Juan Carlos Valencia Rinc�n
The programmer in New York
The programmer in New York
The programmer of the radio show "Jazz la Hora" (and amateur Web Site developer !) was born in Cali, Colombia, in 1966 to a relatively quiet, conservative but funny family. He studied in a prestigious (but in fact really mediocre)local school, from which writer Andr�s Caicedo was once expelled.
As a teenager, Juan Carlos was not a party animal. As a matter of fact, he was a little odd, just studying english and dreaming about impossible things and places. He spent his evenings going over the Entertainment pages of the New York Times and dreaming of conducting a radio program on his favorite music. Over the weekends, he traveled with his family to natural parks in the nearby of Cali where fresh and pure water rivers flow down the Andes mountains.
In his many nights of solitude he dreamt about passionate and impossible love affairs and about all those great movies that never came (and still dont go) to Cali...
He�s a graduate in Engineering (he makes a living out of that) but as he liked (and still does) so many other things, he took some courses on Psychology, Music and foreign languages (English, French, Portuguese and German). Recently, he completed a Masters degree in Comunication. His final dissertation dealing with the Use of the Internet in Colombia - in spanish - is available for download here. (570 Kb. Word 97)
Juan Carlos lives in Bogot� since 1985 where besides working as an Engineer he has been a teacher at a local University. He first joined the Radio in 1992, invited by painter Ines Wickmann, creating special program series for UN radio on musicians like George Gershwin, John Coltrane, Duke Ellington and David Bowie.
Later he worked as programmer in Javeriana Estereo (World Music, Contemporary Sounds and Jazz Fusion). He�s working directly with UN radio as conductor of "Jazz the Hour" since October 1995, a job he enjoys a lot, although sometimes there's not enough time to play more with it.
He loves the books of Thomas Mann, D.H Lawrence, Julio Cortazar and Lucia Etxebarria. He enjoys having breakfast with Earl Grey tea while watching a view through the window. His idea of happiness is watching the colors of the sea in the caribbean island of Providence, scuba diving among beautiful coral reefs full of life or standing on a corner in Cali while eating tropical fruits like chontaduros. He's deeply moved by the dark and truthful voices of Tom Waits, Patricia Barber and Leonard Cohen. He likes to walk beneath the changing lights of the Colpatria building in downtown Bogota and stroll around the streets of the Macarena neighborhood greeting everybody. He thinks that there's nothing like the films of Woody Allen, the amusing honesty of Andrea Echeverri and the beautiful face of french actress Juliette Binoche.
