Joropo, The Soul of Venezuela

Joropo is a big part of life in the rural plains region of the Venezuelan llanos. The name “joropo” encompasses a broad spectrum of Venezuelan cultural forms; from dress and poetry to dance and music.

Joropo is authentically Venezuelan, and its influence reaches far beyond the llanos. The music can now be heard everywhere, from the tunnels of the Caracas Metro, to the petroleum fields of Barinas, to the beaches of Choroni.  Venezuelan school children learn how to dance joropo and showcase their accomplishments at ferias (festivals) wearing traditional clothing such as the liquiliqui.

This particular style of folk music features the four-stringed Venezuelan cuatro,  the harp, the mandolin, and maracas. The instruments can vary by region, but joropo has an unmistakable sound and irresistible rhythm that invites listeners to dance and stomp their feet.

“Alma Llanera” is likely the most beloved joropo of all — many consider it an unofficial national anthem. Listen to a version by Simon Diaz here. Also, check out this video from a dance competition in Guárico State:

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Venezuela Hosts Ninth International Circus Festival

Caracas is full of clowns. And acrobats. And jugglers. Yesterday marked the start of the ninth annual International Circus Festival of Venezuela.

According to TeleSur, it includes performances by artists from Chile, Mexico, Peru, Spain, and Italy, as well as seven different groups of performers from Venezuela. The event runs until Sunday and includes free shows for the public.

A series of workshops and discussions will also be held at the festival to gather ideas for how to improve the circus arts in Venezuela. We have written before about an initiative to create a national circus. It seems that plans are continuing, and with any luck, the country will soon be defying the laws of gravity as never before.

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Venezuela’s Jaime Gili Wins “Art All Around” Contest

Jaime Gili of Venezuela has been called “one of the hottest global artists”. Gili made headlines recently when he won the “Art All Around” contest in Portland, Maine. His design to enliven an industrial area was selected from 560 entries from 73 countries received by the Maine Center for Creativity.

Designing Maine’s public art project came easy for Jaime Gili, who grew up in Caracas, a city full of art, ranging from sculpture and murals to graffiti. Gili explained, “I grew up in Venezuela seeing lots of urban art and and public commissions being made mostly by artists who were active in the ’50s and ’60s, the ’70s. There’s a lot of optical art in this tradition.”

Gili now lives and works in London, where he is a featured artist at the Riflemaker Gallery. In an homage to art and architecture in Caracas, he created “Ruta Rota”, a dislpay of colorful geometric shapes on a 1970s edifice in London’s Cheapside. Recently, he created works of art inspired by the multi-colored stickers sported by the motorcycle taxi drivers of Caracas.

Jaime Gili has also done several projects to help create ties between artists and art groups in Europe and Latin America. To watch a video of the artist explaining his work and see images of the project in Maine, click here. Also, check out his website.

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In Venezuelan Festival, Bodies Become Art

Venezuela recently hosted the 4th annual World Body Art Encounter (Encuentro mundial de arte corporal). Participating in the event were 32 artists from 16 different countries. After a kickoff in Caracas last Friday, the event will tour different parts of the country.

By some accounts, body painting is a practice that dates back hundreds of years in Venezuela. The artist Penelope Rivera from Mexico said, “Venezuela is a country which has a lot of body art with ethnic characteristics, and I think we have to rescue them and integrate them into modern life.”

Check out pictures of the event captured by BBC News. To read more in Spanish,  click here.

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Behind the Scenes With Miss Venezuela

You’ve probably heard that Venezuelan women are some of the most beautiful in the world. Well, it’s part coincidence, part hard work.

This 22-minute documentary by Journeyman Pictures ventures into the Miss Venezuela scene — and the strange world of head honcho Osmel Sosa — to see the drama and the personalities behind the scenes of Venezuela’s huge beauty industry. Get ready for some controversial stuff: plastic surgery, dieting, and racism.

Click here to watch.

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Art in Motion: Venezuela’s Jesús Soto

If you’ve been to the Museo de Bellas Artes in Caracas, and if when you were there you got tangled in a mess of plastic strands that looks like the underside of a yellow jellyfish, you’ve probably heard about Jesús Soto. He is Venezuela’s most famous modern artist.

Venture further into inland Venezuela, and you can visit the Museo de Arte Moderno Jesús Soto in Ciudad Bolivar, the capital of Soto’s home state of Bolivar.

Kinetic art — art that moves — is Soto’s forte. Installations like the one in Caracas are called “penetrables.” Visitors can walk through them, getting lost in a mesmerizing sea of cords that hang from above. Rather than disorienting, the experience is peaceful and fun. Some of the “penetrables” look like solid spheres hanging in the air, but when approached are similarly airy.

Jesús Soto’s legacy in Venezuela is huge. He found a way to interpret the styles and principles of modernism in a way that is uniquely Venezuelan. Find out more on his website.

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Venezuela Hosts World Poetry Festival

Some say that poetry is a dying art. This is not the case in Venezuela, where the World Poetry Festival is hosted each year. The fifth annual event is taking place this week.

This time around, the World Poetry Festival is dedicated to the Venezuelan writer Gustavo Pereira. Pereira hails from Margarita, an island off the coast of Venezuela. He is one of Venezuela’s most famous literary figures, and has published over 30 books.

Pereira told a Caracas newspaper: “now poetry is being written in Venezuela like never before. The participation of young people, who line up to get into poetry readings, is a source of pride. When writing poetry becomes a common activity, we can really sense that we are in the process of making a life-changing transformation.”

Also attending the events in Venezuela this week are prominent poets from all over Latin America as well as countries around the world including France, Turkey, New Zealand, South Africa, Angola, and Palestine.

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Venezuela: Headed for the Big Top

Venezuela is currently enjoying a renaissance of cultural growth, and it has a lot to do with the state’s new mandate to channel oil profits into educational and community development. Last month, a new cultural project was founded called Corazón Adentro (roughly translated, “Inside the Heart”).

To launch that institution, circus performances were held in the Caracas Polydrome. At the opening event, President Chavez announced plans to found a national circus company in Venezuela, perhaps inspiring a larger, continental one called the “Circus of the South.” To read more about this three-ring affair, click here (in English) or here (Spanish).

The Corazón Adentro project begins with a national census to improve knowledge of different local cultural forms and traditions throughout Venezuela. Certainly, there is no shortage of talent. The playful painting above is by Juan Urbina, a native of Caracas who grew up in the poor neighborhood of Petare and whose work is now part of the permanent collection of the Museum of Latin American Art in Long Beach, California.

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Venezuelan Music Tip: Los Vasallos del Sol

What does Venezuela sound like? The best answer to this question is perhaps provided by the band Los Vasallos del Sol (in English, “Vassals of the Sun”). This 25-member group interprets diverse musical traditions that speak of local heritage in many different parts of the country, from the Afro-Venezuelan rhythms of the Caribbean coast to the llanera ballads of the inland plains.

Formed in 1990, Los Vasallos have recorded five albums to date, most recently the 15-year anniversary disc, Quince años (2005). While in the past they were solely supported by the private sector, now they also receive government support and exemplify Venezuela’s new vision of cultural inclusiveness. They are best heard live, for their drumming, dancing, and costumes will dazzle spectators and inform them about Venezuelan culture.

Luckily for us, Los Vasallos are taking their act on tour in the U.S. next week and will be performing in San Francisco, Washington DC, and Houston. For details on these concerts, visit the Venezuela in Your Town section of this blog.

For a sneak peek at Los Vasallos, watch a video here or listen to their song “Malembe de Mendoza” here.

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International Dance Day has Venezuela Spinning

Today, April 29th, events are taking place in Venezuela to celebrate International Dance Day. This particular art form holds a special place in the hearts of Venezuelan people, who seldom turn down a chance to grab a partner and show off their steps.

Ballet performances are being featured at the massive Teresa Carreño Theater in Caracas. It was built in the 1970s and since then has housed Venezuela’s Simon Bolivar Youth Orchestra, the group recently brought to world attention by conductor Gustavo Dudamel. The theater gets its name from one of Venezuela’s most famous female musicians, Teresa Carreño, a gifted classical pianist and composer who began at an early age by tickling the ivories at the White House of Abraham Lincoln when she was only ten.

Here are some highlights from ballet performances at the Teresa Carreño Theater:

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More Than Magical Realism

At a glance, Latin American literature can seem dominated by magical realism, the genre synonymous with Gabriel García Márquez and his momentous novel, 100 Years of Solutide. Venezuela never had its major author of the Latin “boom” period, but that doesn’t mean the country lacks literary traditions worthy of export.

One of Venezuela’s many under-appreciated authors, Adriano González León (pictured here), passed away earlier this month. He was best known for his book, País Portátil (Portable Country), which was published in 1968 and made into a feature film in 1979.

The tale of one rural family, País Portatil narrates the political and economic crisis of the 1960s in Venezuela. The struggle of each generation to overcome obstacles and stand up for their rights is an underlying theme – no surprise, for González is known for railing against the dictatorship of General Marcos Pérez Jiménez.

País Portátil is the best-known work by Adriano González León, but he hated the thought that his long career would be defined by only that book. González also wrote Viejo (Old Man), a novel that came out in 1995 and made an impression on at least one reader; Gabriel García Márquez once commented that he wished he had written it.

Others have called González’s writing “a different way of looking at the world” by combining poetry and prose in a unique style. He also used memory as a literary device to “create a dialogue between the present and the past.”

Like Latin American writers of his generation, González had a cross-over career as a politician; he served as Cultural Attache to the Venezuelan Embassy in Spain during the 1990s.

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