THE TALE AND THE TONGUE. Moving in Migrant Rhythms – Maya Saravia
MOVING IN MIGRANT RHYTHMS is episode nineteen, which follows a conversation with artist and loud thinker Maya Saravia and the podcast host Sonia Fernández Pan. In their conversation the migrant experience is very present. Maya has lived in different cities since she left Guatemala, including Madrid, Lisbon and Berlin. Even if we are the same person, our bodies do not move in the same way in all places and cultures. Part of the insights Maya and Sonia share have a lot to do with feeling and thinking with other rhythms. One of the music genres that Maya often talks about is raggaeton. The raggaeton rhythms are dangerously catchy. It is one of those music rhythms whose will is stronger than ours. In the statement of one of her projects, she refers to raggaeton as a syncretic event. It is a volcano erupting in the world, driven by the flows of capital, labour, many displacements and musical traditions. Another of her projects, El Olvido, starts in a bar in Guatemala. She says it's a bar that could be anywhere in the world. A place where the light-hearted life of bars mixes with the violence of the news. Violence always makes words fall short. Making things happen is usually the attitude of people who see art as a way, and not so much as a destination. It is not about the destination or following a course, but about how one thing leads to another; it is not only important to move, but to create conditions for movement. Perhaps that is the most magical thing about conversations, that they move us without intending to.