My blog post yesterday somewhat cryptically referred to Barranquilla. The exegesis of that post was a long and fascinating conversation I had with somebody who comes from that town in Colombia.
Barranquilla is on the northwest coast of the South American continent, and is known and celebrated for its elaborate and flamboyant Carnival. It was fascinating to meet somebody from this part of the world, and to compare and contrast our culture of New York with an equatorial culture.
I came away with a renewed appreciation for the wonderful diversity of this world of ours, and how much we can learn from the people we encounter. One thing I love about New York is the way you get to meet people from different parts of the world, and how thoroughly we all accept that we are all different yet all the same.
I sincerely hope that our country is not about to enter a dark time of xenophobia, the sort of fearfully cowering and angrily defensive distrust of the outside world that Donald Trump has been peddling.
We are better than that. We must be better than that.
When I was in grad school in Miami, I’d occasionally play in the horn section of a Colombian salsa band, and always loved spending time in that warm, family-focused community of Colombian expats.
When I saw the title of these posts come through my feed reader it took me back to the late 80s, and the tune that I looked forward to playing in every gig — ‘Barranquillero’ — https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N45pRLaLWKs