Music lovers can soak up sounds in a Caribbean setting this week as Cartagena hosts the sixth International Festival of Music, Miriam Wells writes for Colombia Reports.

With a theme entitled “The Sound of the Americas,” the event will offer an intensive program of concerts, talks, classes and workshops until January 14.

Colombia’s Minister of Culture, Mariana Garcés Córdoba, is one of the invitees, and will discuss the relationship between music and politics with Jonathan Levi, a journalist with the Los Angeles Times. The pair will consider whether music is something that should be enjoyed just by those who pay for it or whether access to it is a fundamental human right in the same way as education or health services.

In order to strengthen Colombia’s musical construction industry, the Ministry of Culture is supporting a series of workshops teaching people how to build and repair instruments.

Traditional and modern instruments will be examined, and lectures given about different types of musical techniques.

The festival with end on January 14 with a meeting of well-known musicians working in different genres.

For the original report go to http://colombiareports.com/travel-in-colombia/cartagena/21428-cartagena-hosts-international-music-festival.html