Killer Sound

Colombian musicians turn guns into guitars to make music - as well as a point.
By Kevin Sites, Mon Apr 24, 1:55 PM ET
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BOGOTA, Colombia - It's not long after you enter the world of Cesar Lopez that you realize he doesn't color inside the lines.

He is a classically-trained musician and composer who studied at Colombia's best conservatory. But instead of concert hall performances he chooses to play his music on the streets of Bogota. He writes all of his songs on air-sickness bags he collects during his travels.

"It's appropriate," he says, "because I feel I'm vomiting up what I have inside me."

But despite the description, the music he composes and plays is haunting and beautiful — hardly repulsive.

His comfortable Bogota apartment is filled with the tools of his trade, a baby-grand piano, guitars, amps — as well as the evidence that his subversively creative mind has few boundaries.

Near the piano, on a black stand that resembles a bipod, sits a Winchester lever action rifle. On its polished barrel are four hash marks, representing, says Lopez, the four people killed by it.

But there's much more to the gun than its history: six metal guitar strings stretch from the mid-point of its wooden stock, across the loading chamber, past the fret board threaded over the weapon's barrel, ending at a guitar neck flaring past the muzzle.

It's part of project in which Lopez transforms weapons of war into instruments of killer sound, using them in a kind of political performance art.

"What we want to create is an invitation to an attitude of change," he says. "It says a lot of different things — but the main idea is that weapons can be changed from an object of destructiveness to an object of constructiveness."

When he says we, he means the other 100 or so members of a group calling themselves the Battalion of Immediate Artistic Reaction — musicians and political activists, tired of Colombia's four-decade old war of attrition, committed not only to making music, but also making a point.

Using Internet meet-ups, the battalion mobilizes every time there is some kind of guerrilla attack in Bogota, heading out into the streets to serenade the victims with soothing music.

It was during the 2003 bombing of the El Nogal nightclub which killed 36 people in the capital's trendy Zona Rosa district that Lopez got the idea for turning guns into guitars.

"We were playing our music on the streets near the club," he says, "when I noticed that a soldier was holding his rifle the same way I was holding my guitar."

The prototype hangs on Lopez's wall, but the design has evolved.

"In the first one," he says, pointing out the strings suspended above the gunstock, "the guitar isn't well integrated with the gun. But it's better now. The gun is in service to the guitar, which is the idea."

Lopez says he gets the guns through an anti-land mine group connected to Colombia's peace commissioner's office. Most of the firing components are removed so it can no longer be fired.

Then a guitar maker adds the fretboard, strings and neck as well as an input for the electric amp.

"Violence fears love because it is stronger," Lopez says, strumming the gun guitar on a hammock strung between two walls of his living room. "Violence fears my voice because it goes beyond death."

Only a few dozen of the guitar guns have been manufactured so far, most being used by members of the Battalion when they respond to attacks.

But I wonder if those who just suffered from violence would really want to be serenaded by musicians playing guns.

"The attitude of most people is very good, except at airports," he laughs. But there are definitely critics.

"It's been very difficult to explain to the military the reason for a campaign like this," he says. "They don't really understand how a gun can be turned into a guitar."

And is there the potential that one of Colombia's many armed groups could use the gun guitar concept as a kind of Trojan horse — pretend they are a member of Lopez's Battalion of Immediate Artistic Reaction — but arrive in public wielding real guns instead of decommissioned ones?

Lopez nods his head. It's a question he's considered many times before.

"This is my nightmare," he says, "that's why we've been very careful to make sure the weapons are decommissioned and who we give them to. But yes, people could be killed."

Regardless, he believes real change requires risk. And this cause, he says — ending Colombia's cycle of gun-related violence — is worth it.

Besides, the transformation isn't just for show. The gun guitars truly have a killer sound, according to Lopez, ranging from ballads to, appropriately enough, heavy metal.

He and singer Adriana Luce demonstrate by performing in his living room — an untitled, ethereal work which belies the guitar's vestiges of its past.

Lopez says he just received a dozen AK-47 assault rifles, the world's most ubiquitous automatic weapon, from the peace commissioner's office, and is having them made into guitars.

When they're completed he plans to give them to high profiles musicians such as Shakira, Santana, Paul McCartney and Carlos Vivas, as well as some political and religious leaders like the Dali Lama.

However, Lopez says his recently received a letter in an incredulous tone from a member of the Dali Lama's staff, wondering why anyone would want to give the Buddhist leader a gun — regardless of what's attached to it.

Lopez says he'll try to make the explanation clearer.

In the meantime, he's also at work on another project, putting together what he calling the Experimental Reconciliation Group — a band made up of seven musicians from ex-members of Colombia's left wing guerrilla groups, right wing paramilitaries and even city gangs.

"The idea is to show that people of different political beliefs and backgrounds can work together," he says. "But they'll only be allowed to discuss music."

Optimistically, Lopez says the band will be ready to perform by Aug. 5, even though he hasn't even identified all the members yet.

All of this, he says, is about making positive changes for Colombia, reducing the violence, and teaching people to live together — an ambitious program for someone who could be filling concert halls with enchanting music.

"That's my big question right now," he says, "why I went this route. It's a gamble and I wonder if it will actually end up serving other people."

Listen to or download tracks from Lopez's "Alas de Prueba II" album:"Sin Respuesta""Eterna Presencia""Para Cristina"
To download the entire album directly to your computer's music player, click here.
To learn more about Cesar Lopez and the Battalion of Immediate Artistic Reaction, and to hear more music, visit www.cesarlopez.org.