The music heard in the local radio station (in those strange occasions when it sounds) it is a surprising mixture, something that cannot be listened in any radio station in Cali: Darío Gómez next to Ace of Base and the Niche Group next to Leo Dan. They play all people's request and everything the station can get. The disks are renewed every two years; Only "hits" arrive in cassettes, like it happened with "forgetfulness land"(e32). All the indigenous music it has is one or two disks of Andean music, one of them from the Mono Nuñez festival(e33).
The Guainieña music continues being strictly oral. The the house of culture director said me "this department doesn't have cultural identity". He allowed me to see an exclusion that I ignored completely, when he explained me that "in all the folkloric festivals they don't accept the department because it doesn't have a rhythm that characterizes it, as Tolima or Meta". He was impelling the Barrancominas folkloric festival and it consisted completely on llanera music (from the plains), with Venezuelan artists, and from Vichada and Meta. An indigenous leader, Josefina, only sang me to petition cooing and other themes dedicated to people from the rivers, but she is from Vaupés. The Giant Yuruparí continues sleeping...
In a festival in Venezuela, several yerales, tucanos and other coming from Vaupés, represented the department. But do they sing the puinave? The curripaco? To say no it would be as much as saying that they are not human, and at times I find them more human than us. Their people seem to be covered for a mantel of cultural silence. I didn't even listen an evangelical song in their language. Perhaps it was for interest or time lacking on my behalf, but I listened without effort joropo, vallenato and Salsa to bulk, danced by the same natives. I was in Guainía and I felt in Meta. I looked for the forest and I was in the plain.
Inírida resembles more Puerto Carreño or Villavicencio than Mitú, because the colonists are more near to the former and they rule. The natives are more near to Vaupés and Brazil, but they remain silent. What can I say on Garza Morichal, far from everything, halfway between Barrancominas and San José del Guaviare, at 15 days by water from Inírida? There are the nukak makú(e34) among their residents. The puinave is in their linguistic family (the makú-puinave), but the distance among their languages is as much as the one between Spanish and Rumanian.
Will the nukak culture be transformed like the puinave? Probably the final product will be something like the puinave version of colombianity, but we have lost part of a heritage that we ignore almost completely, like it happens with all the indigenous groups. In Cauca, Tolima and Nariño departamentos there are Indians that they no longer speak their language because they forgot it and today they complain, but they recognize their heritage and they plan to remain in it. In the Ambaló rural area, in the Silvia municipality, they survive only two old men that speak the ambalué, a paéz dialect. Will it happen again with the Inírida surroundings residents?
There are hopes. The community of Coco Viejo ("Old Coconut") is at scarce minutes, they don't have television neither radio, but that and nothing is the same thing... In their conversations in which I didn't understand almost any word, sometimes I did capture a "government" or "mayor". One or another word tricky between them, as it happens us with "okay"? imported from English, or as when we call Cee Dee(e35) to a compact disk. They make their crafts to sell, more than to use, but being so near to the cultural Chernobyl that Inírida is, the changes have been very few. The most terrible of them are in their relationship with the land, but they keep a lot from their language and their tradition.
NOTES
| e32 | A Carlos Vives' hit during 1995. He renewed the vallenato, the traditional Atlantic Coast rythim, mixing it with modern influences and instruments. "La tierra del olvido" is specially strong in Indian influences, even one of the tracks, "Jam en Jucümey" is entirely Indian. Ý |
| e33 | It is the higher point in the Andean music Colombian festivals; hardly another music event would be more Andean. Ý |
| e34 | The Nukak-Makú are the last amazonic nomads in Colombia. They make the first contact with modern society at the 80's endings. Ý |
| e35 | In Spanish "compact disk" means "disco compacto" but nobody in Colombia name them that way. Everybody use the English short: C.D. If anybody try the right Spanish short, "D.C." (pronounced Deh-Ceh) no one will understand it. Ý |