Gentle Reader, I cannot remember the name of the song that was played this morning on the radio, but I did feel prompted to contact the host of the program. Here is an excerpt from my text:
"I can't remember the name of the Bosanova sung by the girl from Ipanema, but I found it evocative in a way I wasn't expecting. As I listened I thought how this is so the music of the privileged Brazilian middle class, a country that has some of the most egregious social inequality in the Americas. The music comes across to me as a kind of mildly toxic soporific, as a way of soothing with soma so that one needn't think of the horrors and many tragedies that mark the lives of so many Brazilians, such as would never be admitted into the lovely cocktail lounges where this music is often played. This makes me think of how we listen to music. What is it we are hearing, and with what part of us are we listening? ...
I haven't been to Brazil, but I have spent a lot of time in Colombia, a country with very similar problems and issues to Brazil. Many middle class Colombians are afraid of the poor and homeless, and believe they are all violent criminals. I remember my first visit to Bogotá, when a friend and some of his extended family were hosting me and giving me a tour of the city, in a car, of course. We were in a poor neighbourhood near downtown Bogotá, and they insisted that we keep the windows rolled up because of the street beggars, whom they feared. I don't know if they really posed that great a threat. I thought that, rather, they have been so stigmatized by poverty that this middle class fear was just part of what they have to bear with. I was feeling more troubled and embarrassed by the fear of my friends, than by the poor beggars outside the car.
When I returned to Colombia in February, I was riding in my friend, Alonso's, car and he was kind enough to not keep the windows up when two different fathers carrying their young children in their arms came to ask us for help..."
Of course I have also written about the Venezuelan refugee family on the sidewalk in Madrid Cundinamarca, near Bogotá, and how much their situation touched and affected me. And the two mothers carrying their babies in their arms, begging near a restaurant we had just eaten at in a posh neighbourhood of Medellín.
I am actually thinking of doing volunteer work in Medellín. I have no idea how this would look, or when I'm returning there. I do feel very strongly that having got a taste of the social inequality and the people this hurts in Colombia, I would like to learn more about the people themselves. To learn from them. I really wonder if there would be some kind of work or some redemptive role that a Canadian of a certain age could perform there. Nor am I really convinced that I would be much help to anyone there. I really see myself as occupying the seat of the unlearned, and maybe that's the best way to approach this.
Any ideas, Gentle Reader?
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