Since I’ve been in Latin America I have immersed myself into the local music. If you look at my playlists you’ll find artists from all over South and Central America in the genres of merengue, bachata, and of course tons of salsa music. I’ve seen that learning to love the local music  is a surefire way to experience and enjoy a community in every town and city in the world. Music is  a main outlet for the values and expressions of a culture, and as many have said, “Listen to what the music is about, and it will show you what a culture appreciates.”

You may be thinking of some of the more negative examples from the dominant channels of music in our culture which showcase people who look like celebrities but carry none of the talent. Their music is formulaic, the lyrics are empty and derogatory, and all of it is manufactured for consumption. Here’s is just one of many articles that speak of this new business. The Song Machine – “The hitmakers behind Rihanna.”

Essentially, the artist never has to dip into personal memories, be they mountain or valley experiences, they just show up to learn the melody and sing it good enough so someone can auto-tune it to the studio producers’ liking. The concert experience, then, is just going to hear the digitally perfected album played over loud stadium speakers with thousands of shouting voices that drown out the song. Now, I admit, I will go to just about any concert, so this element doesn’t destroy it for me, but what bothers me is that the principle that music is an expression of a culture is now so absent in the performance of the music. Is that what we value?

Enter one of the great salsa voices of our time, Marc Anthony, the top selling tropical salsa artist of all time, who like many salsa singers, sings with a complete band. Marc sings live accompanied by an orchestra of talented professionals. Real people, playing real instruments, in real-time. You have to see it and hear it to believe it, but yes, there are still performers who do it the old fashioned way. They make real music live.

It had been a dream of mine to see Marc Anthony live since I set foot in Latin America over four years ago. He has one of the truest, purest voices that I rank up there with Michael Buble, and Josh Groban. You have to hear it live to take it in. His voice is the story of pain and joy, of happiness and despair, and this past night it was pure celebration.

And then there was the orchestra, comprised of the best instrumental talent of men and women that we have today. Trumpets, trombones, saxophones, guitar, bass, piano, full drum set and Latin bongos. The orchestra alone was worth the price of admission, but together it was one of the greatest concerts I’ve ever been to and I got to share it with my girlfriend and thousands of other Marc Anthony fans.

Here’s what it was like, but you’ll have to multiply it by two or three times to get the real effect:

I know you’ve heard his most recent hit:

I’m reading one of the best books I’ve read in the past couple of years. What’s amazing to me is that it precisely and concisely encapsulates so many of the thoughts I’ve had over the past few years in Latin America, as well as the genesis of this career move over four years ago.

Cal Newport is the author of the book called “So Good They Can’t Ignore You: Why Skills Trump Passion in the Quest for Work You Love.“ The first part of the title is a reference from the actor/comedian Steve Martin who, when asked to dispense advice to up and coming artists in an interview with Charlie Rose in 2007, basically said that you’ve got to practice relentlessly and hone your craft so that it will be impossible to ignore what you’re doing. When you get so good, they can’t ignore you, you’ll just be oozing confidence and this will speak louder than any press release.

So Good They Can’t Ignore You

Newport claims that by building up “career capital” – the rare and valuable skills that employers are willing to pay for – you will eventually land a great job that you’ll be passionate about. This of course, flies in the face of convential wisdom which is “follow your passion and the job will come to you” which is actually pretty rare, and maybe it’s even misinformed. As he shows, some of our favorite geniuses, Steve Jobs, Mark Zuckerberg, Bill Gates, achieved the success they are now know for by being incredibly good at what they do, and arrived at their passion after years of hard work.

But if you follow the traditional route of “follow your passion,” you’ll fall prey to the great career mistake that countless 20-something pioneers make: build up enough courage to quit your day job to pursue your passion. What ends up happening is that the individual tries to bridge the gap of where they currently are and where they want to be with enthusiasm and passion, and worry about producing income later. As we all know, the rule of the working world is that people will only pay for something if you’re good at it, and if you’ve got no income, your career dreams can quickly dissipate.

I know there are tons of travel blogs and people hawking advice on how to quit your job and travel, but the reality is that a traveling lifestyle is only sustainable up until the point that your savings run out. To make money off of a blog or web site, you’ve got to be able to sell some product or service people are willing to buy. But what ends up happening is that these bloggers, and they are legion, have a wonderful journey (a journey to write home about, that much is true, and a worthy goal in itself), but they do not have much to sell other than the travel photos they’ve taken and the unusual stories they’ve collected.

In some ways, I feel like I could have made that mistake. I had so much excitement about jumping into a new lifestyle, one where I would be able to impact people living in economic poverty and providing them with hope and microloans, but interestingly enough, I didn’t have a lot to offer in the beginning, not even a modicum of Spanish ability. What saved me, I suppose, is that a great organization, HOPE International believed in me and put into a place where I could be useful and grow professionally. Even though I had five years of work experience, that career platform doesn’t necessarily translate to effective overseas Microfinance operational success.

What I’ve learned, has been four years in the process. What I’ve seen now, as the current program manager of the Edify program in Peru, is that there are a multitude of skills that an organization like Edify or HOPE International are looking for, and the only way you get to have a position where an organization pays you to be there is to make yourself great at these skills. So while many people have the desire to serve, to learn a language, to help, the real, impact-making jobs can only be staffed by people with specific abilities, and are good at what they do. This is kind of career decision I chose, and this set of specific skills is one that I continue to improve.

  This past weekend I ran the Movistar (phone and cable company) 10K with 16,000 of my closest friends. I hadn’t been training all that much for the competition, but I had run a decent amount up until race day. My goal was to break 55 minutes and to not stop. A lot of times I have a habit of setting out to do a monumental amount of kilometers only to find that I can’t keep the pace and have to slow down and walk. I didn’t have to stop this time, I kept my pace, but one thing overwhelmingly slowed me down: traffic!

I crossed the start line at approximately 8:33, a good three minutes after the start time because I was stuck in a wave of people. So it took nearly four minutes for thousands of eager runners to cross, but as I quickly found out, they were all quite excited to start, but didn’t share the same exuberance for running. I had to abruptly slow down to not smack into the runners before me. There was no order to the race, no slower joggers on the right, and faster joggers on the left. It was all just a free for all in the streets, and therefore the race spilled out on both sides into the grace and onto the sidewalk.

It became incredibly frustrating to find any sort of path through the madness as the lack of order intensified. Runners were confined to slowing down to the speed of the joggers in front of them or waste precious energy by zig-zagging through the masses. I wasn’t about to sprint through the mess like so many of my peers, because it all seemed fruitless; as far as my giraffe-like status allowed me, I could see that it would be this way for at least a kilometer.

There was no way to escape the slow pace.

For at least 4 kilometers, a bit over 2 miles, it was like this. No room to run and it was hot! Not because of the weather but because of the magnitude of runners, it was like running in a heat cloud, only to escape the current cloud and land in the next heat cloud. I was so frustrated.

Eventually things subsided at around the 6 or 7 kilometer mark, and I was picking up speed, but what had happened was that I had already set my pace and was comfortable in it. I had spent roughly 70% of the race running at a pace that wasn’t my goal, and now it felt too difficult to change it. I had exhausted a lot of my energy, and was solely focused on finishing.

I finished, it was fun, and I had a blast with my girlfriend and her friends. Well worth the time involved.

Got me thinking about “pacing” in life. How easy it is to stay with the pack, or burn up your energy when you didn’t start out early, or just resign yourself to sticking with the masses. What did I learn? Train for it, build up your pace, and ensure that you start when you need to start to keep the pace that you intend to carry the entire race.

I had a clear view of the house like the one they used in the movie “Up” where I used to live in Miraflores, Lima. I mean look at this house. It’s a spitting image of it there, like a sitting duck amidst its giant neighbors. It was a house from the late 60’s, maybe early 70’s with a classic architecture. If you walk around Miraflores you’ll see some of these houses remaining. They are becoming more rare because of the current trend of building 10 floor apartment or condominium buildings. Some of these property values for the houses can go for over $300,000 and even up to $500,000, my guess is that the sale of a well-located property can fetch up to a few million dollars.

When you look at my “Up” house here posted, doesn’t it look so out of place next to the towering apartment buildings next-door? I kept thinking that it was only a matter of time before the owners sold their property, and yet another classic house would succumb to the fate of other well-located houses in dense residential areas. It’s sad to me thinking about the loss of another house because I feel like this district loses more of its charm with every sale of a quaint residence. But if I were the owner, what would I do? Would I do the same?

I initially thought this house just looked like the house from the movie, but I wonder if the owner found him/herself in the same shoes of the protagonist. Maybe after the passing of their spouse, they wanted to just fly away and visit some faraway lands to fulfill a lifelong promise? Or maybe modern life had become to irritating with the worsening traffic and hustle and bustle of the burgeoning economy? Or they used the funds to help their children go after their life-long dreams?

It was strange to me because just six weeks ago the house stood their on it’s on, and now it’s gone. Slowly gone the way of the buffalo. And I expect in another six weeks, another small portion of Miraflores will lose its character to yet another residential developer.