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The sound you can't see: how a tambora is tuned in the patios of Mamatoco before the Parranda
A tambora isn't bought tuned. It's tuned. And that verb, which sounds technical, in Mamatoco is almost a household ritual: someone tightens the skin, another li

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Art & CultureThe sound you can't see: how a tambora is tuned in the patios of Mamatoco before the Parranda
A tambora isn't bought tuned. It's tuned. And that verb, which sounds technical, in Mamatoco is almost a household ritual: someone tightens the skin, another li
Art & CultureThe Sound That Never Makes It to Spotify: The Route of the Picó and Neighborhood Champeta in Cartagena
There is a sound in Cartagena that doesn't appear in Spotify's curated playlists or in the speakers of the boutique hotels of the Ciudad Amurallada. It's a deep
Art & CultureThe Hidden Palenqueros of Cartagena: The African Heritage that Beats in the Courtyards of the Historic Center
Cartagena de Indias was no ordinary port. For more than two centuries, its docks received slave ships that unloaded men, women and children captured in West and
Art & CultureThe Cartagena of Patios: A Guide to Domestic Architecture and Oral Tradition in the Historic Center
The first time someone enters a house in the Historic Center of Cartagena, almost always the same thing happens: the facade is deceiving. Behind a wooden gate t
Art & CultureSaturday Bartering at the Plaza de Mercado de Kennedy: The Rebusque Economy That Never Makes It Into the Guidebooks
Kennedy is not just a bedroom community. It is the most populous locality in Bogotá, with more than a million inhabitants, and its market plaza —known simply as
Art & CultureCartagena in Black and White: The Photo Archive That Tells the Story of the City Tourists Don't See
There's a photo of Cartagena that gets repeated to exhaustion: the golden wall at sunset, the clock on the Torre del Reloj marking the hour, a palenquera with a
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Art & CultureThe trades that sustain the Centro Histórico: tailors, shoemakers and locksmiths who have spent decades on the same
Before the Centro Histórico of Santa Marta became a corridor of boutique hotels and cafés for photos, its streets already smelled of shoe polish, cotton thread
Art & CultureThe cemetery as archive: what the headstones of Cementerio San Miguel tell us about the Santa Marta that was
There is a headstone in Cementerio San Miguel that reads, simply, "Here lies a samario". No name, no dates, no trade. Every time I pass by it I think that this
Art & CultureMarket plazas as schools: Minorista and Placita de Flórez and the craft of recognizing what you eat
Every Saturday, at the Placita de Flórez, the same scene repeats itself: an older woman asks the vendor on the corner whether the avocado in front of her "is re
Art & CultureThe mural that changes its face: the graffiti collectives that negotiate walls with the community action boards
In Medellín, graffiti stopped being a quick tag on a gray wall and became a neighborhood negotiation. Behind many murals that are now a tourist postcard there i
Art & CultureThe silleteros of Santa Elena: the craft passed down among greenhouses and silletas
Santa Elena is not a flower town for tourists. It is a corregimiento of Medellín where people still grow flowers to sell on Sundays. Heading up the road to Guar
Art & CultureRock al Parque as a social thermometer: 30 years of urban tribes, posters and Bogotá memory
In 1995, when Bogotá still thought of itself with its back turned to rock, a handful of cultural managers convinced the then Instituto Distrital de Cultura y Tu
