I have been back in my homeland, Colombia, and I have been on the road and on the streets re-visiting some towns and cities. I received the new year 2012 in Cartagena de Indias, a city in the Caribbean coast plenty of history (founded in 1533 by by Spanish commander Pedro de Heredia in the former location of the indigenous Caribbean Calamarí village). Cartagena was one of the most important ports for the African slave trade, one of the New World centers for the Catholic inquisition, and one of the favorite cities attacked by pirates. Cartagena has become one of the most interesting cities of Colombia thanks to its past, the mixture of races, the architecture, the foods, musics, and traditions that have converged and continue to intersect in its space.
Although I have visited Cartagena several times before, I had never spent the last day of a year here. I have heard about the parties and concerts that were organized during the New Year celebration, specially, at the Ciudad Amurallada (old walled city), and the very high prize that some people pay in order to attend (around U$200 per person). I have also heard that it was possible to enjoy the parties as an informal pedestrian, to dance in the streets of the Ciudad Amurallada without entering the expensive parties or siting at their glamorous tables. I was looking forward to the latter and have contacted some friends who were also in town for a post-mindnight exploration.
After having dinner with my family and receiving the 00:00 with the traditional 12 grapes, a glass of cava, and the cumbias of a big band orchestra, I was ready to exploring the old city. However, I and Bauco, a friend who was visiting from the Netherlands, didn’t leave Bocagrande until 1:30 am. We meet with my friends under the Torre del Reloj at 2:00, and we started to walk through the Camellón de los Mártires in route to Getsemaní, the area of the Ciudad Amurallada where the African slaves and their descendants used to live. The weather was warm and refreshing with a constant breeze. The Camellón was busy with groups of people that seemed to be, like us, looking for places to continue la rumba (the party). We entered Getsemaní and took the Calle de la Media Luna and then La Sierpe street following a sort of river flow of potential dancers. The colonial houses had open doors and the side walks had chairs and tables where families were still celebrating. When we arrived to the Calle del Espiritu Santo we noticed more movement on the street and started to walk though it. Some families had placed their hi-fi stereos on the sidewalk and the party was actually taking place in the middle of the street with couples dancing to Caribbean rhythms.
We continued walking through the Calle del Espiritu Santo until the Calle de la Media Luna. Some meters to the left, about half a cuadra (a block) we recognized a big group of people dancing outside of a house, and also lots of informal vendors with small coolers selling drinks. As we approached to the group we realized that the house was actually a bar called Tasca Maria. The atmosphere of the packed bar had colonized the street and all the people around were moving to the rhythms that the sound system was amplifying. We started to dance.
After an hour of dancing to salsa and other latin rhythms, the music fade down and a live concert began. I was totally surprised and delighted by the music that four musicians started to play on a little stage located at the end of the bar. They played Champeta, one of the most emblematic sounds of Cartagena and of Afrocolombians. Although this genre of music is usually played in a sort of MC – DJ set up, with samplers, little keyboards, and electronic drums, this time, the Champeta was played by a live band: a drummer, an electric guitarrist, a bassist, and a singer with a mic and a pandero. The name of the band was Grupo Kussima and its director and lead singer was Rafael Chavez. Their performance was amazing, pleasant, and authentic. It made me so happy to listen and dance to the several songs of champeta criolla y africana they played during one hour. All the people who was inside the bar and on the street were happy too, dancing to the mixture of rhythms from west Africa and the Caribbean. I couldn’t resist the temptation to video-record such performance and have put together a little clip with an excerpt from the concert so you can get a sense of the sonido champetero en vivo.
When the concert finished, we decided to continue our journey inside the Ciudad Amurallada and walked to the area known as centro histórico. We encountered even more people on the streets, dressed in white clothes and leather shoes, walking in many directions, as if the night were just beginning. Although the empty tables and chairs on the streets were signs of the end of some parties, all the movement and energy of the people were telling us that the celebration was still going on. The flow of the crowd on the the small peddled streets continued and the rhythm seemed to be emerged from special places that we started found as we drifted through the Calle de la Inquisición, the Callejón de los Estribos, and the Calle Manuel Román y Picón. I was fascinated by the appropriation of public space by the sound that came out from private houses, from their windows, fences, and balconies. As the sound was colonizing the streets, the dancing multitude was also filling the public space with the rhythmic movement of the bodies.
For instance, at the Calle de las Damas there was a private party in the garden of a fancy colonial house.
The music from the party filtered from the private space of the garden to the public space of the street, were a crowd of dancers enjoyed the different tunes that were amplified by the powerful private sound system.
Public and private space were blurred by the sound of music and the rhythmic movement of people´s bodies. We danced until dawn and received the new day light at one of the city wall fortress. As the sky turned purple blue, the sound of the ocean crossfaded over the sound of the music. The waves and the clouds started to turn cotton white. I noticed that my feet and muscles were tired. It was time to rest. We called a day, a night, a year. Welcome 2012.
