El Gigante strolls along
The sunny streets of old Cordón 
Pausing to shade the veteranas from the midday sun

El Hornero bird can spy
El Gigante’s friendly eye
As he passes up crumbs discarded by the passers by
To her home of clay in the blue sky Of Uruguay

Muestra una sonrisa (He shows a smile) Para darté vida
(To give you life)
Luce un cielo azul
He lights up the blue sky Con su andar
Su caminar por el Cordón
(With his walk, his stroll through El Cordón)

Escaramuza’s highest shelf 
El Gigante helps himself 
Passing down books to the customers below
Reciting Ibarbourou

Many, many moons ago
When they built the newest home 
The door was a regular size
Then Gigante arrived
That’s why they build them so high In Uruguay

Muestra una sonrisa...

Las puertas d’el Cordón (The doors of Cordón) 
Asi tan grandes son (Are so big there)
Para que puede entrar por ellas El Gigante
(In order for the giant to enter through them)

Vamos a cantar, Todos a cantar (Let’s all sing)
Le queremos dar (We’d all like to give)
Las gracias al Gigante (Thanks to El Gigante)


My favourite stroll is up to El Cordón. As you ascend from the modernity and daintiness of middle class Pocitos with its beach front apartments, dog walkers and delicious bakeries you leave behind the glamorous 1930s-2000s ‘edificios’ and embrace something far older and more colonial. The ornate and often crumbling 19th century Spanish buildings of El Cordón are a colourful and romantic feast for the eyes.

The most extraordinary feature of these often graffiti covered homes is the door. Doorframes are as tall as the building and boast beautifully crafted and ornate wooden doors and shutters and iron-work window bars and door handles.

Inside one of the finest buildings is Escaramuza, the most beautiful bookshop I’ve ever seen. It’s always full of people like me who just come to smell the books, wonder at the height of the highest shelf and the stained glass ceiling and have a coffee in the café out-back (which I’m sure saves them from bankruptcy if customers really are like me and rarely buy more than a postcard.)

Sipping my coffee one day I found myself thinking about those doors. Why make them so big? Is it a ventilation thing? Maybe it was a way of showing off wealth?

In the absence of any sensible explanation I decided that a ten foot giant ‘El Gigante’ had once lived in El Cordón and was well known to everyone for his kindly acts. In order to be able to welcome him into their homes, residents all decided to add enormous doors to their properties.

Despite having figured out a completely logical explanation, I was thrilled when virtuoso guitarist Juan Pablo Chapital ‘Chapa’ who performed with us in in Montevideo’s ‘El Mingus’ jazz club revealed that in 19th Century Cordón it was normal for people to enter their houses on horseback, hence the supersized doorways! 

How wonderful!

El Gigante is the kind of song you only write on holiday when you have few cares and too much time on your hands.

A celebration of El Cordón, of stories, and of day dreaming.

El Gigante

En Panorama Rural compartimos la entrevista con Ignacio Victorica principal de Victorica & ASociados quién nos brinda detalles de la participación en Agro en Punta, la situación de Conexión Ganadera, su sentir ante las distintas situaciones entre otros temas.-

Ignacio Victorica 120225

En Panorama Rural dialogamos con el Ing. Civ. Agustín Morales Macchi Presidente de la Asociación Rural Exposición Feria de Paysandú quién nos brindó detalles de la recorrida y de las consecuencias de los vientos y el granizo en Páysandú y Río Negro este fin de semana así como también lo tratado en la Sociedad Rural de Río Negro en Young en una reunión de los productores con autoridades locales y nacionales.-

Ing. Civ. Agustín Morales Macchi 170225

From libertad to San José
We drove the roads they paved the way 
From Trinidad cross the Rio Negro
We wondered how they made those places home
Pulling together and just about holding on

A mile or two from Trinidad
A camel stopped us in our tracks
Another stranger in this brave new land 
Swapped sweet cattle grass for desert sand
Rolling with the punches 
And just about holding on

Cinchando juntos, la van llevando
(Pulling together, they’re just about holding on)
Cuatro por cuatro acelera pasando camiones cargados, lentos largando calor en la plaza independencia botijas jugando, banderas flameando! Atraviesa la tierra, es una arteria, alimenta las calles del vecindario.
El ganado se junta bajo un árbol cualquiera buscando la sombra porqué los rayos te queman
(Four wheel drives speed up overtaking loaded trucks that give off heat
its hot in the Independence plaza
kids are playing and flags are swaying (the road) cuts through the land like an artery
nourishing the streets of the neighbourhoods
the cattle gather under any tree they can find
looking for shade because the rays burn)

The city swells in harmony
(Ahí viene la llamada)
A dog & traffic symphony
And people flock from wide & far 
Applaud the sunset from the busy Rambla
Rubbing together
& Just about holding on
Cinchando juntos, la van llevando 
(Pulling together, they’re just about holding on)

JUST ABOUT HOLDING ON
RECORDED by Gerardo Alonso at his studio in Montevideo MIXED by Steve Stewart at Waves Studio, Cambridge
VOICE & SYNTH Joanna Eden
BASS & BACKING VOCALS Andrés Lafone 
ACCORDION Hugo Fattoruso
DRUMS Albana Barrocas
GUITAR & BACKING VOCALS Guillermo Hill

Just About Holding On is a journey song. But while On the River Plate zooms out to all cities, maybe this zooms back in time; when was the first journey along this road, or the land that now forms the road? How did it feel to be the first. How did you know you’d reached your destination, your home, your new land. A place to ‘settle’.

Coming from a place like England with its long and well documented history where people always just ‘were’, the experience of settling a place feels like something which never happened here. The people and the land just seemed to evolve together. Of course they didn’t but maybe we just have so much history that we don’t dwell on the first humans to move here.

So driving from Montevideo to Paysandu on the north-west Uruguayan border with Argentina to see keyboard legend Hugo Fattoruso and his partner drummer Albana Barrocas in concert with Japanese percussionist Tomohiro Yahiro, I had 5 hours to think, drive, look, sleep, muse on first journeys.

Just about holding on

Got a Friend who told me she was angry Another friend who told me he was sad
He’s got a friend who told him he was stupid
For sharing something making her look bad
And the singers sing and the dancers dance The cats all play the fool
And the gurus pray we can find a way
To Stop
And the gods weep
Cos we built a machine, it’s doing us in and we can’t make it stop
And the black sheep
Took a ride in a rocker, machine in his pocket, he thinks he’s a god
And the big sleep goes on and on and on
Come inside my movie watch me shining Come and watch me walking by the sea Come inside my head while I’m declining Block me with your compassion fatigue
While the singers sing and the dancers dance
The cats still play the fool
And the gurus cry cos they don’t know why
And the sellers sell and the fighters fight The wolves all poor the fuel
And the gurus pray we can find a way To stop
And the gods weep
Cos we built a machine, it’s doing us in and we cant make it stop
And the black sheep
Took a ride on a rocket machine in his pocket, he thinks he’s a god
And the mission creep
We’re fighting for freedom, freedom to borrow, freedom to shop
And the big sleep goes on and on and on..
 THE BIG SLEEP
TRACK 3
RECORDED by Gerardo Alonso at his studio in Montevideo MIXED by Steve Stewart at Waves Studio, Cambridge
VOICE & PIANO Joanna Eden
BASS & BACKING VOCALS Andrés Lafone SYNTH Hugo Fattoruso
DRUMS Albana Barrocas

 THE BIG SLEEP
TRACK 3
Written in Montevideo, February ‘23, Andrés came up with the chord sequence and melody for the verse - which sounded wonderfully childlike to me over the cool, funky groove.
It made me think of children telling tales or saying ‘na, na, na, na, na!!’ And that started the first verse lyrics for me.... a kind of childish ‘she said that, he said this’ thing!
And then I knew it was gonna be about social media.
If television was the ‘drug of the nation’ what does that make social media? Stronger than any conceivable drug. And those who deal it know exactly how to get us hooked whilst we’re busy ‘having fun’.
I think I started with Facebook thinking ‘I wonder whatever happened to so and so from school/college, then later I climbed on the bandwagon of belief that it could market my music. The jury’s still out on that one; my music is out there, I have no control over it, and it’s available for free so my earnings have gone down.... hmm ... scratches head and feels a bit silly).

 THE BIG SLEEP
TRACK 3
And now - well now I hardly see my friends’ posts. They just don’t come up in my feed. And the ‘discussions’ I used to join in, debating increasingly contentious matters, with an ever- widening circle of ‘friends’? Well they just became too ugly. I don’t really get involved these days.
I do spend a lot of time and throw too much money at the wall trying to play poker with algorithms to get my music ‘out there’.
Meanwhile the algorithms play me, for hours per day.
I’m ashamed to say, my psychological weak-spot is airplane disasters. Meta knows. The longer I’m on a break from it, the more lurid, morbid and tempting the airplane clips they send me... and I’m hooked again. Just enough cute and funny cat clips to give the appearance of balance. It’s all just healthy fun.
Meanwhile, my kindle lies gathering dust whilst every day I promise myself this is the day I start that novel.

THE BIG SLEEP
TRACK 3
It’s good to write this down.
To acknowledge that I have been consumed by a kind of madness. I can’t dwell too long on the subject as sooner or later my thoughts will come to my kid and the tragedy that they grew up at a time when we adults collectively let down our guard and let the lunatics take over the nursery.
To my beautiful kid:
Terrible things happened in front of you online during your childhood.
On my watch.
I’m so sorry for my part in the collective neglect.
The Big Sleep is our collective blindness to all this.
The Black Sheep is one of silicon valley’s monsters - you choose which one!

The Big Sleep

En Panorama Rural recibimos al Dr. Conrado Rodríguez técnico de Virbac quién nos brindo detalles de su participación en el Curso de Inseminación de la EEMAC y la charla "Manejo sanitario del rodeo en inseminación", el trabajo de investigación en el campo Macondo en Florida así como también las cosas a tener en cuenta en el control de la garrapata en este época del año.-

Dr. Conrado Rodríguez 200225

En Panorama Rural dialogamos con el Ing. Agr. Luis Simean Gerente de Copagran Paysandú quién brindó detalles de los daños de granizo del pasado fin de semana en Paysandú y Río Negro destacando que fue en determinadas zonas de ambos departamentos y que las pérdidas fueron totales además nos adelanto los temas a tratar en la próxima jornada anual de pasturas que se realizará el próximo 26 de febrero.-

Ing. Agr. Luis Simean 210225

En Panorama Rural dialogamos con el meteorólogo Nubel Cisneros quién nos brinda detalles del pronóstico del clima para los próximos 15 días.-

Nubel Cisneros 240225

En Panorama Rural compartimos la entrevista con la Dra. Adriana Drocco Directora Técnica de Virbac quién nos brinda detalles de la importancia de la sanidad al destete para controlar los parásitos internos y la inmunización para prevenir la mancha y gangrena.-

Dra. Adriana Drocco 250225

En Panorama Rural recibimos al Ing. Agr. Rómulo César Coordinador de la Regional Norte del Instituto Plan Agropecuario quién nos brinda detalles de la situación actual del comienzo de este mes de marzo así como también detalles del Curso Ganadero a Distancia y de la Jornada de pasturas que se realiza este 12 de marzo junto a CALSAL y la Sociedad de Fomento de Santa Blanca.-

Ing. Agr. Rómulo César 100325

UK Singer-songwriter, mentor to Sam Smith

Conductora y productora comercial e informativa de Panorama Rural en EXITO FM - RADIO PAYSANDÚ - RADIO FELICIDAD - Ayudante de veterinaria en el MGAP - Paysandú

New tracks tagged #paysandú