Pare

Graffiti, La Floresta, Quito

Arte Urbana - Plaza del Teatro Sucre

One Sunday a month the Teatro Sucre in downtown historic Quito hosts a cultural event. This month was Arte Urbana (Urban Art) and featured various music groups from Colombia and Ecuador (one local group from Otovalo rapped in their native Quechua), skate, break dancing and live graffiti art. ¡Chevre, el evento!

¡Toma! Pewee torrero league

No injuries incurred...it was a small bull.

Band Rehearsal

In Spanish, band and orchestra mean two different things, just as they do in English. However, an attempt at a literal translation is confused by faux amis. For example, if this blog were written in Spanish, I could not title this entry ensayo de la banda; It would have to be ensayo de la orquesta although the group has no string section and is in every sense of the English term, a jazz band.

Walking into the auditorium of the Colegio Cotopaxí in Quito was like entering a time and space warp. It was an enclave of my own version of America, directed by a retired gringo conductor, who greeted his audience in English and gave instructions in English (phrases that only a veteran conductor would use such as “Take it to the woodshop!”). The music reminded me of something that Mr. Eicher, my high school Wind Ensemble instructor, would have chosen to play at the Mid West clinic in Chicago – something modern, complex, musically intellectual but generally unpleasant to listen to. I felt like I was back in high school as I sat watching one of the few jazz ensembles in Ecuador rehearse.

In God's Country

...OR SO I FELT beholding the valleys below, lost in a golden sea of grass and its metallic sheen of wind and bright altiplano sun...



We climbed to an altitude of nearly 3,800 meters one Sunday morning - first in jeep (away from Quito, past Quinche and up through small cobblestone mountain roads) and later on foot (a steep incline through pastureland and the thick grasses of the high plateau) - to the ruins of Quitoloma. From the crest of this páramo is an expansive view of the valleys below and their roads trailing east, the serrated mountain peaks to the south with their peaks lost in clouds, and the blue horizon of Quito to the west. A pre-Incan people had used the site as a fortress. Remnants of their walls remain, crowning the highest hills, scattered stones hidden in the high grasses speckled with lichens the color of sage.





For more information visit:

http://www.edufuturo.com/educacion.php?c=1227

http://www.hoy.com.ec/noticias-ecuador/arquitectura-preinca-a-3780-metros-sobre-el-nivel-del-mar-349882.html

Portete, Esmeraldas

While on the beach in Esmeraldas we became thirsty. It was an empty beach, known to the locals but not yet to the tourists. We were alone in our thirst until a boy on a horse rode by. We asked him where we could find coconut water. He told us to wait. Twenty minutes later he was back with three coconuts on a cart behind his horse. “¿Tienen un machete?” he asked us.

I didn’t know a machete was standard beach ware, but fortunate for us and for the boy, a couple of campers a few dozen meters away had one in their sack. The boy got 2 dollars and we got three fresh coconuts – drained and split, the milk and the meat. I’d never had fresh coconut before, let alone on the beach. It was the beginning of a love affair…

The Creative Process

Claudia Burneo is an art student from Ecuador who studies in Montreal. Before her return trip she organized an art exhibit at the local bar No Lugar in Guapulo (Quito's version of Greenwich village). In the process of one and a half days the barren white-washed-walled and grungy concrete-floored space of No Lugar was transformed into a vibrant, colorful, creative space by Burneo, a small group of friends, several cans of paint, a ladder, brains, beers and a broom.