An AK-47 can blow you away, both literally and metaphorically. In the hands of Columbian musician Cesar Lopez, the assault rifle turns into an “Escoperatta” — a combination of Spanish words escopeta meaning shotgun and guitarra meaning guitar. Cesar takes old rifles surrendered by the Columbian warlords and mercenaries and turns them into guitars.
In the capital to perform at the DIAF, the Escoperatta that Cesar will play has come from an ex-Columbian combatant, Oliver.
Says Cesar, “Oliver was part of the disarmament programme. He handed me the gun saying, ‘I want to change my life’.” Cesar says Oliver transformed his own life while he transformed the gun into a guitar.
Back home Cesar played in a “strange band”. As he says, “We were called the Bat-allion of Immediate Artistic Reaction.
Wherever there was a bomb blast or an armed attack, we reached the spot and played music to pacify the people who were scared and sad.
“One night when we were playing, a soldier kicked my guitar and broke it. I was saddened, but seeing that both he and I were sharing the same stance — him holding the gun around his neck and me with the guitar around mine — I wondered if the gun could be turned into a guitar,” he recalls.
Cesar will be visiting the National Gandhi Museum to present them with a gun-guitar. “I’ve just had two dreams — to go to the Gandhi Memorial and see the place where the man who propagated non-violence rests. And to go to Moscow, meet Mikhail Kalashnikov and give him a gun-guitar as a gift from Columbia.”
Performs today at Stein Auditorium, IHC, at 7.30 pm.