Diary of a Separation

Monday 21st May 2018

Once again #AfroLondon delivers. It is such a privilege to be part of moments like the one I lived tonight at the Total Refreshment Centre in Dalston. It was the beginning of their seven-day-long Africa Week Festival and the celebrations could not have started better. A lecture on Venezuelan folk music archive, the screening of a documentary on the life of Belén, the “Reina of Quitipá” and a live performance by the extremely talented Luzmira Zerpa and her band.

Belén really grabbed me. This was a film that sought to capture a person’s humanity and succeeded. Belén Palacios is an unassuming cocoa farmer deep in the Venezuelan jungle. She has a passion for the world of bamboo sounds. A world that comes to life via the tiny frame of this indomitably spirited woman. Belén is the door into the realm of Afro-Latin culture in this corner of South America. She is the human anvil, situated in the centre of this sonic universe, upon which the bamboo is turned into drum and the drum into musical temple. A place, not only in which to practice and worship, but also in which to honour memory. The memory of our ancestors. The memory of Africa.