roam and rove

It's been, oh, about a year since I was so excited about a story that I could.not.wait to write it. Please don't let lightening strike, but it just happened. That ho-hum feeling just shrugged off. Just now, after I finished a 75-minute interview with Jonathan Trotter, aka Jon Palido, a 22 year old reggaeton artist from... Tobaccoville.

He accidentally fell into music, he said. He was going on a medical and community mission trip to Ecuador a couple of years ago, mainly to translate, but he wanted to add something to the group, so he produced a CD, made 1,000 copies and handed them out to people he met in streets and in shops. He gave all of them away, and he ended up staying for three weeks and performing, once, for at least 3,000 people. Now, he's working on his third album while waiting tables in Raleigh at night. I'm amazed, really, by how there are some people in the world that can move in and out of their native culture so easily, as if that is what they were born to do. Maybe Jonathan is like that. He was born a white boy in rural North Carolina and then go on to be a popular Spanish-speaking hip hop star in Ecuador, Nicaragua, and (soon) Puerto Rico. Amazing.