The Colombian Pacific is the cradle of men and women who have written important chapters in different sectors of the country's contemporary history. For the Quibdó African Film Festival, they are a living legacy for new generations. An inheritance that allows us to affirm that the region is full of magical characters and stories. Protagonists of subjective films that do not need the big screen to shine and leave their mark.
Betty Garcés
The idyll of opera and its intrinsic primary musicality
While the audience holds its breath and imprisons its murmurs so as not to stain the sublime operatic architecture of Ariadne in Naxos (Richard Strauss), Betty Garcés Bedoya, from Bonaventure, lets out a C6 from her vocal cords that makes your skin crawl. Excellent, magical, worthy of all praise. Premature applause floods the audience.
What none of the spectators imagines is that this note was born with the same feeling that the voices of the singers of the Colombian Pacific give off when the marimba, the cununo and the guasá light an invisible but living fire that ignites the hearts.
These women may not know the universe of a soprano, but when she sings a "arrullo" or a "alabado", they have nothing to envy, not even Maria Callas herself. Yes, the comparison sounds laughable and even absurd. But you have to listen to them to understand that when Garcés steps on stage, drenched in genuine emotion, with her soul naked and ready to move every last person that can be seen from there, her physical body becomes a collective body where primary musicality establishes absolute power.
Legendary operas such as Carmen, Le nozze di Figaro, Suor Angelica, La forza del destino, Turandot, La Bohème, Cosí fan tutte and Giulio Cesare, timidly wear the passion and feeling of the Afro-descendant populations of this region of Colombia on their lips. The reason is simple: it is impossible to conceive her separately from her musical roots.
If the ear would be more perceptive and dig into the depths of that C6, it would subtly hear Afro-descendant female voices singing traditional music at the top of their lungs in the city's patron saint festivities or in the events organized by the municipal mayor's office during their unforgettable school years. Thanks to visual and emotional memory, she can afford the luxury of perfuming Richard Strauss' Ariadne with the aromas of the sound territories that are irreplaceable and obligatory in her construction as a human being.
If that ear were more daring and decided to dive into the deepest and most invisible, it would also hear in that C6 the songs of her grandmother Eufemia, the sacred root and the beating of her heart. Although she no longer inhabits this world, she does not cease to pamper and care for her from all evil. She is also there, in that voice that steals sighs and awakens tears.
In the subjective universe of Betty, an adult girl who loves to become different characters, the masterful lyric singer Jessye Norman, one of her greatest influences, whom she discovers thanks to Ivonne, her teacher, happily coexists with beloved characters of Bonaverense culture such as the musician Enrique Urbano Tenorio, better known as Peregoyo, the creator of the unforgettable Combo Vacaná; and Margarita Hurtado Castillo, the Troubadour of the Pacific.
It is time to return to the stage and delight in Ariadne's laments for the departure of Theseus, her lover. An Ariadna whose voice dances currulao with the opera of Strauss and Hofmannsthal, achieving something admirable: the birth of an intense love affair of opera with the primal musicality of a woman of African descent who deeply appreciates her life story and deeply embraces her roots.
It is commonly thought that a person from the Colombian Pacific should sing traditional music simply because he or she was born and raised within a socio-cultural context and appropriates the traditions of the territory. But Garcés Bedoya teaches us that the pride of being Afro also shines through in the creations of George Bizet and Pierre-Augustin Caron de Beaumarchais.
Born in the port of Buenaventura, proud daughter of professor José Garcés and artist Isabel Bedoya, she began her musical journey at the Antonio María Valencia Conservatory in Cali. Fortunately for music, her dream of learning to play guitar is put on the back burner and she auditions to study singing.
One name becomes mandatory: Francisco Vergara. Falling madly in love with her voice, he manages to get the former Minister of Culture Mariana Garcés, director of Casa Proartes in those days, to support her financially to travel to Germany and continue her singing studies.
From then on, the journey becomes a daily lesson of perseverance, passion, determination and unbeatable spirit. The triumphs are not individual but collective, because she conceives her own success as a wonderful opportunity to motivate other men and women of the Pacific who wish to embark on the path of dreams that are elusive but achievable.
She arrives in Cologne, the fourth largest city in Germany, and obtains a place to study for a Master of Arts degree. Afterwards, the Royal Opera House rewards her talent and admits her to a youth program and she studies two master's degrees in Hannover.
Dead silence in the theater. Zerbinetta makes her triumphant appearance to console Ariadne. Garcés' voice lets out another C6 and it is worth the ear's time to delve deep into that angelic sound to learn that her maternal great-grandfather was a saxophonist and her grandfather, a man who had no sight, played the dulzaina with skill. When Betty sings, one must listen with insatiable curiosity and scrutinize every note that escapes her lips because they are chatterboxes.
It is ineluctable to look at her face and evoke legendary jazz singers like Ella Fitzgerald and Sara Vaughan. Her classical beauty is a delight and her eyes scream with pleasure that she is still that shy and quiet girl who used to watch the shawms on the street corners of Buenaventura. The only difference is that today she is an adult girl who enjoys becoming a fantastic character, worthy of a fairy tale.
Her name and talent are applauded in countries such as Ecuador, Brazil, Chile, Germany, England, Austria, Belgium, Portugal, the United States and China. We must mention stages such as the Parco della Musica (Rome), the Churches of St. Eustace (Paris), St. Patrick's Church and the National Opera America Center (New York). In the midst of so many steps climbed, the eternal gratitude to the city where she was born because it is the origin of such sublime and unforgettable musical notes.
The final act. Betty, our ebony Ariadne, renounces herself to become sublime. While the audience holds its breath and imprisons its murmurs so as not to stain the operatic architecture, a C6 resounds in the place and makes the skin stand on end. Excellent, magical, worthy of all praise. Standing applause, a sea of emotions hits the stage with force.
If the ear would be more perceptive and dig deeper into that C6, it would subtly hear Afro-descendant female voices singing traditional music at the top of their lungs; his grandmother Eufemia, his great-grandfather playing the saxophone and his maternal grandfather loving the dulzaina.
Thanks to them, the pacific will always travel in the baggage of his spirit and the love affair of opera and its intrinsic primal musicality will become eternal.