“Caminando Por La Playa” means walking along the beach, yet Aldo Zolev wrote it about a happy day marching through Bogotá, a city more than 2,600 metres up in the Andes and hundreds of kilometres from the sea. The percussion sets a brisk marching step through the instrumental, with Sandro Londoño on cymbals. Sandra Duque plays the melody on bassoon over Zolev’s double bass. Zolev describes the piece as energetic and lively, built on a memory of Colombian rhythms, and says the walk stands for a way through life, urging his friends to walk “por la vida hoy y siempre“, through life today and always, and to be happy.

Zolev comes from Pamplona, a small Andean city in north-eastern Colombia near the Venezuelan border, where his grandfather, a professional double bassist, started him on the instrument. He moved to Bogotá to study double bass at the conservatory of the Universidad Nacional de Colombia and took jazz and harmony lessons with saxophonist Antonio Arnedo. He formed the world-jazz group Dos Aguas and later played in Bereket, an ensemble devoted to Turkish and Middle Eastern music. In 2007 he set up EnnO, the independent Bogotá label and studio that has since produced 25 albums and runs its own world music festival. Three years later he launched UVA Sexteto, bringing the oud in alongside his double bass. He has also recorded with MARIAZÚ, whose album Eau de Vie – Agua Ardiente was cut outdoors in the Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta, with birdsong and running water around acoustic instruments and indigenous percussion.

In 2025 Zolev relaunched Sensaciones Bajo La Lluvia, the album that carries “Caminando Por La Playa”, and he has just come back from a summer tour of Europe.