Dödens Väg Bolivia

[Priamo Gregory]

Route36 is an illegal pop-up lounge bar located in La Paz, Bolivia where cocaine is served by the gram on a silver platter, along with the cocktail of your choice. It also seems to be somewhere literally everyone knows about, which leads you to suspect that, for it to remain open, there may be an element of corruption at play.

Of course, while everyone knows of it, not everybody knows where it actually is. After provoking blank faces from three cabbies, we eventually found our man. "Can you take us to Route 36 please?" we asked, in Spanish. He quoted us 15 bolivianos (just over a buck) and took us on our way. The only hiccup on our journey was the roadblock we had to circumvent.

La Paz's main plaza had been protected by riot police for the past week or two as striking miners from another city demanded investment. The day before our taxi ride, at the end of July, those demands were delivered by way of dynamite set off in the middle a busy road. This is the sort of climate in which La Paz has resided for the past few years; tourists indulging in artisanal local drug services, while protests rage every couple of months, from soldiers demanding better working conditions to the disabled campaigning for better welfare support.

As we avoided the roadblock by driving into the outskirts of La Paz, the cabbie explained to me that the majority of Bolivia's cocaine is produced around the eastern cities of Cochabamba and Santa Cruz. It's the many farms here that give Bolivia its number three global ranking when it comes to coca production, with its 23,000 hectares of plantations behind Colombia's 48,000 and Peru's 49,800.

Arriving at the bar, we were almost manhandled through a four-foot opening in what looked like a garage door by the three young Bolivian men who were rather inconspicuously standing guard outside. After paying our 25 bls [$3.62] entrance fee (which we exchanged for ripped pieces of paper indicating no.12056 and no.12057, respectively) we sauntered in and were beckoned over to the busiest table by a charming Norwegian man.

This isn't the kind of bar that turns a blind eye to dealers in the bathroom; this is a bar that actively facilitates and promotes the use of cocaine. Route 36 changes location as soon as there are complaints from the locals. According to a few of the guys sat around the table, it had been here for several weeks.

There were around 20 people in the bar. We were sat with eight English gap year kids, two Belgian professionals, and the Norwegian. Half a dozen Irish businessmen were sat on the opposite side of the bar, definitely the most wound up and coke-y of everyone in there, in addition to two bar-women, the hostess, the DJ (who kept playing fucking terrible dubstep), and two security guards constantly pacing around.

The coca leaf, of which cocaine derives, made news recently amid the Pope's visit to La Paz. In the Andes, the leaf is considered a sacred commodity, and President Evo Morales is a staunch defender of its medicinal and nutritional qualities. And he makes a very valid point; its cultural importance for Andean people, who have chewed the leaf for thousands of years, is primarily to relieve altitude sickness, not facilitate four-hour house party conversations with your boss about how to improve workflow.

It is for this reason that he ended the practice of previous governments, which destroyed coca leaf fields as part of the American war on drugs, kicking out the US Drug Enforcement Agency, which was offering farmers 960 [$1,500] for each field of coca destroyed. He had referred to this as cultural imperialism, arguing that increased demand for cocaine in the United States shouldn't rob indigenous peoples of ancient traditions.

Since legalizing coca cultivation after he was elected in 2006, Morales has repeatedly insisted that coca is not cocaine, calling on the UN to remove it from its list of prohibited drugs. However, Bolivia's cocaine exports have risen steadily since he took office, with production rising from 290 to 420 tons between 2013 and 2014, and it is perhaps inadvertently due to his liberal policies that Route 36 exists.

I had to excuse myself from pleasantries and introductions to rack up on the cut-out surfaces that the bar had provided. I made two slugs from the wrap we'd been given and hoovered it up. Unsurprisingly, I became chattier than usual as we all exchanged life stories and travel tips.

By 5 AM I was pretty wired, chain smoking cigarettes and talking very much at people rather than with them. At around half 6, a woman in her fifties asked us if we wanted any weed, trying to avoid the gaze of the bar-staff. We bought five grams of an almost un-smokeable black clump masquerading as marijuana (which subsequently gave me a headache) for 80 bls [$11.61] and headed back to our Airbnb in a cab with seven of our new very high, very chatty friends.

Rhiannon Giddens is an American Roots musician. Known as a solo musician and the lead singer, violinist, banjo player and a founding member of the Grammy-winning band the Carolina Chocolate Drops. She is a native of Greensboro, NC and a 2000 graduate of the Oberlin Conservatory, where she studied opera.

In addition to her work with the Drops, Rhiannon has a strong solo career with two released albums Tomorrow is My Turn released in 2015, and Freedom in 2017. Additional to other projects she has been part of Rhiannon was invited to be a contributing member of the acclaimed Lost on the River: The New Basement Tapes album produced by T Bone Burnett featuring a collective of musicians recording songs based on uncovered lyrics handwritten by Bob Dylan in 1967.

Learning how to play the banjo is no different. There are different types of banjos and plenty of new terminology for parts of banjos and playing styles. Aspiring players also wonder what makes one banjo better than another.

This GRAMMY Sunday, Rhiannon Giddens shares the story of a previous GRAMMYs, when she was nominated for her first solo record, 2015's Tomorrow Is My Turn. Giddens "was all dolled up in gown and professional hair and makeup and feeling very, very hollow inside" from the red carpet experience, "feeling the disconnect with why I actually play and sing music." She and her longtime friend and colleague Dirk Powell grabbed their fiddle and banjo and set up outside a pizza joint to play some tunes, unnoticed except for a young boy who was selling candy bars and asked: "Hey I used to learn violin, can I see yours?" You can read her story here.

He kept passing by, looking at us play, his candy bars slowly melting in the sun, until he finally slowed down and said, "Hey I used to learn violin, can I see yours?" and Dirk passed him his fiddle, and he played a little, and then I passed him the banjo and he played a little, and it was such a beautiful moment of us and him sharing a little music and all of a sudden all was right with the world. I have thought of that sweet kid often and I wonder if he ever started playing violin again. Sometimes the GRAMMY moment is outside the convention center, next to a box of melted chocolate bars.

"I love this idea of 'intersection' for inspiration when it comes to describing American music or its characteristics," classical singer Julia Bullock says in a new video from Boosey & Hawkes for its America at 250 series. "There's no apology for where those inspirations are coming from, so whether it's directly quoting or imitating the sort of collage and then the depth of expression that can come out of the layering effect, I put all these things together because it brings me great pleasure and joy and often surprises me tremendously." You can watch it here.

Heartbreaking, groundbreaking, simultaneously gutting and hopeful, Songs of Our Native Daughters gives a much-needed perspective on the dark American institution of slavery. In bringing to light the specific experience of black women through the beautiful music and writing of contemporary black female musicians, collectively Our Native Daughters, the album finds new touchstones in the story of American racism. The emotion called up by Giddens, Kiah, McCalla, and Russell, in both their vulnerability and resilience, is nothing short of humbling. Songs of Our Native Daughters is a gift to the hearts and ears of Americans for years to come.

In fact, professors at three schools marveled at her passion for geology, her intelligence, her kindness and mentorship of fellow students. And which of those was most dominant in her life? That competition is too close to call, but her gift for and love of geosciences was on a historic arc.

Tragically, Emma Giddens, who was in the fourth year of a five-year doctoral program focused on carbonates, died shortly before receiving word that her research was being honored with an AAPG Foundation Grant-in-Aid.

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