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Obituarios Negros is a book and transmedia project that navigates between music, literature, performance, and painting. This is the story of an imaginary geography called Lamba, a black territory – similar to García Marquez’s Macondo – where sorcery, sex, and humanity is born. It is an ode to death and to bullerengue music. Concepts like ‘death’, ‘ugly’, ‘sorcery’, ‘bad’, assume positive value within the AfroColombian Caribbean aesthetic in a significant reversal of the white usage of the terms. It is oraliteratura, an expression of the oral tradition of the Caribbean Coast. When the author, Guillermo Valencia Hernández, reads the book on stage he is accompanied by a drummer and a singer. The book becomes music – bullerengue – and theatre.
The book has 65 colour illustrations by three illiterate outsider artists from the Caribbean Coast. Each artist painted their interpretation of Lamba’s stories.
Hand-bounded, limited edition of 300 copies.
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