The Story of EL GRAN MONO : Australia's only Colombian Pico Soundsystem

Join Tom and Johnny, creators of El Gran Mono, for this special pre-festival chat where they will take us through the origins and journey of how and why they created EL GRAN MONO.

Just across the road from LA FIESTA at the Origin Bake Cafe + Bakery from 1pm! Listen to the history then walk across the road and experience El Gran Mono as it kicks off LA FIESTA 2025 at 2pm!

El Gran Mono is the first picó sound system built outside of Colombia. Picó are huge, hand-painted fluorescent speaker stacks, decorated with animals, aeroplanes, dragons, revolutionary figures or other psychedelic scenes. El Gran Mono (‘The Great Ape’) is a collaboration between Melbourne record collectors Tom Noonan and Johnny El Pájaro in consultation with members of the picó community in Colombia, featuring artwork by Colombian sound system artist William ‘El Maestro’ Gutierrez.  

LA FIESTA TALKS + WORKSHOPS:

1:00pm : TALK | Colombian Pico Soundsystem (45 mins)
The origins and context of El Gran Mono Sound System. Explore how and why it became the first “Pico” style sound system outside of Colombia. 

3:00pm : WORKSHOP - Afro-Colombian Percussion (45 mins)
A hands-on session where participants get a taste and context of Cumbia and other Colombian percussion styles.

4:45pm : WORKSHOP | Maracatu Afro-Brazilian Percussion (45 mins)
A cultural overview and practical introduction to Maracatu percussion, giving participants the chance to play and engage with the rhythms directly.

COLOMBIAN PICOS HISTORY

In the 1970s, the Carribean coastal cities of Colombia began importing vinyl records from West Africa. For the Afro- Colombian diaspora, descendants of the thousands sold into slavery in the region between the sixteenth and nineteenth centuries, this presented an opportunity to craft a new sonic identity. Melding Latin, salsa, Congolese rhumba, and Afropop with the feeling of a Jamaican sound-system party, a new genre of sound was born: picó.

Standing a few metres tall, hand-painted with anything from animals to revolutionary figures and lit with ultraviolet light, picó sound systems are central to the verbenas (street parties) that define the downtown streets of Barranquilla, Cartagena and Santa Marta. Replete with performances, food, dance and costume competitions, the verbenas revolve around the unique sounds and colours of picó.

Extending the transatlantic dialogue between Colombia and Africa to Australia, El Gran Mono – or ‘the Great Ape’ – is the first authentic picó to be built outside of Colombia. Painted by William Gutierrez, it depicts a giant gorilla, in a disaster movieinspired apocalyptic scene, straddling Melbourne’s Flinders Street Station. At a time when governments within Colombia are seeking to outlaw verbenas by drawing unfair parallels between picó culture and crime rates, El Gran Mono stands as a testament to the endurance of Afro-Colombian culture.