#picó

[lengua-herida]

Mis fotos favoritas de la noche.

Feliz cumpleaños, Zurdo

[piononostalgia]

Picó / La Máquina Musical del Caribe

[pepperjunkie]

Sound system..

[ctmql-blog1]

Un oferton!

[deinertego]

Coletera.

[mecagoentoloqsemenea]

#turrondejijona #picó #oldtimes #bestiesforlife (at Almenara, Valenciana, Spain)

[actualitatvalenciana-blog]

Amparo Picó: "És inaudit que Fuset es vaja a recolzar en un generador d'enfrontaments" http://actualitatvalenciana.com/amparo-pico-inaudit-que-fuset-vaja-recolzar-generador-denfrontaments/

[inamediascape-blog1]

Picó, Carepa Style

The Urabá subregion of Colombia has many reputations, except for its choice of music. It is located on the Caribbean Sea, at less than a hundred miles from the Panamá border, just across the gulf that bears its name.  For the past twenty years, it stood as one of the most contested strategic zones of the country’s internal armed conflict. Its history was rife with violence, and most Colombians regard the subregion as isolated and backward; having little to offer but its rich natural resources for extractive economies. All throughout the 90s and early 2000s, paramilitary and guerrilla groups fought for control over the huge profit margins of the “banana axis”; Colombia’s enormous banana growing zone that comprises the municipalities of Apartadó, Carepa, Chigorodó, and Turbo which are also where Picó culture is most active. These municipalities have long been a focus of resistance, as the first settlers were freed slaves and runaway indigenous groups who ultimately gave way to racially mixed descendants.

Urabaenses could care less about how people from the inland of Colombia see them. Inlanders, or cachacos, are people without rhythm or style; they are stiff, socially conservative, and penny pinchers. Urabaenses identify more with the great transcultural Caribbean than with the hegemonic Colombian national identity. This is by no means an overstatement if you think in terms of the musical influences Urabaenses have embraced as their own. This aspiration to form part of the (Antillean) Caribbean can also be easily felt through Picó.    

As a native from the mountainous Colombian inland, I find Picó party scenes from the Colombian Atlantic Coast -which is predominantly of African heritage- to be unique. They signal towards a confluence of styles and genres that I only get a sense of in some reggaeton music videos. Nevertheless the videos fall short of the innovative patchwork seen in this region. Picós take inspiration in musical genres of African origin. From the 1960s throughout the early 2000s, Urabá listened to Jamaican dub and reggae; African soukous, highlife, and mbaqanga; and of course Colombian cumbia, vallenato, bullerengue, and porro. This display of variety of genres converged nowadays into the two genres du jour, known as reggaeton and champeta. What the scene nowadays lacks in the variety of rhythms it makes up in the pastiche of clothing styles that establish connections with new and vintage Latin American fashions.

Picó is transliteration in Spanish for “pick-up.” I initially thought it stood for the Chevrolet pick-up trucks in which they transport the massive sound system from one location to another. But it comes from the vinyl turntable pick-up needle, introduced with the electronic phonograph that the early set-ups used. Whoever collected exclusive and popular hit records, while being able to mix them artfully and pump up the volume on boot-knocking speakers, would be king of the block party in lower-income neighborhoods. One could say that a Picó is as much of a get-together or a party scene as a deeply entrenched celebration of the trans-continental African heritage. Regions of Colombia that are of obvious Spanish descent unfortunately, often overlook this.  

The youths I photographed declared their ignorance as to where the term came from (and did not seem care either, shrugging their shoulders in typical too-cool-for-that fashion). Every one of them journeyed that day some hundred miles from Carepa to Necoclí to assist this one specific Picó. When I asked a young woman to summarize what their scene was about she pointed to Estiven, a tall-and-shy type who was in all appearances their wordsmith. He said in a somewhat casual tone: “Our way, our style, actively shifting. Never sad for our past, because this is our culture, it is the future.”