in Colombia’s cultural history.

Fotos: Raúl Tobón

This potential began to manifest shortly after the company’s foundation with performances in Paris at the Don Quixote Theater Festival and across Spain in such cities as Malaga, León and Barcelona. A long list of international appearances would soon follow, and in 2005 Sankofa was recognized by Colombia’s Ministry of Culture with a National Dance Scholarship. Further accolades followed in 2008 on the strength of two company productions: San Pacho Bendito was awarded the National Dance Award by the Ministry of Culture, and Pasos En La Tierra was recognized by the United States Embassy with a Preservation of Tradition Scholarship. The following year, Palacios took his company to Burkina Faso, Africa as participants in an artistic internship that included support from both the Colombian government and French embassy.

These experiences no doubt informed Sankofa’s 2010 production La Ciudad De Los Otros (“The City Of The Others”). Set in a contemporary urban environment, the work illustrates the challenges inherent in a society where multitudes of people, each with his own unique origin and method of viewing the world, are forced to share a common space and thus adapt their behavior in order to facilitate a larger social functionality. It quickly becomes obvious how this process can lead to stereotypes, and La Ciudad De Los Otros articulates the challenge we face in trying to break these molds while maintaining the essence of what makes us human.

With support from Colombia’s Ministry of Culture, Sankofa plans to develop a pair of new works in 2012. They’re also set for a July performance in Canada, and have additional plans for a European tour later in the year.

We’re at a unique moment in human history: recent economic turmoil in some of the world’s fading first world capital markets has coincided with blistering growth in the so-called developing world, forcing us to begin asking structural questions about how we manage the extraordinary cultural shifts that are already underway both at home and abroad. Art has helped us address such challenges at numerous key points in the modern timeline, and will continue to do so through projects such as Sankofa.

Jack 15 is here, and we’re throwing a party to celebrate! Colombian music, fashion, dance, and food comes to life Saturday, May 19 at Patria Mia restaurant in Parque Lleras (Calle 9 #37ª – 13, Medellín, Colombia)

As always we’ll be handing out free copies of Jack Magazine, and this time, we’re giving away a free 16 GB iPad 2 to the winner of the night’s iPod battle! Great food, fine cocktails, and a full lineup of entertainment on schedule.

More details available on our Lanzamiento event page in Facebook:
http://www.facebook.com/events/419825481375580/
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*Música en vivo de La Fragua:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KEXEpVqc7Ko
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jlu9sf1uTSI

*Desfile de moda de Makeno y Vida Augusta
http://www.facebook.com/pages/MAKENO/102511746531024
http://www.facebook.com/vidaaugusta

*Danza afro-folklorica por Dance Connection
http://ieluiscarlosgalans.wikispaces.com/DANCE+CONNECTION

*Batalla iPod – Premio, iPad 2 de 16GB de iShop
http://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=290756844348517&set=a.107521022672101.15132.105446916212845&type=1&theater

*Menu Gourmet y cocteles por Patria Mia
http://www.facebook.com/patriamiamedellin

*Fotos y videos cortesia de BP Films
http://www.facebook.com/pages/Bp-Films/164163973662688

This is precisely where the development story of Medellin becomes interesting, with recent investment in large-scale infrastructural projects that are aimed squarely at those who live and breathe on the unsung edge of town. It began with a revolutionary library program and the Metro transportation system, and carries on today with a newly constructed outdoor escalator in one of the poorest parts of town. Built at a cost of around US$6.7 million, the project consists of two parallel motorized escalators that carry people up and down the steep jagged slopes of Medellin’s Comuna 13. The significance of this investment lies in its intent to improve the day-to-day lives of neighborhood residents who are saddled with economic disadvantages and ongoing struggles against local gang violence. Think about it: you head down into the city, work a full day, then have to hike up the equivalent of a 28-story building just to get home, and home is a place that is still navigating its way out of being one of the most dangerous neighborhoods in the world. How about a free, 5-minute escalator ride instead? Wouldn’t that make your life just a little easier?

Neighborhood residents could certainly use the break, particularly in light of Comuna 13’s turbulent history. It’s a minor miracle that the whole place hasn’t gone up in smoke given the range of destructive elements that have spent the past few decades warring over its control: everyone from leftist guerrillas to organized militias to the mafia and common street gangs have set up shop in Comuna 13 at one time or another. Further, steep hills, narrow streets and lots of lookout spots have made this an easy place for the bad guys to maintain control of; add in their overwhelming firepower, and you can see why they exert significant influence over the area to this day. While installing an escalator doesn’t resolve this issue, it is consistent with efforts to address the full range of Medellin’s population. Like the libraries and Metro before it, this escalator is a striking visual icon that carries a deliberate message in its geographic placement, in addition to providing real functionality for local residents. It’s a powerful way for civic leaders to cultivate community pride among poorer residents, allowing them to participate in the city’s remarkable transformation.

This notion of participation is key to understanding the overall objective here, as it illustrates local government’s attempt to avoid the sort of social exclusion that has led to class warfare in other development scenarios around the globe. Take Brazil for example: despite a roaring economy that has soared up to place 6th among all nations in nominal GDP, it is still home to vast numbers of people living in extreme poverty, residents who are completely disconnected from their nation’s economic success. It is notable that officials from Rio de Janeiro plan to visit Comuna 13 and investigate the possibility of installing a similar system of escalators in the famed favelas of their own impoverished hillsides.

Time will tell how this all works out, but at the very least this latest project illustrates the ongoing commitment to an innovative public works agenda that has delivered an important sense of pride to residents around the country. That’s worth something, isn’t it?

Jack Radio #113 by Jack Radio on Mixcloud

Jack Radio – The best new music from Colombia and around the world. This week we feature a brand new release from top Colombian producer Gux Swadharma.

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This Week’s Playlist:

We are very proud to present the new issue of Jack Magazine. Issue #15 Spring 2012.

So what’s in a remix? We see the word casually strewn about the modern music landscape, along with synonymous cousins like re-touch, rework, edit and re-edit. In music parlance, a remix occurs when a DJ or producer has taken an original song and morphed it into a unique version, removing a few things here, adding a few things there, or in some cases fusing it with sounds from an entirely different genre of music. Done properly, the remix offers a fresh, evolved take on the original while maintaining some of the essence that made it special in the first place.

Inspired by Colombia’s ongoing challenge to straddle the lines of old and new, we’ve thrown this issue of Jack Magazine into the remix machine as well. Makeno and Croquis, for instance, are among a growing number of businesses across the country that are proposing social impact as an genuine operational measuring tool, reexamining the function of a modern enterprise. In their first column for Jack Magazine, sustainable design blog Vida Mas Verde looks into home automation for a fresh take in addressing domestic energy consumption, while Sankofa’s strict adherence to artistic integrity offers a unique take on race and cultural relations by fortifying Colombia’s historic links to Africa.

Perhaps the most notable remix of all lies in the delivery of this issue’s content, a great deal of which appears in Spanish. What is this, some kind of experiment? No! From this issue forward, we at Jack will continue to investigate and report our findings throughout Colombia’s remarkable development; sometimes we’ll do it in English, sometimes we’ll do it in Spanish. English may still be the universal second language, but it’s clearly going through its own remix as more and more cultures learn it and eventually add in their own flavors to develop a working hybrid. We already have Spanglish – is Chinglish next?

Jack Radio #112 by Jack Radio on Mixcloud

Jack Radio – The best new music from Colombia and around the world. This week we feature music from young Colombian producer Bleepolar, who experiments with electronic beats while exploring rhythms from his native country.

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This Week’s Playlist:

A behind the scenes look at the photo-shoot for the cover and fashion editorial for the upcoming edition of Jack Magazine, shot at C2 Taller in Medellin.

Photos by Carlos “El Gato” Valencia.
Styling, direction and production by Laura Salazar and Natalia Uribe.
Model: Lorenza Piedrahita
Makeup: Melissa Molina.
Video by Shaun Patrick Stakem (spsphotos.com).
Music by Emiliana Torrini.

Jack Radio #111 by Jack Radio on Mixcloud

Jack Radio – The best new music from Colombia and around the world. This week we feature music from Bogota-based Pacific fusion outfit La Mojarra Electrica.

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This Week’s Playlist: