My full name is Edgar Andrés Rivera Machado. I was born in Bogotá, Colombia in 1979. My parents, they loved music. All the family parties were full of salsa music and jazz – dancing and singing. My father plays the maracas but nothing more. He sings and my mother sings. They love the music and sing all the time and dance. Wow. Bachanato, a little bit cumbia with accordion. I always remember the Christmas parties were like three days of drinking and dancing.

My dad is a civil engineer, and my mom is a lawyer. My older brother lives in France. He is a medical doctor. My younger brother is environmental engineer in Colombia. He played drums.

I remember the first group that I loved was The Cure, maybe 1991. I was like, “Wow! What the hell?” It blew my mind. I love this music. Then the Grunge boom and I listened to Pearl Jam, and I thought, “What is this music? Wow!” And I fell in love totally with Pearl Jam. Then I listened to Nirvana, and I thought, “I want to play. I want to play!” My older brother had a guitar, but he didn’t play a lot, so I took it and just started teaching myself. I started with a friend, and this friend said, “You want to learn to play his guitar? Learn how to make a cejilla, bar chord.” So, I started with a Nirvana song. It only had two chords! I realized that guitar is a really hard instrument. To make a D chord and make it sound good, you have to put your fingers exactly right and near the fret, and it’s hard and the buzzing. Oh! On the piano, you just press down the keys. I have taught guitar to some people. They say, “I like the way you play guitar, do you want to teach me?” And the first thing I say is, “Ok, but do you love the guitar, really, really, really? Because if not, you are going to quit. You are going to get frustrated. If you want it, you have to push yourself through his horrible sound.”

I loved sports as a kid. I loved playing fútbol, and I like biking and skateboarding, and I am an intellectual person. They said I had a high IQ, and all the teachers said, “This boy needs a different kind of school because he is smart and bored. When another student says, ‘Teacher, I don’t understand this,’ Andres gets crazy.” I remember thinking, “What? What? I understood this two years ago!” At some point my parents didn’t know what to do. In Bogotá, there was only one school that assists this kind of student, Instituto Alberto Merani. So, my parents took me there, and they gave me an IQ test. This was a breaking point for me. The test was two days. And on the first day, I took the test. When I came home to the neighborhood, my friends bullied and teased me saying, “Oh you are too smart for us.” And on the second day of the test, I lowered myself so I wouldn’t do well. I didn’t want to be different. To be in the school you need 130 points. My score was 129. The results of the first day were so high that even with trying to do bad on the second day, I scored 129. A few years later I took some classes at this special school after my regular school, but I didn’t go to school there.

I didn’t really play guitar until I was 16. I started to play in a band with my uncle. We were in a contest sponsored by a radio station to find the Colombia Pearl Jam band of the year. We were among 115 bands. We sent a demo, and we were one of five bands chosen for a live concert. We played two songs. We played Wishlist of Pearl Jam and one of our own songs. It was a live concert in a really famous bar in Bogotá, Acid Bar. This electric guitar I have now is my first guitar. I’ve had it 26 years. It was a present from my parents when I was 16.

I remember one of the concerts that I saw, a band did a cover of the song Burn by The Cure on the Crow album, and I was like, “What the fuck? You can make this relatively easily. If you know your instrument well, you can do this.” I was watching and they weren’t doing anything awesome, and I was thinking, “Oh, I see this possible.” All our music was in Spanish, so I thought to myself, “I can do this.”

But I didn’t realize that music was what I want to do at that point of my life. I was in love with anthropology. I looked at all the spectrums of careers and the only thing that popped for me was anthropology. My parents said, “Why are you going to do this? Study music!” No parents say this. They wanted me to study music! But I love anthropology. I was interested in ethno-musicology. But in the university, I was always with the guitar, and many anthropology colleagues told me, “You should study music. I think that anthropology is not your thing. You spend more time playing guitar than reading the books, so you should think to study music.” “No, I want to study anthropology. What are you talking about. Fuck you! I want this now!”

When I was in university, some anthropology friends and I made a trip to Ecuador. We all played cumbia. In Ecuador, there was the first Foro Social de las Américas, a big meeting of social movements in Quito. We thought this was going to be very nice and talking about really important things. And we used this as an excuse to travel to Quito as a band. We didn’t go to any of the meetings or conferences! We were camping in the Metropolitan Park in Quito with maybe 300 tents. It was a really nice experience with people from all over the world, from Australia and Asia. It was incredible. We stayed in Ecuador a month. When I crossed into Ecuador, I had almost no money. I could buy cigarettes. That’s it. I jumped into the unknown. People invited us to their place to eat and sleep because of our music and my guitar. At some point, I met some guys from Bogotá in Quito, and they said they were saving money to travel to Tierra del Fuego, to the end of the world. They said, “We have $100 saved now.” They opened their wallets and showed me. They got this money from playing music, music that we considered was really boring romantic songs. I was thinking, “If you are making money with this kind of stuff, we are going to be rich!” So, we started playing in the restaurants in Quito. That was really the first time I played in the street, and I realized this is a fucking nice job. We were really young and drinking and smoking, and my guys were busy with their girlfriends sleeping late, so one day I just went alone, and I realize I don’t need anybody to make this money. I never went to Tierra del Fuego because I had to go back to finish school.

One year later in Caracas, Venezuela was the same Foro not just for the Americas but for the world, the Foro Social Mundial. This time I didn’t organize with anybody. I took my guitar, and I went. I like to paint a little bit, and I took some cell phone cases and drew butterflies on the fabric. I think, “If music doesn’t work or I don’t feel secure to play in the street, I have this.” And it worked really good. I sold so many. I didn’t need the guitar to make money.

When I was in the university, I had a job in merchandising and marketing making ethnographic studies of the population to sell products. I worked for Bavaria, which is a beer enterprise. They were in love with the insights and information we were giving them because we were anthropologists. It was well-paid. They hired merchandising students and us. Then, I realized what I was doing. We were making a merchandising study of the peasants to take their money. I would interview them like, “How many beers to you take daily? How much money do you spend?” And I realized that they are hiring me to sell more to people who have nothing. I couldn’t do this anymore. I quit. I told my partner, “I can’t do this anymore. I don’t know how you do this job, but I can’t. I give you my pay and you finish this work, but I can’t do this anymore.”

The 1991 Constitution in Colombia was really one of the most beautiful constitutions in the world and gave rights and respect to the indigenous people. The last 5 or 6 presidents when they get elected, they go to one of the tribes and they ask them for permission to govern the country. It’s an awesome thing. When I graduated, I went to work for the government in many different departments. I was working with the Ministry of Culture trying to save the cultural heritage. I had to make a lot of interviews with indigenous people like, “What were the customs here? And describe this to me,” so they don’t lose this. There was this program of the government to give poor girls and boys a ration of milk in a cookie for daily nutrition, and I was hired to evaluate this program. I went to some really really hard places in Colombia like the end of the world. It was never safe to travel in these places. I was able to watch how the paramilitary work because there is no state in these places. They are the ones who say you can pass or we have to wait two days to pass for no reason. The dangerous people in Colombia are the paramilitary.

My last work in Colombia was with the Unit for the Attention and Integral Reparation of the Victims for the internal armed conflict victims. In Colombia there is jurisdiction that the state is guilty for not protecting these people, and the government has to give reparations. The language of the government was not their language, so I was like a cultural interpreter.

When I graduated, I also started with another band, La Mercosur. They were friends of mine who were studying music and they said, “We like the way that you play the guitar because you are not a musician. You’ve got this different approach.” And I said, “Well, ok.” I don’t know what they mean. We were a little bit famous in Colombia. We played cumbia mixed with Balkan music. In Colombia, there is a rhythm called chirimía, and the format is like Balkan music or klezmer music. We had bass, drums, percussion, clarinet, saxophone and me with the guitar. They just said like, “This song is in A minor. Play what you want.” I have one memory of a concert we did and some really awesome musician in Colombia, Mateo Molano, that I admired said, “You were amazing.” And I was like, “What?” I still didn’t believe it. I had a big self-esteem problem. I didn’t believe it. Listen, my father is a recovering alcoholic like me, and I had this rough childhood. I think it comes from there. My mother was a little bit violent because of my father’s behavior. My dad was never violent. On the contrary, when he was drunk, he would say, “Hey Andrés, come here. I love you. I love you.” But you can’t sustain everything drinking all the time, but he had kept his job in a large state-owned telecom company. He spent maybe 40 years there. People know he is a good engineer. The band stayed together after university and we played the 2013 Rock al Parque concert, the biggest music festival in Colombia. We were hot, but I didn’t have the real confidence.

Then I got married. I started the relationship in 2008. She is Colombian, but she came to Spain a long time ago. I met her there in Colombia on one of her visits to her family. She’s a really good director of photography. They would fly her anywhere for commercials for Coca-Cola and Mastercard and Mango when she was in Spain. It was really big ones. She really made it. In Colombia, it was not as good for her, and she wanted to move back to Spain. So, we moved back to Madrid in 2015 to try for two years because she realized she is losing her experience and people are going to forget her and her career. She made a promise to me, “Let’s try it for two years, and if you don’t like it, we will come back.” I have two girls. My youngest, Irene, was born in 2015 in Spain. The oldest, Zoe, was born in Colombia in 2011. We made this deal that my wife was in charge of money, and I was in charge of the cleaning, taking the girls to school and all these things. I’m not a macho guy. I love my girls and I enjoy the time with them and cook with them. I enjoy this like a little boy. Anyway, it didn’t last. After two years we got divorced. She didn’t want to go back to Colombia.

I started to play guitar a little in Madrid when we separated in 2017. A friend of mine came here to visit me, and my first job after the divorce was selling phone plans in Madrid. It was summer 8am to 8pm with a tie, 40 degrees Celsius and it was cold door selling. And I only earned if I sell – commission. This was my first job in Spain. And she looked at me and said, “What are you doing? You are an anthropologist! You are the guitarist of La Mercosur! You played in Rock al Parque. What the fuck are you doing? What are you talking about? I’m totally sure that if you go these 12 hours with your guitar you are going to make money. Today you sell anything?” “No,” I said. She told me, “Because you are not a seller. You are an anthropologist. You are a guitarist. You are an artist. I’m sure you are going to be with at least 1 Euro.” I said, “Ok, ok!” But I was just divorced in a foreign country with no friends, with no family, with no home, with this fucking job. But this idea was like an origin. She planted the seed in my brain, and it started to grow. After this job, I found a job with an NGO stopping people on the street and raising money. Because I’m an anthropologist, I have the social speech right at hand. And I made the goal every month. I spent like a year in this, but this music idea was in my brain, and the money was not enough. I have to take care of my girls. I had a nice apartment, but I was drinking after the divorce. I was suffering. I started with the little bottles, but then it got much worse. I had this problem in Colombia, but not this bad. Fifteen years ago, I got in a car accident in Colombia. A car hit me two blocks from my home. I was drunk. I spent two years walking with crutches. I had nine surgeries in my leg. I didn’t remember anything two days before or two days after the accident.

So, the idea of music was in my head, so I started to try in the metro with the electric guitar and a backing track with beats and improvising. I didn’t make anything. It wasn’t working. I tried in El Retiro, the biggest park in Madrid, but I was drinking and a mess. And at some point, I start to realize I have to clean out the people I am hanging with. If not, I’m going to die. I had to break so many of my relationships here when I stopped drinking. All of them now are all in a bad shape.

So, I start playing at the terrazas. And one Sunday in 5 hours I made 175 Euros. And this was 2018. And I said, “This is my path.” Actually, I was getting better in the NGO job. I was promoted to a coordinator. I didn’t have to be in the street asking for donations. The NGO job paid 600 Euros a month. So, I said goodbye to the job.

I moved to Málaga because my drinking problem was getting worse and worse and worse. In Alcohol Anonymous, they say there are only 3 places you are going to end: the cemetery, the hospital or jail if I keep drinking. In my mind, I knew I had to stop. I was in this fight in my head.

The drinking problem for me was an ego problem. Addiction is a self-esteem problem for me. One day, I was working making music, and I was with my girls later and full of money, and I was going to take them to some awesome restaurant blah blah with all my ego, and I said, “I deserve a shot because I’m a great dad.” It’s an illness that tricks you. They say the first drink is the most dangerous. Then another one. I was with my girls. And when we left, I noticed I was not so stable and I realized, “This is not the parent that I want to be. No.” Fortunately, they didn’t see this, and they have never seen me drunk. But I said, “If my girls get damage in this stage of life, I’m going to jump from the Viaduct Segovia, this big bridge in Madrid.” The next day I woke up and faced this truth, and I realized I have to go away. It was kind of a self-punishment. “If I want to be with them, I have to be good.” The process of addiction is a degrading process.

At one point before this, I found a room in one of the most expensive neighborhoods in Madrid. One day I was drinking, and I buy a bottle of wine, and I came home, and I was too drunk to drink it. In the morning the next day, this was my breakfast. Then I take my guitar and smoke a joint and drink my bottle of wine. The next day, I woke up with all the sheets in blood and my face was a mess. I was too drunk, and I just fell. I was without my cell phone. I thought maybe I was robbed and someone hit me. And I said, “Stop, you just fell drunk and somebody found you and took your phone.” I realized I couldn’t stay in Madrid. “If I want to recover myself, I have to be away from here.” I spent three nights sleeping in the street in Madrid, but I thought, “My parents didn’t pay a lot of money in university so I could be here. I am so ungrateful.”

So I went to my oldest brother who lives in France. I said, “Please brother, help me. I want to stop drinking.” He’s a Christian, an Adventist. He said, “OK, come here, but you know how I am, and you know what you have to do.” And I get there, and I just needed to fall a little bit more. At some point, I was drunk walking home in the field. I fell asleep, and the police brought me to my brother. And he said I had to go.

In Madrid in 2018, I got a relationship with an Australian artist, and she was traveling to Málaga and said, “I’m going to travel to Málaga. Do you want to come?” And I knew if I stayed in Madrid, I’m going to die. This day, I got my things and then went to Málaga. In Alcoholic Anonymous, they call it a geographical escape. It doesn’t work all the time, but it worked for me. I realized that if I go back to Colombia, I am going to regret this my whole life. I couldn’t abandon my girls.

But I was still drinking. I was in a bus here and I lost my cell phone for the fifth time in that year. I was saying to the alcohol, “No, No, No, I’m not going to give you anymore. Because of you, No. You have taken all of me, my dignity, my girls, my money, my health. I’m not going to let you take anymore.”  I was still going to Alcohol Anonymous even though I was drinking. I didn’t feel horrible going there. They don’t judge. You are always welcome. This is the tick of recovery. The last day I drank was February 12, 2020. I was amazed that I didn’t drink during the pandemic. Yes, I smoke a lot, and I want to stop, but it doesn’t make me crazy. In AA they say you have to come 90 days to 90 meetings. It is some kind of magical formula. Now, I go every week because I know if I don’t go, I will go back to the same places I was before.

The guitar has been like a savior for me. It saved my life. I’m writing her a song and one of the lines is, “She is my shield and my sword.” She’s also my ATM. For me the money is always good. This last 5 years, all hours that I have worked, I have earned 20 Euros or more every hour. This hasn’t happened only 10 times in 5 years. I always used to worry about this, but now I don’t worry and since this new sensation, I earn even more. Saturday, 8 days ago, I thought, “I don’t want to work, but Ok let’s go.” I went to two terrazas and made 70 Euros in less than an hour and I went home. I think that this is because of my recovery process. Five years ago, I was not so good musician. I have improved a lot.

I probably have 200 songs in my repertoire now, but I forget a lot because I know which songs work the best. I’ve got 10 top songs. If I come to a terraza after another musician just played, I use my best 4 or 5 songs. The ones that I think I perform the best and the people always like. No Woman No Cry, Stand By Me, Englishman in New York, Losing My Religion, Don’t Worry Be Happy. People have given my 50 Euros just for Don’t Worry Be Happy. The goal to make money doesn’t affect my playing. I think that what works for me is that I can’t do it unless I give everything. That’s it. Sometimes it helps to go out and play when I’m not feeling good, and other times I’m thinking, “Please come and get me and take me with a spoon!”

When people ask me, “What do you do?” I answer, “I give energy and good vibes to the people.”  And I receive, too. Sometimes this flow does not work. I give, but I don’t receive. But I’ve noticed it usually works. The energy is what matters. Sometimes when it’s going bad, I think, “This is not working today, I say OK, let’s go and give it all.” Then the people feel it, too. There’s only 100% with this job, totally.

At the beginning, sometimes I played 7 or 8 hours, but now this is impossible. The energy it requires is enormous. People don’t realize what it takes to do this. I have to be giving it all, if not, it’s not going to work. People are going to tell you to go away. You are depressing us. You have to give everything. I respond totally to the people. Some days I’m tired and I know it’s going to sound bad, but I have to work, and I need money. I go and the people think it’s amazing. Really? Ok. People love live music. It’s one of the reasons this works. You can notice this, and the people feel it.

I have a few waiters that are fans of me, and they give me money. I don’t think this happens to too many musicians. In the Plaza de Flores, I have one that always gives me 2 Euros. He takes the money of all the other waiters to give me 2 Euros. This is El Gallo Ronco restaurant.

I am amazed when people give a lot of money. It has happened to me many times when someone gives me 50 Euros. The first time, it was a girl from Madrid who gave me 50 Euros after I played 3 songs. They totally hide the money when they give it to me. They show their humility. It’s really beautiful. They all fold the bill really small and put it in my hand. They do it because they like it, and almost always they say, “You deserve this. Take it.” It’s a beautiful experience just between them and me.

One day I was going to Pedregalejo, and I was in the bus with the guitar just daydreaming. This guy from the US said, “Oh, you are a musician, right? It has been hard for you this last year, yes?” He takes out 100 Euros and gives it to me. He told me, “I hope you are not going to waste this money.” I said, “I’ve got two daughters. This money is going to be for my daughters.” And then he took out a 50 Euro bill and gives this to me, too. He said, “I have too much money that I can’t count it.”

I’m a little burned out now because it’s been 5 years, but I think now I have to make other things. My talent is now enough that I can try other things. I know I can give more than this. I’m totally clear about this. I want to fuse music and anthropology and do music therapy. I have written a project and I want to present it to the schools here doing workshops building instruments and history of music. Making flutes and percussion instruments. I did this in Colombia, and it was great. I have always wanted to work with children. and actually when I was still married, we went to the school of my girls and showed how to make Colombian food, like arepas. We did this two times. And the teacher was like, “Hey, have you ever worked with children before? I have worked a lot of time with children and very few times I have had this kind of connection with children that you have. You have to think about working with kids because you have a connection that is rare.” I was like, “Oh, ok.” I am like this with my girls, too. When they come here, they don’t want to go to the beach. They want to stay in and play games. They come every holiday and they come a month in the summer and two weeks in December. I go to Madrid for their birthdays, and I am in this process of healing with the city. I am making peace with Madrid. My greatest pain is not having the opportunity to watch my girls grow daily, to be with them daily.

The last time I was in Colombia, my younger brother and I had a fight. He told me, “I can’t believe that you with your intelligence and your degree in Spain you can’t find a job as an anthropologist.” And I realized I don’t want to find a job as an anthropologist. I want to keep doing what I’m doing. I’m totally free and totally happy with what I’m doing. Then he came to me 15 minutes later and said, “Bro, I’m sorry. You are right. You know what? That fight is because I am jealous of you.” He’s a musician. He’s a drummer, and that’s why. He recognized that I am following my dream, and he is not. My brother is one of the biggest men that I know – smart and a beautiful person. He is the person who I listen to the most. I was with him at the Berlin Wall some time ago and he watched me play. He was working as an environmental engineer there. And since then, every time I talk about needing money, he says, “What? I saw you at the Berlin Wall. Don’t talk to me about money. Take your guitar and go to work!” The clarinetist from La Mercosur was here in December last year and we were in the street, and he said, “You’ve done it. What many singers I have seen them trying to fulfill all their life, you have done it. You have found the color of your voice, and you own your own voice.”

In the future, I want a peaceful life outside the city. I may go to live in the countryside of France with my brother and grow my own food and maybe give the workshops. My dream is to have a place here and a place there.

The guitar has given me confidence. Now I don’t think about rejection when I play music in the street. I have a musician friend, and she has this notion that, “If I play in the street, I am prostituting this music.” I don’t understand this because for me this is the way that I make my life, the most beautiful thing that I can do making my art in order to sustain me. Today, I never get nervous about playing on the street. This is what I do.

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