He gets guns to play song of peace

BOGOTÁ -- Guns for peace may sound like an oxymoron, but César López has a vision. Why not transform a tool of war into an instrument for peace?

The 32-year-old conservatory-trained musician was looking for ways to use music as an antidote to the violence in this war-ravaged country. While playing outside a Bogotá social club to commemorate victims shortly after a 2003 terrorist bomb attack there, Lopez noticed that a soldier standing guard was holding a rifle in the same way that a musician holds a guitar.

``But he was in a very aggressive and paranoid stance, while we were there in a very loving stance. I got the idea: What if these two were merged -- the worst invention of humanity with the most beautiful," López said.

So was born the ``escopetarra" -- a combination of the words for rifle (escopeta) and guitar (guitarra) -- a symbol of civilization overcoming destruction.

López explained his idea to the Bogotá mayor's office, which gave him half a dozen decommissioned Winchester 16-caliber rifles from the city's guns-for-food buyback program. He took them to an instrument maker, who, for about $900 each, mounted a fretboard over the barrel of each shotgun, added metal strings running down from the muzzle, and inserted a pickup and a jack to wire the instrument to an amplifier.

Most of the donated guns had belonged to criminals, but the one López kept for himself was used by a member of the leftist National Liberation Army, known as the ELN, to kill seven people, according to a former owner.

``It has a very, very heavy energy," López said quietly as he strummed the instrument along the barrel of the former rifle. ``But I see it as a weapon that's been rehabilitated. . . . The weapon is simply lending itself as a vertebra so that the guitar can exist. For me, the gun has died."

López presented one of his first creations to Grammy-winning Colombian rock star Juanes , who auctioned it for $17,000 at a Los Angeles benefit for victims of land mines. He gave others to Argentine singer-activist Fito Páez , the Bogotá mayor's office, and the United Nations Development Program, and kept a spare that will tour Colombian museums. On the waiting list for their own are Colombian pop star Shakira, Mexican singer Julieta Venegas , and legendary Brazilian musician Gilberto Gil. López dreams of presenting escopetarras to other musician activists: Bono, Paul McCartney, and Sting.

Vice President Francisco Santos's office has promised López 10 decommissioned AK-47s from among thousands that have been turned in by former combatants who demobilized in the last few years. One of those weapons has some 500 hatch marks etched on the barrel by its last owner, supposedly representing its victims. An estimated 100,000 Colombians have perished in 42 years of conflict between leftist guerrillas, military forces, and right-wing militias.

López, a wiry, energetic rock guitarist, classical pianist, and lyricist who earns a living composing for film and theater and playing chamber music, began exploring music as social work a decade ago. With three dozen fellow students at the National University conservatory, López began playing free concerts at jails, orphanages, psychiatric clinics, and institutes for the deaf and blind.

In 2002, he and his friends put out a call for auditions to Bogotá street musicians, many of whom were homeless, suffering from drug or alcohol abuse or domestic violence. The idea was to organize them into a group that could perform in public with respect and dignity. They eventually cut a compact disc called ``Invisible Invincibles."

``We weren't trying to find the new Juanes or Shakira -- this wasn't `Latin American Idol.' The idea was to give these artists a dignified life and . . . to change the concept of busking, so the public doesn't think paying street musicians is charity, but rather money well spent for a valuable service," he explained.

Next, he became interested in Colombia's peasants and indigenous people who live in the midst of conflict and resist the occupation of their villages and conscription of their youths by armed groups.

López and his friends collected testimony from victims, and their stories of bravery line the jacket notes of a CD called ``Resistance."

López said he feels a ``social obligation" to use music to draw attention to the long-running war. ``Despite all the violence in the countryside, people in big cities are relatively safe, in a bubble, so I feel one of our biggest responsibilities and privileges is to open our microphones for the voices of people who can't speak for themselves."

After the bombing of the Bogotá social club that killed 36 people in 2003, López and his friends put out a call to 250 local musicians to play in public to comfort victims and protest violence. Dubbed the ``Battalion of Immediate Artistic Reaction," the group gathered to protest bombings in Colombia, the attacks on Madrid's trains, and the Iraq war.

His latest brainchild is to create an ``Experimental Reconciliation Group," a band composed of five former members of armed groups -- the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, better known as FARC; the ELN; right-wing paramilitaries; and criminal gangs -- who will perform and cut a CD.

Sandra Parra, 31, a cellist who collaborates with López, said they have observed that when antagonists play together ``they have to listen to one another, and music softens their differences."

Thanks to the escopetarra's modest fame, López's quartet Almaparlantes (Soul Speakers) has been invited to attend the ratification of an arms control treaty at the United Nations in New York this month , where a sculpture out front shows a man hewing a sword into a plow share.

The trip's biggest hurdle may be getting the gun-guitars through airport security. In the past, López has had to play the suspicious-looking instrument for airport authorities to prove it no longer fires. Twice, airlines let him fly only after the pilots agreed to take the gun-guitars into the cockpit for safekeeping.