The masterful sounds captivated the 1,700 attendees at the Amazonia room, in the Blue Zone, at the Valle del Pacífico Events Center, in Cali. The closing of the opening ceremony of the COP16 biodiversity in Cali was in charge of Geneviève Côté, a Canadian artist who imitates sounds of animals and ecosystems, such as the sea, the desert and the jungle.
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Two acts, ‘Transition’, by Michel Ducharme, and ‘Experience’, by Ludovico Einaudi, were chosen by the interpreter to summarize the first day of the summit. The visual and sound presentation sought to raise the link between threatened biodiversity and humanity.
“Please, let’s make peace with nature,” he said after finishing his presentation in which he showed how biodiversity and the planet are overwhelmed, and the ordeal to ask for a change that stops their destruction.
If I can contribute by imitating sounds so that people become aware, I will continue doing it.
This vision is based on something that is obvious at first glance: she is a tough and strategic woman when it comes to speaking, two characteristics that she boldly camouflages in the midst of phrases with jokes and laughter. Or at least that’s how he demonstrates it every time he tries to say that what he does is not a “talent of the universe, but rather an ability that, due to the causalities of destiny, he ended up developing.”
It is based on the fact that his life has been a complete roller coaster. Since he has memories he began to imitate noises, at first as an almost unconscious reaction, “like a game” – he says in dialogue with EL TIEMPO – “as if I became a mirror of what my senses perceived.”
His childhood was difficult. When she was just a teenager, her mother took her own life, something that completely changed the way she perceived everything around her. “I didn’t know what I was really facing, they were difficult times because they made me rethink the way I was living,” he says.
“I learned to get used to the pain and live with it,” he continues.
In 2017, faced with the existential burden that haunted her and the accumulated problems, she decided to participate in a silent retreat. He wanted to take some time to reflect and look for a new direction.
The decision was to go into the mountains of Canada for ten days. “We couldn’t talk, we were separated men and women, and they didn’t even let us write on paper, it was each one with each other, in absolute silence,” he details.
There he learned to listen to what was around him and spend time trying to replicate the sounds. It was an intensive course that he still takes today.
In the last decade he has participated in realities of talents, in Canada, the United Kingdom and the United States. “When I won my first contest, they started calling me from other latitudes, and there I was able to understand the magnitude of what I was doing. I have traveled the world for that”account.
For the event on the night of Sunday, October 20 in Cali, he had to prepare for weeks. “I am fascinated by Colombian biodiversity. There are unique sounds and species that I have been discovering. If I can contribute by imitating sounds so that people become aware, I will continue doing it. It is the best way to reach people,” she says.
And he emphasizes: “Music is life itself and each being is unique and authentic, and the sounds they produce are magical. Imitating them and serving as an echo to maximize them are the channels that allow me to support the preservation of natural resources.”
DAVID ALEJANDRO LÓPEZ BERMÚDEZ
THE TIME
@lopez03david
