The Rap Cartel, World Records and Other Tales From Colombia

One of the few DJs in the Guinness Book of World Records isn't from the Bronx, or LA. He's not from the USA at all. DJ Joyman Vargas hails from the barrio of El Trebol, in Cali, Colombia. Right before Christmas back in 1997, while most of the city was partying to the 4/4 beat that earned Cali the tag, "The Capital of Salsa," DJ Joyman, then 24, was setting the world's record for the most consecutive hours mixing on the radio -- 122, or five full days of spinning records!

Cali is a tropical crossroads, set in a valley. It's always been a stop for traffic travelling to and from Colombia's Pacific Coast, the Andean Mountains to the south, the rest of the country to the east. The coast is a rainy, green Africa redux, populated by the great-grandsons and daughters of slaves. Very rich in animals and plant life, but very poor otherwise. For several decades, hundreds of thousands have fled guns and bombs to arrive on Cali's doorstep and this has made it a city of many hues.

With immigration from the coast came music from the sea. That's how salsa hit the streets here in the 70's (although it survives nowadays as a commercial phenomenon, more than a cultural one). But in the last 10 to 15 years, Hip Hop culture has also hit the streets of Cali. DJ Joyman remembers seeing Beat Street four times in 1984, "I still got the poster right here," he gushed over the phone. He's been hooked since. But there's tons more like him, and rap in particular is spreading fast from the dark-skinned teens of Aguablanca, in Cali, to their fellow, lighter-skinned Colombians up and down this mountainous country.

In what were once wetlands on Cali's southern edge, Aguablanca is one of Latin America's largest "invasion" areas, where people come to squat on the outskirts of cities. About 400,000 people of color from the Pacific coast have settled here, often finding harder times in the city than what they left behind. Since 1994, the Aguablanca Cultural Network has been trying to help by supporting folk dancing groups, modeling schools, salsa bands, and any cultural expression that may help the ghetto youth find alternatives to the streets. Initially funded by an Italian NGO, the Network now depends on state funds and is run by local youth.

They also support about 25 of the area's dozens of rap and b-boy crews, mainly by giving them places to meet. This is no small thing considering that many of their members come from large families crammed into single-floor houses. One of the Network heads is Robinson Ruin, who also belongs to BS, a rap trio with a music video of their own, a status symbol in Colombia's still-young rap scene.

On the day of our interview, Ruiz had called a Network meeting to discuss the first anniversary of a rap-inclusive weekly radio show called "The Zone." Cali, with four radio stations now programming rap, leads the nation; Bogota, the capital, has only two. This in part is because a leading commercial radio station has found that the ratings for their nightly rap show are as high are as for many of their salsa programs. It also helps that two of the four stations are community-run stations, and that "the communities in Cali are listening to rap," according to Niky Cuervo, of the b-boy group, Energy Kings.

As soon as I suggested a spot for taking photos of the 15 kids at the meeting, trouble began. In the cab ride to the interview, I passed a neighborhood barbershop with a Tupac Shakur poster in the window and some funny haircuts painted on the glass, and thought it'd make a cool backdrop to the group of 17 to 23-year-olds. But when I voiced the idea, a guy called "Maligno" got in my face and said, "Some people be sayin' that the barbers be down with Hip Hop because they be doin' the razor cuts, but that ain't necessarily so." Then somebody pointed to stars and stripes on the window and refused to have their pictures taken in front of the American flag. The photographer, Lalo Borja, and I kept moving.