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Echoo
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What we
have already done

Some initiatives are over, others are merely paused. They were worth recording: anyone who helped us in the past has a right to find them again, and anyone arriving now can still decide to pick one up.

Would you take a project on?

The things gathered on this page did not end badly: they stopped because we are volunteers and not a company. If one of them interests you — taking it on, supporting it, sponsoring it, restarting it with us or in our place — we would gladly talk.

Let us talk
A Chiquitica guitar

Chiquitica, the low-cost guitar

The Chiquitica is a guitar made of wood, cardboard and fishing line: it costs very little, it goes together in an hour and it really does play, only more quietly. We invented it for the music schools we support, where a real instrument costs as much as a month's wages, and then we sold it in Italy as well to fund them. More than 2,000 have been built and sold.

The project is on hold today, and not for lack of orders: the Chiquitica had stopped being a volunteer project and turned into a business — orders, suppliers, admin, production, packing, deliveries. We are volunteers, with jobs and families, and at some point we could no longer keep up.

The design, the moulds and everything we learned along the way are still here, ready for anyone who wants to start them up again.

The Chiquitica story
A Chiquitica building workshop

The building workshops

For years we took the Chiquitica building and decorating workshops on the road: to schools, bookshops, festivals, village fairs and the Centro Musica in Trento. They were meant for children, but the parents enjoyed them just as much.

It always went the same way: we showed how a guitar is built, handed out colours to decorate it however you liked — the last one, in a Trento bookshop in October 2022, had a Halloween theme — and at the end you learned to play it. Meanwhile we told the story of children the same age, in Cuba or Burundi, who cannot afford a guitar: it was the simplest way we had found of explaining our projects to an eight-year-old.

The workshops are on hold as well, for the same reason: with no production there are no guitars to assemble.

The ChiquiAsta 2022 poster

ChiquiAsta and ChiquiLotteria, February 2022

On 18 February 2022, at the Opificio delle Idee in Rovereto, we held a charity auction in support of the music schools in Cuba, Burundi and Scampia. You could take part in the room or from home, over a video link.

The lots came in two kinds. First the experiences offered by volunteers and friends of the association: piano, violin, accordion, singing, guitar and Portuguese lessons; a cookery workshop on making dinner out of what is left in the fridge; four hours of homework help; a full dinner delivered to your door; two house concerts; a workshop on shooting a music video; a lesson on recording good audio at home; two hours of housework; a weekend in Luserna; and a philosophical afternoon.

Then the instruments donated for the occasion: a Brodwin piano, a Real Digital Piano keyboard, a luthier-made mandola, a djembe, an Eko Mia IV electric guitar, a Fulltone overdrive, a 3/4 cello, a PA system, a Martin acoustic guitar, a vocal effects pedal, a mixer, other acoustic and classical guitars, a ukulele, a portable pickup and a ceramic slide.

Alongside the auction ran the ChiquiLotteria: five euros a ticket, thirty-five prizes, drawn the same evening. The Chiquitica building workshops were touring in the same season, and many of the people in the room that night had first met us there.

The Ponte Radio house in Luserna

Ponte Radio — Luserna

From 2019 we ran Ponte Radio, a house in the village of Luserna, up on the Cimbrian plateau an hour from Rovereto: three floors, five rooms, twelve beds (plus folding beds and mattresses when they were needed), three pianos, a table football, a fitted kitchen and a private garden with a fire pit.

We rented it out for short stays to anyone who wanted to run something there: music workshops, retreats, yoga courses, summer camps, study weeks. Around it were the historic trails of the plateau and the silence, which for anyone arriving from the city was half the reason to come.

Every July the house hosted the Echoo Guitar Campus: four days of classes indoors and out, with students and teachers living in the house throughout.

We no longer run the house.

The village of LusernaThe ground-floor hallThe dining room
The Kapuziner Strasse artwork

Kapuziner Strasse

Kapuziner Strasse was a community of musicians born of a simple idea: that solidarity work and artistic excellence do not belong on different planets.

It had two purposes. The first, artistic: freeing the music from constraints by composing collaboratively in layers — one musician leaves some material, another works on top of it, a third turns it upside down, and in the end the piece belongs to no one in particular. The second, practical: supporting Echoo's projects financially through the sale of the records.

The image beside this text is the project's original artwork.

The project has ended and its website is no longer online.

Would you take a project on?

The things gathered on this page did not end badly: they stopped because we are volunteers and not a company. If one of them interests you — taking it on, supporting it, sponsoring it, restarting it with us or in our place — we would gladly talk.

Let us talk