Been a long long time since I last caught up here and so this is a long one, and probably won..t get me up to date so expect another soon....
So much for plans… Especially in this part of the world! I was writing at the end of that last blog post about my intention to finish off and release my public transport album from the wonderful frenetic city of La Paz whilst Sara was off on a multi day trek with some Swiss friends of ours. But although I did end up with a week or more in La Paz this plan didn..t happen at all, but I wound up having what was probably a much better experience. The ..Collectivo.. album will have to wait until I get home now I suspect.
Everything changed due to a bout of illnesses. One of our Swiss friends actually got so ill that he wound up in hospital for a few days and this put something of a dampener on their trekking plans. We waited a few day whilst decisions were being made as to whether or not to proceed and during this time my guts turned to liquid as well.
Venturing bravely out one day we witnessed maybe the most drunken fiesta we had seen in the country yet- in the wealthiest suburbs of La Paz no less. All the doctors and lawyers were shitfaced at noon, struggling along in costumes trying to play their instruments, one old patriarch looked trapped in a time warp in the middle of the street as he stared blankly at his drumsticks and snaredrum, too pissed it seemed to remember what they were for. Not sure exactly what they were celebrating.
Ultimately we came to conclude that it was perhaps at least partly the frigid airless nature of the Altiplano that was largely to blame for our various infirmities. A decision was taken to bail for the lowlands.
Rurrenabaque is a small town in the Bolivian selva (Amazon jungle) that gained a certain notoriety when a group of Israeli adventurers came unstuck there. Several of them died and a bestseller was written by one of the survivors. Perhaps perversely this resulted in the place becoming a major tourist attraction, especially for other Israeli tourists seeking perhaps to prove their survival skills superior to their countrymen. Many tour agencies were set up to take groups out into the jungle. A national park- Madidi- was formed and the numbers increased until today when ..Rurre.. is one of Bolivias top tourist attractions.
To be honest initially we had planned to skip the place. It was if anything overhyped and we had read many negative reports about the tours based from here. Amongst the most notorious were rumours that animals are frequently kept in cages close to tracks so that guides can miraculously spot and catch, say, an anaconda to present to their clients. But at the same time we were both keen after the Iquitos river trip in Peru to have another jungle experience and maybe Rurre was as good as anywhere?
Sara did some online research and posted a query on a couple of forums asking if anyone could recommend a good tour company that didn..t capture or mistreat animal. Within hours she had several responses and at least 2 of these were recommending a company called San Miguel del Bala, a Conservation International affiliated business owned and run as a community trust in an attempt to turn to tourism as an income stream now that no logging was allowed in the Madidi National Park. What..s more it turned out that it was possible to stay longer term as a volunteer. One still had to pay to do this- around NZ$14 per day- but this was still significantly cheaper than the US$70 it cost to visit as a guest. I read something on the website about them being particularly interested in special projects. Bingo! I wrote them about the possibility of making a CD documenting the sound environment, natural and musical, at and around the lodge and the National Park. I had a positive reply within hours, Martin and Rita- the Swiss- were keen- and we started making our plans to get down there.
Rurre is 18 hours by bus from La Paz. A long long way and the road is notoriously dangerous and muddy- there are frequent reports of the trip taking 30 hours or more. Sara and I decided to take the bus- I was actually pretty excited about the trip- the great thing about goat tracks around vertical drops is that they are typically attended by great views- had to be an adventure. Rita and Martin caught a plane- Martin not sure his recent recovery from serious illness would be sustained by a rough sleepless bus trip. They were there in 20 minutes!
Last day in La Paz was spent scouring the pirate software stalls for music programs, editing and multitrack software. Needless to say nearly every program you could imagine was available for next to nothing. Then it was off to the chemist to stock up on antibiotics in case of tropical bugs, and valium to knock ourselves out for the overnight sections of the upcoming bus trials. Finally I also gave in to what was a rather perverse case of consumerist desire and purchased one of those portable dvd player with the little screens I..d kept seeing in markets. I feel a bit embarrassed to have surrendered like this but some nights I just feel like watching movies in my hotel room and the markets are so full of great pirated dvds, music and TV series. (1st up the first season of The Wire… Bloody great but have just discovered that the set we bought is missing the final 2 episodes. Damn!)
The bus itself departed at least an hour and a half later than its schedule (in part because some family was moving house and all their lounge furniture and fridge freezers etc somehow had to be slotted into the hold under the bus) from a part of La Paz we had never visited before. It was a fascinating city like that, there are tight narrow valleys disappearing into the mountain sides everywhere with whole substantial suburbs effectively hidden away from view. I was pretty sad to leave knowing that this would be our last visit for this journey at least. It seemed a very livable city and I had many fantasies of what I could do there living in an apartment. All those markets full to brimming with useful tools and materials. If it weren..t for the notoriously ineffective, and perhaps even downright corrupt, postal service it would be a great place from which to run a record label.
We seem to have had pretty crap luck when it comes to windows on buses. For some reason the locals seem to have an aversion to fresh air on public transport and prefer to ride their journeys out in a hot humid fetid funk. Somehow Sara and I always seem to wind up with seats between windows with the seats in front or behind having control over ventilation. We usually manage to sneakily open a neighbours window a crack or more but this is always discovered within minutes and the offending breeze cut off. So it was for at least the 1st few hours of this journey. We set off over a high snowy mountain pass before dropping down down down past exquisite scenery- massive craggy mountain faces awash with spectacular waterfalls- 2 hours or so down and into the beginnings of the tropics and the jungle. The heat and general mugginess increased so that some windows were opened, if only a cm or so.
For all the austere breathless beauty of the highlands theres something about these tropical lowlands that I prefer. Things are instantly more laidback. Its hard to rush in this kind of heat. Everyone gets around in shorts, singlet and jandles. No suits down here. The bus rattled along for hours kicking up and occasionally being subsumed into enormous clouds of dust from vehicles coming the other way.
Whenever we met a truck or bus like this a standoff would occur. This is a rigidly one way track, frequently cut into the side of sheer clay cliffs, and it would have to be decided which vehicle would reverse to the previous passing bay. A hair-raising experience with the buses carriage frequently overhanging the edge. (And this only got worse at night in the dark when the drivers assistant would get off and attempt to guide us backward by feeble torchlight). We passed tiny villages in the bush, the buildings of thatched palm fronds and the locals generally to be spotted lounging in hammocks or swimming in the creeks. A dinner of bbq..d steak and beer in a small town. Then the lights off, we took our valium tablets and zoned out gaga to the Beatles ..White Album.. , Brian Eno and old Pink Floyd bootlegs. (All classic rock- haha- but perfect given the scenario).
Getting bogged in mud is one of the hazards of this trip and I awoke in the dark to find that all the noise and action was in attempt to free us from a small quagmire. Turned out that it was 5.30am and that we were on the very outskirts of Rurrenabaque. The drugs had worked! Half an hour later, in the rosy dawn, we retrieved our dusty packs from the hold and gave ourselves over entirely to a tout who was offering a room in a riverside hotel for an ok price. He offered to drive us down on the back of his 125cc motorbike (not many cars here- most of the taxis are motorbikes!) but I had no idea how this was even remotely feasible with all our bags so we walked behind him as he putted along down to the river and our home for the night. A nice place, free bananas, parrots in the trees, hammocks on the shady deck, and the big brown Rio Beni rolling sluggishly passed. We took to our room and promptly fell fast asleep until early afternoon.
Town was a collection of dirt and cement roads lined with cheap chicken restaurants (wooden benches and plastic flowers) , a phenomenal array of 2nd hand clothing stalls, and the typical general stores and electro gadget shops. There was one street dominated by over priced tourist restaurants and bars with signs in bad English, and I assume equally bad Hebrew. There were many tour agencies, but with the season winding down some only a handful of actual tourists. We found the offices of San Miguel del Bala and introduced ourselves to Eric, the guy with whom we had been corresponding.
Eric is something of an enigma, I got to know him as well as I could over a few weeks but I was never sure if I really knew him at all. He was born in a remote village/mission several hours further into the jungle from Rurre. Recognizing his intelligence at 6 years old the German priests running the mission sent him to a German school in La Paz. He spent the next 10 years here, only returning home during school holidays. Now 32 he speaks 5 languages and has several degrees in biology and business studies from universities in Brazil and Argentina. He claims to have held prestigious jobs all over Bolivia setting up environmentally aware tourism infrastructures. It was Erics father who found and saved the life of the Israeli who wrote the book that turned Rurrenabaque into a tourist location. Together they set up the 1st eco lodge in the area. He has a wife and a son 3 years old. But besides all this there was something lost and sad about him. Possibly just the simple angst of a talented and ambitious man in a country and culture where such things are frequently disregarded.
So we went over the volunteer agreements with Eric, signing a 7 day contract (the minimum- a trial period). I was left somewhat unsure that they knew what the fuck I was on about with my project, but they seemed keen to encourage me all the same. He had a note for us from Rita and Martin letting us know that they were already out at the lodge. The deal was that we would work 4 hours a day in return for the reduced rate food and accommodation at the lodge. We signed an acknowledgement that San Miguel was in no way responsible for injuries occurring as a result of falls nor snake or scorpion bite. He told us to be back at the office at 8am the next morning so that we could catch the boat up river.
Loading our gear on board I was glad of my dry bag (a truly waterproof rubber bag containing my zoom recorder and other electronics). The boat was no more than a dug out log with an outboard motor at the back. Pretty fucking cool but with definite potential for an unexpected swim. We had thought Eric was going to join us but as we boarded he waved goodbye and the boat set off against the current. Operating like a taxi it called in, picked up and dropped off people as we went. 45 minutes on a surging hot chocolate coloured tumult with stunning rocky cliffs and green jungle lining the banks. At one point we stopped to watch a large weasel like creature swimming across to toward the other bank. It was nearly there when we came along but got so freaked out by the boat that the poor bugger turned around and swam back toward the bank it had set out from.
We arrived and it was straight into the start of our 4 hours work unloading the various food supplies we had brought up river and carrying them up to the lodge. Rita and Martin were there, and also one other volunteer who to confuse matters was also named Martin. (This second Martin was a 22 yr old from Denmark who was 6 weeks into a 3 month volunteer contract). It was really bloody hot, incredibly humid, but we were told that even the locals were a bit freaked out by the heat and that it wasn..t like this most of the time.
The lodge itself was a beautiful place- as one would expect! There were 2 large buildings down by the river, a dining hall and kitchen and a big mosquito meshed common house containing hammocks, a small library and a tiny museum. The main accommodation area- 7 self contained cabins- was an arduous climb up a stairway up the hill. We got to know this climb intimately over the next few weeks carrying guests luggage up to the cabins and undertaking our morning cleaning details.
The volunteers were housed in a small hut near the kitchen along with the other local workers. This was perfectly adequate, ok beds and good mozzie nets, although I did find it kind of weird not being able to talk to Sara in bed at night. At night a torch was essential to get up to the cabin, no lights once the generator was shut off and the rough bush track prone to invasion by snakes, scorpions, and tarantulas. (Actually tarantulas were the most common of the exotic creatures we encountered. Seemed to be everywhere). The most common actual hazard was a species of small wasp with a violent disposition. It would attack on sight, administering small but painful stings without any provocation whatsoever. I estimate I got at least 3 such stings every day I was there.
We had a strange situation at first there being 5 volunteers working at the lodge and only 2 actual guests in residence. We had pretty much free reign of the place and could cook for ourselves in the kitchen etc –in full view of the dining area- where as the guests had everything made for them. We could roam about as we pleased where as it must have felt that they had a restricted range. Later when it was busy with guests we got our meals made for us by the kitchen staff- left overs from the guests food mainly (and frequently very little of it unfortunately- when busy the locals had a tendency to get quite flustered and we were often forgotten entirely).
I was keen to get on with my project and so set about recording bird and insect sounds around the lodge. Julio, the manager, seemed a little perplexed by this and it took me maybe longer than it should have to realize that there had been no communication from the office about what I had come to do at all. I kept asking when the laptop I had been promised would arrive and he would just smile and shrug. If he had said ¨what laptop?¨ I may have clicked earlier that he was in the dark about the whole thing.
Anyway upshot was that for the first few days I didn..t really get much work done on my project at all but rather helped with the general volunteer work. Needless to say the hours tended to exceed the agreed amount but as there was nothing else to do I didn..t really mind. Pretty much every morning we were there we would start out by cleaning around the cabins up on the hill. This meant going up there with a rake and a broom for 2 hours or more of sweeping up leaves. A pretty surreal scenario in the jungle! Needless to say this work was never completed because the place was subject to a constant rain, a veritable storm of falling leaves. Besides the blisters I got a perverse pleasure from this work however, could wander off up some trail and work my way back listening to the forest. It was a meditative time. Besides this we did jobs like building stairways and new paths. Martin suggested building a wooden seat down by the river and we built this.
The lodge is a 15 minute walk upstream from the village/community of San Miguel del Bala itself. We had several excursions down here during our time off, a hair raising experience for me being a snake phobe walking through long grass. It was amazing to visit because they still have no electricity (besides some solar powered lights) and people were living much as they must have for 100s of years. I got some great recordings down there, especially one day when they were using a huge wooden sugarcane press to extract sugar juice, a whole team of people driving it. Most of the people here survive by subsistence farming. Before the Lodge, and the National Park, the major external income came from logging. There were many banana and cacao groves (cocoa pod trees), and areas were being cleared for rice paddies.
On the 3rd or 4th day Eric showed up bringing with him the laptop and having a sitdown meeting with me and Julio. Eric suggested that maybe he could organize a trip upriver to the Madidi National Park proper so that I could record some monkeys and other more exotic animals. Sounded great I said. He asked Julio to help me as he could, including running the generator, a horrible noisy little petrol affair, whenever I needed to recharge the laptop battery. Shithot! I was in business. Straight away I set up in the common house and loaded on some software (wound up using Adobe Audition, a program I hadn..t used before, but the only one of the disks I..d bought in La Paz that didn..t crash the computer. A great program actually, at least as good as any of the other multi track editing software I..ve used). Started loading on and editing the insect recordings I..d gotten the last few days. Eric said he would be back ¨the day after tomorrow¨, or possibly the day after that and we could head up the river.
I think it was 4 days later that he showed up midmorning. ¨So, we can leave in 30 minutes?¨. OK! Better hurry. Sara and I rushed up to get a day pack together. Also coming with us was a new Irish volunteer named Peter who had shown up a day or 2 earlier. A great young guy his appearance on the scene represented a huge coincidence in that he was a biologist with a particular interest in bio-acoustics.
Never before had the locals heard of western freaks who wanted to record animal sounds and now they had 2 of them at once. If it wasn..t for the fact that Peters digital recorder had broken I think I may have surrendered the documentary part of my project to him entirely. As it was we helped each other out and had great discussions about music etc as we were both pretty much into the same sounds. Traded Sublime Frequency mp3s etc.
Down to the boat with our gear and Eric says: ¨That’s all you need for 3 days?¨
3 days!!! I thought we were going for the afternoon… More panic as we rushed to try and get multi overnight kit together.
And so started an utterly unexpected adventure wherein we got what was essentially a free guided trip into the deep Amazon Jungle. We said a hasty farewell to Rita and Martin who were leaving the next day and clambered aboard yet another log with a motor, this one even more basic than the 1st one we went on, the motor sounded like a tractor yet pushed us upstream at a snails pace. Really this was an astounding situation to find myself in. Actually I felt a little like a fraud. I..m a guy who likes mixing together weird noises but here I was with an indigenous tribal community funding me to go for 3 days on a serious documentary expedition, with nothing more than a zoom H4. What the hell- I was keen to give it a go.
The scenery was amazing, the river at times utterly terrifying. With us onboard were Eric and 2 other local men, one of the lodges main guides, and the boat driver. At one point we pulled over to shore where they jumped off and cut some long lengths of bamboo. I had no idea what these were for until we reached the rapids and they were put to use to try and stabilize the boat as we struggled upstream, coming close to capsizing more times than I care to remember. At one stage there was a cacophony of parrot squalls and Eric pointed out a clay cliff full of holes inhabited by Toucans. I was too worried that we were likely about to have an accidental swim to get my recorder out of its dry bag.
We pulled into shore maybe 4 hours upstream and carried our gear up the beach. We were at a semi-permanent camp used by San Miguel del Bala for jungle tours. Tents were set up and a basic camp kitchen put in order. Then we went fishing.
The rivers here in the Amazon absolutely teem with fish of all sorts, piranhas, even giant piranhas, included. There are huge fish here, fish heavier than can easily be lifted and these is one of the main food stuffs in the region. Fish was to be our staple food, along with plantain and yucca, during our time in the bush.
Fishing technique number 1 :
Collect enormous grubs from grass by river bank.
Use grubs to catch abundant small sprats (approx time to catch small fish with grub = 5 seconds)
Use sprats as bait to catch bigger fish on handline.
This didn..t work so well for us.. It was drizzling when we tried and actually pretty cold and apparently fish don..t feed during cold spells..
Fishing technique number 2:
Use drift net- hold one end and let the other be taken out by current.
Walk along the shore following your drift net for approximately 5 minutes.
Wade out and gather the net in.
This was REMARKABLY successful! On the first try we caught 4 huge fish, much bigger than any trout I..ve seen. We smoked these over the fire and besides being full of tiny bones they were delicious.
I had bought a bottle of scotch with Peter and we shared this around the campfire before heading to our tent. It was cold and I was glad of the sleeping bags (something I couldn..t imagine using on other warmer nights), but at least the cold kept the mosquitos at bay.
Next morning we were up and off bright and early in a continuing light drizzle, fueled by frequent stops to add more coca leaves to the wad in ones mouth. I carried my recorder under my coat. We walked a big loop through the bush for several hours stopping to record whenever we came across anything of interest.
Some of the bird sounds- the Horned Screamer for eg- were amazing, but needless to say it was the animals we wanted to see and hear. On that first loop we heard and saw some Brown Capuchin Monkeys. They made it onto the final album but are not so exciting sonically as some of the other monkeys.
After a quick lunch of smoked fish back at camp we got on our motorized log and headed on upstream for an hour or so. Saw a crocodile on the river bank- I would be more cautious swimming in the river after that! Pulled into a lagoon off the river proper and did another long hike through the bush. Not that we covered much ground really, but we were moving much as hunters do, with deliberate quiet stealth like zen walking one conscious step after another. First animal encounter of the afternoon was a large group of wild pigs. These were terrifying! Huge black beasts that seemed determined to stand their ground and made an enormous racket clacking their tusks at us. CLACK CLACK CLACK! Then they would all bolt howling through the undergrowth smashing small trees and whatever was in their path. Got some great recordings.
An hour or so later we came across a group of Spider Monkeys.
Was starting to feel pretty knackered by the time we turned around and headed back to the boat. Had something like 75 recordings already but a problem was on the horizon. Not having been aware that we would be out here for so long I hadn..t organized getting any more batteries for my recorder. Rita and Martin had kindly donated me what AAs they had with them but unfortunately these turned out to be rubbish. Another eg of counterfeit goods, they claimed to be sony alkaloid batteries but when I tried them I found that simply even booting up the recorder (turning it on) used nearly a third of their charge. Bugger! So I had to be pretty conservative with the recorder from then on.
The boat fairly flew back down stream to camp. A spot of fishing on the way. Dinner and chat around the fire.
Eric and the other local guys headed off for some night fishing. With my batteries dying we would head back down to the lodge tomorrow and they wanted fish to take to their families. I decided to head off to try and record some frogs, something I considered very brave given my terror of snakes, creatures more active at night and especially fond of the swampy watery areas frequented by amphibians... I walked at a snails pace my torch studying every inch of ground for a goodly while before I took the next step. I got what I considered some good recordings and crept back to camp just as cautiously. (In fact in later review with Eric I discovered that what I had was a collection of recordings of crickets..)
The next morning I awoke in the pre-dawn to a distant roaring. I leapt up with the recorder just as Eric called out to me to get ready. Howler Monkeys! It was the most amazing sound, a deep throaty call and response and I was as eager to record it right there with this weird stereophonic ambience at a distance as I was to run several km through the jungle behind the guide Ronaldo. (Eric laughing stayed in bed).
But run we did, Sara and Peter in tow. And so I got perhaps the most dramatic recording of the trip, nearly asphyxiating in my desire to not pant breathlessly all over the recording, when we got right up to the very tree inhabited by one of the howlers in time to record a good 5 minutes or so of throaty roaring before it finished up for the day and curled up to go to sleep. Duty done for the day, territory confirmed. Sounded for all the world like death metal vocals.
Struck camp, loaded the boat and another hairy trip back down the river. A very close call at one rapid with even the locals suddenly in panic mode fighting the river with their poles to keep us off a rock rushing up that would have flipped us easy as a leaf. The trip down with the current was a fast one, ther jungle cliffs and rapids speeding passed, and we were back at the lodge by midday. Not exactly anticlimactic but a shock to be back there so soon. The sun came out just as we arrived home.
Despite the instructions to the lodge people that I was there to work on a special project it was evident that this wasn..t really understood. I was able to turn on the generator whenever I asked, but to be honest even I wasn..t very keen on this. It was a horrible smelly noisy thing that disrupted the tranquillo nature of the place whenever if booted into life. Usually it was only on from sunset until around 8.30pm. Also it was obvious that Julio, the manager, thought that my time would be more practically used doing more mundane tasks such as building and leaf sweeping. I didn..t necessarily begrudge the requests that I work on these other jobs rather than on the editing etc I was trying to get done- I actually very much enjoy outdoor physical work- but I also knew that if I didn..t get cracking on putting this album together then we would be there forever. I decided that it would be best to return to Rurrenabaque to work on the album there with constant electricity and without the distractions of the lifestyle of the lodge.
The annual San Miguel fiesta was coming up in a couple of days so we decided to stay for that before leaving. Would be nice to finish with a party and also good to get some more recordings of local musicians. The days leading up to this were very intense as a large group of biologists, 15 in total, were visiting the lodge to hold a convention. In fact they were affiliated with Conservation International, one of the funders of the lodge. It was a very big deal for the San Miguel project and as a result all hands were required on deck and we were asked to work extra hours. Sara cooking in the kitchen and me and the other volunteers doing extra cleaning etc. Kind of a pain in the arse really- in terms of how my project was proceeding. One day the biologists went upriver a way and the lucky buggers saw a Jaguar on the river bank. They were a funny bunch, aid funders on a junket some of them. I got along best with the 3 or 4 Bolivian biologists who were part of the group, they were as interested in my project as I was in their work. The Europeans and Yanks seemed more than happy to treat us as servants.
The night of the fiesta arrived and what a party! We arrived way too early at 9pm. Luckily for me some of the local musos saw us there and brought down their instruments especially for me to record (I had recorded one of them a few days previous at the lodge). The local music is a chaotic joyous racket made with drums and bamboo flutes. Dominant instrument is ultra fast semi martial snare drumming. Pretty cool energetic stuff. Anyway the sound of this started bringing some of the locals down, unfortunately this lead to calls that the generator be started and modern music be played on the PA. Luckily for me the generator broke down or ran out of fuel every so often and the old timers music would start up again. Boom boom boom of the bass drum with calls and shouts, the machinegun snare, the barely audible flute playing old old jungle melodies.
Everyone was dancing and the booze was free. Folks walking around amongst the crowd carrying jugs of potent chicha (masticated then fermented corn and sugar alcohol), or much more potently fanta mixed with 96percent ¨potable¨ industrial alcohol and pouring it into little cups that were shared amongst everyone. Glad I had those hepatitis jabs! The drinks never stopped coming. Everyone dancing in this big old wall-less hall with a thatched roof, the recorded music on the PA distorted like crazy from sheer volume and torn speakers. I think it was 3 am before we finally snuck away to negotiate the snake infested river track back to the lodge.
Then bang! 7am and we have to get up because we..re due to catch the boat back down to Rurrenabaque at 8 with the Conservation International folk. Actually feeling not so bad… Maybe that industrial alcohols not as toxic as I..d thought it might be?
So back to town... And it seemed like a city after the quiet of the jungle. We..d gotten pretty used to the lifestyle out there. I really enjoyed falling asleep exhausted every night under a mosquito net to the sound of insects. Waking with the sun. Rurrenabaque was a chaos of careening motorbikes and dust and noise- noise of shop radios, noise of drunken bars and truck horns.
We found a cheap hotel, only $4 each a night and I settled straight in with the laptop. My main job out at the lodge had been cleaning up and editing the recordings. Actually got really good at using noise reduction filters etc. Quite a good skill to have I reckon- got to the stage where I can now isolate a single insect or bird out of a soundfield full of river noise and wind and lots of other insects etc. I was pleased with that. Obviously this wouldn..t normally be my style- I..m a big fan of extraneous noise- but I thought for this project I should try and be as hi-fi and clear as possible.
So now I set about trying to work the recordings I..d selected into some sort of cohesive and interesting flow. I wanted it to have a sense of narrative, to capture over 35 mins what its like to visit the San Miguel del Bala world. I also wanted it to work as an interesting and engaging piece of music. There was one track in particular that I made especially for myself though- myself and other noise drone fanatics.
At dusk the place would come alive with cicada and cricket sounds. These resonated at such a frequency that they produced virtual sine waves that sounded as much like microphonic feedback as anything. So I made one piece using all my isolated insects and various effects to create the dusk from hell. A huge immersive wall of menacing noise that x-fades into the real thing- a straight field recording of dusk insects. This is the piece that took the longest, days of work, and also the one that I suspect that the lodge folk actually like the least, but for me it represents the sheer spine tingling bliss that these dusk sounds induced in me.
The other tracks are filmic. A journey up the river, a trip to the village, a day and night in the jungle. These are interspersed with flute and drum pieces played by the locals, and one by me.
I had been working 9-10 hour days in our hotel for 5 or 6 days- Sara going slowly mad with boredom, and both us broiling in the muggy tropical heat (and getting virtually no sleep due to a spectacularly noisy nightclub -¨bananas¨(!) - over the road), when I got a visit from the manager of the San Miguel office and project. He wanted the laptop back. Yikes! I hadn..t been told it was his personal laptop. I knew I still had at least a few days work left and so we eventually negotiated a situation whereby I would work in the office from then on. To be honest this probably meant I got less done each day (what with the various distractions there (answering phonecalls and emails when English was needed etc) but at least they got some idea of the amount of work I was actually putting in, the amount of time something like this takes.
Sara came down each day and did some English tutoring for one of the guides. She was pleased to have something to do. Rurre isn..t a big town and theres not a hell of a lot to do there.
Eric had suggested another project to follow on from this one, a project that I was even more excited about but I think it was just as well for Sara that it fell through. Erics grandfather is an 80 year old shaman who lives 6 hours from Rurre by motorbike. Eric was keen that we go up to visit him and another shaman to record their traditional music. This music is an integral part of their magical tradition and each shaman specialises in a particular magical instrument. For Erics grandfather this is bone flutes that he has made from various animals. The other shaman utilises violins that he makes from sacred animal parts and wood. Eric was keen to do this as he has already written a short book covering the history of these traditions and saw this as an opportunity to get at least some of it published, albeit in the form of liner notes. I was very excited by the idea as well, even by the part of simply riding a motorbike 6 hours into the jungle, but the project fell through when his grandfather decided that it would be inappropriate for their traditions to be recorded, let alone inscribed onto CDs to be distributed around the world. Can..t really complain about his reasoning- for them the magic they work with is entirely of and about the place where it occurs- but it is sad somehow that this music/tradition will disappear from history without leaving a tangible trace, and probably very soon.
And so my project and my time in Rurre was finally finished with the completion, the sequencing and laying out of the final album. I was sad to leave, felt like I could have lived there for years. We..d gotten to develop favourite restaurants as well as friendships over the month or so we were there. I..m even toying with the idea of returning, that jungle lifestyle is pretty great.
We caught over 30 hours worth of buses, with only a 5 hour break in the middle to reach Santa Cruz. Since then we have come up to Samaipata in the hills for a few days, and tomorrow we return to Santa Cruz where we are meeting up again with our Swiss friends to head down into Paraguay from where we will go to Argentina. But thats all another story.
I hope to have the album I recorded in Rurrenabaque up for download in the next few days. Just trying to find someone to host it on their server (any suggestions out there?). I will be selling this album in return for a $5 donation to the San Miguel del Bala trust. I will post a message out here when this is up and available.
Sorry if this blog seems a little rushed or incoherent. I..ve been trying to get it done as quickly as possible.