Mateo Rivano (a.k.a. BarbaRoja) is a visual artist, DJ, and digger from Bogota, Colombia. He is one of the main figures of Bogota's vanguard tropical music scene, also spearheading the visual side of this movement by working on record covers, video clips, and art direction for bands and record labels like Meridian Brothers, Frente Cumbiero, Romperayo, Los Pirañas, Ondatropica, Quantic, Okra Jirushi, and Discrepant records, among others. He started his DJ career in the 2000s while living in Italy, playing Jamaican 7”s on TNT Sound System in Firenze, where he learned the tools of the trade until returning to Bogota in 2008. From then on, he has been digging deep for Colombian roots records and other various South American rarities, as well as African and Caribbean sounds. In 2015, Mateo and his friend Mario Galeano (Frente Cumbiero) teamed up to found Los Guaqueros (The Tomb Raiders), a DJ collective specialized in the exploration of Colombia's extensive musical history, in promoting this incredibly rich musical culture and opening new roads for many other restless DJ's.
