Bono guitar strikes wrong note in Bolivia (Some strange instruments)

[icymist]

Bono guitar strikes wrong note in Bolivia

U2 singer Bono has unwittingly triggered an international row while on tour and preaching a message of solidarity in South America.

Sophie Arie

Thursday, March 09, 2006

U2 singer Bono has unwittingly triggered an international row while on tour and preaching a message of solidarity in South America.
The rock star was presented with a traditional Andean guitar, a charango, as a symbol of Chile's musical culture after a concert in Santiago last week.

(snip)
An expert on the subject, he runs a museum full of the instruments made of everything from armadillo to tortoise shells to dried ox testicles, in La Paz.

(more)
http://www.thestandard.com.hk/news_detail.asp?we_cat=7&art_id=13699&sid=6964852&con_type=1&d_str=20060309

Wow! Imagine a rock star playing dried ox testicles?! Can you believe that Bolivia and Chile are actually fighting over this? This sounds like something Monty Python would do....Yum! Crunchy frog!
:eyes:

[tocqueville]

1. next head line : Bono triggers war over ox testicles... nt

[lyonn]

2. What I got from the article

That Bolivia needs access to the ocean and Chile could help Bolivia by giving them this access - possibly making Bolivia a less poverty stricken country. My smarts is lacking and especially in history, but, how did Chile become such a long skinny country? Who cares who made the instrument first and with what, they were trying to mimic the Spaniards anyway.

[mitchum]

3. Is he gong to wear the charango on his back...

like he did with that acoustic guitar in the 80s?

[Kerrytravelers]

4. You can't have a Bono thread without a picture of Bono!

Sigh...

... yummy

[rockymountaindem]

5. I guess international relations are best left to the pros

If Chile does something, it seems that's enough to get Bolivia upset. Maybe they could both go in for some border arbitration, I don't know...

[Squeech]

6. I found out

how to tune the charango; it was so preposterous I immediately abandoned all hope of playing one. The lowest note is in the middle.

My understanding of how South America got that way is that Simon Bolivar wandered up and down the Spanish speaking part of the continent, fomenting uprisings wherever he thought the people were ready. But being only one man, he couldn't coordinate the whole (half) continent, so colonies broke off piecemeal.

Brazil never actually achieved independence; instead, the king of Portugal felt so threatened by Napoleon's army that he just bailed, he and his court took ship for Brazil and set up their new improved empire in Rio de Janeiro. The prestige of having a real live crowned head of Europe was so powerful that Brazil never broke apart. The monarchy abdicated at the end of the 19th century, and Brazil has been a democracy for most of the time since (the main exception being the military coup in the '60s that persisted well into the '80s).

There have been wars, the one I know the most about (which still isn't much) was one instigated by Paraguay (the only other landlocked country) against Brazil, Argentina and Uruguay. Need I add that Paraguay got its ass handed to it? What were they thinking?