Julia Haltigan has stolen our Gopher hearts without even knowing it. Tune in for a heavenly experience here, the favourite is “Goodbye Cowboys & Rocket Men,” but they are all gradations of the sublime…

Freddie Stevenson, the English-born singer-songwriter is a self-taught musical genius. Freddie gives his listeners the kind of musical and lyrical experience usually reserved for the likes of Leonard Cohen, Paul Simon and Bob Dylan. When he told us he loved The Gopher we, quite understandably, nearly fainted from jubilation. Following our celebration [which may or may not have included unstoppable underwear-dancing], and several e-mail exchanges analysing Creed’s “My Own Prison” later, we bring you a story written especially for Gopher-fanatics where he gives us [...]]]>

Freddie Stevenson, the English-born singer-songwriter is a self-taught musical genius. Freddie gives his listeners the kind of musical and lyrical experience usually reserved for the likes of Leonard Cohen, Paul Simon and Bob Dylan. When he told us he loved The Gopher we, quite understandably, nearly fainted from jubilation. Following our celebration [which may or may not have included unstoppable underwear-dancing], and several e-mail exchanges analysing Creed’s “My Own Prison” later, we bring you a story written especially for Gopher-fanatics where he gives us Packing-tips, props, and a mysterious term dubbed “duende.” And music. Lots of music.

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I’ll tell you a story, and softly blow my own trumpet. I’ve only played one gig in Spain, on a rooftop in Barcelona. Okay, I’ll blow a little louder. Penelope Cruz was there. And her sister, too. Anyway, singing and playing an acoustic guitar, I bellowed and stomped my way through a set, un-amplified in the open air. Afterwards I was milling around trying to think up a witty opener for a potential conversation with Penelope, when a different but equally beautiful Spanish lady came up to me, grabbed my hand, and leaning close into my face and staring deep into my eyes whispered, “Thank you. You have duende.” “What’s duende?” I asked. “Duende, ” she said, letting go of my hand, “is…” and she flung her arms in the air, puffed out her chest, and grimacing like a sad clown, stamped her foot on the ground. “And that’s a compliment,” she said, before walking away.

In his lecture ‘The Secret Life Of The Love Song,’ the great Australian songwriter Nick Cave discusses his lifelong obsession with writing love songs, and mentions the Portuguese term ‘Suadade,’ the universal sense of inexplicable longing, a deep and sorrowful yearning for something lost which was never owned and can never be found. He then goes on to mention duende and quotes Frederico Garcia Lorca: “All that has dark sound has duende, that mysterious power that everyone can feel but no philosopher can explain.” But, Cave goes on: “All in all it would appear that duende is too fragile to survive the brutality of technology and the ever increasing acceleration of the music industry. Perhaps there is just no money in sadness, no dollars in duende.” Nick Cave spoke those words in 1999, and since then the music industry has crashed and burned, largely thanks to the internet. All that remains amongst the rubble is the latest winner of Pop Idol, some impossibly pure teenage ‘country’ singers who were probably built by robots in a top-secret bunker at Disney HQ, and duende.

Duende is by its very nature undefinable, and Garcia Lorca, that great definer of the un-definable, puts it this way in his (pardon the paradox) definitive ‘Theory and Play of The Duende’: “The duende wounds, and in trying to heal that wound that never heals, lies the strangeness, the inventiveness of a man’s work.”

Since I first started making music, the most common observations people have offered me are, “I like your records but you’re better live,” and “I like the version of that song on the record, but I prefer the demo you made alone.” It seems that duende is extremely difficult to capture on record. Of course it’s been done. Listen to Van Morrison’s magical ‘Astral Weeks’ and duende leaps out of the speakers from the first note. But I was beginning to feel, around the time I met that beautiful Spanish woman on the rooftop in Barcelona, that something was missing. While I was, and still am, extremely proud of my own two studio albums, ‘Body On The Line’ and ‘All My Strange Companions,’ something was missing. This feeling coincided with, and I’m sure in the most part contributed to, an intense period of change in my life, both professionally and personally. Important relationships disintegrated, and I left London where I had lived for the last ten years. Now before you break out the violins, I’ll quote Nick Cave again: “How beautiful the notion that we create our own personal catastrophes and that it is the creative forces within us that are instrumental in doing this.” I found myself entering a period of emotional and actual homelessness, but I only had myself to blame. As I noted to myself at the time somewhere in a song I never wrote, “I have arranged the furniture of my life to lie in nothingness and now I am lonely.” Lonely or not, it was where I was, and I alone had put myself there.

Freddie Stevenson – The City is King

Ever since I started writing songs around the age of fourteen, I’ve been recording them myself, first on a Tascam 4 track tape machine, then a Roland digital 8 track, and eventually on a laptop computer, using the Logic recording software, one of the greatest inventions known to man. Every room I have ever occupied for more than a few days has been turned into a recording studio. I travel light: a guitar, a couple of books, change of underwear, two AKG condenser microphones and an orchestra. For me, recording is the natural culmination of the writing process, and I’m always writing. I’m not a brilliant engineer – I do everything on headphones, and my Mac’s been at death’s door for the last two years, but you make do with what’s available to you. At the beginning of 2009, I gathered up all the recordings I had been working on since completing ‘All My Strange Companions’ – thirty songs in all – and offered them online as free downloads, spreading the word to friends and fans via Myspace and Facebook. Then I went to New York, with my change of underwear and my orchestra, a city I had been visiting and playing in on and off for a while. Broke, I started a busking band with the saxophonist David Luther and the bassist Bennett Miller. We called ourselves The Dirty Urchins (and still do), first playing for tips on the subway platforms and eventually, when the weather improved, making an album, ‘Late As Usual,’ and selling it in Central Park. All the while I continued writing and recording, but now every time I finished a song, I would immediately put it online and offer it for download. Soon this became as much a part of the writing process as recording – a way of clearing the desk and making room for the next song to come along. It also became a lifeline. Things move fast in New York City. The metabolism of the place fuses with your own, and I drenched myself in it, my every waking moment filled with movement and music. As I wrote and recorded and uploaded, I felt as if I were walking along a beach. The immensity and silence of the internet was as comforting as the ocean, and I needed its supreme indifference; its teeming emptiness acted as a salve to the extremes of life in New York, the rollercoaster of joy, fear, desire and boredom. Here’s Garcia Lorca again, speaking of how duende can pierce you like an arrow and want to kill you ‘for having stolen his ultimate secret, the subtle link that joins the five senses to what is core to the living flesh, the living cloud, the living ocean of love liberated from time.’

Summer turned to winter and the busking season ended and I made my way, still with my portable orchestra but missing a few pairs of underpants, back to Scotland where my father is renovating an old house a few miles outside Edinburgh. The uncertain future I had so willingly dived into when I went to New York at the beginning of 2009 was still there in front of me, but being a little older and a little uglier now, I was able to see it as the natural way of things. You endure a period of transition in life only to come out the other side knowing that life itself is a period of transition. Where I live in Scotland, time moves at nature’s pace, There is genuinely nothing going on at 3am that doesn’t involve owls and foxes, and there I have the luxury of time and space; I plant an orchard, watch it grow, and pick the fruit.

By now I had gained a modest following online, and I kept writing, recording and uploading, all the while waiting for that one really juicy piece of fruit to ripen, that one song that would tip me over the edge, when the stars align and I’m wearing the right hat and it’s a sure fire hit, and wondering where the opportunity to make another record would come from.

Freddie Stevenson – Happy Hour

Back in New York I had concocted a plan with my friend, guitarist with the band The Mercury Seed and general music biz impresario John Jackson, to put together a collection of fifty of the downloads I had made packaged with a booklet of the lyrics. With this in mind, I began reviewing everything I had recorded, listening to many of the songs for the first time since I had uploaded them, and I realised that I had in fact been making a record all along, under my own nose – and what’s more, it might even contain a touch of duende! It has no beginning and no end; it’s messy and it’s sad; in the background you can hear telephones ring, trucks beep beeping as they reverse on the street, birds chirping, thunder crashing; but listening back, as if I were listening to someone else, I felt duende. I heard the songs being born, unbidden and covered in blood. I heard myself as I was when I wrote and recorded them, sometimes half numb with despair, at other times struggling to contain my joy, entirely unselfconscious and utterly alone, singing into the internet.

It has no structure, it is un-finishable, but I noticed, by just putting the fifty songs in alphabetical order, the arc of a love story. The first song ‘All The Way Home’ begins with the lines “I suppose it’s a tale you’ve often heard / Against all the odds, boy meets girl,” and the last song is called ‘Wyoming,’ a song about needing to go back to the beginning, to where love began, and the place I went on holiday aged eleven and first fell in love with the guitar. In between is all confusion and contradictions, the heart of any love story.

Freddie Stevenson – All The Way Home

Which brings me to now. When I first came across the Gopher Illustrated, I was immediately struck by how their philosophy of creating a magazine that is a ‘collectible in motion’ that ‘lives on the shelf’ resonated with my ideas about how to describe to people this record I had been making. At a time when the internet has devoured the recording industry and is now turning its hungry eyes on print media (the new Apple iPad surely has the potential of becoming to magazines and books what the iPod was to CDs), how do we survive and harness these new opportunities? How do we not allow ourselves to be swept away in the torrent of information? How can we be heard? Looked at one way, the internet is a dark ocean where a lone voice can so easily be lost. It was the need to confront this void that started me off on these recordings, because it so perfectly mirrored the void I felt in myself, the breeding ground of duende. On the other hand, never before has it been possible to connect with so many people so quickly and so intimately. In that sense, the internet could be seen as Lorca’s ‘living ocean of love, liberated from time.’

Perhaps duende is not, after all, too fragile to survive the brutality of technology like Nick Cave worried back in 1999. Perhaps duende is what lies at the root of our urge to keep developing new ways of communicating with each other to share our experience of living. I can’t put it better than Lorca: “The duende….Where is the duende? Through the empty archway a wind of the spirit enters, blowing insistently over the heads of the dead, in search of new landscapes and unknown accents: a wind with the odour of a child’s saliva, crushed grass, and medusa’s veil, announcing the endless baptism of freshly created things.” What a wonderful metaphor for the rise of technology, the internet, and the opportunities they offer us – ‘the endless baptism of freshly created things.’ I hope you’ll accept my songs with an open heart, in the spirit in which they were created, carved from our shared heritage of duende, tumbling through a strange new world in the midst of change.

Freddie Stevenson – To a Woman in Winter

Freddie Stevenson – Blind Architect

Freddie Stevenson – Love & Hunger

Freddie Stevenson – I Cried When I Was Born

[ With many thanks to Freddie Stevenson. These songs and many more are available for download free of charge HERE ]

Freddie Stevenson will make your heart explode. I usually can’t get through the day without a fix. Don’t tell him I said that.

Stream his music on MySpace, or alternatively, listen and download here.

Kyra Choucroun is one of the founders of The Gopher Illustrated and a political fiend (try and stop her, we dare you!)  Her interests range from International Political Economy to Development and Conflict resolution. Fresh out of a Masters from the London School of Economics, K-fresh is hard at work at an internship in the UK. A native of Venezuela and a dweller of everywhere else, Kyra has spent most of her life explaining away the intricacies and misunderstandings of international politics to… well… everyone. [...]]]>

Kyra Choucroun is one of the founders of The Gopher Illustrated and a political fiend (try and stop her, we dare you!)  Her interests range from International Political Economy to Development and Conflict resolution. Fresh out of a Masters from the London School of Economics, K-fresh is hard at work at an internship in the UK. A native of Venezuela and a dweller of everywhere else, Kyra has spent most of her life explaining away the intricacies and misunderstandings of international politics to… well… everyone. This article is no different – it is, however, her take on things with all the implications a personal perspective carries. We welcome and encourage a healthy dialogue on the matter, for which we invite you to use the comments below. To any and all who will question K in the future, look forward to a link with a formal response – while she is a very busy woman, K is no slouch.


Latin America is turning to the left – this much is widely known. It is, however, a phenomenon that carries with it rather complex qualities, primarily the chasm between two very differing modes of leftist politics. One “left,” championed primarily by Chile, Brazil, and Uruguay, is akin to a moderate, social-democratic kind. Its positive characteristics lie in its ability to reconstruct itself via the recognition of the mistakes created by its ideological models, primarily the former Soviet Union and Cuba.

The other, less orthodox type of “left” is populist. Ruled on the forefront today by Venezuela’s Chavez, and followed very strongly by Morales in Bolivia and Kirchner in Argentina, it is trapped in ideological admiration for its forefathers.

A Different Shade of Red?

The reconstructed left is best exemplified in Chile. A respect for democratic institutions, in fusion with social policies is a formula for success. A region plagued by corruption and authoritarian tendencies has as its model a country which managed to trump ideology with historical legacy.

Michelle Bachelet, along with her profitable coalition of Old Socialist Party and the Christian Democrats, has been able to generate high economic growth and improve on several social issues.

A model to its Latin American counterparts, Chile’s history of dictatorships and intransigent economic policies did not prevent its rise as a successful and growing nation: the country managed to surpass the traumatic political legacy of Augusto Pinochet’s dictatorship whilst significantly reducing poverty and achieving remarkable improvements in both infrastructure and education.

In Brazil, correspondingly, there exists the same successful coalescence of old socialist tendencies with new, innovative macroeconomic policies. President Lula’s ability strictly to follow IMF requirements has been of paramount importance in Brazil’s recent success. Its economic stability, accentuated by its yearly production of quite an extraordinary fiscal surplus, demonstrates Brazil’s successful fusion of traditional socialist principles with rather orthodox economic policies.

Without abandoning socialist principles, however, Lula developed the “Zero Hunger” initiative, a creative manifestation combining ideology with political practicality. In addition, Lula devised the “Bolsa Familia” welfare program (“Family Scholarship” in English), which entails direct cash transfers to poor Brazilian families strictly on the condition that the children attend school and acquire vaccinations. Modeled on Mexico’s “Oportunidades” program, Bolsa Familia is the largest and most extensive conditional cash transfer initiative in the world.

Lastly, Uruguay is, to some extent, another illustration of the dichotomy. Quite the prodigy, it has the lowest poverty rate, as well as low levels of inequality – an accomplishment in the most unequal continent in the world.

Vazquez is borrowing from the old and combining it with the new, a strategy with the potential of producing positive results. This is exemplified not only by Uruguay’s mature relationship with the United States, but also by its ability to resist some of its counterparts’ ideological warfare on neo-liberalism.

Populism Returns

The resurrection of populism in Latin America is spearheaded by one man: Hugo Chavez. His demagogic, anti-USA and authoritarian nature aims at “decontaminating” the region of neo-liberalist tendencies. Its results can be seen in the ongoing deterioration of Venezuela’s situation: from 1997 to 2003, GDP shrank 45 percent, while the national currency, the Bolivar, dropped 292 percent from 1998 to 2005.

Argentina and Bolivia are no different: Nestor Kirchner was a die-hard Peronist who defaulted on IMF loans, while Morales is a populist in the purest form, with plans to nationalise the country’s assets.

Argentina, however, judging from the recent election results, seems poised towards a more practical view of socialism. Although Cristina de Kirchner cites good relations with Venezuela’s Chavez, she seems focused on improving her country’s education and public health system.

Despite her Peronist background, her idea of “social and inclusive” capitalism is characteristic of a more pragmatic economic policy under which the country is more likely to positively contribute to the region. She expressed this view in an exclusive interview with Time Magazine: “We’re not averse to capitalism. But if they used to say, ‘Workers of the world unite!’ then we also say today, ‘Capitalists of the world, assume your social responsibility!’” This is akin to Lula’s popular view of the economy, and one he is successfully implementing.

El Salvador Goes Red

Mauricio Funes is to El Salvador what Hugo Chavez Frias was to Venezuela ten years ago. Here is a popular, charismatic, electable and self-declared man of the people delivering a potent political message: El Salvador is for El Salvadorians, not the big business interests allegedly protected by the two decade rule of the right. Undoubtedly, the late Sunday night victory of the Faribundo Marti National Liberation Front (FMLN), a party largely composed of former Marxist guerrillas, marks a monumental shift in the country’s bloody history. Nationally, and most superficially, it signifies an ideological change marked with both populist and communist rhetoric. Regionally, the election results are a blatant triumph for the left axis spearheaded by Venezuela’s Hugo Chavez. His incessant presence throughout the campaign, mainly via endorsements, is only one sign of his role in the eventual catapult of the left to power. The picture, however, need not be a grim one. 
All the while Rodrigo Avila’s right wing party has been successful in maintaining some sense of social stability and creating an environment conducive towards business and investment, growth has since 1999 been below 3 percent, starkly low compared to most of its Latin American neighbours. The party, despite several social initiatives, has a disappointing record in alleviating the grievances of El Salvador’s poor. Gang violence, drugs, and tin shacks disguised as housing all continue to plague San Salvador’s most destitute areas. A change in policy was clearly in need in a country ripe with not only social ills but also the remnants of a 12 year long civil war. 
Is this a good change for El Salvador? It can be. The new leadership, although feared by many will become a communist satellite and align itself with the vociferous camp led by Chavez, can in fact become a hopeful chapter in El Salvador’s history. Its promises to begin afresh with the United States and remain faithful to a free trade agreement instated by the previous government is a fine start. During the campaign, Funes also alluded to framing his own policies according to Brazil’s Lula Da Silva, a highly positive development judging by the country’s success in assuaging political divisions and placing the country on a veritable path towards an auspicious economic future. Whether these were simply campaign tactics designed to temper fears of extremism remains yet to be seen.

Economically, the victory spells a different story. El Salvador’s growth was sacrificed by conservative party’s importance on stability rather than clear macroeconomic principles. In 2001, El Salvador undertook the dollar as its currency, at the cost of employment and production. The fact that 18 percent of its gross national product (GDP) is composed of remittances from abroad will constrain the new government’s ability to stimulate growth, especially as the global recession crashes in with full force. 
El Salvador on Sunday night could have been mistaken for a scene in any Chavista rally in Caracas – shirts, minivans, and faces all clad in red, illustrating an unquenchable thirst for the end of what in their minds has been a stagnant and corrupt rule. What happens next is clearly up to the Salvadorians – they can cleverly follow the example of their Brazilian neighbour, or they can destructively immerse themselves in the demagogic leadership of its less clever neighbour, Venezuela. Only time will tell.

Ideology vs. Pragmatism

It is vital to take notice of the fact that socialist policies are not necessarily a path to destruction; the ideas upon which they are contingent are essential in every political system to compensate for the distortions resulting from capitalist development. The populist-propelled kind of left, however, ignores the “compensation” element of the rule, trying to destroy all modes of capitalism, thus eliminating the prospect of beneficial social and economic progress.

The political, economic, and social progress of any region is based on its ability to create a stable balance between its allegiance to ideology and pragmatism. The left dichotomy present in Latin America is creating a two-camp sort of Western Hemisphere – not conducive to a constructive political climate.

If the region were united rather than strictly partitioned into two separate ideologies, the sense of alienation Latin America has experienced would lessen, and would provide an opportunity for Latin America to fulfill its potential as a powerful, promising, and vigorous region. Some in the region have already taken the initiative to detach themselves from the negative effects of past ideology. It is time that the rest follow in the same propitious direction.