If you can beat a sword into a plowshare, why can't you make a guitar out of an AK-47? Cesar Lopez, a classically trained musician who plays guitar on the streets of Bogota, and his fellow peace activists have been doing just that for a couple of years now.
After a nightclub was bombed in 2003 as part of Colombia's decades-long guerrilla war, Lopez noticed that a soldier was holding rifle in the same way that he held a guitar and had an idea.
"We found the worst human invention, which is the gun, and the most beautiful, which could be a guitar," López told an interviewer. "And in the end . . . the gun dies and the guitar is born."
The AK-47s have been confiscated from rebels and Lopez gets them from the Colombian government after they have been disabled. They are converted to electric guitars with the help of luthier Alberto Paredes by adding a fretboard, pickups, a jack and controls. The hybrid result is called an escopetarra from the Spanish word for shotgun, escopeta, and guitar, guitarra.
The gun-tars have been given to the United Nations (that's former Secretary-General Kofi Annan with one below) and South American music stars as symbols of peace.
After a nightclub was bombed in 2003 as part of Colombia's decades-long guerrilla war, Lopez noticed that a soldier was holding rifle in the same way that he held a guitar and had an idea.
"We found the worst human invention, which is the gun, and the most beautiful, which could be a guitar," López told an interviewer. "And in the end . . . the gun dies and the guitar is born."
The AK-47s have been confiscated from rebels and Lopez gets them from the Colombian government after they have been disabled. They are converted to electric guitars with the help of luthier Alberto Paredes by adding a fretboard, pickups, a jack and controls. The hybrid result is called an escopetarra from the Spanish word for shotgun, escopeta, and guitar, guitarra.
The gun-tars have been given to the United Nations (that's former Secretary-General Kofi Annan with one below) and South American music stars as symbols of peace.
(Photos from Reuters)
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