• Older people have created musical groups and dances, strengthening their confidence and personal autonomy.
• 50 people have successfully fought the pandemic and are now presenting themselves on public platforms.
Bogotá, DC, May 25, 2023. Despite being at risk of contracting Covid-19, they have added other risks such as isolation and social isolation due to probable factors such as living alone, losing family members, friends or suffering from chronic diseases; many older people from the towns of Teusaquillo and Barrios Unidos did not suffer that they were defeated and today they return to art and culture.
It all started in the middle of 2021, when fifty older people demonstrated their skills through Karaoke and thus gradually created their musical group “Sons of Knowledge”.
“Folk and Latin American music is part of the musical repertoire of the 25 people, from “Filius Saberes”, shaping the cultural space to work on the human occupation in its kind of creation and their productions belonged to the “ambassadors” and are musicians. in the musical stage “Latin America”, highlights Didier Guzmán, workshop leader of the day center.
Didier, a multi-instrumental musician, digging digging thanks to music, remembers how after the pandemic and working virtually, older people were inspired and in person by helping the Wise and Wise Men of Barrios Unidos Teusaquillo.
“We started every Wednesday from 2 to 4 in the afternoon in the center of the day and from the first month we already had the first presentation, because of the group of about twenty-five people, the largest majority, with more than 60 years who are associated with the younger ones, which is part of the action of the southern power” , he says.
They are happy and very happy, says the head of the workshop, after explaining that “with these we have been developing musicians since last year, thanks to their ideas about artistic creation, they feel very happy and I see a lot. to be good in each of the participants. Definitely, art and creativity generate many benefits in the person of the elderly, that is what we offer here today at the center.
For Gilberto Navarro Peñalosa, from Bogotá and a resident of the neighborhood of San Luis, he has loved music since he started three years ago and where he enjoys dancing, yoga, singing, painting and stage sports. “Today we are dealing with guacharaca and with what I do in the middle of the day, I am alive, the river, the joy and the environment of change.”
Another member of the group is Martha Plazas Ramírez from Barrios Unidos, a Cali woman who has been part of the center for 4 years, plays the drum, guitar, maracas and guacharacas. He emphasizes that “what I do is super delicious, because I learned to play music, do handicrafts, do sports, ride a bicycle and walk.”
And for Jaime Roberto Escobar Sanabria, the guitarist of the group, reaching the middle of the day, it became a beautiful opportunity, which after 55 years in music will be reactivated. “I am from Medellin and I live in the neighborhood of Teusaquillo, I was in the middle of the day for 3 years where I did very well, I completely renewed my lifestyle and today I play electric guitar, drums and guacharaca”, he emphasizes. .
The addition of “Son of Saberes” is a choral group from the Día Tierra de Saberes center, where older people enjoy popular choreographic narratives, where they work on coordination, location, concentration and use of free time.
Tierra de Saberes has a great trajectory, where confidence and individual and group autonomy can be reinforced through dances, giving presentations at the local and district level.
More than a dance group, it’s a group of friends who share a love of art!
